Friday the 13th. Not a good day to make any major decisions. We docked at Port Vila, Vanuatu in the morning. We headed ashore for a lunch and stopped at a sushi restaurant. It was a good meal. I had an eel bowl and Maria had a sashimi bowl. We also had a couple of bottles of sake. We did enjoy the meal until the bill came and we discovered they did not accept credit cards. They were very nice however and offered to have the chef drive us into town to an ATM. We did so and Maria pulled out V$20,000 Vanuatu (worth about US$166). Why she opted to pull so much out, I don't know. The bill was for V$12,996 (US$108 which I thought was staggering). I gave the chef $13,000 and he told us he did not have the V$4 change (US$0.03). We assured him we did not need any change. We then asked him if he would take us back to the ship, which he did. I gave him V$1,000 (US$8.33) which he could not believe.
In the evening, we were presented with a letter that said the cruise was going to be canceled after we reached Perth. We were to be given an option to continue on an alternate route or go home. There were no other details given. Later in the evening, the Captain held a meeting in the Show Lounge. We thought he would provide additional details, especially concerning compensation offerings for the canceled cruise. But no, Instead, he informed us that there was a cyclone developing in the Coral Sea and the plan was to try to outrun it to Brisbane and take shelter there until it passed. There were a lot of questions concerning the cruise cancellation, which the staff could not answer except to say more information would be forthcoming.
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