I be cruising! - Part One

I have just come back from an absolutely life changing 10 day P&O Cruise! I am not even sure where to start, it was just an indescribable experience, everyday was an adventure, the people we met were amazing, the sights we saw, the cultures, the entertainment... just amazing. Lets start from the beginning =)

Back in December my friend Jason randomly called me to ask if I would want to come on a cruise, which of course I jumped at the idea, who wouldn't! It was for 10 days leaving from Sydney, Australia and traveling to the islands around Vanuatu for a few days, stopping at 4 separate islands before returning back to Sydney. I went with one of my best mates Jason, our mate Mick, Mick's older brother Steve and a friend of theirs Rodney. We are all single, in our early 20's, and work/study far too hard, so a holiday like this sounded epic from the start.

Luckily I kept a log while on the cruise which makes it much easier to recount the trip. You know when you go on holidays and you return back home to receive the expected "how was your trip?"... and you'd think you would have have a week's worth of stuff to tell but you kind of blank out, don't really know where to start, what parts to tell. Well that happens to me anyway lol.

Our first 3 days were spent at sea so we made the most of it by exploring the cruise ship. These things are floating resorts it is unreal, there's bars everywhere, all you can eat buffets, casino, theater room, nightclub, pools... you get the drift. (Get it, drift? Classic!). Also with 2000 passengers it doesn't take long before you start chatting to strangers, there were quite a lot of characters that's for sure.

It wasn't long until we met some new people, namely these 3 girls at the nightclub on our second night to which we hit it off with them from the start. Hayley, Amy and Laura. By the end of the cruise they became like best friends to us and became a significant part of our group, we did everything with them and the cruise definitely wouldn't of been the same without them!

First up was the island of Numea... and as my luck would have it I was terribly terribly sick for this day lol. I kid you not, I thought I was going to die... I missed the entire day and instead opted to stay very very still on one of the pool deck chairs. In the end I slept from 10am to 4pm, stumbled around for dinner, then fell asleep again from 10pm that night until 9am the next day. So, yep, the most I seen of Numea was through closed eyes haha.

Numeo, taken from the back of the boat.

Woke up the next day feeling awesome though! Which was great because today we were on the absolutely stunning island of Lifuo!  For this place, no explanation will do it justice so instead, I am going to let the pictures do the talking.

Clear skies, clearer waters, sun on your face, knowing your hundreds of kilometers from home and being able to spend the day without a single care in the world... priceless!  My favourite part was snorkeling in the crystal clear waters, seeing a huge abundance of life just below the surface.  The rest of the day was spent doing a bit of sight seeing, looking at what the locals had for sale and then just wasting the day away on the beach... I felt so privileged to be able to live a life where I have the chance to do these amazing things.

Oh yeah, I got my hair braided by the locals haha, and bought a bandanna to go with it... it surprisingly suited me extremely well.

Part Two can be found here.