March 14th - Fremantle, Australia

Oh well another day with changes to our itinerary…and more.

The Captain came on early this morning with the announcement that we would not be allowing any more passengers or crew to come aboard the ship including the hundreds expected here in Fremantle.  Those folks just found out this morning just like us.  Can you imagine coming all this way to board a ship only to be turned away?  I don’t know how many there were.  Even Captain Wells who was supposed to take over command wasn’t allowed on and now Captain Hashmi will continue in command.

The people turned away will be put up in hotels for up to four days while Cunard makes arrangements for them to go home.  In addition, any other passengers who want to leave can leave here in Fremantle and Cunard will fly them back home and give them a future cruise credit.  A number of people are taking them up on the offer but they needed more time to pack and get ready to go so the ship is staying overnight in Fremantle and will leave (hopefully) tomorrow evening.

I say hopefully because two other world cruises, Holland America’s and Regent’s are coming to an end here in Fremantle in the next week or two.  I was sick to my stomach when I heard that, I thought for sure we would be ended too and have to fly home from Australia.  Do you have any idea how long a flight it is from here to home???  Well let me tell you…most flights go through Sydney, that’s a 5-hour flight to there, then it’s a 14-hour flight (!!!) from Sydney to LA, then 6 hours from there to Boston.  That’s a nightmare scenario for someone who doesn’t like to fly like me. 

I won’t feel at ease until we leave Fremantle tomorrow night, things could easily change again.  If the new schedule holds, we will still go to Mauritius but skip Reunion Island and continue onto Durban South Africa and arrive a day early.  Our South Africa ports look good right now so fingers crossed we still go.  After that we have one stop in Namibia and two more stops on islands in the Atlantic, but those will probably be cancelled.  Hopefully all the measures now being put in place to prevent the spread of the virus will work and by the end of April we’ll see some marked improvement. 

Meanwhile here in Australia things seem very normal.  We went to the Fremantle Markets today and there were plenty of people milling about and having a good time.  There are cases of the virus in Australia but it’s not widespread, they did a good job of treating the situation seriously from the beginning (no hoax here) and it seems to have worked but time will tell. 

I have some pictures of our day here in Fremantle, it was pretty nice, humid but with a breeze.  The skies opened up in the evening but we were back on the ship by then.  Tomorrow we’re here again and I’m not sure what we’ll do, maybe take the train into Perth for the day.