Port Moresby & Brisbane

Christmas Day in Port Moresby was lovely....we spent some early morning hours aboard the Golden Dawn finishing the logs, working on photos and then sweet good-byes! After checking into the lovely Airways Hotel near the airport, all relaxed in their rooftop pool looking out at the mountains surrounding Port Moresby.

Christmas "Dinner" is the big meal in PNG so the adjoining restaurant was packed with local families and ex-pats celebrating with Santa in residence and presents for all the kiddies! Most of the gifts were "water related" so after meals were finished, the pool was full of celebrating children with their swamp boats and water guns! We had great fun watching all of them playing in the water....all those kids are really "fishes" with beautiful swimming skills!

Supper was our main meal later in the evening and since George had previously asked the manager if there would be "Christmas Pudding", of course there was! All in all, even though we were missing our families, it was a lovely Christmas Day...in plus 90 degree sunshine!

Early on the 26th we left PNG on a flight to Brisbane. We're staying a little ways out of Brisbane proper and had scheduled a 1/2 day afternoon tour of the City and the surrounding areas including a tour of a koala sanctuary. Unfortunately, it was "bucketing" here to use a local term.....I think we'd call it "pouring buckets" which is quite rare for the Sunshine Coast of Australia! It was hard to be cranky about it because apparently they're in the middle of a huge drought and desperately need the rain....we postponed our tour until the next afternoon so we'll see what happens later today.

It did stop raining a little later on and we were able to walk the few blocks to "Brett's Wharf" which is where the river transport called "City Cat" is boarded. It's a beautiful cruise along the Brisbane River down towards the Ciy Centre. It was quite a lovely sight, with all the beautiful homes along the river and then, of course, the tall apartment/condo buildings as we got closer to downtown. We walked along the boardwalk and found a magnificent Italian restaurant to have dinner and then cruised back to the hotel later on.

Here's a few more photos from the various legs of the trip that I haven't been able to upload along the way....we're off to Fiji late this evening, arriving early Thursday a.m. and then off to Los Angeles late Thursday evening, arriving in LAX mid-afternoon on Thursday....we're arriving in Los Angeles BEFORE we've even left Fiji timewise! It's tough on the body clocks but we're on our way home.....see you all soon!