Port Louis, Mauritius

It's been a return to sea days as of late with little new to post about in all honesty. 11 sea days with one port to break that up. That port was Port Louis, Mauritius.

But before I get into that, there's been a recent revelation that is possibly exclusive to a world voyage. Something I hadn't considered but something that upon reflection is almost obvious. People are getting bored! Over a thousand of our guests are into their third month on board. There's a limit to how much variety one ship can offer across that length of time. Obviously, the ports offer whatever they offer but life on board begins a to become groundhog day. That manifests itself in some general guest dissatisfaction around things that weren't blatantly obvious on day one but now become more significant. The sentiment remains positive but when you combine boredom with a run of so many sea days, people become more ill with a common cold than they ordinarily would, people lose an item and it becomes a theft. People are tetchy and it begins to leak out in various ways.

Track cruising around the Med or the Caribbean means guests come out for a week or two, enjoy the novelty of a unique experience on board and then go home. When you're 86 days into a cruise it's a very different experience.

It's possible this also accounts for me not blogging recently. The cocktail parties are on repeat, the sea days are largely the same and if I'm honest, the ports haven't been great since Singapore. A lot of us are getting 'contract tired' and it becomes a little harder to do exactly the same job today as you did yesterday. Entirely normal I suspect.

Now don't get me wrong, this isn't a normal job and I won't pretend otherwise. I'm describing first world problems here!!

The sunsets remain amazing, the highs remain high and the experience is still a unique one and I still love every day I work here. It's just an observation that differs from other voyages I've experienced.

Mauritius meant me doing something I rarely do. Not my cup of tea, a beach day! We hired a driver for the day and drove out to a beach resort on Easter Sunday. First mistake, it turns out that's a busy day to be lounging! The first place we went to turned us away but fortunately a nearby hotel reluctantly accommodated us. A strange set of rules followed. You can have lunch if you stick to the restaurant, you can use the beach but you can't take drinks there, you can sit by the pool but can't use the pool. And you can't do a combination of all of the above. Unless you're there at lunchtime when it all changes and then seemingly you can do whatever you want. It's hard to follow a set of such flexible yet rigid rules that are both enforced and unenforceable. So after some confusion we eventually found some poolside seating and proceeded to eat and drink. The staff were lovely and attentive eventually, very different to our arrival, despite being the same people! All a bit odd.