In the last week we have travelled from Hawaii to somewhere off Mexico via northern California. While in Hawaiian waters, we spent a day ashore in Honolulu, mainly strolling around, as we’d been there before. It wasn’t much changed, apart from the tourists getting fatter.
The island of Maui, the next day, was more interesting. The town of Lahaina is touristy but quaint, with lots of small art galleries and even more tourist tat stores. We generally avoid the latter. (In fact, we normally avoid all shopping as we think that if you’re visiting a strange place, you should get out and see it rather than spending hours in some hopeful local merchant’s emporium. This notion attracts curious glances from many of our fellow travellers, who obviously think we’re unbalanced and shake their heads before returning to their discussions about the trinkets they’ve managed to acquire.)
(That said, I did buy 6 t-shirts for twenty bucks on Maui. You know how they say that, before you leave home, you should lay out everything you intend to pack and then throw half of it back in the drawer? Well, I did that. I got on board. I ran out of shirts. So much for the experienced-world-traveller tips.)
Anyway, Maui was very pretty and we did a bit of walking around, sheltering as much as we could from the blazing sun. We sat for a while under Lahaina’s historic giant banyan tree, which is over a century old, has about 30 trunks, all connected by branches, and covers more ground area than even the largest tourists. I also went for a quick swim and ended up floating around in the shallows for ages because it was just too nice to get out. As usual, I’m not going to lower myself by comparing our lot with that of our New Zealand friends, who we are sure are enjoying winter.
Leaving Hawaii behind, we spent a few days at sea heading for San Francisco. The weather got noticeably cooler and we spent more time inside, reading, attending the inevitable trivia quizzes and attending some of the lectures that cruise lines lay on for passengers who want to take a break from eating. The lectures vary in quality but are often fascinating. So are the presenters: one is an American woman who was one of the first female pilots in the US air force (in the fifties), then became TWA’s first wide-body airline pilot (I assume that the ‘wide body’ description applied to the plane rather than her although, to be honest, it could have been either. But still…) In between all this excitement she had eight children and gained a PhD. Oh, and she’s taller than I am but that’s not really relevant unless you’re into trivial rubbish. (Although, come to think of it, you wouldn’t have read this far if you weren’t into trivial rubbish, would you?)
We landed in San Francisco on a typically foggy morning. It didn’t stop us getting out and about and, by afternoon, it was sunny and pleasantly warm. Having been to SF before, we missed out the touristy things and just walked. We climbed right to the top of Nob Hill and then down the other side, with a side trip to Union Square, where some excellent local painters sit and display their wares. (More on this later…) Total distance walked (and this is being conservative) was over 10 miles. By the time we got back to the ship I couldn’t bend my knees and my feet felt as though they’d been welded on. I announced I was going to stagger to the pool and soak. J announced that she’d seen something interesting and was going to walk right on. This is ‘walk’ as in ‘sprightly’. Sometimes my undying love for this woman falters slightly.
We sailed out of Frisco and down the coast, past Los Angeles and Corona, home to our good friends Sharmila and Dave. They didn’t come to the coast to wave to us so they’re off our postcard list (along, come to think of it, with everyone else we know). After a day at sea, we found ourselves in Mexican waters and landed at Cabo San Lucas. Cabo is right at the southern end of the Baja California peninsula and is being built up into a major tourist resort. We didn’t much fancy the day in a major tourist resort so we hired a car and drove off into the desert. A funny thing about desert. It all looks kinda deserty. Still, it was interesting and a bit of an adventure. For about 30 miles, all we saw was sea (to our left) and cacti (everywhere else). Then we came to some mountains and found the little town of Todos Santos.
Todos comprises three parallel roads, running a few hundred metres, with a sprinkling of streets between them. It does, however, have yer actual Hotel California, which it likes to claim is the one in the song by The Eagles. This is very impressive and the claim is totally authentic apart from the fact that the songwriter had never actually heard of Todos before he wrote the song. Still, it was pretty, as was the great yellow church, complete with ornate altar, beautiful stained glass window and Coke machine. Welcome to Mexico. There was also a cultural centre with lots of Mexican painting and exhibits, an early Mexican straw-ish house and ‘the skull’. ‘The skull’ looked like it might have belonged to a duck-bill platypus if duck-bill platypuses grew to be a hundred feet long. (Note to Northern Hemisphere readers: they don’t.)
Anyway, this thing was (a) humungous and (b) non-fossilised so fairly recent and (c) completely devoid of any sort of information that might have identified it. As my extensive command of Spanish seems to have declined (since our 2007 trip to Spain) to the phrases ‘Ola!’, ‘Muchas Gracias” and ‘Que?’, we never did find out what it was.
Otherwise, Todos was very slow-moving and the people friendly and courteous and not at all given to shouting ‘feelthy gringos’ and shooting at us (see earlier blog under ‘concerns and fears’). In fact, whenever we stopped at the side of the road, drivers would brake to a halt to let us cross the road. Even the town’s sole policeman insisted on stepping into the street and, just in case we were about to encounter the region’s only discourteous driver, flagging the traffic to a halt. We were so grateful that we crossed the road even though we didn’t want to go.
Anyway, we drove back across the desert and made it back Cabo San Lucas in time for a quick look round. The place has lots of big apartment blocks and hotels, some only half-completed, and a goes-on-for-ever sandy beach. On one side a series of rocky points lead to Los Archos, or ‘The Arch’ (maybe my Spanish is making a comeback, huh?), which is a hole in the rock. Water flows through the arch from the Pacific Ocean into the Sea of Cortes, which is cool if you’re into seas and things.
And so to today. Another sea day and then we’re in Acapulco. We’re planning to see the famous cliff divers and avoid films where they are imitated by Elvis Presley…
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Before we finish, my promised discourse (see notes on San Fran) about the world of art. Art would be one of my special areas of expertise if it wasn’t for the fact that I know nothing about it. But, as you know, total ignorance has never stopped me from giving an authorative-sounding opinion on any subject you might care to name.
Anyway, we spent some time looking at the art in Union Square and decided that much of it was very fine. We also liked much of the art we saw in the many galleries on Maui. However… There is much art aboard the Dawn Princess, which hosts regular auctions hosted by a suitably effete American art connoisseur. Said effete American art connoisseur works hard to convince people that the paintings on display are highly desirable and will appreciate in value by thousands of per cent before buyers even get home. (I am exaggerating, but not much.) Anyway, here’s the thing as it strikes us, unqualified as we are in terms of art appreciation but possessed, we think, of gigantic quantities of elegant good taste. The art we’ve seen ashore has varied but much of it has been really good. The art of the ship is, er, how shall we put it, total unadulterated crap. Still, it sells…
And we shall leave you there to contemplate the vagaries of the human condition as we prepare for (a) lunch and (b) Acapulco.
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