Some folks have expressed interest in how we plan, pack, and get ready for a world cruise. This gives you an idea of what is involved in getting ready to go. I hope you find this interesting.
We’re just about 90 days out of our January 5th sailing. You can see our itinerary above. For those who went along on our 2011 world cruise you’ll see a number of repeats. There are certain places that every world cruise goes each year. The main difference for us this time is we’re heading over to Africa. Last time we went up through the Middle East and Suez Canal to the Mediterranean.
At this point in our preparation we are looking at visas. It appears that we’ll need 6 or 7 visas. Most will be provided through the ship as we arrive in the country. We’ll see the charges show up on our shipboard account. We have two issues. Since the ship is only going to Hong Kong we don’t need a China visa. However, Noreen and I are leaving the ship and traveling into the interior. For this we have to get our own China visa. The other issue is with Dakar, Senegal. There always seems to be one country that is having problems with the US and reacting by changing the visa requirements at the last minute. None of this is unusual and will be worked out by the time we sail. Our challenge is the timing of sending our passports off for visas and not interfering with any other travel we have that requires a passport.
Another area for attention now is immunizations. Looks like the only thing we’ll need this time is malaria and tetanus booster. We’re up to date on yellow fever and other shots from the South America & Antarctica cruise.
We’re also nailing down excursions. Some are privately planned and others are sponsored by the ship. We have a private excursion planned from Lima to see the Nazca Lines. This is on Noreen’s bucket list and we had to plan it ourselves. Our next big excursion is in China. We’ll leave the ship in Hong Kong, spend 5 days traveling around the interior and rejoin the ship in Singapore. Then we have another off ship in Durban for a five day safari and rejoin the ship in Cape Town. Our safari destination, Kruger National Park, is rated high for malaria risk, thus the need for immunizations discussed above. We’re working with our doctor to decide if we want shots, pills or both. Noreen is looking at a camel safari and some elephant rides in various ports. Otherwise we’ll just be getting off-ship and taking local transport and see the sights. I’ll probably have 6 or 7 SCUBA dives over the cruise.
Packing isn’t too much of an issue. We’ll be staying pretty much in the temperate region so no need for extreme clothing. We actually had a bigger challenge going around South America with tropical to Antarctica to deal with. China may be a bit chilly and we may decide on some special clothing for Africa with the malaria threat. The real challenge for Noreen is 18 formal nights during the cruise. We have laundry service on board so a two week supply of routine daily clothes is fine.
We need four months of OTC drugs and toiletries since everything is much more expensive out of the US. We take a power strip, extra hooks for the walls, tape, rubber bands, first aid kit and a whole selection of stuff to make the room supportive of the time on board.
That really is the major planning that goes on. It really is a lot of fun going over the itinerary and figuring out what we want to do and experiencing different cultures. I look for my adventures like Zorbing and Noreen looks for opportunities to help the local economy. Hope this was interesting and answered some questions. If you want to know something specific, let me know. We’ll “see” you in January when we set sail.
