Last of eight days in New Zealand - we sail the beautiful fjords of Milford Sound.  See waterfalls, rainbows, majestic cliffs.  Why is it called a 'sound' when it makes no noise?  So many misleading names.  The 'straights of Magellan' are not straight.  Greenland is white.  'Four Mile Road' in Colorado is ten miles long.  We're scheduled to visit Thursday Island on a Wednesday.  How do these things happen?

The world is naturally difficult to comprehend.  Misnomers only confound the issues.  Common beliefs often begin with an error; a simple mistake that through the magic of originality becomes entrenched in our culture.  Columbus propagated such an error when he referred to the natives of North America as 'Indians' based on his intended destination of India.  It took five hundred years to even begin correcting that mistake.  The Roman Catholic church imprisoned Galileo for asserting that the Earth orbits the Sun, rather than vice-versa.  And so it goes - nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error (Goethe).

This makes the task of understanding the world so much more difficult.  On our cruise, as we visit new places almost daily, we try to resist the urge to see what we expect or believe and instead believe what we see.  Not so easy.  In addition to our ten suitcases, we brought onboard a complete and matching set of pre-conceived notions.  These are further enhanced by commercial hype and 'glass-half-full' tour guides.  So in our pursuit of learning about this world from direct observation, we try to read between the lines, to make our own observations.  Then to somehow assemble these observations into a coherent, plausible story. 

It's a big story.  The diversity of this planet is so overwhelming that it seems impossible to comprehend, much less convey.  On a world journey, the etiquette of our tweet culture provides solace in our struggle to tell a story - a shelter from the onslaught of stimulus.  In the 21st century it is okay to summarize by saying that wherever you travel, people are, on a basic level, pretty much the same.  It is also fair to say that the diversity of human cultures, and indeed all life forms, is remarkably rich and varied.  Taken together, these seemingly opposite statements imply the world is what you make of it.

For perspective, we imagine what an inter-galactic blogger would write on a luxury, six-star cruise through the universe.  Universal Tour, day 54,100:  Milky Way, Earth. Mostly water. Many fish, some mammals, opposable thumbs.  Tomorrow Jupiter, then 1,200 light years of deep space before visiting Orion's Belt.