World Cruise – a Passenger’s Perspective

In 2016 my parents were luckily enough to embark on a voyage of a lifetime.  On January 2nd 2016 they set sail on the World Circumnavigation on the P&O ship the Aurora.

As you can imagine planning for 114 nights away at sea took a fair bit of time!  I thought I would share an extract from their epic voyage so you can see what a World Cruise is all about.

Saturday 2nd January 2016

We made our way to the Ocean Cruise Terminal for 2.30. We deposited our luggage with the porter and left our car with the car parking people and walked to the terminal. Once inside we were handed a card and had to wait for our letter to be called to book in. We waited about 45 mins. Once we were called up the process was very quick and we were soon welcomed on board.  We began to sail shortly after 6.00 pm. As we reached the harbour head we were met with a firework display from a tug boat. What a send off!

Monday January 11th & Tuesday January 12th 2016

Barbados. We docked about 8.00 am, an hour later than scheduled.  We got off board about 8.30 and made our way through the cruise terminal to the meeting point for our excursion – Coast to Coast. We started by driving out of Bridgetown towards the west coast passed the famous cricket ground – the Kensington Oval . We passed some very exclusive hotels, including the one where the golfer Tiger Woods had married. He hired the entire hotel for his guests. Also the apartment villa that pop star Rhiannon had bought! The west coast was all you imagined a Caribbean beach to be. Beautiful white sandy beaches, palm trees and turquoise blue sea.

Saturday January 16th

One of the cruise highlights – Panama Canal! Awake early as we were scheduled to go through the first lock at 6.00 am just as dawn was breaking. Everyone out on their balconies, on deck or in the Crows Nest where Kenneth Puckett was giving a running commentary. Once we were through the first set of locks, called the Gatun locks, which raised us from sea level to 85 feet we were on the man made lake called Gatun Lake which is twenty three and a half miles long.  Altogether it took us about 9 hours to get through the 48 mile long canal at a cost of about a quarter of a million pounds. A fantastic and memorable day.

Sunday January 24th and Monday January 25th

Woke up at 6.00 am opened the curtains and stepped out onto the balcony. What a wonderful sight met our eyes. The moon was behind the Golden Gate and we looked across at the lights of San Fransisco.  We were called to go to see immigration 15 minutes early. Well done P&O it was very efficiently organised entering Carmen on one side and leaving the other. All the immigration officers were sitting behind tables and we saw a very chatty lady and we were cleared to leave the ship before 9.00 am.  Went on an organised trip to Alcatraz, superb views across the bay as we went towards the island on a ferry. When we got there we were given a talk by one of the officials before we started the climb from the ferry dock to the prison. Once we were there we were handed ear sets so we toured the prison at our own pace. The cells were extremely small with just a toilet, washbasin & bed. We saw the cell where Al Capone was and heard all sorts of stories about attempted escapes, the gunning down of prison officers from both the prison guards and the prisoners. We also heard from the children ( sons and daughters of the prison guards) who lived on the island and travelled across the bay daily to attend school. It was a very thought provoking experience.

Saturday January 30th and Sunday January 31st

Arrived at the island if Maui, looked out across the water and were treated to a display from some whales who came up to the surface of the water. What a welcome! This was a tender port so waited to board a tender. We saw one of the volcanoes on the big island, as locals called it, throwing out lots of volcanic cloud.

Woke up to find we had docked at Honolulu. We were overlooking the harbour and the Aloha tower. Had breakfast and then made our way off the ship and got into a taxi.  We then walked all through China Town and made our way to the sea and the Aloha tower, which we went up. There were superb views over the city and several photos were taken. Whilst up the tower we were watching the planes taking off.

Saturday February 6th.

The day that never was! Overnight we crossed the dateline so the 6th February didn’t exist for us. We jumped from being 13 hours behind the UK to being 13 hours in front.

We all gave up drinking this day, and the crew had the day off!

Saturday February 20th.

Woke up at about 5.30am and peeped out of the window to see that we had entered the approaches to Sydney Harbour. It was still dark outside but we were soon able to identify where we were and which direction we were coming in at. We came in on a south westerly course and before too long we could see the harbour bridge to the back of us.  We spent two days in Sydney enjoying the city. Eventually sailed away a little late due to late arrival of some passengers. A lovely sight sailing out of Sydney Harbour.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this short extract from my parent’s epic World Cruise.

If you have any questions about World Cruises or want to see what prices I can do for this please get in touch with me 0333 300 2825 or [email protected].

Until next time Happy Cruising!