United Arab Emirates

What a contrast! We left the hustle and bustle of an ancient India and arrived in the modernised city of Abu Dhabi. The shuttle bus soared down the 6 lane highway and not a tuk tuk in sight. Even the weather had lost its humidity but it’s still bloody hot.

Amongst all the modern skyscrapers, the bus dropped us at the World Trade Centre. We were in the centre of this metropolis yet everything was calm. One half of the WTC had very upmarket shopping while the other side had a marketplace and supermarket. Everything felt so civilised and clean. Even the hawker market touts weren’t pushy. The supermarket was able to satisfy some of our food cravings that the cruise ship couldn’t meet.

I managed to convince Ruthie to contain her shopping hunger until closer to the end of our journey explaining that I could only carry so many elephants and camels on my back!

Overnight we sailed to Dubai. We have been here before where we had done a 4WD desert drive which took us to a Bedouin feast as well as a sunset camel ride. (And nearly got us killed on the way home when our vehicle got bogged in the sand and we had to get out while all the other 4WD’s flew past us from every direction.) We shopped with the gold souks and visited the shopping centre which contained a snowfield just in case you fancied a spot of skiing in this hot weather. Whilst there are a few more things we need to tick off, the extreme heat made us choose to stay in the cruise terminal with free wifi and catch up with the rest of the world. I heard one cruise passenger had to replace his foot wear because the footpaths had melted the soles!

Some of the ships senior crew do a meet and greet. When the Captain was asked what the most annoying thing or the biggest problem he had doing his job is, he amusingly answered Tik Tokers. The Ultimate World Cruise (the whole cruise is 9 months long) has attracted a lot of media attention. There are news crews in many ports looking for an interview – possibly because it’s not the usual world cruise type of crowd. Ruthie has been following many of the young influencers on board even before we embarked. She was very excited when she got to meet them and tell them she was one of their hundreds of thousands of followers. (They weren’t as excited as she was!)

Leaving Dubai we got as close as 30 kilometres from the Iranian border and further down we saw Oman in the distance. There was a lot of small talk about pirates. In fact the ship had a pirate party where everyone dressed as pirates. If only the real pirates could see us now!

Tonight the ship celebrated that we had turned south on our way to Africa! Another huge balloon drop and party, this time the theme was desert sand colours. We danced the night away to all the songs mentioning Africa the band knew! We had to pinch ourselves. We’re going to Africa. Thank goodness tomorrow was another sea day and we could sleep in.

There are less than 800 passengers on this segment (less than half full) and we feel like we are on our own VIP sailing yacht. It feels very personal as there seems to be 1 crew member for every passenger, deck chair choices abound as do tables in the dining room and if we have to wait longer than 3 seconds for a lift something’s wrong. Some of the full world cruisers chose to forgo this portion of the trip and will rejoin again in Greece. Although about 90 passengers are rejoining in the Seychelles (there was actually a boo when this was announced). Their cabins and anything they didn’t want to take with them are being kept for them.

Now sailing south we of course had to have the obligatory Equator crossing ceremony. The shellbacks were suitably punished by kissing the fish and having ice and water dumped down their backs. King Neptune rides again!

Turn the yacht to the Seychelles please James!