Plan B

Since I had no preplanned accommodation reservations and was taking advantage of last-minute bookings, I always had in the back of my mind the need for a Plan B. During week 3 of our holiday I tired of the endless hours on the computer hoping to catch a deal for the next week, which were dwindling. I was also getting restless and bored. The predominant attraction of Hawaii is the beach and it doesn’t have the appeal that it once did. I used to be very naive about the ocean but this week a group of tiger sharks had been spotted near shore and a 20 year old Swedish tourist got swept out to sea while she was just standing at the water’s edge. Her body has never been found.

So I started looking at other options for my remaining time in Hawaii. If I had to pay top dollar for accommodation in Hawaii then I wanted more bang for my buck. I decided I was going to take a 2 week cruise of New Zealand and booked a flight to Sydney, returning from Auckland. I asked JS if he was interested in joining me. He thought about it for one minute and then declined. It was 39 years ago that JS and I took our first trip together to AU and NZ but he still didn’t take the bait. Plan B didn’t work out as well as I had hoped. Since I had to pay the full fare for 2 passengers on the cruise (no discounts for solo travellers), I waited to see if there would be a drop in price, which never materialized. Then there was the daily news of the deadly Coronavirus and how it was impacting the cruise industry. The final straw was weather reports of a cyclone that was expected to make landfall near Sydney with warnings of high seas on the day the cruise would be departing. My gut was telling me not to go on the cruise although this was the simplest plan. Back to the drawing board....it was time for Plan C and time was running out!Read more