‘Off to see the world’ is a song from one of the ‘My Little Pony’ movies by some Swedish chaps and has nothing to do with what we are going to do over the next 110 days. It just has a catchy name, a bit like ‘Off to see the Wizard of Oz’. We will be back in sunny Brisbane in mid September.

The Coral Princess is leaving Brisbane and will be taking us up the Queensland coast, through the Torres Strait to Komodo Island, where those big lizzards live, in that string of islands running down from Bali towards PNG. Then, Singapore and across the Indian Ocean to Dubai via Colombo in Sri Lanka.

So,things will be a little quiet on the blog for the next ten days or so until we hit Singapore. The ship is one of the smallest in the Princess fleet, accomodating up to 2,000 guests. It set off on this passage from Auckland, picked up in Sydney and today us in Brisbane. So, it seems it will be mostly New Zealanders and Aussies aboard.

We are sharing our cabin on this journey with another guest, three to the room and it could be a little squeezy. Slobro has joined us to provide special insights on where we go and who we come across. He, may slow us down a bit in some of the onboard activities and shore excursions. This cannot be helped.

The drive out to the port went smoothly and the boarding process all good. Only about 400 Brisbanites to board so it went quite smoothly and quickly. Thankfully, we had passed our RAT tests and had all the paperwork in order.

It is a pleasant afternoon, sunny with some cloud. Low cloud out to the west on the horizon, so we may get a good sunset going past the Glasshouse Mountains. All good for the sail away at 5pm.