Grand Africa Cruise - Sea Day

Cruise Day 70

Sunday, December 18, 2022

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads.  Not knowing where I’m going is what inspires me to travel it.”  -- Rosalia de Castro

Today is the beginning of the end, the first of two sea days before we return to Fort Lauderdale and the end of the cruise.  We are anxious to get home, but it feels a little sad that our adventure is ending.  It is a letdown to realize we are returning to our normal everyday life.

We slept in a little, but were still up and about before 9:00 and after breakfast in the Neptune Lounge we decided to do some packing.  We have to decide what we need to carry and check on the plane and what we are shipping home.  The shipped luggage can take up to ten days to arrive so we need to make sure we only ship things we can do without for that time.

We made some progress, but the real packing will be done tomorrow.  After our packing, I uploaded our final batch of pictures before we get home and then backed everything up.

There is a crew talent show today and Kristine has been telling us for weeks that we have to attend as she will be performing, and she wants the support of all the Neptune Suite guests.  I’m sure there will be a big turnout as she is very popular among our fellow suite passengers.

We went to lunch early today as we wanted to get good seats for the show.  We went down there an hour early and it was full when we got there.  We did get decent seats and we were glad we went early as they had to set up folding chairs out in the entryway to accommodate more people.

I’ll take a minute here to talk about the crew.  For those of you not familiar with the crew of a cruise ship, the vast majority of those providing service to passengers work on six to eight month contracts, which means they are away from their family for extended periods of time.  There are no weekends off, no holidays, just working every day for the length of their contract.  Our room stewards are up very early every morning, and they clean rooms and do other tasks until around 1:00 PM.  They get a few hours for lunch and a nap and then it’s back to work until around 9:00 at night.  Kristine, our Neptune Lounge concierge, is there between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning to open up and she closes every night at 8:30.  She gets a lunch and dinner break, but she spends most of her time there.

Besides these examples, there are many behind the scenes crew that we never see but have the same type of contract and work schedule.  If their schedule permits, they can get off the ship in the ports, but they usually don’t have much time.  There are occasional crew excursions, but many of the crew, like the dining and room stewards, can’t get the time off to go.

Despite this heavy work schedule, they are always friendly and helpful and make our shipboard life easier and more enjoyable.  Most of the lower-level crew (not officers or managers) are Filipino or Indonesian, but there are many other nationalities represented also.  Compared to what we expect to be paid in the US, they are paid very low wages, but they do get their room and food and there is also a ”crew appreciation” charge per person per day that at the end of the cruise is split up among all the crew members.

These charges are automatically charged to your account, but can be declined if requested, but most people appreciate how hard they work and are glad to pay.  It is optional, but at the end of the cruise many people give crew members such as the room attendants and dining room stewards some extra money as well.  We always do that as they work so hard and do so much for us to make our cruise more enjoyable.

Despite the low wages, most crew members make much more than they can earn working in their home countries so the long hours and months away from their family are worth it to them.  The crew members we have talked to over the years usually have a goal to quit after a certain number of years once they have saved enough money to start a business of their own. 

The crew talent show lasted two hours and it was great.  This was strictly a volunteer effort by the performers, and they had to use their non-working hours to rehearse.  There were twelve performances that included solo and group performances.  We were of course rooting for Kristine, and she did a dance routine and then came back with a group of her fellow Filipinos doing a traditional dance.  She is very talented and ended up taking second place.  Everyone who performed was very talented and the effort that went into this show was greatly appreciated by the audience and each performance was rewarded with extended applause and cheers.

During part of the show they did a tribute to various crew members and their departments that were made by the crew themselves.  They were all very good and some of them were very funny.

Kristine doing her dance routine.  I was using a pocket camera to take these pictures and the battery went dead at this point, and I wasn't able to get any pictures during the rest of the show, but you get the idea.

After the show Val and I decided to stroll through the casino and try our luck.  I came back to earth after my big win the other night, but Val had a very successful day.  Since this is the end of the cruise, we are a little looser with what we spend, and that is made easier by the luck we have had lately.

By the time we got back to our room it was after 5:00 so we relaxed until dinner.  It was dinner as usual tonight, but the casino was definitely not the usual for Val.  She won $600 on one machine and then a few smaller amounts on several others.  All told today, Val won over $800, the best day either of us have ever had on a shipboard casino.

With all the winning Val did, we spent quite a bit of time in the casino tonight and didn’t get back to our room until after 10:00.  We found the last gift of the cruise on our beds when we returned.  We each got a Holland America duffel bag to use for overflow packing.

Tomorrow is another sea day and the last day of our cruise.  We also have the clocks turned back for the last time and get an extra hour of sleep, so we were in no hurry to get to bed.

Some afternoon clouds led to ...

a beautiful sky as the sun began to go down.