Healthy Cruising:

Sydney to the South Pacific

For feeling younger, I can heartily recommend a cruise. It may not actually rejuvenate you, but you’ll feel relatively youthful in comparison with most of your fellow passengers – and when you get to our age, it’s gratifying to find yourself in the lowest age percentile. As the month of March is school term time all over the world, the demographic of this particular cruise was mainly baby boomers (and whatever you call the category that came before them) blithely enjoying life, dodging grandparental duties and cruising their way serenely through the kids’ inheritance.

Roy and I had done a cruise on the Noordam in early 2017, and now we were looking forward to a 13-night cruise on the same vessel. It would be taking us from Sydney to the Melanesian Islands: Nouméa and Lifou in New Caledonia; to Port Vila in Vanuatu; to Fiji’s Lautoka town and Dravuni Island; and finally to the isle of Maré, which is part of New Caledonia.

All-in cruising sounds like a dream come true. Not only are breakfast, lunch and dinner included in your cruise fare, but so is the indulgent free flow of snacks and beverages – possibly alcoholic ones, too – the rest of the time. But there’s a downside: cruise liner passengers gain an estimated half-kilo to a full kilo for each day they cruise.

Most of the middle-aged and elderly passengers queueing with us to board the Noordam in Sydney really could not afford to put on another 10 kilograms or so in bodyweight – and neither could we. So, here are my six top tips for avoiding overindulgence and staying reasonably fit in the midst of continuous temptation.

#1 Plan ahead

Try to lose any spare flab before you go. Possibly not the healthiest approach, crash-dieting before your summer hols is nevertheless a time-honoured way to get swimsuit-ready. Regard it as credit in the bank for all those four-course set dinners, sugary cocktails and post-lunch ice-cream cones.

#2 Keep tabs on the alcohol

Unless you really want to drink all day and feel dreadful every morning, avoid drinking too much – especially if you’re over 45. (Younger livers are more resilient.) I suggest not taking the all-in drinks package. For us, on this particular cruise, it turned out to be a dollar-wise decision, too. The package cost about US$50 per person per day, and would have added $1,400 to our bill instead of the $500 that we actually spent – and that without stinting ourselves.

#3 Keep moving

A spin-off benefit of sticking to the advice in #2 above is that you’ll have time and energy to spare. Not being hungover too often, I managed to get myself to several 8am yoga classes in the fitness centre ($12 a go or $30 for three sessions). A treadmill isn’t my favourite thing, but I found them useful on this ship; it has “No Running” signs on the promenade deck. Roy ( below, right) used the recumbent bicycle, ideal for exercising his brand new knee.

The centre’s instuctors ( with me, above), the winsome Bernard and the incredibly constructed Charley, both hail from Joburg, South Africa.

#4 Get your sweat on

Hydrotherapy offers huge health benefits, including effective detoxification. So we used part of what we’d saved on alcohol to splash out on membership of the Noordam’s great hydropool facility.

This includes a big and bubbly onsen- like hot pool, two steam rooms, hot and cold rain-showers, and a row of heated mosaic-lined stone loungers where you can bliss out with a view of the passing ocean through floor-to-ceiling windows. Hydropool membership is strictly limited, and you can visit as often as you like; it cost us each about US$150 and was well worth it.

Alternatively, the ship’s two swimming pools also offer several hot tubs – but you may end up having to share one with Hank from Milwaukee, Mildred from Dakota or Dennis from Florida; or even all three simultaneously.

#5 Eat your veggies

The Lido buffet restaurant (Level 9) serves all the traditionally fatty and sugary American breakfast foods, yes. But it also has freshly cut fruit, a pretty good Asian section (miso at breakfast, for example) and an excellent salad bar piled high with more baby spinach, chick peas, goat’s cheese, walnuts and extra-virgins than you could shake a celery stalk at.

It was sheer bliss to be served nightly three-course dinners at the Sea Vista Room (Levels 2 and 3). Standard fare includes creamy Caesar salad, lamb cutlets, New York striploin, pavlova, crème brulée and chocolate brownies with hazelnut ice cream – but dinner doesn’t have to be heavy or unhealthy. Each night’s menu features tasty vegetarian options and “sugar-free desserts” (why bother, though?). There’s also a separate vegan and vegetarian menu with a wide variety of really good dishes; you just have to order them from your waiter the night before.

Finally, the Pool Deck’s Dive In café has a great Tex Mex trolley loaded with various chillies, salsas, black beans and the best guacamole ever.

Be seasick

If you tend toward queasiness as I do, you could drop quite a lot of weight on a cruise, but it wouldn’t be much fun. I was laid low for several days of our previous Noordam cruise, and it’s not a weight- loss method that I recommend. So, this time, with six full days at sea, I consulted Dr Google and assembled an arsenal of medications. Armed w with everything from Blackmore’s T Travelcalm (not a drug, just ginger) t to Kwells, Travacalm and O Ondansetron, I did much b better than last time. How did we fare on the scales? I put on just one kilogram in two weeks of semi-indulgence. (As for my inscrutable husband, he’s not telling.)

Lifou, Easo Island, New Caledonia

The Noordam dropped anchor a ten-minute tender ride off Lifou. Our two-hour Melanesian Encounter (US$59) left from the ad hoc tourist village that’s located near the arrivals pier. Tourism is the main source of income here: you can get your hair braided, have a massage, hire snorkelling gear and buy a fresh coconut – or even a Magnum ice cream.

A non- air- conditioned bus – “Open well the windows,” instructed matriarchal guide Gabriella – took us on a 10-to-15-minute ride to a nearby tribal village. First up was a visit to a tall, thatched parliament building, used for tribal elder debates. From there it was a short walk to a reception area, where the women of the family were preparing the traditional local meal, bougna.

For this, a whole chicken is placed on a pile of banana leaves, together with cassava and sweet potato, topped with freshly squeezed coconut cream, wrapped up carefully, firmly tied with twine and then buried with red-hot stones to cook for a few hours.

Port Vila, Vanuatu

I was itching to go ashore, and P Port Vila proved to be my favourite d destination on this cruise. As you step off the gangway, you either go right to join one of the ship’s organised tours, or left to enter at least 300 metres worth of market maze.

Safely through that, a water taxi cost just A$5 for a 15-minute ride to the town centre. At the interesting local market, I ordered an early lunch from Felina’s Kitchen: beautifully fresh Fishy Fried Fish with rice, cassava and boiled kai lan ( shown above). Wherever we went, both here and in New Caledonia, the locals were unfailingly warm and welcoming.

Our Best of Vila afternoon tour guide, Arthur, is an erudite former teacher. He explained that Vanuatu was colonised by both the French and the English simultaneously, until winning independence in1980. Nowadays, English predominates.

Arthur communicated with our driver, Carl, in pidgin, and that’s because they don’t speak the same mother tongue: Vanuatu has around 100 different

PORT HIGHLIGHTS

languages – not dialects, but entirely separate languages.

First stop was the Nicolai Michoutouchkine & Aloi Pilioko Foundation, an eclectic private collection of South Pacific art, memorabilia, carvings and masks – “a fascinating insight into Melanesian culture”, says the brochure.

Next up was Pango, an “urban village” on the outskirts of Vila. This is where bungee jumping originated, we’re told, and it’s been only for boys since the very early days: to protect the modesty of knicker-less females when their kraskets (pidgin for “grass skirts”) would fall over their faces.

You’d easily be able to visit the picturesque National Museum on your own, but then you probably wouldn’t be treated to a lovely demonstration I watched of “sandroing” – pidgin for, you guessed it, the traditional art of “sand drawing”.

Dravuni Island, Fiji

After tendering ashore to a comfortable pier, you walk straight up over a fine, grassy carpet directly into the little village. Anything from 80 to 200 people actually live liv in this village; others come by boat to sell their wares.

Turning right at the charming, three- roomed kindergarten and primary school, I found myself heading steadily up a hill to a lookout point, about a 20-minute trek each way and worth it for the views.

That done, it was time to try out my new snorkelling gear, and I was happy to find a couple of coral sites teeming with small-to-medium fish. But island destinations like this one are mainly about the beach, so the cloudy, drizzly morning and steady afternoon rain were a bit disappointing.

Tadine, Maré Island, New Caledonia

Even in the rain, Maré Island’s Yejele Turquoise Beach ( pictured left) was a cruise highlight. This white, powdery stretch of sand would have been idyllic on a sunny day. The snorkelling is said to be pristine, too – but the water was cloudy and a rip tide was running.

Evaluation

There’s only so much a cruise operator can do to make things perfect… and ensuring good weather is not in this category! In all other respects, hats off to the Noordam team for getting so much right, starting with easy, orderly boarding, efficient tender operations and stress-free disembarkation.

In case you were wondering, we loved our Signature Suite for its spaciousness and comfort – it was worth paying extra for. Cabin service was as friendly and efficient as you’d expect, and I heartily recommend the US$95 unlimited laundry package.

So, if you’re due for a bit of spoiling and this looks like it could be your type of cruise liner, check out the itineraries of the Noordam and her numerous sister ships on the Holland America website.