We’re sailing through placid waters of the South Pacific with a United Nations’ complement of passengers – youth, hard working families, grandparents, retired couples – all intent on a relaxing holiday break on what Oosterdam’s hotel director Boban Zivkovic calls “classic, traditional cruising”.
It doesn’t begin promisingly in Sydney’s dilapidated overseas passenger terminal where scores of passengers scramble for a few plastic chairs in 29 degree heat to be processed and complete departure and health forms. The ship is at passenger-capacity – almost 2,000 – on the 14-day, Sydney-Sydney, ‘Pacific treasures’ cruise.
But the terminal discomfort is tempered as we cruise through Sydney Harbour, skirt the bridge, Australians welling with national pride at the Sydney Opera House, its ‘sails’ like a giant shark’s mouth. My mind flashes back to a return to New York after 9/11 and the depth of emotion for its courageous citizens as Oosterdam’s sister ship
Noordam sailed by the Statue of Liberty, its beams illuminating the East River.
OOSTERDAM
Our spirits soar, too, as we become familiar with Holland America’s elegant Oosterdam, launched in 2003, a huge glassed globe of the world suspended in the atrium. We find the ship has four restaurants, 10 bars, two show lounges and wide ranging amenities including spa, casino, gym and well-stocked library, coupled with smiling service from Filipino and Indonesian staff.
Our stateroom on deck five is compact with a small veranda, giving sweeping ocean views, the seas, under azure skies, remaining almost millpond calm throughout the cruise. We learn, unsurprisingly, almost 70% of the passengers are Australians with, surprisingly, another 40 nations represented, including 59 Britons.
Staff and the two-level Vista restaurant are tested in coping with the flow of passengers for dinner. We’re issued with buzzers at times and wait one night for half an hour to be seated, but there’s the compensation of a half lobster for the main course. Overall, passengers react with good humour to the wait.
The dinner menu throughout the cruise is impressive, from choice American beef to seafood – long, slender Alaskan crab legs are especially memorable.
We mark our wedding anniversary in the stylish Pinnacle Restaurant ($US29 cover charge), noteworthy for its decor, impeccable service and cuisine. I begin with US West Coast crab cakes, my wife lobster bisque, but, having enjoyed US northwest beef in the Vista Restaurant, we pass up the 650g Double R Ranch porterhouse steak and settle for modest, grilled lamb chops spiced with apple chutney and mint sauce. I finish with a decadent soufflé, and staff present us with a little, chocolate anniversary cake.
PEACE BY THE PALMS
There are no sophisticated ports on this cruise such as those experienced, for instance, in the Mediterranean. Like fellow passengers, we revel and swim in the peaceful, palm-fringed islands with white sandy beaches, crystal clear waters and friendly locals, offering, without pressure, colourful sarongs and other crafts.
Islands like Mare, in the French Loyalty group, a newcomer to tourism, where old Kanak women in floral headdresses greet us with song. We marvel at the market’s massive bananas, pawpaws and taro. Many passengers take an excursion to beautiful Yejele beach where the waters abound with turtles, dolphins and tropical fish.
Lobsters laze on the bottom as we swim on another slice of paradise, Vanuatu’s Mystery Island, where, for $US5, passengers are photographed in a ‘cannibal pot’, grandmothers take an outing among the tourists with cute grandchildren in their Sunday best. Clusters of tacky signs in garbled English offering excursions detract from the island’s natural beauty. The island is uninhabited, with traders coming from neighbouring islands.
The 156 year old Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel stands like a sentinel on the promontory overlooking the bay at Easo, New Caledonia. Traders sell sarongs and other wares in
open-air, thatched huts, but most of us escape to the beach and its sparkling waters.
LAUTOKA EXCURSION
In Lautoka, Fiji’s second largest city dominated by a sugar mill, we take a taxi from the port to a shopping area with rutted streets, a banner across the side of the park marking International Anti-Corruption Day and urging the community to join the fight.
Other passengers opt for excursions to beaches, a resort, hot springs, fire-walking and kava ceremonies. Angelic children from Fiji’s Dravuni Island, beach-front primary school and kindergarten greet us with Christmas carols and again we revel in the temperate, tropical waters. We’re told the population is around only 150, but, being a Sunday, there are no traders.
Finally, to the well-beaten cruise destination of the Isle of
Pines, New Caledonia, where, unsurprisingly, the lure is the beach, swimming and sunbaking. The pines and tropical bougainvilleas are beautiful, the Melanesian people welcoming, the sarongs and trinkets expensive.
ALL ABOUT THE COMFORT
If these lovely, tranquil islands are a draw for passengers, so is the Oosterdam with its cuisine, entertainment and activities, ranging from flower arranging to cooking shows, indoor cycling to dancing with the stars.
The ship hotel director Boban Zivkovic says for most passengers the appeal of the cruise, is all about “getting away and relaxing in the warmth of the South West Pacific.” His biggest challenge, he says, “is something beyond our control – the weather… the moody Tasman Sea. [But] this ship can go anywhere in any weather; it’s all about the comfort of our guests.”
A theatre packed to capacity to hear a consultant outline and take bookings for future cruises is evidence that the line is meeting those holiday break expectations.
THE HOLIDAY
John Coleman travelled at his own expense. Oosterdam continues its series of South Pacific/New Zealand cruises until the beginning of May when it heads to Vancouver for an Alaskan season and will be replaced in Australasian waters by sister Vista ship Noordam from October. Noordam has a 12-day, Sydney-Sydney ‘Pacific treasures’ cruise departing December 5, taking in Tadine, Mare, New Caledonia; Easo; Lifou, New Caledonia; Lautoka, Fiji; Dravuni, Fiji; Noumea, New Caledonia.
More information at www.hollandamerica.com