April 3, 2018

Today we arrived at Busselton which is the port for Margaret River. This was the first and only tender port for this cruise. We were to arrive at 9:00 am so were surprised when a little after 8:00 they announced that the ship had been cleared and they were starting the tenders. Since we are in a suite we had received a letter in our cabin with a letter explaining the tender process and tender tickets. It said when we were ready to go ashore to go straight to deck 4 with our room keys and the tender tickets. When we got down there they were letting the ship tours on the tenders. Security tried to send us to a lounge to wait but I whipped out our letter and he let us through. We were on the first tender to shore. We quickly met up with our guide and discussed our itinerary and we were on our way in our Toyota HiAce people mover vans.

Our first stop was Sugar Loaf which was a beautiful lookout of the ocean. David and Beth took a walk out on the rocks and got closer to the water. After that brief stop we were off to the lighthouse. We got there a few minutes early and were able to get an iced coffe. Their iced coffees come with a scoop of ice cream in them.

We had a tour of the lighthouse and we had a small group of about 7 people. We were able to climb to the top and go outside and walk around the top. I was able to make it to the top with no problems so I was quite proud of myself.

When we finished our lighthouse tour we had to hurry off because we had a wine tasting and lunch reservations. They gave us about 9 wines to taste. I didn’t really care for any of them. They quickly seated us for lunch. This tour was all inclusive with lunch. I didn’t realize we wouldn’t get to order our own lunch. They served us a lot of strange things. The first thing they gave us was these black things and they said it was potatoes with squid ink on them along with something to dip it in. There was also a cheese plate, some bread and a meat platter.

The next stop was a cave. I’ve been on cave tours before and thought this would be good when I chose it. What I didn’t know is that there were 350 steps down into the cave and another 350 steps back up. They told us that it would also be difficult to breath the further down we went. I only went partway down and I started worrying about not being able to get back out. I huffed and puffed but I made it out without passing out.

By this time we were getting tired but did agree to taste chocolate. We had a chance to do more wine tastings or cheese tastings but we opted to skip that and do some scenic driving. We found a nice beach where Beth went and dipped her toes in the water.

The last tender back to the ship was 5:30. We got back around 5:10. We had a chance to check our email with the free WiFi and then back to the tenders where we were on the last one back to the ship.

After resting a bit in our room we went down to the dining room and had dinner. We were so tired that we didn’t attend any shows and went back to our cabin and watched TV.

Tomorrow we will be in Fremantle (Perth) where we will be on tour from 9:00 am - 8:00 pm.