A day at sea always offers the opportunity to reflect on the past days and the many different landscapes ad cultures we have been experiencing over the last weeks. The contrasts between the different countries we visited and were able to experience to a certain degree are probably one of the first things that come to mind. Today, as we navigated the waters of the Karimata Strait (which separates Sumatra from Borneo), many of us delved into the impressions created during the previous weeks.
A day at sea is always different than any other day at sea. You never know what can happen or what creature may show up. Some of us are always hopeful and early risers, eternally in the search of some seabirds or marine mammals, so were out on deck to see yet another splendid sunrise. But the birds were hard to find today. It was very much a single bird day! A beautiful (and most likely) Christmas Island frigatebird, a critically endangered species, gave us a short visit and left us studying books for a good while, trying to correctly identify the species. Our only bird of the day came and went as swiftly as a breeze of wind.
Inside the comfortable National Geographic Orion, it was another day for education and introductions to what awaits us in Borneo starting tomorrow afternoon. With the help of lectures, presentations, and documentaries, plus another always welcomed dose of Lawrence’s magnificent tales, we covered topics as wide as the beliefs of the peoples of southeast Asia, the orangutans that we hope to see the day after tomorrow, and how to work on our thousands of photos once we have them on our computers.
The end of the day could not have been better. To remind us of where we are, the hotel team prepared a delightful Asian dinner that was served at our outdoor café, while seeing the sun dip in the ocean and the sky turn colors of red. At last, King and Queen Neptune appeared briefly to “welcome” those that crossed the Equator for the first time!
