Leaving in less than two weeks for 18 days (17 nights: funny how that works) on Silver Whisper, the newest of the Silversea Cruises' four ships. Planning (with United Airlines' consent) on three nights in Sydney before the cruise and two nights in Hong Kong at the end. The ship will make seven stops enroute including three on the island of New Guinea, two in Papua New Guinea and one on the Indonesian side of the island in the area formerly called, Irian Jaya. I've been to PNG's capital city of Port Moresby--known as "Moresby" to world travelers who are defined as those who call it "Moresby"--in the South. The two stops in the country on this cruise are on the north side of the island and give access to the mountainous areas. I've booked a full day excursion (the cruisers name for guided tour just like we don't leave the ship, we disembark and we don't just pay for the cruise, we pay through the nose) at Madang, the 2nd stop in New Guinea after the lovely named town of Wewak. The full day tour, uh, excusion will go up into the mountains where I won't be surprised if a bunch of university students will dress like canibals and jump up and (presumably) down. (This is know in the world of cruising as "folkloric", a word apparently used only by cruise ship tour desk personnel.)
The ship will stop also in Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, country number 115 for me, and make two stops in the Philippines, Cebu City and Manila. I've booked tours (or as we say, "pre-booked" them) in all the stops except for Newcastle, NSW which is only 75 miles north of Sydney. (Maybe I'll go there on commuter train from Sydney and leave a note for myself.) Newcastle is a substitute port for the originally advertised city of Bundaberg in Queensland, near Brisbane. I'm sure the entire ship will be abuzz conjecturing about the reason for the substitution. My guess is that the captain had a lump of coal to deliver.
Click on Google Earth screen capture above (as well as on most other pictures as in this series) for a higher resolution version. The one above shows the ship's planned stops.
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