VI. End of Cruise

After Vila we had three days at sea. Each day started with us meeting for our breakfast of Special K and some. On sunday morning the ship had a brunch as well, so we decided to meet up a bit later. During the night our phones had automatically changed the time. Even though we had already adjusted all our watches for daylight savings earlier on the cruise. Ben and Kat and Luke and I ended up going to brunch an hour early. We somehow just missed eachother. And when we called Joelle and Keegan thats when we realised what had happened. Lucky all our watches were showing the real time. That was a very weird morning. 

The above photos and any other photos of food in this post are off Joelle's blog femmefitale. This was what our breakfast looked like most of the time. Plus lots of "Aussie" bacon and eggs. The above photo is french toast and coco pops. It sadly wasn't as great as it sounds. Mine was a tad burnt and it was just a bit of a mess really.

Not going to lie, these paintings were on each floor in different colours and I was completely obsessed. There were a couple of different mermaid ones which I was often pointed out by our friends, "look it's you". But at this point the ocean was outside and I was trapped inside when all I wanted to do was go snorkelling again. 

We spent way too much time in the duty free shops on board. Mainly the jewellery store. The boys combined would have spent I think at least over $1000. Luke and I became pretty obsessed with watches.

The boys in their natural element. Being on the cruise and being friends with the great people we met really got me in to the gym. Training with the girls was so much fun. I miss it so much. I learnt so much from Joelle. She won 2013 Natural Olympia and she is an absolute rig. If you are interested in fitness I highly recommend checking out her blog she posts some incredible articles and is truly inspiring. Her butt is my motivation.

This is a recent photo from Joelle during this years competition. How amazing does she look!!

On Sunday night everyone was watching the footy, the boys and Kat were pretty excited. Joelle and I weren't really fussed. In the last blog post you may have noticed it was really cloudy at the end of the day. That night was by far the worst night on the cruise, movement wise. There was a storm outside and it was physically impossible to walk in a straight line. I had already had my bit of seasickness, and sadly it was Luke's turn on the one night he was really excited about. We ended up having to stay in the room for the night, which meant luke wasn't able to watch the game. He was pretty upset. We got the boys to call our room to update us. And couldn't remember who won for the life of me.

On one of the days we all got together and rode the waterslides. The Green Thunder (chunder) was pretty scary. You are standing in a capsule and the floor falls from underneath you and water rapidly attacks your face. Sounds fun right? It's over in less then 30 seconds and we have the best video of Keegan holding the GoPro and going down the slide. It's pretty great. I will get all my videos together and edited soon so I can share the great footage we got with our multitude of GoPro's.

Above is most likely a photo of Joelle confusing the waiters when trying to request greek yogurt for breakfast. To be fair there is a bircher muesli you can order which has the yogurt in it. It's just trying to explain to the waiters that you want that yogurt which is the hard part.

We couldn't find everyone one afternoon so Luke and I decided to play ping pong finally. It wasn't too windy this day. Yes the ping pong table is outside. I know right, genius! We then got real weird and started making up weird rules and at one point we both had the GoPro head strap on and were filming our mad pro skills. This was one of those little snippets I won't forget, just having stupid fun with the boy that I am so ridiculously in love with.

It hurts how different this looked like in real life. We couldn't get a good photo of it. This was the most pink and magical sunset, I wish I could have shared it with all of you.

Luke: "Erica's on the red wines again, oh no."

Just a blurry photo from one of the many very weird performances our waiters put on for us every night. I didn't love them, I didn't hate them, they just happened.

Purple Mermaid

This was Luke and I on the Cruise's first "Elegant night". Yes I was lazy and outfit repeated. I don't have many nice dresses tbh.

This was on the last elegant night of the cruise. We all got a good amount of drunk and decided to take some pro photos. We didn't want to pay for them because we took so many so these are our sneaky photos of photos because photos.

The boys copied our pose, and they did it flawlessly! Who wore it better?

Everybody meet 'The bubbler'. This was a weird face that Kat and Ben had been talking about the whole cruise and it was ruining the rest of us waiting to see it. He finally brought out 'The Bubbler' and it did not disappoint. Looks so much better in person. I couldn't get a good enough quality photo of the photo because the people at the store cracked on to what we were doing.

A couple of the photos were kind of perfect so I had to buy them. It hurts my heart so much seeing these photos, I miss these amazing people so much. I can't even explain the bond you make with people after seeing them everyday for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and everything in between. I actually feel homesick for all of them.

. Make friends

This is the watch I bought Luke for our Two Year Anniversary. It's so stunning. Very art deco.

Here's to the best 10 day's onboard the Carnival Spirit. I had an amazing time with my favourite person in the world. I couldn't think of anyone better to travel the world with. This time we ticked off New Caledonia and Vanuatu. I can't wait to start ticking more places off our list. I will cherish the time spent on this ship and more so off this ship with the amazing group of friends we managed to put together. Joelle I miss our sauna dates and gym sessions and the constant motivation you were to me every day. Kat I miss your beautician horror stories, awkward sentences and drunk girl dancing in the club together. Keegan I miss how you always flipped around what everyone said to make them sound bitchy, "Are you wearing that out tonight?" and of course "SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER". Ben I miss your sense of humour, you could always make us smile and of course the bubbler. Here's to the warm melting chocolate cakes, snorkelling adventures, discovering new places together, touching turtles, riding the green chunder, uniting the GoPro's, the girls vs boys basketball game, the scarily aggressive games of spoons we played nightly, shots of gold patron, gym sessions, and most of all our family breakfast, lunch and dinner. And somehow we managed to work things out without phones in the mix. I love you all so much and I can't wait to see you all again for another adventure. Thankyou Carnival for a killer 10 days and for putting us on table 106 together.

#CarnivalCruise

#HappyTwoYear

erica

V. Vila, Vanuatu

Our last stop on the cruise was a fair bit of a let down. I mean we still had a great day, but I can't say Vila is one of the nicest places I have ever visited. As soon as we got off the boat we could tell this stop was going to be a lot different to the other beautiful places we had visited. When we hopped off the boat instead of being greeted by sandy white shores and tropical paradise we were confronted with concrete and clouds. Luke and I had booked a snorkel tour for Vila so we had a couple of hours to kill with our friends. We decided to spend this time at the markets which were just outside the this fence. Although once we got to the fence we spent the majority of our time and energy telling taxi drivers that we did not want to go anywhere and that we just wanted to look at the markets, rather then actually being able to enjoy the markets.

. Markets

It was very humid and it was also raining at the time. It was fun walking around the markets for a while, but then it just started being the same items in different places. It was all just a bit much. Especially considering half of these things I had seen in Thailand, although here they had changed the wording to say "Vanuatu" more often then not in permanent marker. Very authentic.

Surprisingly people actually bought these bow and arrows and were allowed to take them in to Australia. And yet I am technically not allowed to bring home coral? 

And I wasn't allowed to bring home Kava either. I really wanted to try Kava but nobody else in the group was game/ in the mood and in the end I just didn't get a chance.

I have to admit I did buy one of those fake shark tooth necklaces above. I have no real excuse except for the fact that I think they are really cool.

. Find souvenirs

For some reason these creepy (not sure if racist) baby dolls were everywhere. I don't know about you, but I put them on par with clowns for inducing nightmares.

When it came time for Luke and I to go on our tour we split up from the group and went back to the boat. The others went duty free shopping in town because we had been told it is really good in Vila.

. Talk to a local

We got dropped off with a group of people to a random wharf in town. This was a tiny car I saw on the way. The boat ride was absolutely freezing. And Luke and I were so close to not going snorkelling considering how cold we were. But when we got to the location we decided we had to do it. This was the last chance we had to snorkel on this trip.

And we were not disappointed. 

This was a beautiful snorkelling location. They were feeding the fish around us, and gave us bread to play with the fish. I was back where I belonged. My hair even blended with the water now.

Just posing with some fish.

Will never get over how funny fish faces are.

Just after this photo was taken I looked up at Luke making wild gestures and he was doing the same to me. I wasn't even thinking I just swam straight over to him.

"Did you see the snake!!!"

Just underneath the photo was a stunning black and white sea snake. I went back to try and see it again but I couldn't find it. Which freaked me out until I found out that they aren't dangerous from the tour guide. But I still haven't checked up on the facts. Who knows they could actually be crazy deadly. But that is for another day on Google.

Luke had left me at this point because his knee was sore which was fair. I didn't mind. It just gave me a chance to relax and swim around with all the fish. 

I feel like the photos above are me basically leading my army of fish to wreak havoc on the world. 

I adventured pretty far from the group and found some amazing coral. I even found some Clown fish who I can't even tell you how long I spent watching. They were so entertaining. I literally spent a lifetime floating above them watching them rub up against the anemone. And on top of this there were these black fish everywhere, they kind of looked like goldfish. They were the funniest things. They would stare at you when you swim by and then randomly swim away really fast. Imagine 12 black fish all in different places around you just staring at you. I was dying. I was actually laughing out loud in to my snorkel. I don't have any photos of these fish but I have some great video footage. Hopefully I will sort my shit out and put some footage together real soon.

. See clown fish

I eventually went back to the group and practiced diving as far down as I could for a while. Ended up getting heaps of water in my ear that I was still trying to get out later that night.

Tropical Island Mermaid Princess

. Snorkel in Vanuatu 

I don't know if you can see them, but if you can look really hard you can see a couple of the black fish I was talking about, looking at the camera.

The ocean will forever leave me speechless and give me goosebumps. It is just so entirely different everywhere you go, and yet the same. It's a whole other world that we are so blissfully ignorant of. I will forever be in complete awe of the absolute wonder that is just below the surface. 

. Duty free shopping

I was eventually dragged out of my happy place and put back on the boat (not physically). We headed back to the ship, showered and met everyone for lunch. The other's were all pretty exhausted and let down. Vila was extremely below everyone's expectations. Luke and I wanted to check out the duty free shopping so we headed back on to the Island. And talked a cab driver out of swindling us. We got half the price he was trying to charge us. I bought a bottle of Pimm's and Luke bought me my favourite perfume "Oh Lola" by Marc Jacobs as an anniversary present. We pretty much went back to the ship right after shopping and spent the rest of the afternoon playing ping pong and mini golf because we couldn't find the others. We eventually met up with them again for dinner and had another great night in fantastic company. 

#CarnivalCruise

#HappyTwoYear

erica