Following our visit to Boston, we sailed off into the east. It took us another couple of days to really get clear of North America, such is the vast expanse of the world’s second-biggest country, Canada. (So, which is the biggest? Answers at the end of this entry.)
Already, the skies and seas were turning grey and so they stayed. The North Atlantic has a reputation for being, well, grey. The waves were choppy and the temperature dropped. There were plenty of spare deck chairs around the swimming pool. We spent our days playing cards, reading and attending (and occasionally winning) the twice-daily quizzes. We have mixed feelings about ‘sea days’. J loves them. Put her on a ship with a view of the water and she’s happy. I get a little restless – I prefer port days - and wasn’t much looking forward to our six days on the ocean between Boston and Ireland. In the event, it passed quickly enough.
After the grey, wet and windy days at sea, we were surprised to find that Ireland was grey, wet and windy. It didn’t matter too much. We docked in the small port of Cobh (pronounced ‘Cove’) and, while some of our fellow travellers went off to Cork and Blarney Castle, we hung around the town. The residents of Cobh had decided that August 25th was ‘Australia Day’ and that they should make a big fuss on account of the fact that many Irishpersons had emigrated to Australia (and New Zealand, they occasionally added) and it was the first time a cruise ship from Australia had returned to the port.
So, despite the weather, there was a programme of musical entertainment beside the water and a host of interesting characters around the pubs. We decided, with various Australian comrades, to sample Guinness and discovered it tasted better straight from the barrel than it did out of bottles that had travelled half-way around the world. Some locals recommended we try Beamish stout, which is brewed in Cobh (so they said: it could have been brewed in downtown Kinshasha for all we knew). Beamish didn’t, in our humble and slightly inebriated opinion, taste quite as good as Guinness but it was nice enough. And it was cheaper.
So, it was a pleasant day. By late afternoon, we were back on board the ship. The sun began to shine and it actually got warm. The inhabitants of the town came down to the dock en masse and a brass band played. People on the ship sang songs. People on the shore sang songs back. Somebody started the Aussie cheer (an intricate little number which goes ‘Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, oi, oi, oi, which may not sound like much but does demonstrate that Australians can be trained to perform simple tasks). We responded with bellows of ‘Kiwi, Kiwi’.
The ship sounded its horn and pulled away. Cobh-ians filled the streets and hills to wave at us. We sailed down the wide river into the sea bathed in sunshine. It had all worked out rather nicely.
Next day was a sea day again. This time, though, there was rather more to see than sea. Although we were headed for France, we sailed past Land’s End and The Lizard. The sight of England brought a small lump to my throat. I’ve often been unsure whether I’m a Kiwi or a Pom. I’ve decided I’m both and proud of it.
The next day we docked in the French port of Le Havre. Le Havre is in Normandy: despite travelling fairly extensively in France, this was new territory for us. We practiced our Gallic shrugs (somewhat rusty since our last visit) and made our way ashore.
Le Havre’s reputation is dull, especially by French standards. Bombed heavily during the second world war, it was rebuilt to the designs of an architect who believed that concrete could be shaped into something artistic. With another couple, we hired a car (a Lancia, believe it or not, the first I have ever driven) and headed for the motorway.
Our first stop was Rouen, about an hour inland. Readers will know that we are both great Francophiles but Rouen still amazed us. And continued to amaze us, every time we walked down one of its narrow streets and round a corner. This place has three magnificent Gothic cathedrals dating as far back as 1100-something. More recently, somebody thought ‘three isn’t many cathedrals, is it?’ and built another, modern one.
Besides monuments to monumental masons, the city has a wealth of medieval buildings, including many colourful and crooked houses. We bought baguettes and fruit and ate lunch in the city plaza (shrugging expressively). The hour we planned to spend there stretched to three.
Finally we moved on and ended up back on the coast in Honfleur, which is almost indecently attractive. Its glory is a small boat harbour which is surrounded by more medieval houses, pubs, the strangest church we’re seen in a long time and numerous bars and cafes. (Photos will be published when we finally get home.) We drank coffee, watched people, did more shrugging.
Finally, it was time to return to the ship. We had to be back by 7pm or it would leave without us, which would be slightly inconvenient. I left my usual contingency time for things going wrong and we set off. This final step on the day’s journey went well. We arced over a beautiful suspension bridge and then another which curved dramatically sideways as it went up. Things were still going well. But France has this strange pull on us. The GPS we’d rented told us to take the next right. We obeyed. We found ourselves on a motorway headed for Paris. The GPS, said, ‘don’t worry, take the next exit in x kilometres’. We reached the next exit. It was closed. We carried on, in exactly the wrong direction.
Finally we got turned round and hurtled back to Le Havre, much of our contingency time now gone. We could see our ship. We sighed in relief. We then discovered that the helpful locals had blocked off the road leading to the ship. A helpful woman told us it would be much easier to walk to the ship than drive (which we had to do to return the hire car). She gave us complicated directions. We followed them and found the next road along had been closed. Our Gallic shrugs were starting to look less convincing.
Eventually, we found a track that led to the dock and made it to the ship with several seconds to spare. We threw the car keys at the rental car guy, scrambled on board and headed to the nearest bar.
Despite which… It was a great day and we still think France is just about the best country on earth. The last day of our 2009 cruise turned out to be eventful, a tad stressful, but magical.
So, it’s now our last night on board. We have spent much of the evening so far packing. (We are currently 5 kilograms overweight on our luggage so something needs to go. I suspect it will be my shoes and clothes…) Tomorrow it’s Southampton and an early start. We get ashore, find a Hertz depot, hire another car and head north in search of members of the clan. Then it’ll be Manchester airport and a massive trip back to NZ. With that cheerful thought, we sign off our 2009 travel blog. Hope you enjoyed it…
PS The world’s biggest country is Russia. We know this because it was the subject of a quiz question. Mind you, given the reliability of the ship’s quizzes, you might do well to check it yourself.
Tuesday, 25 August 2009
Tuesday, 18 August 2009
2009 Entry # 5: Bobbing from Bermuda to Boston…
We left windy Aruba and sailed north through the Caribbean Sea. At the time of writing (a week later), said sea is being churned by a hurricane but it was unruffled during our transit. Our next port call was Bermuda, which turned out to be something close to a paradise on earth.
Bermuda is actually a collection of islands (30-odd, I think), the main ones being arranged in a fetching half-moon configuration and connected by bridges. We docked in the old naval dockyard, once home to an outpost of the British Royal Navy but now used mostly by cruise ships and pleasure craft. The dockyard was picturesque, with a fort and surrounding buildings all constructed from limestone. (We could tell it was limestone because an old arch in the old walls was obviously letting in rain water and then releasing it in a series of leaks which were in the process of forming small stalagmites.)
Pretty as the buildings were, they were mostly derelict. The Navy had gone and, apart from somebody who’d installed a maritime museum at one end of the dockyard, only a few local shopkeepers had stepped up to take over. The boarded-up doors and windows were a surprise in a little country where ordinary-looking houses sell for millions. Maybe prospective developers were deterred by the fact that the dockyard was at the far end of Bermuda (which means about 20 miles away from the only two towns of note, Hamilton and St George).
We decided to visit both towns, avoiding the excursions offered by the cruise line and taking ourselves off on public transport, catching a local bus that wound through narrow streets and across the narrow main island. The views from the bus windows were all of leafy gulches leading down to sandy bays. There were tiny bridges over inlets (including a miniscule drawbridge) and lots of cute pastel-coloured houses. The towns themselves were like English villages transplanted to the mid-ocean. With the sun blazing down, it was a very pleasant spot. We talked to locals on the buses who agreed it was idyllic but told us that crime had been on the increase and that there was a growing drug problem. Good ol’ humanity. Find paradise and do what you can to stuff it up.
After a couple more days at sea, we entered US waters and, as dawn broke, sailed into New York harbour. The rising sun played hide-and-seek. I took photographs of it divided by the Brooklyn bridge and, a few minutes later, peeking from behind the Empire State Building. We had a whole day scheduled to explore the city. We thought. The US immigration service, of course, had other ideas. Everyone had to go through a full face-to-face passport check, as in the US airports where, of course, they only employ people with masters’ degrees in buggering up travellers’ lives. By the time we got ashore it was midday. We abandoned plans to cover all of Manhattan and confined ourselves to the area around Times Square and Central Park.
The famous Times Square was, as advertised, abuzz with people, although it was a lot smaller than I’d imagined. (Although I’d been to NYC before, I’d skipped the square for some reason.) The skyline, however, is an entertainment in itself, blazing as it does with massive neon advertisements.
Central Park was as beautiful as ever, even though the temperature by this time was close to Saharan. It seems they’d had quite poor weather until the day we arrived, when everything suddenly got brighter. We wandered under the famous park bridges and took more photos of the high-rise skyline over the trees, ate ‘chilli dogs’ and made for the John Lennon memorial at Strawberry Fields.
It wasn’t quite as good as the last time I was here, ten years ago. The memorial features park benches arranged around a mosaic circle. In 1999, the circle, the centre of which bears the single word ‘Imagine’, was full of tokens, poems and small flower arrangements, left by those who still grieved for the one-time Beatle. I sprawled on a bench, wiping sweat from my face. The other seats were occupied by a mixture of visitors and elderly denizens of the city. After a moment, one of the old men climbed to his feet and, bending creaking knees, pulled several of the flowery tokens out of the circle. As he made his way back to his seat, I heard him mutter ‘now we’ll have some fun’.
Right on cue, I heard the screeches of an approaching bag lady. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the relocated tokens by the mosaic. ‘OH MY GOD,’ she thundered. ‘I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE!’ Dropping her carrier bags, she swept the tokens back into the circle and positioned them just so before resuming her journey, the accompanying commentary loud enough to drown out the sound of traffic on Central Park West.
Another of the old men caught my eye. His voice crackled with the distinctive New York brogue. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’
‘No,’ I told him, ‘I’m from New Zealand.’
There was the slightest hint of a smile. ‘Count yourselves lucky. We have to put up with this sorta thing all da time.’)
Nowadays, we’re told, some people still place tokens in the circle but, this time around, there were none. I felt a little cheated.
We walked back to the ship, wilting in the heat. So much for NYC.
The next day, we were in Newport, Rhode Island. Newport is where American royalty families like the Kennedys had their weekend ‘cottages’, as they called them. The ‘cottages’ are humble affairs, rarely bigger than the average English stately home and mostly crammed into gardens of only a few dozen acres. JFK married Jacqui hereabouts. We caught a local bus and did a bit of the obligatory gawking and then walked around the town of Newport, which was quaint, well-swept and full of friendly, polite people. At one time, you could only buy a place on Rhode Island if you could pass muster with the residents’ association. (Typical entrance interview: ‘How many zeroes do you have on the end of your bank balance? ‘Gosh,’ (stifling a yawn) ‘I ain’t got a clue but my accountant once told me it was more than eight.’) You expect to see the Great Gatsby stroll along the main street. (As ‘Gatsby’ is one of my favourite books, this wouldn’t have been such a bad thing…)
Leaving Newport, we fetched up (as they say hereabouts) in Boston harbour, not far from where the famous Tea Party took place. Again, we skipped the ship’s organised excursions and took ourselves into the city, where we rode around on a bus and, at the point where the road got wet, a boat. The city is home to about 6 million people but it doesn’t feel like it. Downtown has a cluster of skyscrapers but they’re in a fairly small area. They’ve nearly all been built since the sixties, prior to which the central city was low-rise. (Given which, it’s a bit of a shame they didn’t follow the lead of the great European cities like Paris and London, which remain low-rise and confine the big buildings to locations off to one side.)
That said, Boston is very pretty and in turns tidy and scruffy. The city’s glory, as in NYC, is its park land, which is known as Boston Common. It stretches over many acres and includes ponds and memorials and even a couple of early-settler graveyards. (I love graveyards: they tell such stories.) We even saw a Park Ranger on a big, stolid horse, suffering platonically as tourists took his picture and little children plucked up the courage to touch his horse’s nose.
The city is full of history, most of it concerning the American’s break with Great Britain. Those of us who feel that independence was a bad move and that the Yanks who have been better remaining as colonists (disagree? How about ‘no George Dubya?’ I rest my case…) are well outnumbered. We went to see the old sailing ship USS Constitution, aka ‘Old Ironsides’, so called because British sailors fired cannonballs at her and, seeing the shot bounce off her hard-wood sides, concluded that she was made of iron). There’s a museum next to the ship with a theatre which showed blatantly biased films about the Constitution’s battles, in all of which the British got beaten…
(Mind you, Britain was at the time ruled by George III, who once had a conversation with an oak tree under the impression it was the Spanish ambassador, so I suppose we can’t be too surprised that the Royal Navy wasn’t at its best.)
We liked Boston a lot and could happily have spent more time there. Modern ships, however, wait for no person. We sailed out and away from North America (although, two days later, we’re still just south of Newfoundland). Coming up: later today we will pass over the grave of the Titanic (we expect to see passengers at the rail taking photos of the sea); then, in 4 days time, we’ll make landfall in Ireland. More on that later.
The Atlantic crossing, as the more mathematically-gifted among you would have calculated, takes us 6 days. J is in her element as she loves every second on the sea. Me, I could do with more time on land, but still. Our main concern at present is that a substantial minority of our fellow passengers have developed rasping coughs. Those who remember our 2007 travel blog may recall ‘Funchal Flu’, which affected the whole ship. We’re considering the use of the anti-swine flu masks we brought with us from NZ and wondering if we’re prepared to go to the next evening show looking like complete wallies. (OK, OK, looking more like complete wallies than usual... Happy now?)
For now, though, it’s ‘so long, pardners’.
Bermuda is actually a collection of islands (30-odd, I think), the main ones being arranged in a fetching half-moon configuration and connected by bridges. We docked in the old naval dockyard, once home to an outpost of the British Royal Navy but now used mostly by cruise ships and pleasure craft. The dockyard was picturesque, with a fort and surrounding buildings all constructed from limestone. (We could tell it was limestone because an old arch in the old walls was obviously letting in rain water and then releasing it in a series of leaks which were in the process of forming small stalagmites.)
Pretty as the buildings were, they were mostly derelict. The Navy had gone and, apart from somebody who’d installed a maritime museum at one end of the dockyard, only a few local shopkeepers had stepped up to take over. The boarded-up doors and windows were a surprise in a little country where ordinary-looking houses sell for millions. Maybe prospective developers were deterred by the fact that the dockyard was at the far end of Bermuda (which means about 20 miles away from the only two towns of note, Hamilton and St George).
We decided to visit both towns, avoiding the excursions offered by the cruise line and taking ourselves off on public transport, catching a local bus that wound through narrow streets and across the narrow main island. The views from the bus windows were all of leafy gulches leading down to sandy bays. There were tiny bridges over inlets (including a miniscule drawbridge) and lots of cute pastel-coloured houses. The towns themselves were like English villages transplanted to the mid-ocean. With the sun blazing down, it was a very pleasant spot. We talked to locals on the buses who agreed it was idyllic but told us that crime had been on the increase and that there was a growing drug problem. Good ol’ humanity. Find paradise and do what you can to stuff it up.
After a couple more days at sea, we entered US waters and, as dawn broke, sailed into New York harbour. The rising sun played hide-and-seek. I took photographs of it divided by the Brooklyn bridge and, a few minutes later, peeking from behind the Empire State Building. We had a whole day scheduled to explore the city. We thought. The US immigration service, of course, had other ideas. Everyone had to go through a full face-to-face passport check, as in the US airports where, of course, they only employ people with masters’ degrees in buggering up travellers’ lives. By the time we got ashore it was midday. We abandoned plans to cover all of Manhattan and confined ourselves to the area around Times Square and Central Park.
The famous Times Square was, as advertised, abuzz with people, although it was a lot smaller than I’d imagined. (Although I’d been to NYC before, I’d skipped the square for some reason.) The skyline, however, is an entertainment in itself, blazing as it does with massive neon advertisements.
Central Park was as beautiful as ever, even though the temperature by this time was close to Saharan. It seems they’d had quite poor weather until the day we arrived, when everything suddenly got brighter. We wandered under the famous park bridges and took more photos of the high-rise skyline over the trees, ate ‘chilli dogs’ and made for the John Lennon memorial at Strawberry Fields.
It wasn’t quite as good as the last time I was here, ten years ago. The memorial features park benches arranged around a mosaic circle. In 1999, the circle, the centre of which bears the single word ‘Imagine’, was full of tokens, poems and small flower arrangements, left by those who still grieved for the one-time Beatle. I sprawled on a bench, wiping sweat from my face. The other seats were occupied by a mixture of visitors and elderly denizens of the city. After a moment, one of the old men climbed to his feet and, bending creaking knees, pulled several of the flowery tokens out of the circle. As he made his way back to his seat, I heard him mutter ‘now we’ll have some fun’.
Right on cue, I heard the screeches of an approaching bag lady. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the relocated tokens by the mosaic. ‘OH MY GOD,’ she thundered. ‘I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE!’ Dropping her carrier bags, she swept the tokens back into the circle and positioned them just so before resuming her journey, the accompanying commentary loud enough to drown out the sound of traffic on Central Park West.
Another of the old men caught my eye. His voice crackled with the distinctive New York brogue. ‘You’re not from around here, are you?’
‘No,’ I told him, ‘I’m from New Zealand.’
There was the slightest hint of a smile. ‘Count yourselves lucky. We have to put up with this sorta thing all da time.’)
Nowadays, we’re told, some people still place tokens in the circle but, this time around, there were none. I felt a little cheated.
We walked back to the ship, wilting in the heat. So much for NYC.
The next day, we were in Newport, Rhode Island. Newport is where American royalty families like the Kennedys had their weekend ‘cottages’, as they called them. The ‘cottages’ are humble affairs, rarely bigger than the average English stately home and mostly crammed into gardens of only a few dozen acres. JFK married Jacqui hereabouts. We caught a local bus and did a bit of the obligatory gawking and then walked around the town of Newport, which was quaint, well-swept and full of friendly, polite people. At one time, you could only buy a place on Rhode Island if you could pass muster with the residents’ association. (Typical entrance interview: ‘How many zeroes do you have on the end of your bank balance? ‘Gosh,’ (stifling a yawn) ‘I ain’t got a clue but my accountant once told me it was more than eight.’) You expect to see the Great Gatsby stroll along the main street. (As ‘Gatsby’ is one of my favourite books, this wouldn’t have been such a bad thing…)
Leaving Newport, we fetched up (as they say hereabouts) in Boston harbour, not far from where the famous Tea Party took place. Again, we skipped the ship’s organised excursions and took ourselves into the city, where we rode around on a bus and, at the point where the road got wet, a boat. The city is home to about 6 million people but it doesn’t feel like it. Downtown has a cluster of skyscrapers but they’re in a fairly small area. They’ve nearly all been built since the sixties, prior to which the central city was low-rise. (Given which, it’s a bit of a shame they didn’t follow the lead of the great European cities like Paris and London, which remain low-rise and confine the big buildings to locations off to one side.)
That said, Boston is very pretty and in turns tidy and scruffy. The city’s glory, as in NYC, is its park land, which is known as Boston Common. It stretches over many acres and includes ponds and memorials and even a couple of early-settler graveyards. (I love graveyards: they tell such stories.) We even saw a Park Ranger on a big, stolid horse, suffering platonically as tourists took his picture and little children plucked up the courage to touch his horse’s nose.
The city is full of history, most of it concerning the American’s break with Great Britain. Those of us who feel that independence was a bad move and that the Yanks who have been better remaining as colonists (disagree? How about ‘no George Dubya?’ I rest my case…) are well outnumbered. We went to see the old sailing ship USS Constitution, aka ‘Old Ironsides’, so called because British sailors fired cannonballs at her and, seeing the shot bounce off her hard-wood sides, concluded that she was made of iron). There’s a museum next to the ship with a theatre which showed blatantly biased films about the Constitution’s battles, in all of which the British got beaten…
(Mind you, Britain was at the time ruled by George III, who once had a conversation with an oak tree under the impression it was the Spanish ambassador, so I suppose we can’t be too surprised that the Royal Navy wasn’t at its best.)
We liked Boston a lot and could happily have spent more time there. Modern ships, however, wait for no person. We sailed out and away from North America (although, two days later, we’re still just south of Newfoundland). Coming up: later today we will pass over the grave of the Titanic (we expect to see passengers at the rail taking photos of the sea); then, in 4 days time, we’ll make landfall in Ireland. More on that later.
The Atlantic crossing, as the more mathematically-gifted among you would have calculated, takes us 6 days. J is in her element as she loves every second on the sea. Me, I could do with more time on land, but still. Our main concern at present is that a substantial minority of our fellow passengers have developed rasping coughs. Those who remember our 2007 travel blog may recall ‘Funchal Flu’, which affected the whole ship. We’re considering the use of the anti-swine flu masks we brought with us from NZ and wondering if we’re prepared to go to the next evening show looking like complete wallies. (OK, OK, looking more like complete wallies than usual... Happy now?)
For now, though, it’s ‘so long, pardners’.
Sunday, 9 August 2009
2009 Entry # 4: In which we avoid getting kidnapped in Columbia.
This week’s entry is action-packed and full of fun. (Well, it is if you have a low ‘fun threshold). Set aside an afternoon and read on. Or pretend you didn’t see our email and go do something useful.
After our adventures in Cabo San Lucas, we went to Acapulco and managed to avoid seeing another terrible old Elvis movie. (I believe he made one called ‘Fun In Acapulco’: I think I saw this film as a lad and I seem to remember it brought an entirely new meaning to the word ‘fun’.) The famous resort is nowadays at the other end of the scale from sleepy Todos Santos, which we covered in the last blog entry. Guess how many inhabitants it has nowadays? Is it (a) two million; (b) two hundred thousand; (c) two? Answers at the bottom of this blog entry.
Anyway, Acapulco stretches across a broad bay, complete with sandy beaches, towering hotels, every US retail chain you can think of and hordes of locals offering to sell you everything from cheap jewellery to hard drugs. (Those of you who guessed Acapulco only had two inhabitants are feeling a bit silly now, aren’t you?) Back from the glorious beach, the shabby back streets are a reminder that this is still a poor country. Catch a bus out of town and you’ll find that the next bay to Acapulco’s, while even prettier, hosts a seaside town full of tin-roofed fishermen’s shacks.
A big difference between this part of Mexico (it’s a couple of hundred miles south of Mexico City) and the last bit we visited is the vegetation. Here, we’ve moved from the desert of Baja California to Vietnam-style jungle. The landscape has, in fact, attracted lots of steamy Hollywood productions - such as whatever jungley movie it was that featured Rambo single-handedly wiping out thousands of naughty Russians/ Afghans/ terrorists/ Inland Revenue officials or whatever - were filmed around Acapulco. They even put Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in a muddy river here to film ‘The African Queen’.
No visit to Acapulco (Tourist Cliché Warning) is complete without a side trip to see the famous cliff divers. The cliff diving tradition started in the thirties, when locals would dive into a narrow channel between some very hard rocks to try to free snarled-up fishing lines. Visiting celebs like film star Hedy Lamarr thought this looked rather nice and (probably secretly hoping they’d get it wrong and head-butt a boulder) started paying them to do it.
Nowadays there’s a cliff divers’ union which collects appearance fees on their behalf and regulates the number of dives they perform. This regulation is necessary. In the early days, divers would go blind as a result of repeated dives from altitudes that resulted in them entering the water at speeds close to 70 miles per hour. (The locals also tell you, with barely disguised relish, about others who lost the use of eyes due to collisions with floating matchsticks, nails (apparently, nails float here) and, in one case, a fly.) Broken bones were also common, although no diver has ever been killed.
The event is quite exciting, although there’s a vague sense of anti-climax. You see the old newsreel films and get the impression that the divers are leaping from the top of a towering cliff-face. (Come to think of it, when I saw ‘Fun In Acapulco’, I’m sure Elvis dived from the top of an Everest-sized mountain.) In fact, the divers use platforms on the side of a cliff positioned up to 137 feet above the water. Still, having once chickened out of jumping off the high-board at the local swimming baths, I am sympathetic enough to realise that when you’re on a cliff the water looks a long way down…
We saw a lot more of Acapulco but, apart from an old fort overlooking part of the bay, it didn’t seem much like Mexico. Lovely views, to be sure, lots of Starbucks, high-rises everywhere but it could have been Surfer’s Paradise (or, for our British readers, Blackpool with bigger buildings and about a thousand times more sun than it usually gets). Not so our next destination, which was further south and called Huatulco. Huatulco is pronounced somewhat like ‘what-al-co’. (The nearest city is Oaxaca, which sound a bit like ‘what-aca’, as delivered by a wombat on LSD.)
Huatalco, like the other Mexican resort towns we’ve docked in, is being developed for the tourist trade using government money. It’s in a much earlier phase of development, though, which means it’s still lovely and will remain so until the concrete mixers finish working their magic. The town of Huatulco itself is just a few shacks in one of a series of glorious sandy-beached bays. We wandered around and then took a taxi ride to the nearby town of El Crucecita. (I displayed my extensive command of Spanish again. ‘Quenta costas US dollars?’ ‘Tres!’ ‘We’ll give you dos.’ ‘OK, senor, but where is this “El Cinecentre’ of which you speak?’)
Anyway, El Crucecita was much more of a slice of Mexico, with potholed streets and sidewalks, the inevitable massive church and a mixture of tourists shops and not-quite-level little houses. We liked it and walked around most of its streets until the 40 degree heat got to us.
***
We sailed away from Huatulco and left Mexico behind. We then sailed through the territorial waters of El Salvador, Guatamala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, which was pretty smart of us considering we didn’t know where any of these places were.
Out on the high seas, we had an experience that was a first for us and was quite exciting for a while. We were on deck when we noticed that the setting sun was on the port side of the ship instead of the starboard, where it should have been. The captain then announced via the intercom that they had had a report of a local fishing vessel that had been out of contact for two days. The ship had picked up a remote signal so we were diverting to investigate.
Sure enough, thirty minutes later we came upon the missing boat. It clearly wasn’t too well equipped: rather than sending up flares they lit a fire on their foredeck that, for a minute or two, looked like consuming the whole vessel. Eventually the two crewmen put that out and stood up waving flags. Our ship sent out its rescue boat, which circled cautiously – presumably in case the ‘lost’ fishermen turned out to be pirates – and then went close and offered assistance. We were relieved (well, mostly – it would have been nice to have a tad more excitement) to see that nobody was firing AK47s at anyone else. (This was actually just as well as we’re told that the ship doesn’t carry firearms. Apparently there has been a debate about whether merchant ships should be armed and the general feeling is that carrying weapons would encourage pirates to shoot first and count bodies second. Cruise ships do, however, have one weapon at their disposal. It’s called a Long Range Audio Device and it beams high-pitched sound that supposedly nauseates anyone in its path. I seem to recall that a cruise liner successfully used such a device to deter Somali pirates a few months ago.)
Anyway, it turned out the fishing boat’s electrics had failed. Our ship gave them a new battery and supplies and made sure that a tow boat was coming for them. After a couple of hours, we sailed on.
The incident was a reminder of the chances people take to earn a living in the third world. The boat was a hundred miles out to sea, poorly equipped and not much more than 20 feet long. Its two crewmen had gone two days about with no power, in choppy seas and high temperatures. All this for a net full of fish.
***
Next stop was the Panama Canal. The prospect of sailing through the canal was one of the main reasons we booked this trip. We’d done the Suez a couple of times, and enjoyed wafting along on a strip of water surrounded by the biggest beach on the planet. Now we faced the prospect of wafting along on a strip of water surrounded by jungle.
True to expectations, the Panama was way different. There wasn’t much sand but there was an awful lot of jungle. There were also locks. Six of ’em, three going up and three going down. They’re quite something, not least as they were built nearly a hundred years ago, at enormous cost both in terms of money and human life.
(Let’s have one of those little side-effects into history that so many of you have found useful as a drug-free cure for insomnia. The dream of digging a canal through the Panama isthmus started with the French, who raised lots of money around the turn of the twentieth century and entrusted the job to the chap who had dug the Suez canal. Unfortunately, the chap who had dug the Suez canal thought the task of building the Panama would be much the same. It wasn’t. There were a few little differences they’d overlooked, like (a) Panama was made of rock, not sand, (b) Panama had more disease-carrying mosquitoes than any desert and (c) Panama had high land where Suez was flat. Regarding the last point, you needed locks, which weren’t necessary in Suez. The French builders didn’t quite grasp this point.
So, the French effort saw lots of digging and not much progress. The money ran out and so did the lives of 22,000 workers, thanks to the unforeseen mosquito (and yellow fever) problems. After the French operation went bust, the US waited a while and then bought the canal concession in a garage sale (sort of). The US engineers had rather more idea and they built the lock at a cost of some hundred million bucks and another 29,000 deaths. All this so people like us can sail through and take interesting photos.)
The photos will have to be posted some other time, when we’re not enriching the cruise line every time we sign on to the Internet. Here’s a verbal picture. You sail out of the sea into a river and then towards a double set of locks. Then you’re surrounded by grey concrete. The ship fits into the first lock with about 2 feet to spare either side. (It does have a few more feet at each end, but not much.)
(Our ship has, in fact, been built to specific measurements so that it can transit the canal. Such vessels are known as ‘Panamax’ ships. The new giant liners can’t get through. Old WW2 battleships, as a point of interest, could get though no problem.)
The first lock is a bit of a buzz. We stand at the ship’s rail and watch as the land gradually gets lower. It’s a strange feeling (although the speed of ascent isn’t much faster than that in the lift in our apartment building back home…) At some point, a tanker glides into the lock next to ours (the locks are all in pairs but traffic at any particular hour is always going one way) so we can look down on its deck.
When we cross the continental divide and start heading ‘downhill’, of course, we find our ship sinking in each lock and look up to see a massive ship apparently suspended behind a set of flimsy-looking lock gates.
It’s all a triumph of engineering on a par with the pyramids. In between the locks, we spent a few hours sailing through broader sections of canal. There’s an impressive array of wildfire – more than a hundred species of mammals and many birds call Panama home – and we spotted a few crocodiles, often quite close to banks where workmen were busy building new roads.
***
A few other notes about marine life. We saw quite a bit. There have been the inevitable dolphins and flying fish (not that we’re in any way blasé about these lovely creatures) but, a few days ago, we also sailed through a patch of sea that served as a backyard to a bunch of whales. We didn’t get to see said cetaceans up close, as the ship does its best to avoid colliding with them, but every so often we’d see a flash of silver and a glistening fountain as a whale breached and spouted.
Coming out of Huatulco, we also sailed past a number of turtles. These were green turtles. Apparently there are three kinds of sea turtles, the others being loggerheads and something else. We know there are three kinds of sea turtles as this was the subject of a question at one of the onboard quizzes we’ve been going to. (After giving us the answer, the quizmaster asked if anyone could name turtles that live on the land and J got herself a big round of applause by shouting out ‘Ninja Turtles!’. ’Wish I’d thought of that!)
Which leads us nicely to the subject of the onboard entertainment, which has ranged from Broadway-style singing and dancing events (I have managed to last almost four minutes at one of these before running from the theatre with my hands over my ears) to comedians, ventriloquists and hypnotists (not all at once) to classical musicians. The bext of the latter was a Greek guitarist who once studied with the famed Segovia and was just magic. It takes a lot to get me to sit still for an hour but this guy managed it.
It becomes obvious that there is a second division of entertainers who rarely appear on TV and will never grace the pages of the women’s magazines but who churn out a nice living sailing from port to port and trotting out their well-oiled 45 minutes of comedy, song or magic to pay their way.
Oh, and we still frequent the open air movies under the stars. It’s a tough life.
***
As we write, we’ve had two more port calls since emerging from the canal into the Caribbean Sea. The first of these, Cartagena, has something of a tough reputation, being in the country of Columbia, where the main industry seems to cover cocaine production, smuggling and various other forms of crime. The city’s reputation is such that some of our fellow passengers refused to leave the ship.
Undaunted, we decided to go ashore and get ourselves to the old city. Cartagena is, it turns out, two cities in one. The new city is full of modern hotels and skyscrapers and is much the same as new cities everywhere. The old city, though, is something else. It dates back to colonial days and is the sort of picturesque Spanish town that you expect to find in Spain but generally don’t. The buildings are painted in bright pastel colours and have many balconies and ornate frontages.
We travelled to the old town in a taxi and, for a reasonable price, the taxi driver stayed with us and showed us around. (The driver’s name was Saul, pronounced ‘Sow-all’, and he was a friendly black man who seemed to know everyone in the city. He’d also played football so we spent a happy few minutes comparing old injuries until we were trumped by an elderly fellow-traveller who had played four times for the German national team in the fifties.)
We wandered up and down narrow streets and spent some time sitting under the shady trees in the main square, which is named after and features an equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar. (Bolivar was the liberation hero who battled the Spanish out of Columbia, Paraguay and Bolivia, which is named after him.)
The old city has lots of street vendors who are keen to be your friend but will generally turn away if you say ‘no, gracias’ or offer $2 for the watches they’re selling, the latter being J’s method of choice. I did buy a straw Panama hat for US$5. It was a very hot day and my suitcase-creased cricket hat was looking rather worse for wear.
Otherwise, it was a very pleasant day and we weren’t kidnapped and held to ransom once. This may have had something to do with the fact that there were armed police and soldiers on every corner. We later found out that the President of Columbia was in town so the heavy law enforcement presence, like the 21-gun salute that had boomed out from the old fort earlier in the day, was more in his honour than ours.
We made it back to the ship deciding we’d really liked Cartagena. Our next port stop wasn’t quite so exciting. We sailed north and docked at Aruba, which is a classic desert island, replete with sandy beaches and lots of cactus plants. It’s also in the path of the trade winds, so it always has a steady breeze. When we were there the steady breeze was blowing at 30 knots so it wasn’t really a beach day. We spent time wandering around the capital city of Aranjestad but what we mostly found were tourist stalls and big, glossy shops of the type we normally avoid like the plague. After the charm of Cartagena, it was a disappointment but it wasn’t hard to see how you could have a relaxing beach break there if the wind stopped blowing.
We did have some trouble getting out of the place, though. One of the ship’s starboard engine developed a fault so the engineers were in touch with the manufacturer’s 24x7 help desk. Passengers made the usual jokes about whacking the side of the engine block with a spanner to fix it and we silently hoped that said manufacturer’s 24x7 help desk hadn’t been outsourced to Manila. (‘Engine? Where is engine? Can you turn off and then turn on again? Then wait twenty minutes and call us back if not fixed.’)
We left them to it and went to bed. They must have changed the spark plugs or something because the cabin is now rocking so we’re somewhere around the spot where Johnny Depp seized the Black Pearl in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. We’re headed to Bermuda. We have two days at sea, which is how we have time to update this blog.
***
Oh, and Acapulco has two million inhabitants. Definitely more than two. (By the way, Mexico City has over 22 million.)
P.S. A note for our Kiwis readers. One of our fellow passengers is Arthur Alan Thomas. Now looking much older but with a glamorous youngish wife (or consort?). (For non-Kiwis, this guy was locked up for years for allegedly murdering a young couple who lived close to his farm. After a dozen or so years inside, he won a retrial where the jury declared him innocent (not least as it turned out the cops had oiled the wheels of justice by planting evidence). He was released and given a million bucks in compensation. Fair enough, too.)
After our adventures in Cabo San Lucas, we went to Acapulco and managed to avoid seeing another terrible old Elvis movie. (I believe he made one called ‘Fun In Acapulco’: I think I saw this film as a lad and I seem to remember it brought an entirely new meaning to the word ‘fun’.) The famous resort is nowadays at the other end of the scale from sleepy Todos Santos, which we covered in the last blog entry. Guess how many inhabitants it has nowadays? Is it (a) two million; (b) two hundred thousand; (c) two? Answers at the bottom of this blog entry.
Anyway, Acapulco stretches across a broad bay, complete with sandy beaches, towering hotels, every US retail chain you can think of and hordes of locals offering to sell you everything from cheap jewellery to hard drugs. (Those of you who guessed Acapulco only had two inhabitants are feeling a bit silly now, aren’t you?) Back from the glorious beach, the shabby back streets are a reminder that this is still a poor country. Catch a bus out of town and you’ll find that the next bay to Acapulco’s, while even prettier, hosts a seaside town full of tin-roofed fishermen’s shacks.
A big difference between this part of Mexico (it’s a couple of hundred miles south of Mexico City) and the last bit we visited is the vegetation. Here, we’ve moved from the desert of Baja California to Vietnam-style jungle. The landscape has, in fact, attracted lots of steamy Hollywood productions - such as whatever jungley movie it was that featured Rambo single-handedly wiping out thousands of naughty Russians/ Afghans/ terrorists/ Inland Revenue officials or whatever - were filmed around Acapulco. They even put Bogart and Katherine Hepburn in a muddy river here to film ‘The African Queen’.
No visit to Acapulco (Tourist Cliché Warning) is complete without a side trip to see the famous cliff divers. The cliff diving tradition started in the thirties, when locals would dive into a narrow channel between some very hard rocks to try to free snarled-up fishing lines. Visiting celebs like film star Hedy Lamarr thought this looked rather nice and (probably secretly hoping they’d get it wrong and head-butt a boulder) started paying them to do it.
Nowadays there’s a cliff divers’ union which collects appearance fees on their behalf and regulates the number of dives they perform. This regulation is necessary. In the early days, divers would go blind as a result of repeated dives from altitudes that resulted in them entering the water at speeds close to 70 miles per hour. (The locals also tell you, with barely disguised relish, about others who lost the use of eyes due to collisions with floating matchsticks, nails (apparently, nails float here) and, in one case, a fly.) Broken bones were also common, although no diver has ever been killed.
The event is quite exciting, although there’s a vague sense of anti-climax. You see the old newsreel films and get the impression that the divers are leaping from the top of a towering cliff-face. (Come to think of it, when I saw ‘Fun In Acapulco’, I’m sure Elvis dived from the top of an Everest-sized mountain.) In fact, the divers use platforms on the side of a cliff positioned up to 137 feet above the water. Still, having once chickened out of jumping off the high-board at the local swimming baths, I am sympathetic enough to realise that when you’re on a cliff the water looks a long way down…
We saw a lot more of Acapulco but, apart from an old fort overlooking part of the bay, it didn’t seem much like Mexico. Lovely views, to be sure, lots of Starbucks, high-rises everywhere but it could have been Surfer’s Paradise (or, for our British readers, Blackpool with bigger buildings and about a thousand times more sun than it usually gets). Not so our next destination, which was further south and called Huatulco. Huatulco is pronounced somewhat like ‘what-al-co’. (The nearest city is Oaxaca, which sound a bit like ‘what-aca’, as delivered by a wombat on LSD.)
Huatalco, like the other Mexican resort towns we’ve docked in, is being developed for the tourist trade using government money. It’s in a much earlier phase of development, though, which means it’s still lovely and will remain so until the concrete mixers finish working their magic. The town of Huatulco itself is just a few shacks in one of a series of glorious sandy-beached bays. We wandered around and then took a taxi ride to the nearby town of El Crucecita. (I displayed my extensive command of Spanish again. ‘Quenta costas US dollars?’ ‘Tres!’ ‘We’ll give you dos.’ ‘OK, senor, but where is this “El Cinecentre’ of which you speak?’)
Anyway, El Crucecita was much more of a slice of Mexico, with potholed streets and sidewalks, the inevitable massive church and a mixture of tourists shops and not-quite-level little houses. We liked it and walked around most of its streets until the 40 degree heat got to us.
***
We sailed away from Huatulco and left Mexico behind. We then sailed through the territorial waters of El Salvador, Guatamala, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, which was pretty smart of us considering we didn’t know where any of these places were.
Out on the high seas, we had an experience that was a first for us and was quite exciting for a while. We were on deck when we noticed that the setting sun was on the port side of the ship instead of the starboard, where it should have been. The captain then announced via the intercom that they had had a report of a local fishing vessel that had been out of contact for two days. The ship had picked up a remote signal so we were diverting to investigate.
Sure enough, thirty minutes later we came upon the missing boat. It clearly wasn’t too well equipped: rather than sending up flares they lit a fire on their foredeck that, for a minute or two, looked like consuming the whole vessel. Eventually the two crewmen put that out and stood up waving flags. Our ship sent out its rescue boat, which circled cautiously – presumably in case the ‘lost’ fishermen turned out to be pirates – and then went close and offered assistance. We were relieved (well, mostly – it would have been nice to have a tad more excitement) to see that nobody was firing AK47s at anyone else. (This was actually just as well as we’re told that the ship doesn’t carry firearms. Apparently there has been a debate about whether merchant ships should be armed and the general feeling is that carrying weapons would encourage pirates to shoot first and count bodies second. Cruise ships do, however, have one weapon at their disposal. It’s called a Long Range Audio Device and it beams high-pitched sound that supposedly nauseates anyone in its path. I seem to recall that a cruise liner successfully used such a device to deter Somali pirates a few months ago.)
Anyway, it turned out the fishing boat’s electrics had failed. Our ship gave them a new battery and supplies and made sure that a tow boat was coming for them. After a couple of hours, we sailed on.
The incident was a reminder of the chances people take to earn a living in the third world. The boat was a hundred miles out to sea, poorly equipped and not much more than 20 feet long. Its two crewmen had gone two days about with no power, in choppy seas and high temperatures. All this for a net full of fish.
***
Next stop was the Panama Canal. The prospect of sailing through the canal was one of the main reasons we booked this trip. We’d done the Suez a couple of times, and enjoyed wafting along on a strip of water surrounded by the biggest beach on the planet. Now we faced the prospect of wafting along on a strip of water surrounded by jungle.
True to expectations, the Panama was way different. There wasn’t much sand but there was an awful lot of jungle. There were also locks. Six of ’em, three going up and three going down. They’re quite something, not least as they were built nearly a hundred years ago, at enormous cost both in terms of money and human life.
(Let’s have one of those little side-effects into history that so many of you have found useful as a drug-free cure for insomnia. The dream of digging a canal through the Panama isthmus started with the French, who raised lots of money around the turn of the twentieth century and entrusted the job to the chap who had dug the Suez canal. Unfortunately, the chap who had dug the Suez canal thought the task of building the Panama would be much the same. It wasn’t. There were a few little differences they’d overlooked, like (a) Panama was made of rock, not sand, (b) Panama had more disease-carrying mosquitoes than any desert and (c) Panama had high land where Suez was flat. Regarding the last point, you needed locks, which weren’t necessary in Suez. The French builders didn’t quite grasp this point.
So, the French effort saw lots of digging and not much progress. The money ran out and so did the lives of 22,000 workers, thanks to the unforeseen mosquito (and yellow fever) problems. After the French operation went bust, the US waited a while and then bought the canal concession in a garage sale (sort of). The US engineers had rather more idea and they built the lock at a cost of some hundred million bucks and another 29,000 deaths. All this so people like us can sail through and take interesting photos.)
The photos will have to be posted some other time, when we’re not enriching the cruise line every time we sign on to the Internet. Here’s a verbal picture. You sail out of the sea into a river and then towards a double set of locks. Then you’re surrounded by grey concrete. The ship fits into the first lock with about 2 feet to spare either side. (It does have a few more feet at each end, but not much.)
(Our ship has, in fact, been built to specific measurements so that it can transit the canal. Such vessels are known as ‘Panamax’ ships. The new giant liners can’t get through. Old WW2 battleships, as a point of interest, could get though no problem.)
The first lock is a bit of a buzz. We stand at the ship’s rail and watch as the land gradually gets lower. It’s a strange feeling (although the speed of ascent isn’t much faster than that in the lift in our apartment building back home…) At some point, a tanker glides into the lock next to ours (the locks are all in pairs but traffic at any particular hour is always going one way) so we can look down on its deck.
When we cross the continental divide and start heading ‘downhill’, of course, we find our ship sinking in each lock and look up to see a massive ship apparently suspended behind a set of flimsy-looking lock gates.
It’s all a triumph of engineering on a par with the pyramids. In between the locks, we spent a few hours sailing through broader sections of canal. There’s an impressive array of wildfire – more than a hundred species of mammals and many birds call Panama home – and we spotted a few crocodiles, often quite close to banks where workmen were busy building new roads.
***
A few other notes about marine life. We saw quite a bit. There have been the inevitable dolphins and flying fish (not that we’re in any way blasé about these lovely creatures) but, a few days ago, we also sailed through a patch of sea that served as a backyard to a bunch of whales. We didn’t get to see said cetaceans up close, as the ship does its best to avoid colliding with them, but every so often we’d see a flash of silver and a glistening fountain as a whale breached and spouted.
Coming out of Huatulco, we also sailed past a number of turtles. These were green turtles. Apparently there are three kinds of sea turtles, the others being loggerheads and something else. We know there are three kinds of sea turtles as this was the subject of a question at one of the onboard quizzes we’ve been going to. (After giving us the answer, the quizmaster asked if anyone could name turtles that live on the land and J got herself a big round of applause by shouting out ‘Ninja Turtles!’. ’Wish I’d thought of that!)
Which leads us nicely to the subject of the onboard entertainment, which has ranged from Broadway-style singing and dancing events (I have managed to last almost four minutes at one of these before running from the theatre with my hands over my ears) to comedians, ventriloquists and hypnotists (not all at once) to classical musicians. The bext of the latter was a Greek guitarist who once studied with the famed Segovia and was just magic. It takes a lot to get me to sit still for an hour but this guy managed it.
It becomes obvious that there is a second division of entertainers who rarely appear on TV and will never grace the pages of the women’s magazines but who churn out a nice living sailing from port to port and trotting out their well-oiled 45 minutes of comedy, song or magic to pay their way.
Oh, and we still frequent the open air movies under the stars. It’s a tough life.
***
As we write, we’ve had two more port calls since emerging from the canal into the Caribbean Sea. The first of these, Cartagena, has something of a tough reputation, being in the country of Columbia, where the main industry seems to cover cocaine production, smuggling and various other forms of crime. The city’s reputation is such that some of our fellow passengers refused to leave the ship.
Undaunted, we decided to go ashore and get ourselves to the old city. Cartagena is, it turns out, two cities in one. The new city is full of modern hotels and skyscrapers and is much the same as new cities everywhere. The old city, though, is something else. It dates back to colonial days and is the sort of picturesque Spanish town that you expect to find in Spain but generally don’t. The buildings are painted in bright pastel colours and have many balconies and ornate frontages.
We travelled to the old town in a taxi and, for a reasonable price, the taxi driver stayed with us and showed us around. (The driver’s name was Saul, pronounced ‘Sow-all’, and he was a friendly black man who seemed to know everyone in the city. He’d also played football so we spent a happy few minutes comparing old injuries until we were trumped by an elderly fellow-traveller who had played four times for the German national team in the fifties.)
We wandered up and down narrow streets and spent some time sitting under the shady trees in the main square, which is named after and features an equestrian statue of Simon Bolivar. (Bolivar was the liberation hero who battled the Spanish out of Columbia, Paraguay and Bolivia, which is named after him.)
The old city has lots of street vendors who are keen to be your friend but will generally turn away if you say ‘no, gracias’ or offer $2 for the watches they’re selling, the latter being J’s method of choice. I did buy a straw Panama hat for US$5. It was a very hot day and my suitcase-creased cricket hat was looking rather worse for wear.
Otherwise, it was a very pleasant day and we weren’t kidnapped and held to ransom once. This may have had something to do with the fact that there were armed police and soldiers on every corner. We later found out that the President of Columbia was in town so the heavy law enforcement presence, like the 21-gun salute that had boomed out from the old fort earlier in the day, was more in his honour than ours.
We made it back to the ship deciding we’d really liked Cartagena. Our next port stop wasn’t quite so exciting. We sailed north and docked at Aruba, which is a classic desert island, replete with sandy beaches and lots of cactus plants. It’s also in the path of the trade winds, so it always has a steady breeze. When we were there the steady breeze was blowing at 30 knots so it wasn’t really a beach day. We spent time wandering around the capital city of Aranjestad but what we mostly found were tourist stalls and big, glossy shops of the type we normally avoid like the plague. After the charm of Cartagena, it was a disappointment but it wasn’t hard to see how you could have a relaxing beach break there if the wind stopped blowing.
We did have some trouble getting out of the place, though. One of the ship’s starboard engine developed a fault so the engineers were in touch with the manufacturer’s 24x7 help desk. Passengers made the usual jokes about whacking the side of the engine block with a spanner to fix it and we silently hoped that said manufacturer’s 24x7 help desk hadn’t been outsourced to Manila. (‘Engine? Where is engine? Can you turn off and then turn on again? Then wait twenty minutes and call us back if not fixed.’)
We left them to it and went to bed. They must have changed the spark plugs or something because the cabin is now rocking so we’re somewhere around the spot where Johnny Depp seized the Black Pearl in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’. We’re headed to Bermuda. We have two days at sea, which is how we have time to update this blog.
***
Oh, and Acapulco has two million inhabitants. Definitely more than two. (By the way, Mexico City has over 22 million.)
P.S. A note for our Kiwis readers. One of our fellow passengers is Arthur Alan Thomas. Now looking much older but with a glamorous youngish wife (or consort?). (For non-Kiwis, this guy was locked up for years for allegedly murdering a young couple who lived close to his farm. After a dozen or so years inside, he won a retrial where the jury declared him innocent (not least as it turned out the cops had oiled the wheels of justice by planting evidence). He was released and given a million bucks in compensation. Fair enough, too.)
Sunday, 2 August 2009
2009 Entry # 3: The 50th State, a learned discourse on the world of modern art and an encounter with a Mexican policeman
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…
**********************************************
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.
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…
**********************************************
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.
Wednesday, 22 July 2009
Northwards drifting: fascinating geological and revolting biological information
We had a fleeting visit to Samoa but didn’t go ashore as J still wasn’t feeling too great. (She’s better now.) Upping anchor, we continued to travel northwards. In principle. In fact, we spent several days travelling northwards through the cunning strategem of steaming eastwards for a while and then heading south. It didn’t make much sense to us, but the captain didn’t want to know when we tried to tell him about the shortest distance between two points.
Actually, the reason for these unusual manoeuvres was that, after Samoa, we visited Papeete and Bora Bora. These places are all part of French Polynesia, which occupies an area as big as Europe but comprises just a handful of small islands. Just think how much money they’d make in real estate deals if they filled in all that empty ocean between the islands.
Papeete was surprisingly busy and was supposedly French-speaking. My French, however, drew even more puzzled looks than it does in France, so it could be that they have a strange accent in Tahiti. (It’s equally possible that I have a strange accent, but still…) Otherwise, Tahiti was as advertised, lots of sandy beaches and steep volcanic-sided hills. All a bit commercial though. And expensive. Someone bought a can of Coke and got charged $US8.
The next day we were in Bora Bora, which, as Pacific islands go, was much more like it. It’s a classic atoll shape but the atoll is based on a volcanic crater so it’s quite like a southern-seas version of Santorini. BB was very pretty and you could walk the capital city from end to end in about four minutes.
Following BB, we headed properly northwards, crossed the equator and spent two days in a featureless ocean before arriving at Christmas Island, where we did a slow cruise-past. The island is sandy and flat, with lots of coconut trees. There are a few inhabitants who mainly go fishing and live in two micro-towns called London and Paris. A few of them paddled out in canoes and waved at us in what seemed to be a friendly fashion. The ship decided to have a Christmas party, Santa and all. We didn’t get any presents, though.
From Xmas Island it was lots of ocean and the sea’s been a bit choppy so we haven’t been using the swimming pool so much. There was a brief flurry of excitement yesterday when we were told that there was going to be a lunar eclipse but, although it was total elsewhere, all we could detect was a slight dent in the side of the sun. Maybe we should complain to the cruise line.
Anyway, today it’s Hawaii and as soon as we finish posting this blog entry we’re off to Waikiki beach.
More on the travel side of things later, but now for some fascinating (in a dull sort of way) information about the nature of time… We crossed the international date line a few days ago, with the result that we had two Fridays in a row, which was weird. We will gradually lose the day we’ve gained as we head eastwards.
Even more unusually, we have also managed to be in two days at the same time. Christmas Island is also known as Kiribati, which is (a) pronounced ‘Kiribass’ and (b) part of the kingdom of Tuvalu which comprises a bunch of islands spread over another vast tract of ocean. A few years ago, the clever people of Tuvalu decided to bend the international date line so that (a) all their islands would be on the same time and (b) (the real reason) they could claim that one of their islands would be the first to see in the new millennium. (This island is now called, with breathtaking originality, ‘Millennium Island’.)
So, this clear case of manipulating the space-time continuum resulted in us being present on the ship where it was legally Sunday, surrounded by ocean and bits of land where it was legally Monday.
We didn’t understand it, either.
Anyway, back to life on board. I am pleased to report that the fatigue that dogged me while I was undergoing treatment has now mostly gone, so I’ve stepped up the exercise regime, alternating days at the gym with hour-long scurries (sorta fast walking with occasional wheezy jogs) around the deck. (Three rounds of the deck = 1 mile and I’m building up to 5 miles, which is quite good as a couple of months ago I got out of breath just going for the morning paper.)
Meanwhile, we are doing our best to resist the mountains of food available 24x7 in the half-a-dozen shipboard restaurants. And, in my case, not succeeding. My body is now engaged in a sort of biological arms race, expanding muscles competing for space with rampant fat cells. The result is, I suspect, not a pretty sight. And we’re only a quarter of the way through the voyage.
Otherwise, we pass our days, when we’re not exercising or eating, with reading, talking to people, swimming, sunbathing and participating in the twice-daily quizzes. We have won a couple of the quizzes but competition is fierce. For several days, a group of spotty teenagers won with very high scores. We then realised the little buggers were using a handheld computer to get the answers. We have been urging the crew to reinstate the quaint custom of keel-hauling.
There’s lots of entertainment. The ship offers nightly live shows, which haven’t been much cop so far (as they’ve featured Australian ‘entertainers’!?). Much better are the movies under the stars, where we stretch out on loungers around the swimming pool and watch movies on a giant screen while uniformed flunkies, obviously concerned that a lengthy film could result in us going more than two hours without food, serve us with drinks and popcorn. It’s not a patch on working in an office on a cold, rainy Monday, of course, but we make the best of it.
Anyway, just in case you’re having trouble getting the horrifying imagery of my warring biological functions out of your minds, here’s some more interesting information about the world about us. Have you ever wondered why atolls are round with lots of water in the middle? No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. What happens is that a volcano erupts, bursts through the surface of the sea and then says to itself ‘gawd, all this erupting has really shagged me out’ and gradually subsides until it’s just a circle of land sticking out above the water. All’s well for a few million years but then the volcanic land starts to sink under its own weight (thus providing an eerie glimpse into what lies in my future if I keep eating all the shipboard fruit pie and custard).
However, as the land sinks, coral grows on it and forms new land. Bits of ground-up coral forms sand (over a few more million years) and you have beaches. Any fresh water streams on the land drain into the water and the fresh water kills the bits of coral around it so you then have channels into the atoll, which is very handy if you’re on a ship.
Once again, the Cartiblog broadens the minds (as well as turning the stomachs) of its readers. Farewell, faithful readers. Hawaii beckons.
Actually, the reason for these unusual manoeuvres was that, after Samoa, we visited Papeete and Bora Bora. These places are all part of French Polynesia, which occupies an area as big as Europe but comprises just a handful of small islands. Just think how much money they’d make in real estate deals if they filled in all that empty ocean between the islands.
Papeete was surprisingly busy and was supposedly French-speaking. My French, however, drew even more puzzled looks than it does in France, so it could be that they have a strange accent in Tahiti. (It’s equally possible that I have a strange accent, but still…) Otherwise, Tahiti was as advertised, lots of sandy beaches and steep volcanic-sided hills. All a bit commercial though. And expensive. Someone bought a can of Coke and got charged $US8.
The next day we were in Bora Bora, which, as Pacific islands go, was much more like it. It’s a classic atoll shape but the atoll is based on a volcanic crater so it’s quite like a southern-seas version of Santorini. BB was very pretty and you could walk the capital city from end to end in about four minutes.
Following BB, we headed properly northwards, crossed the equator and spent two days in a featureless ocean before arriving at Christmas Island, where we did a slow cruise-past. The island is sandy and flat, with lots of coconut trees. There are a few inhabitants who mainly go fishing and live in two micro-towns called London and Paris. A few of them paddled out in canoes and waved at us in what seemed to be a friendly fashion. The ship decided to have a Christmas party, Santa and all. We didn’t get any presents, though.
From Xmas Island it was lots of ocean and the sea’s been a bit choppy so we haven’t been using the swimming pool so much. There was a brief flurry of excitement yesterday when we were told that there was going to be a lunar eclipse but, although it was total elsewhere, all we could detect was a slight dent in the side of the sun. Maybe we should complain to the cruise line.
Anyway, today it’s Hawaii and as soon as we finish posting this blog entry we’re off to Waikiki beach.
More on the travel side of things later, but now for some fascinating (in a dull sort of way) information about the nature of time… We crossed the international date line a few days ago, with the result that we had two Fridays in a row, which was weird. We will gradually lose the day we’ve gained as we head eastwards.
Even more unusually, we have also managed to be in two days at the same time. Christmas Island is also known as Kiribati, which is (a) pronounced ‘Kiribass’ and (b) part of the kingdom of Tuvalu which comprises a bunch of islands spread over another vast tract of ocean. A few years ago, the clever people of Tuvalu decided to bend the international date line so that (a) all their islands would be on the same time and (b) (the real reason) they could claim that one of their islands would be the first to see in the new millennium. (This island is now called, with breathtaking originality, ‘Millennium Island’.)
So, this clear case of manipulating the space-time continuum resulted in us being present on the ship where it was legally Sunday, surrounded by ocean and bits of land where it was legally Monday.
We didn’t understand it, either.
Anyway, back to life on board. I am pleased to report that the fatigue that dogged me while I was undergoing treatment has now mostly gone, so I’ve stepped up the exercise regime, alternating days at the gym with hour-long scurries (sorta fast walking with occasional wheezy jogs) around the deck. (Three rounds of the deck = 1 mile and I’m building up to 5 miles, which is quite good as a couple of months ago I got out of breath just going for the morning paper.)
Meanwhile, we are doing our best to resist the mountains of food available 24x7 in the half-a-dozen shipboard restaurants. And, in my case, not succeeding. My body is now engaged in a sort of biological arms race, expanding muscles competing for space with rampant fat cells. The result is, I suspect, not a pretty sight. And we’re only a quarter of the way through the voyage.
Otherwise, we pass our days, when we’re not exercising or eating, with reading, talking to people, swimming, sunbathing and participating in the twice-daily quizzes. We have won a couple of the quizzes but competition is fierce. For several days, a group of spotty teenagers won with very high scores. We then realised the little buggers were using a handheld computer to get the answers. We have been urging the crew to reinstate the quaint custom of keel-hauling.
There’s lots of entertainment. The ship offers nightly live shows, which haven’t been much cop so far (as they’ve featured Australian ‘entertainers’!?). Much better are the movies under the stars, where we stretch out on loungers around the swimming pool and watch movies on a giant screen while uniformed flunkies, obviously concerned that a lengthy film could result in us going more than two hours without food, serve us with drinks and popcorn. It’s not a patch on working in an office on a cold, rainy Monday, of course, but we make the best of it.
Anyway, just in case you’re having trouble getting the horrifying imagery of my warring biological functions out of your minds, here’s some more interesting information about the world about us. Have you ever wondered why atolls are round with lots of water in the middle? No? Well, I’ll tell you anyway. What happens is that a volcano erupts, bursts through the surface of the sea and then says to itself ‘gawd, all this erupting has really shagged me out’ and gradually subsides until it’s just a circle of land sticking out above the water. All’s well for a few million years but then the volcanic land starts to sink under its own weight (thus providing an eerie glimpse into what lies in my future if I keep eating all the shipboard fruit pie and custard).
However, as the land sinks, coral grows on it and forms new land. Bits of ground-up coral forms sand (over a few more million years) and you have beaches. Any fresh water streams on the land drain into the water and the fresh water kills the bits of coral around it so you then have channels into the atoll, which is very handy if you’re on a ship.
Once again, the Cartiblog broadens the minds (as well as turning the stomachs) of its readers. Farewell, faithful readers. Hawaii beckons.
Saturday, 15 November 2008
Back by unpopular demand… The Cartilbog
Day one
So many people (well, two) have asked us to resurrect our blog that we’ve decided to comply, mainly because it means we won’t have to buy people postcards and try to send them from places in Mexico that we’ve never heard of and which will probably be populated by gap-toothed men in massive sombreros who sneer at us, fondle their six-shooters (this is no longer an offence under Mexican law) and address us as ‘feelthy gringos’.
So many people (well, two) have asked us to resurrect our blog that we’ve decided to comply, mainly because it means we won’t have to buy people postcards and try to send them from places in Mexico that we’ve never heard of and which will probably be populated by gap-toothed men in massive sombreros who sneer at us, fondle their six-shooters (this is no longer an offence under Mexican law) and address us as ‘feelthy gringos’.
So… Here we are, one day out of Auckland and sailing through something that can best be described as ‘an awful lot of ocean’. The skies are amethyst blue and the sun wraps you in a toasty-warm embrace as soon as you step outside. Yes, it really is like that somewhere in the world. Just here, though, it’s overcast, breezy and not remotely warm.
Still, over the next seven or so weeks we will be in lotsa hot spots and we’ll visit a bunch of places we’ve heard of and, as intimated earlier, a bunch more that could be on Mars for all we know. These include the South Pacific islands of Samoa, Papeete and Bora Bora (so good they made a typographical error when they typed the name). Then we sail past Christmas Island (we can’t go ashore as we’ve been naughty, not nice), land in two ports in Hawaii and slog across the rest of the Pacific to San Francisco, where we hope the army of demented panhandlers we told to **** off in 2005 don’t remember us.
If, by chance, we haven’t all got swine flu by then, we’ll put that right by visiting the Mexican ports of Acapulco (which we’re heard of thanks to Elvis Presley – see, all those terrible movies had some value after all), Huatalco (which we’d never heard of) and Cabo San Lucas (oh, come on, we’re not that gullible).
Still with us? After hopefully dodging modern day versions of Pancho Villa (a legendary sharp-shooter who used to play centre forward for Birmingham City, boom, boom), we sail through the Pamana Canal and visit Cartagena (we’d heard of this place and we even guessed correctly what continent it was on) (after three goes), Aruba, which is an island somewhere in the Caribbean, and Bermuda.
We then meander up the Eastern Seaboard, take a bite of the Big Apple, visit Boston and Newport and retrace the course of the Titanic. A quick stop in Ireland, then Le Havre, then Southampton and on to the real geographical highlight of the trip, Stoke-on-Trent, the Venice of The Midlands. (Well, it’s got canals.)
So much for the future. Back to the present. The trip to date actually started on Tuesday, when we flew to Auckland and spent the afternoon and early evening with our old friends Nina and Pat, plus family. Wednesday morning we met more old friends, ex-neighbours Kath and Frank, who delivered us to Princes’ Wharf in time for our 1pm boarding. We then discovered that the 1pm boarding time had become a 3pm boarding time, which was great news as the Auckland drizzle had just set in and we didn’t want to miss a minute of it. We took ourselves off to a bar, drank beer and told ourselves we’d be warm in a couple of days.
At last we were ready to embark. Although boarding ships is much easier then getting on planes, we found ourselves near the end of a lengthy queue. We were soon distracted by a sweet old lady from England who, with her husband, was standing behind us, clutching the handlebars of her wheeled zimmer frame. She prattled happily on about her life and times and then said, ‘look over there!’. When we looked back, she’d somehow managed to get the wheely thing, plus her confused-looking husband, past us. We watched in admiration as she continued in like manner until she was at the front of the queue. Never underestimate a little old lady with a cute smile.
(Later on, she materialised at the first-night cocktail party just as Jasu had managed to score us a couple of glasses of complimentary champagne at the bar. ‘Where did you get those from, dear?’ she simpered. As Jasu nodded towards the counter, the old girl tried to relieve her of the glasses. This time, though, J was ready for her and managed to hold them out of grasping distance. We’re really looking forward to seeing how this one gets on at the lifeboat drills.)
Anyway, we finally got on board and were able to unpack our bags in cabin 318, our home for the next 50 days. The ship, eerily, is identical to the one in which we circumnavigated Australia last year, so we know our way about and don’t have the usual period of new-ship disorientation, which is mostly good but also a little disappointing.
Day Four
We didn’t get Day One posted as there was a problem with the blog site. If you’re reading this now, we have found a way to overcome it.
We are now an hour away from Samoa. The weather is brighter and today’s temperature should hit 30 degrees. I had my first dip in the pool yesterday.
We have been meeting more of our fellow passengers. They are very pleasant on the whole. We’ve also run into a few people who we’d seen or met on previous voyages. But… Those who can recall our 2007 blog might remember we had a problem with a grumpy old man who was on our table for dinner: we got so fed up with him we demanded to be moved to another table and the other couple at the original table said ‘if they’re going, we’re going too’. Well, we went to the Captain’s cocktail party the other night and guess who we ran into?
**********************************************************************************
So that’s it for 2009 blog entry number one. This entry is dedicated to our beautiful, smart, funny Auckland-based friend Nina, who has recently joined me in The Club That No-one Wants To Join and is facing a spell of chemotherapy with cheerful courage. This dedication is made with whatever passes for prayers amongst heathens like ourselves and Everest-sized quantities of love and good wishes.
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