High tea at sea on Saturday

It's been several posts since I've included cake. How remiss of me. It's not too late in the week though to talk about tea and cake. If you are in Sydney or visiting, there's no sweeter way to enjoy the harbour than by having high tea at sea!
The Captain Cook Cruises High Tea at Sea cruise now departs three times a week instead of two with the addition of a Sunday afternoon High Tea Cruise from 16 May to 31 October 2010..
Like the Wednesday and Saturday High Tea cruises, the Sunday High Tea at Sea will depart at 2.30pm from Jetty 6, Circular Quay and return at 3.45pm.
The High Tea at Sea cruise features a delicious High Tea menu designed by MasterChef Series One Contestant, Lucas Parsons and Captain Cook Cruises Head Chef, Dennis Yang.
The menu includes a variety of savoury and sweet foods such as Crystal Bay prawns on dill blini crème fraiche, porcini mushroom, chili jam and spec pork sausage rolls, caramelized onion, beetroot, goats cheese baby tartlet chervil, mini scones with strawberry jam and vanilla cream, glazed mango and coconut custard tartlets, chocolate dipped strawberries and assorted Petite fours and truffles.
The cruise also includes an extensive tea menu with 15 different teas to choose from and million dollar views of Sydney Harbour.
The High-Tea at Sea cruise is held on the prestigious MV Sydney 2000 and is priced at $55.00 per person which includes a glass of delectable bubbles.
Anyone for tea?
Visit: www.captaincook.com.au

Machu Picchu side dish: Guinea pig on a plate:

Sailing along the South American coast was the beginning of a pilgrimage to the ancient glory of Machu Picchu – fortified by gourmet guinea pigs.

Why am I feeling so guilty about eating a guinea pig? The dilemma isn’t that bad after all. Not since my chat with the chef at the Inkaterra Hotel where the train from Cusco pulls into Aguas Calientes, the closest town to Machu Picchu in Peru. One of the special dishes here is roast guinea pig served with mashed potato, drizzled in a mandarin jus. So, when I buy my guinea pigs (cuys) from a roadside barbecue in the Secret Valley, I’m told by my local guide that I should serve them with the latest in food fashion, quinoa, with over 350 varieties. Since the 1960s, efforts have been made to increase consumption of the ‘cuy’ outside South America and these days Andean immigrants in New York City raise them for major ethnic restaurants.

The meat is high in protein, low in fat and similar to the dark meat of chicken. It’s served fried (chactado or frito) or roasted in pieces (al horno) but in Cusco, it’s baked whole, like a cute, small, suckling pig garnished with pomegranates. For me, it is an instant hit. Funny though, it’s not featured on cruise menus.

If anyone had told me that after a nine-day sophisticated cruise on a posh Ponant ship, Le Boreal, along the South American coast, I’d be lugging an el cheapo backpack on the train to the ruins of Machu Picchu, I’d have said they were bonkers. But both experiences were equally fantastic and vastly different.

Our cruise starts in Puerta Caldera in Costa Rica and we head towards the palm-fringed Cocas Island on our way to Guayaquil in Ecuador, the real and only home of the Panama hat, first woven in 1630 and now, still handwoven, exported worldwide. From the minute I step on board, I feel at ease with the French flavour of Le Boreal. All 132 cabins have ridiculously comfy beds and pillows. The bathrooms feature full-length glass panels so I can shower while ocean gazing. Facials and fitness are available at the spa and gym, which also take advantage of sea views.

A la carte dining takes on a new meaning in the elegant La Licombe where the passengers, mostly French, dress to the nines as they devour their frogs’ legs and foie gras. On deck six at La Boussole, breakfast, lunch and dinner are enjoyed buffet style, indoors or beside the pool.

Latin American musicians put us in the mood for arrival in Lima, Peru, a multiethnic nation formed over five centuries before the Spanish Conquest in the 16th Century. Lima has much to intrigue the first time visitor. Barranco is favourable for accommodation so I choose the only real boutique hotel, the very arty Hotel B. Located a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean and a short waterfront walk to the shopping mecca of Miaflores, I pass the Parque del Amor scattered with monuments and mosaics devoted to love.

The ruins of Machu Picchu and the beautiful city of Cusco is somewhere I’ve yearned to visit. At 2400m, after a one hour flight from Lima, I spend two days acclimatising in Cusco and soaking up the pulsating atmosphere in this city of half a million, where the houses climb up the hillsides. The main square explodes with people and Spanish buildings and traditionally clothed women clutch baby alpacas to earn a few cents for tourist photos. Shopping for handmade fabrics and jewellery at the markets is fun and good value.

Machu Picchu is 130km from Cusco so, in a mini-bus, we drive via the Sacred Valley to Ollantaytambo for our scenic and comfortable train trip to overnight in Aguas Calientes. We’re up at 6.30am to beat the first tourist train and catch the shuttle bus up the winding roadside to the crowning jewel of Inca architecture.

Known as ‘the lost city of the Incas’, and perched high in the Andean Cordillera, it remained hidden until 1911 when archaeologist, Hiram Bingham, revealed it to the world. Thought to be built around 1440 and abandoned before the Spanish invasion of 1532, it was used as a secondary palace for the emperor with temples dedicated to Inca divinities in the main courtyard and other annexed buildings for servants looking after up to 750 inhabitants. Surrounded by mountain peaks, Machu Picchu is a city of granite, so grey amongst greenery but overwhelming on first sight. Two days, partly guided and partly exploring alone, was ideal. It still remains shrouded in mystery as the Incas left no trace, either written or oral, to explain their departure. As part of a 325km square nature reserve and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1983, it’s a magnificent world wonder, worth every second of waiting for trains and boats and planes.

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Originally published in Get up & Go Magazine Winter 2016

P&O Cruises in the South Pacific - an 80 year tradition

By guest blogger Roderick Eime

Everyone knows that cruising is just about the hottest thing in travel at the moment. It seems everyone is cruising and everyone else just can’t wait to go.

Just these last couple of years, all the big cruise lines have brought bigger and fancier ships down to Australia to cash in on our enthusiasm for the shipboard vacation experience.

Celebrity Cruises have brought the superb Celebrity Solstice, while Carnival has homeported both Carnival Spirit and Carnival Legend in Sydney. The respected US brand, Holland America spoiled us with both Noordam and Volendam while Royal Caribbean Cruise Line have moved a small fleet here with Legend of the Seas going to Brisbane and both beauties, Explorer of the Seas and Voyager of the Seas squeezing into a very busy Sydney.

Pacific Dawn entered service for P&O in 2007

Old favourites, the luxurious Princess Cruises, have had both Sun Princess and Dawn Princess here for some time. Then there are the many visits by ships on their round the world itineraries like Cunard and Azamara passing through.

But one cruise line stands above all others with their attachment to Australia and that is the 178-year-old Peninsular & Orient Line, known these days as just P&O.

A pioneer of steam ships back in the early 19th century and then known as The Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company, P&O offered ‘excursions’ to intrepid travellers aboard the mail ships as they completed their rounds to the Iberian Peninsula (Spain) and the Mediterranean. The first of these cruises set sail in 1844.

Pioneered here in Australia P&O cruises to the Pacific began in the 1930s with the classic mail steamers SS Strathaird, Stratheden and Strathallen. Their flourishing pre-war Pacific activities included cruises to Norfolk Island, Noumea, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and the then New Hebrides (now Vanuatu).

SS Himalaya pioneered the P&O Pacific cruise revival

The SS Strathaird, which sailed for P&O from 1932-61, was of similar appearance to the postwar cruise ships such as the venerable SS Himalaya, Arcadia and Chusan and was one of five ‘Strath’ class steamers that served as both jolly tourist ships and sombre troop transports as well as refugee and immigrant ships; that dark chapter spelling a pause to pleasure cruises until 1953 when routes to the South Pacific were resumed. More adventurous travellers could employ the mail routes to travel as far as India, Ceylon and all the way to England via the Suez Canal or Cape Town.

With mail contracts gradually falling more and more to the new jet aircraft, the former mail ships were again returned to pleasure cruising, the milestone being 1968 when SS Himalaya was homeported in Sydney for dedicated cruise itineraries to the Pacific.

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When the much-loved former migrant ship Himalaya was retired in 1974, another milestone for the company was achieved with the acquisition of US cruise line Princess Cruises and the abolition of ‘classes’ on cruise ships (something that didn’t hadn't sat well with egalitarian Australians).

From that time on, it was onward and upward for P&O including the takeover of rival brand Sitmar, well known as operator of the ‘fun ship’, Fairstar. There were several corporate mergers and demergers, but the most significant one came in 2003 when P&O Australia became part of the massive Carnival Corporation along with ten other cruise lines. Carnival then became the largest cruise company in the world. P&O still continued to cruise under its own brand, filling a niche in the cruise market that complemented other Carnival brands like Princess, Carnival and even Cunard. 

‘Pacific’ named ships Pacific Dawn, Pacific Sky, Pacific Pearl, Pacific Jewel, Pacific Sun and Pacific Star all sailed under the popular leisure brand throughout the ‘noughties’ gaining fans and followers who have since ‘graduated’ to other brands in the massive Carnival fleet as their lives’ circumstances changed, but their love of cruising did not.

Now, as we reach 2015, the level of luxury and technical sophistication of the P&O fleet and the world’s cruise ships in general is at a dizzying height. Gourmet restaurants, spa and beauty salons, water slides, surf simulators and even ice rinks can now be found on cruise ships out of Sydney.

This year P&O will expand its current fleet of Pacific Jewel, Pacific Dawn and Pacific Pearl by two to make five vessels in total operating from Sydney. Pacific Aria and Pacific Eden will move over from Holland America and join the other ‘Pacific fleet’. The former HAL ships, Statendam and Ryndam, each carry a modest 1260 passengers, compared to 2020 aboard the largest P&O ship currently operating out of Australia, Pacific Dawn, which entered service for P&O in 2007.

P&O Cruises Australia have come a long way from their beginnings as part of the oldest cruise line in the world. Today their five ships service a fun, young and family-friendly market on routes to the South Pacific pioneered more than 80 years ago. Australians certainly love cruising and P&O have been there all the way.

Macquarie Island - cooler than ever!

Get Up & Go guest blogger, Roderick Eime returns to the new, pest-free Macquarie Island after five years.

It's a bit like preparing for a military operation as we are plucked by the beleaguered deckhands from the stern transom into the lurching Zodiac. Trussed up in numerous layers of Gortex and looking almost like space explorers, we endure the biting sea spray whipped up by 30kt gusts as we seat our clumsy bottoms around the inflatable tender.
We push off and head to shore and are immediately hit by a brutal wave over the bow, drenching the first row of passengers. The enemy is not entrenched in bunkers on the beach awaiting our arrival, but rather blowing all around us like an angry bellows, whipping stinging spray into our faces and buffeting our Zodiac as if at the hand of a child's tantrum.

Landing on the cobble beach at Buckles Bay is notoriously treacherous, but one of the few locations near the ANARE base where one is possible. In 1948 when the modern base was established, it was more out of respect for history than practicality. The site of Sir Douglas Mawson's original 1911 site was used and expanded rather than a more accessible one found with a safe harbour and solid foundation.

Silversea staff are waist deep in frothing surf as our Zodiac is quickly backed up against the stony shore. One by one, between sets of breakers, we are hauled out of the rubber craft and deposited on the beach with some relief but also a sense of excitement at having completed the tricky job of getting ashore.

Apart from meteorology, biology and the reception of up to 1000 visitors per year, the base hosts TasmanianParks and Wildlife Service staff who recently celebrated the total eradication of introduced pests from Macquarie Island. No mean feat in itself, the eight year project involved the team of 12 hunters and 11 dogs walking 92,000km in search of surviving pests after the end of the aerial baiting program in 2011.

Alien species like horses, donkeys, pigs, cattle, goats, dogs and sheep were relatively easy to deal with. Cats took bit longer, with the last feline removed in 2000 after a decade-long campaign, but the rabbits, rats and mice proved the toughest task, requiring a combination of poisoning and hunting to reach total success. Even now, vermin patrols will be maintained for the time being to be absolutely certain.

After my first visit in 2010, the islands enthusiastic regeneration was evident with renewed vegetation regrowth covering the previously barren sections on hillsides and slopes. The four species of breeding penguin and albatross, as well as numerous other migratory seabirds can now nest unmolested on this southern paradise once brought to the brink by the careless and greedy hand of man.

Roderick Eime writes regularly on Expedition and Adventure Cruising at www.expeditioncruising.com