Halfway house

It is truly fantastic to be treated to an environment where one is waited on hand and foot and has access to unlimited food and drink. This is in total contrast to the reality of the home environment where there is nobody on hand to undertake the menial chores of cooking and cleaning, and one is struggling to prepare even the most basic meal. Surely it is unreasonable to expect anyone to make this traumatic change overnight. We were fortunate in that we had wisely planned for two nights at the Mangrove Resort in Broome which has proved to be very comfortable but with nowhere near the offerings and service aboard Le Laperouse. Our strategy is to make the transition from luxury ship to home as painless as possible.
Disembarkation from the ship was handled very smoothly and methodically using a system which clearly has been refined over many voyages. We were instructed to have our bags packed and outside our cabins by the disgustingly early time of 6am. Fortunately we still had access to the cabins until 8am. Colour-coded labels were provided according to whether people would be flying out immediately or, like us, were going to various hotels. The system ran like clockwork and disembarking passengers together with their luggage got loaded on the appropriate buses.
As planned we, along with quite a few others, were deposited at the Mangrove Resort, though our room wasn’t going to be ready until some time later. After exploring what looks like a rather magnificent resort with two swimming pools and many other great facilities we decided to kill time by exploring the town itself.
The ‘five minutes’ walk up the road’ directions from the hotel receptionist clashed slightly with the reality of a 10-minute walk in the blazing sun, but we got there. Central Broome is actually quite large with many shops. Clearly the place is orientated towards the tourist trade because a large proportion of the places are either cafes or gift and souvenir shops. We used our time productively in finding a replacement for Elspeth’s almost-new lost sunglasses, having a light lunch (while recovering from the excesses of the previous night’s Gala Dinner) and booking a guided tour of Broome for the following day.
We then wended our way back to the resort, unpacked and spent a totally lazy afternoon by the pool.Baca selengkapnya