Some Final Thoughts

"The gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can become, until he goes abroad.  I speak now, of course, in the supposition that the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a consummate ass.  If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother.  I shall always delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my travels. "

-Mark Twain, from The Innocents Abroad 

It's been 10 days since I disembarked in Ft. Lauderdale and returned to my regular life.  Well, not entirely my regular life--I don't go back to work for another week.  But, notwithstanding Christmas being in the middle of time I've been back, I have been able to reflect a bit on the trip (I've also been able to post my photos.  They can be found at http://gallery.me.com/cryswill#gallery  ).  Here are some random observations:

The wonder of it all:  It still amazes me that I had the chance to do something like this.  I owe a lot to a lot of people for making it possible.

What was my favorite place/activity?  This is the question I've gotten the most since I've returned, and I really cannot answer it.  The places and activities were so varied that calling one a favorite is like picking a favorite child.  Certainly some stand out more than others:  ancient Egypt, Petra, the safari, Mumbai, Kerala, Cape Town and Rio certainly all qualify as favorites.  But I wouldn't discount Dubai, Namibia, Fujairah, the Seychelles, or really almost any other experience along the way.

How did I stand those days at sea?  I will admit that, prior to this trip, I had never been a fan of days at sea on cruises.  For me, it's always been all about the places being visited.  But that changed for this trip.  Particularly after that first week, when I was off the ship overnight for Cairo, then again for Petra, then again for Luxor, I needed a vacation from my vacation--time to just re-group.  After a while, I started to stress when there were lots of ports in a row.  That is, until I had a little chat with myself and let it go.  Unfortunately, the victims of that stress were my visits to Mombasa and Zanzibar--I didn't really take them in properly because I was suffering from travel fatigue at the time.  Fortunately, I did not have that particular malady again until we hit the Caribbean, where it really didn't matter and where it was all about getting ready to end the trip anyway.

In any event, there was plenty to do during days at sea--lectures, classes, card games, socializing, catching up on the news and on my blog, and deck chair with book, to name a few.  The ship provided plenty of activities, and friends provided more.

Speaking of friends, the people I had the privilege to meet, both on the ship and off, were perhaps the best part of it all.  From the very first night in Athens, when we entered the rooftop bar and immediately recognized a "virtual friend" from the internet and then went to dinner and met a wonderful couple who would become valued friends throughout the trip, to the farewell parties when we had to say goodbye to so many terrific people, the community that was formed on this trip was something special.   

This included not only the 80+ people who were on for the full cruise, but those who joined and left along the way for the five individual segments of the cruise.  The ship's capacity is 490 passengers, and we tended to average in the neighborhood of 400 passengers at any given time, so there were plenty of people on just for the segments.  In particular, there was a group that was on the safari and joined the ship in Cape Town who participate on a message board that I've belonged to for a while, and it was great to finally get to know them in person.

The crew was a major part of the community, and became part of our lives for the duration.  I have to hand it to them--no matter what happened, there they were keeping their composure and dealing with whatever was in front of them.  For them, there was no escaping--they lived on this ship and had to deal with their responsibilities every time they left their quarters.  It cannot have been easy, and yet they all, from the captain to the general manager to the cruise director to the tour desk and reception to every waiter and steward and stewardess, left one feeling like they found it a pleasure to be with you and doing what they were doing.  My hat is off to every last one of them. 

Then there was my roommate, Beth.  She was a large part of why this trip was so great.  Her warm and friendly personality meant lots of new friends that she always shared.  Her considerateness made living with her easy.  Her sense of humor meant that I spent a good portion of those 72 days and 71 nights laughing like a lunatic.  I miss sharing quarters with her--which is something for a curmudgeon like me.

So now I'm home, and have to make my own bed, clean my own home, and cook my own meals.  When I wake up in the morning, there is not a new city or country to explore.  But that doesn't mean the adventure is over.  What this trip left me with is a renewed sense of wonder and beauty.  I saw many beautiful sunsets in exotic places, but I had that same sense of awe as I watched the sunset as I drove to North Carolina for Christmas.  Just a few minutes ago, I stopped to enjoy a painting on my own wall that has been there for a very long time.  And the time I'm spending with family and friends is more precious than ever.  

I picked a period to be away that was profound from a historic perspective.  America elected a president who, during my childhood, would have been considered unthinkable for the post.  The economy tanked in a big way, and we're all still unsure what it means to us or the world, or how much worse it's going to get.  The world remains a violent, uncertain place--both in places I visited (Mumbai, Athens, the Gulf of Aden) and places I didn't (Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran).  But I'm fortunate, in that I had this opportunity, that I missed the violence in the places that it took hold, and that I was able to take a very deep breath before plunging once more into the fray--for once refreshed and ready to go.

To my friends and family:  I will try not to be too consummate an ass, but stop me when I get too boring.  I really am full of the last few months' adventures, and that could well make me full of something else.  

Da Water and Da Rum, Mon

"RUM, n.  Generally, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers."

-Ambrose Bierce

The last week of the cruise was appropriately different from the nine weeks that went before it.  Those nine weeks were about exploring the historic and the exotic (or at least exotic to the likes of me).  The final week was about water, rum, and saying goodbye to new friends, as we plied the more traditional cruise ship waters of the Caribbean.  Stops were at Barbados, Dominica, Puerto Rico, and Grand Turk.

At all stops except Puerto Rico, the activity for me was the same:  snorkeling.  In Barbados, the snorkeling was with giant green turtles off a catamaran.  The cat crew were a friendly and helpful bunch, though I wasn't so sure about the advice one crewman gave me when the bad-tempered turtle named Hawkeye swam past:  make fists so that no fingers are dangling for him to bite at.  But my fingers went unbitten, so perhaps it was good advice after all.  After the snorkel, it was rum drinks all around as we relaxed and danced in the sun while the cat made its way back to shore under full sail.

In Dominica, it was snorkeling via "fun cats"--two-person catamarans that we steered ourselves as we formed a convoy of six cats.  Dominica itself is a beautiful island, widely considered to be the most unspoiled island in the Caribbean.  However, the reef is not so unspoiled--where we were, it was largely dead.  There is mining nearby of volcanic ash, and the off-flow from that activity has taken its toll on the coral.  

Dominica is politically interesting.  With a population of only 70,000, and dimensions of 29 miles by 16 miles, it is nevertheless an independent country with a seat in the United Nations.  It used to be a British colony, but became independent in 1978.

Our other snorkel island was Grand Turk.  I'd heard much about the quality of the diving here, so was looking forward to the snorkeling with the idea that if the diving is good the snorkeling will be too.  As in Barbados, we were on a catamaran.  The operation was totally professional, with the best equipment we'd had on any of our snorkels and a crew that was careful to make sure everyone knew what they were doing.  The waters were extremely rough, but I didn't experience the kind of difficulties I'd had in the Seychelles, probably because we weren't snorkeling near rocks and because the quality of the gear helped in battling the current.  But the work to counter the current did not have the same payoff as in the Seychelles--the reef here was in bad shape.  Apparently, while the island repaired its structures quickly after Hurricane Ike in the fall,the damage to the reef is more devastating and cannot be repaired by man.

The sail back to shore was particularly pretty, as the sun was setting as we sailed.  Rum drinks all around again, though less dancing on this one, probably because the cat was a good bit more crowded.  But still a pleasant day.

In Puerto Rico, we skipped the snorkeling and went straight for the rum, taking the ferry over to the Bacardi factory for a tour and free mojitos.  After that was a stroll around old San Juan, looking at the lovely buildings and blue cobblestone streets, stopping in a local cafe for lunch, and finding an exhibit in a park called "Earth from Above."  The exhibit was comprised of large, detailed and stunning photographs of places all over the world as seen from airplanes, helicopters and hot air balloons.  Many of the photos were of places we'd visited on our trip, albeit from above:  the dunes of Namibia, Kenyan villages, Petra, etc.  It was the perfect coda to our trip, coming as it did at journey's end.  And, as if to punctuate the point, the skies opened and it started to pour just as we returned to the ship from this wonderful day.

And indeed the journey is now over.  My next entry will be the last for this journal--some final words about the two and a half months of a trip that I'd never have dreamed I'd be able to take and that was beyond all my expectations of it.  

Life Along the Amazon

“A regal, ruling river there exists,
unique, and vast, of loveliness unmatched,
lowly-born amidst cold summit mists
then haughty, snubbing oceans, when dispatched."

- Fabriciano Hernàndez, Hymn to the Amazon

As mentioned in my last entry, we were scheduled for three more stops in Brazil after Rio. However, a funny thing happened on the way to Fortaleza. I awoke at about 5:00 am with the odd sense that something was wrong. It took me a few minutes to realize that there was no electricity—the nightlight in the room was out and the air conditioning shut down. It took me a couple more minutes to realize that the ship was not moving. Our entire power system was gone, and the ship was dead in the water. It remained this way for over an hour, and we experienced a couple more partial shut-downs through the course of the morning. Turns out, a water-cooled generator had failed and, being interconnected to other systems, had taken down the ship’s entire power system.

We were within sight of land when this happened, so it was not too disturbing. But it was a little unnerving to think that it could have happened while the ship was crossing the Atlantic, days from any land, or when we were in the Gulf of Aden where all the pirate activity has been taking place.

What it did do was set us back on our schedule such that the port stop in Fortaleza had to be foregone. So, I can write only of Salvador and Belem.

Salvador

Salvador, in the state of Bahia, was founded in 1549, and is Brazil’s third largest city (and the fifth largest in Latin America). It once was the capital of Brazil.

Salvador has a lower city and an upper city, with the lower being the commercial center and the upper containing a picturesque old city. Interestingly, the best way to get between the upper and lower cities is to take a giant municipal elevator. At a cost equal to about 25 cents, it is certainly cheaper than a taxi. We docked in the lower city, but did our exploring in the upper city, so the elevator came in handy.

The old city is laid out with narrow cobblestone streets, and churches everywhere. There are said to be 365 churches in the city, one for every day of the year. Many of the churches are quite ornate in design, and quite old, but there also are many newer ones. The cobblestone streets are lined with restaurants and shops, most of the latter selling crafts and art. Some of the streets are quite steep, and I can’t see many cars being able to withstand the cobblestone climb. Which may explain why we saw very few cars in this part of the city.

On the way back to the ship, I decided to try the popular local drink—coconut water. For the equivalent of about 40 cents, a vendor will sell you a green coconut, lop off the top with a machete, and give you a straw. Not a drink I would seek out, but not vile either. It was thirst-quenching, which was what I needed on that hot and humid day walking around the city.

Belem

Our last stop in Brazil was Belem, the gateway to the Amazon. The Amazon is the world’s largest body of freshwater and, measured by water volume, the largest river in the world by far (measured by length, the Nile is slightly larger). Because of the way the tides behave, we had to drop anchor a good distance out of Belem, in an estuary of the Amazon, which meant that we had to take a 45-minute bus ride to get to Belem and board our river boat for our mini Amazon adventure.

It was worth the ride. We got a glimpse of Amazonian life as we sailed up the river and through some of its channels. Houses on stilts line the river, and small boats and canoes are to this area what cars and bicycles are to other locations—the main form of transportation. We visited an island where the people make their living by gathering the fruits, barks and other materials on their land, take them in the morning to Belem to sell, then return in late morning to a relaxing rest of the day. We met a 70-year-old man who climbs thin, tall trees to gather fruit. We also encountered lots of children, many of whom followed us around. Unlike other places we’ve visited, they were not begging but were just curious about the strangers in their midst. School had just ended for summer vacation (remember, the seasons are opposite in the Southern Hemisphere from the Northern Hemisphere), so the children were on their school break. They were very sweet.

We bought some brazil nuts fresh from the tree. What I had never known is that the nuts that we know as brazil nuts actually are a much larger nut that, when broken open, contains as many as 18 of the nuts we see in stores. The fresh nuts have almost a coconut taste to them. We also tried jackfruit which, while slippery, is quite tasty. We also saw cocoa growing in its natural environment, and learned of the many different varieties that exist just on that little island.

We are now back on the ship, and just crossed the equator and so are back in the Northern Hemisphere. One week from today, I’ll be off the ship and headed home. Our remaining stops are on some Caribbean islands. While I’ve only been to one of them (Puerto Rico) in the past, I somehow feel as though the exploration portion of the trip is over. Now is just some fun in the sun.

Sailing Down to Rio

“There is no point to samba if it doesn’t make you smile.” -Latin American journalist (and author of the book Samba) Alma Guillermoprieto

Having arrived in Rio from Africa, much seemed familiar in the spirit of the people and in their crafts. This turns out to be no coincidence. At the height of Portugal’s colonization of the area, many slaves were brought here from western Africa, to the point that the proportion of slaves to Portuguese was 4 to 1 (and they all outnumbered the indigenous people by a significant margin). Some slaves eventually became free, and intermarriage between the three populations over the years became quite common, so that the culture became homogenous with a strong African influence.

And all this comes down to the samba—the drum-driven music, the feathers and beads, the “joyful noise” are all of African origin. Derived from a word meaning “to pray” or “to be joyful,” samba has its roots in the African embrace of the Christian mandate to make a joyful noise unto the Lord. Much of what we saw and experienced in Brazil, a country of deeply prevalent religion, was about the samba.

Our first visit in Rio was to Samba City, the place where the floats for Carnival and other parades are made. Few other visitors were there, so we and the workers largely had the place to ourselves.  Much work was being done on both the upcoming Carnival and the Christmas parade, and it was fascinating to watch these craftspeople at work, and to see some of their results. Feathers, beads, and all manner of decoration rule the day. A young man took some time out to show us how the characters on the Santa float were being constructed, starting with Styrofoam, then covered by paper mache, then painted. It was a fun and colorful morning.

The evening picked up the samba theme, as we attended a samba show at the club Plataforma. The audience was mostly tourists—from all over the world—but the performance was genuine samba. The costumes were colorful, the dance steps energetic and sometimes intricate, and the evening highly entertaining. The caipirinha (the national drink of Brazil) flowed heavily, making the evening a woozy one. It is said of the caipirinha that after one you feel good, after two you can dance the samba, and after three you can speak Portuguese.

In between the samba experiences, we were faced with making the most of our time in Rio on a rainy day. But we looked up from Samba City and realized that the cloud cover had cleared, so proceeded to the Corcovado, the mountain over the city on which the giant Christo Redentor statue perches. It is something of a trademark for Rio, and no trip to that city is complete without a visit to its base to take in the views of the city and its harbors. Intended to mark the 100th anniversary of Brazil’s independence in 1922, the Christo Redentor didn’t open until 1931 due to a funding shortfall during its erection. It is 98 ft high (on a 26-ft pedestal) and 98 ft between fingertips, and dominates the view above the city. When you see pictures of Rio, inevitably a photo of this statue turns up.

To get to the statue, a tram travels up the mountain through the Parque Nacional da Tijuca. At more than 8,000 acres, this is the largest urban forest in the world and one of the last remnants of rainforest on Brazil’s southern coast. The 20-minute ride up is a study in botany, with different areas labeled with the different plants on view. Every so often, you get a quick glimpse of the view below, but those glimpses are only teasers. About 15 minutes into the trip, suddenly the trees open up and a breathtaking view of the city below presents itself.

It had started raining again during our trip up, and we worried that the views would be obscured by clouds. Ha! Not to worry—the rain had stopped when we reached top, and the winds were so high that the clouds were blowing away at a rapid rate. Unfortunately, the winds were so high that it was nearly impossible to stand and look at the fantastic views for fear of being blown off the mountain. I have never been outside in winds like that before, so it was a new experience for me. The winds were high enough that they had closed the elevators and escalators that lead from the tram station to the base of the statue, so we’d had to walk up. We were told that, while it usually is windy up there, the winds that day were higher than any in recent memory. But we did get to see our views, and have a wind-swept experience on top of it. It was good that we went up when we did, as a fallen tree closed the tram later that day.

After that, we trolled the famous Ipanema and Copacabana beaches for a bit. For Brazilians, the beach is the center of life and activity. However, this was a rainy week day, so there were not many people on the beach that day. But the beaches themselves stretch for miles, with volleyball and soccer areas set up on the beach and plenty of vendors to provide whatever one might need or want. Sand sculptures were the order of the day, some extremely large and elaborate—and managing to hold up notwithstanding the rain. Christmas themes showed up in several of them, reminding us that it indeed is the Christmas season—hard to remember when it’s 90 degrees out, but Christmas falls in the summer in Brazil.

The next day was clear and sunny, with moderate temperature. In other words, perfect weather. So this was to be the day for the “other” view of the city—the trip up Sugarloaf Mountain. Rio is built in and among many mountains, but the Christo Redentor makes the Corcovado stand out, and Sugarloaf stands out because it sits at the mouth of the harbor. Access is by cable car—you board at the bottom and it takes you halfway up for some spectacular views, then you board another and it takes you to the very top. Life on Sugarloaf looks much like beach life, with opportunities for relaxation, family activities and picnicking. Once again the views were spectacular, though this time without the threat of being blown across the city.

From there, we returned to see the beach life on a sunny day. Though again a weekday, this time the beach was alive with activity—people walking, sunning, playing volleyball and soccer (in bare feet!), eating, drinking, and just generally living at the beach. Skimpy swim suits were the order of the day for both male and female, and no matter what the body shape of the wearer. It was great to see such a lack of self-consciousness.

We then paid a visit to the tiny but entertaining Carmen Miranda Museum, getting a short and informative review of her life and career. Apparently not that many people visit the museum, so we were treated like honored guests. From there, we went to a monastery with a chapel of elaborate wood and gold leaf, with both modern and old frescoes decorating the altar area. It reminded me of a similar chapel we saw in Oporto, Portugal—probably not a coincidence.

This was to end our visit, as our ship was sailing in the early evening. The sailaway was probably the most beautiful we’ve seen, as we headed out the harbor past Sugarloaf Mountain and the Ipanema and Copacabana beaches and out to sea for our trip up the Brazilian coast.

Our next visits are to Salvador da Bahia, Fortaleza and Belem. Each visit will be sandwiched between sea days, so it will take us another six days to cover the coast before we head out into the Caribbean for the final week of our cruise.

Life at Sea

“I lead the dancing to the dithyramb,
the hymn to Dionysus, lord divine.
I’m good at it, I’m even quite the ham—
Provided that my brains are braised in wine”
-Archilochus


Before I left on this trip, the most frequent question I would get was “how can you stand to be on a cruise ship for 72 days?” As I am now in the final two weeks of the voyage, I can answer that question—very easily.

Accomodations

The cabin that I am sharing with Beth is reasonably-sized: 359 square feet overall, including the balcony. It has a bedroom, sitting room that can separated from the bedroom by heavy curtain, good-sized bath, walk-in closet and balcony. In addition to this private space, we spread out to the public spaces: two restaurants, three bars, a library, a few little alcoves here and there, the gym, the pool deck (including a grill and bar I don’t count in the restaurant and bar count), the upper deck, and the promenade deck. In other words, there’s plenty of room to run.

Our ship is small for a cruise ship in this era. Its maximum passenger capacity is 490, and we’ve been running with anywhere from 350-420 since I got on. Approximately 80 of us are doing the full voyage—either the 71 nights like Beth and me, or 82 nights for those who boarded Sept. 27 and did the segment before ours. These lengthy cruises are divided into segments, with lengths running from 9 days to 21 days. Our full cruise covers a total of 5 segments, and those who boarded on 9/27 are on for a total of 6 segments. Collectively, the people who boarded on 9/27 or, like us, on 10/8 are considered the “full cruisers.” I have now become aware that some animals are more equal than others on a cruise ship—full cruisers being among the more equal. There’s just a bit more pampering and bit more attention meted out to the people on for the longer period. I suppose that’s a bit natural—when you’re on that long, the crew gets to know you better (for better or worse) and has a better feel for your preferences.

Shipboard Culture and People

Life aboard the ship is much like living in a small town. Everyone knows everyone else, and when people move away (i.e., leave at the end of a segment) it is cause for a sense of loss. But, when new people move in (i.e., board at the start of a segment), there is great curiosity about the new neighbors. And, in between, all the things that go on in a closed community: camaraderie, friendship, gossip, fun and the occasional hurt feeling.

The community consists of the passengers, the crew, and the staff. The level of interaction between passengers and personnel is pretty high. When you’re on for a long time, or even just for a week, you get to know the steward or stewardess who takes care of your room, and become well-acquainted with the wait staff. The Regent Seven Seas cruise line, which is the one I am on, has open seating at meals, so you do not get the same wait staff every time. Plus, they rotate the staff between restaurants and areas. But one does become friendlier with some than others, and it is a pleasure to get to know these hard-working people who somehow manage to remain pleasant through grueling hours and sometimes difficult people.

On this ship, the officers are quite visible, frequently mixing with the passengers. We have seen the captain helping people off the tenders, hauling luggage and provisions, and even bussing tables. Passengers will receive invitations to dine with a specific officer or two on many evenings, which demands that the officers be “personalities” in addition to being competent in their respective areas. I’ve developed a great deal of respect for these folks, who really do put up with a great deal. There’s also an interesting dynamic among some of the passengers who tend to “collect” officers—they enjoy spending time with the officers and go out of their way to engage in extra activities with them.

Another group that mixes a lot with the passengers is the entertainers. The ship has a resident troupe of singers and dancers, who double as social hosts and hostesses. These are all personable young people (one came of drinking age during the Africa segment of the cruise) who put on a couple of song and dance shows per week, and often also sing in the lounges in early evening or late night. It is really very clever of the cruise line to have them mix with the guests so much—the show is that much more enjoyable when you feel like you are watching your friends perform.

There also are headliners aboard—singers, comedians and musicians who put on solo performances. Many, but not all, of them also mix with the passengers. Our cabin is on the hall where most of them reside during the cruise, so we have gotten to know a few of them fairly well.

They are not quite entertainers and not quite staff, but there also are lecturers aboard who give talks during days at sea. Sometimes the talks are relevant to the cruise— particularly good ones have been the lecturer on the history of South Africa and a cultural anthropologist with expertise in South America—and sometimes they are random topics like “how to stay young” or the history of spying. The lecturers also live among the passengers, and will often join us for meals or excursions.

There are other staff as well—the tour desk folks, the reception and guest relations staff, the cruise consultant, the photographers—who mix with the passengers, and who are also friendly and energetic. In addition, there are the personnel we don’t see: the deck and bridge crew and the cooks being prime among them.

Cruise Ship as Mode of Travel

The number one advantage of cruising is how it simplifies travel. You unpack once, then your hotel moves from place to place. You go to bed at night and wake up in another town, get off and explore it, come back “home” for dinner and bed, then wake up in yet another town and do the same. Sometimes you stay overnight in the town, but you still return to the ship to sleep, so it’s still your hotel. And you have the choice of eating in town or eating on the ship. But you never have to bother about the logistics of travel—you are on the vessel that takes you to the next place.

Meals and Pampering

The fact that the ship is all-inclusive also simplifies matters. One never has to worry about the check for a meal or drinks. Wine pours freely at dinner, and the food usually ranges from good to excellent. There are usually about five choices for the main dish at dinner, plus a group of items that are always on the menu. You can eat in one of the two restaurants, order room service, or, at lunch, eat at the pool grill, which often has featured themes. In other words, there is no lack of food or drink. The biggest challenge we face is maintaining weight control and sobriety.

And, of course, this is one long vacation. Every day, my bed is made, my room is cleaned and I have fresh towels. If I sit down in pretty much any public space, some nice young man or woman magically appears offering me a drink. Or, food or drink is brought to my room if I so choose. It was not hard to get used to living this way.

Life is a little reverse from what happens at home. At home, at least during the week, I dress up and put on makeup in the morning, then in the evening take off the makeup and put on my casual clothes for dinner. Here, I wear my casual clothes and no makeup all day, then in the evening dress up and put on my makeup to go to dinner. This dressing for dinner thing is so civilized. There are formal nights (and no one has been rude enough to notice how often I wear the same two outfits), informal nights (dressy but not quite formal), and “country club casual” (slacks or skirt and a nice top). There is something very grounding about the need to dress each evening.

How Our Days and Nights Are Spent

So how do we spend our time on a cruise ship? Well, when we are in a port, usually the time is spent exploring that area. But there are days at sea, sometimes several in a row. How are they spent? Well, it’s up to you: a book and a deck chair are always a fine combination. Or, you can engage in activities: lectures, wine tastings, cooking demonstrations, dance lessons, deck “sports” like shuffleboard, baggo or bocce, gambling (no, I haven’t), trivia contests, organized bridge games or other pickup card games (I’ve fallen in with a group that plays a game called Pooch in the afternoons), crafts, and of course eating and drinking.

Evenings usually consist of gathering in one of the bars for before-dinner drinks (and usually there’s a pianist, a small band and/or vocalist playing), then off to dinner. You can dine alone, ask to be put with others at a larger table (“people pot luck”), or sit with friends or otherwise form a group beforehand and ask for a table together. Early in the cruise, we took people pot luck, but in the later weeks we’ve usually made dates with friends to be sure to have some time with them. On formal nights, one tends to have invitations to eat with an officer, and so you get a kind of people pot luck there, depending on who else is at the table.

Dinners tend to be long and leisurely, with different people having different numbers of courses, and much wine being poured throughout. After dinner, there is usually a show in the lounge—often a singer backed up by the ship’s orchestra or a revue put on by the resident troupe. There also is dancing in Galileo’s, the upstairs lounge, which extends well after the show. One of the other full cruisers is a 91-year-old gentleman who dances until midnight every night—usually with the youngest women in the room. Also, another bar, the Stars Lounge, puts on a disco or karaoke after the show. And, the smaller Navigator Lounge is a post-dinner gathering place for conversation.

Other “special” activities turn up from time to time. Just concluded was a “Dancing with the Navigator Stars,” whereby passengers teamed up with dance professionals from the ship (the dance instructors, the performers, and the “gentleman hosts”—men who, in exchange for free cruises, spend their evenings dancing with the ladies; see the movie “Out to Sea”) for a dance contest. It was great fun, and showed up some real talent or just good spirit (the 91-year-old gentleman mentioned above came in third). Every so often, the crew will put on a show—there’s a lot of talent there too. Though, a Filipino waiter named Elvis just got off the ship for a well-deserved vacation. You can probably guess what his act is.

There also are periodic parties on the deck to celebrate something or another—sailing from a nice port, good weather, crossing the equator, or just someone felt like putting one on. The equator crossing party was something wild—I will not reveal too much of it lest I spoil the surprise for others’ first crossing. Let’s just say that the photo above is from the aftermath of that party and, yes, that is the ship’s doctor with a watermelon on his head.

Overall

This truly has been the experience of a lifetime. I’ve seen places I’ve always dreamed of, places I otherwise would not have seen, and places I must go back to to spend more time. There have been adventures, quiet times, riotous times, and, most precious of all, good friends. Even as we are starting wind down, I continue to be amazed at my great good fortune to have had this opportunity, and remain grateful to the colleagues who made it possible for me. I will be seeing you soon.

Next entry: Rio de Janeiro

On British Soil: St. Helena

“Glory is fleeting but obscurity is forever.”
-Napoleon Bonaparte

On any lengthy cruise, there is bound to be a port or two that is a “throwaway”, one that is stopped at only because it happens to be along the way. I’d assumed that St. Helena would be just that, as it is pretty much the only thing on our route to Rio from Namibia. Without it, our crossing of the Atlantic would be 7 days, a bit too many days at sea. Was I ever wrong! St. Helena was one of those delightful surprises.

What I knew about St. Helena before getting there was that it was the place of Napoleon’s last exile and where Napoleon died. And, indeed, visits to the house where Napoleon lived and his tomb (although he was removed from the tomb years ago) were focus points of our tour of the island. But the highlight of the tour was the astounding beauty of the island.

Just the act of touring the island was an adventure in itself. There are no airports on this island, so the only way to reach it is by ship. As Helena is 2-3 days by sea from the nearest continent, very few ships visit it. Ours was the first cruise ship this year, and the next will not stop there until January. Other than that, it sees a mail ship stop once a month. There may be an airport eventually—one of the passengers on our ship was aboard in order to meet with St. Helena’s governor about building the airport.

Because of the limited number of visitors, and the limited number of residents (3600), there is only a limited tourism infrastructure, but that was a large part of the charm. We wound up touring the island by way of the “ancient bus,” a 1929 Rolls Royce (or at least pieces of it) tricked out as an open-air truck held together by wires and duct tape that carries up to 14 passengers. What great fun to travel around this lush island by way of this vehicle!

Everywhere we went, people waved, and one woman came running out of her house to take a photo. Presumably she’d seen our peculiar vehicle before, so I’m thinking she wanted a picture of the strangers in its back. When the vehicle is not operating as a bus, it is a taxi. Our driver, and the owner of this unique vehicle, is Colin Corker. Together with his wife Tracey, they are quite the entreprenaurs.

St. Helena’s landscape is fascinating. As you approach it by sea, you see rocky cliffs and a valley where the town of Jamestown is built. Once on the island, you travel some narrow and winding roads up the mountains to a green lushness that would rival anything seen in places like Tahiti or Hawaii. The beauty is breathtaking, and the views of valley and mountain at every turn are spectacular. The homes are lovely—most of them in town, or in a new development above town at the top of Jacobs Ladder, a 700–step set of stairs originally used to move manure up the mountain, but a few homes dispersed throughout the mountain area or in very small villages here and there.

My only complaint about St. Helena is that we had only 4 hours there. I’d have loved to have more time to explore this lovely terrain and town.

We are now on our trans-Atlantic sailing. My next entry will discuss life aboard a cruise ship on a lengthy cruise.

The Land God Made in Anger: Namibia

“Oh that the desert were my dwelling place.”
-Lord Byron, from Childe Harold

Our visit to Walvis Bay, Namibia, was all about the sand. Red sand, white sand, black sand, all together on sand dunes large and small. First we went through the Valley of the Moon, a desert of bleak, black iron deposits and, of course, sand. The closest thing I’ve ever seen to it is the Badlands in South Dakota. It is beautiful in its starkness, with fascinating rock formations and life forms that we could see limited to lichen, klipspringers (an antlelope-like animal), and a 200-year old plant that I cannot begin to describe.

We then visited the sand dunes, which vary in color and complexion as the light shifts through the day. Most are red in color, but with some parts white and some black. The sands shift constantly with the winds, and it is all the roads maintenance people can do to keep the sand from obliterating the roads (the main one of which is well-paved and maintained).

The town of Walvis Bay is pretty, with colorful ranch-type cottages and a beautiful lagoon at its center. During the morning, the lagoon is typically filled with white flamingoes. However, we got there later in the day and the flamingoes were gone. Those who know me can imagine my disappointment at this turn of events.

What little I saw of Namibia seems a lovely country. I saw little of the visible poverty seen in places like Kenya and Tanzania, nor the press of people seen in so many locales. No surprise with respect to the latter—Namibia is the second most sparsely populated country in the world.

In the evening, the ship put on a “dune dinner under the stars”. It was a wonderful evening. A percussion band greeted us as we arrived, and then a chorus from a local school put on a terrific concert. The dinner was barbecued meats, seafood, and vegetables, and was delicious. The only part missing was “under the stars.” It rarely rains in the desert. But it did that night. It was not a hard rain—more a light drizzle—but it was entrancing to be in the desert for such an unusual event. And, it made the conditions ripe for a truly spectacular sunset.

It was with great reluctance we returned to the ship that evening, and sailed away the next day from this place where the desert meets the ocean.

Our departure from Namibia marked the end of our sojourn in this hemisphere, and we set sail across the Atlantic bound for Brazil. Our mid-ocean stop, after two days of sailing, would be the island of St. Helena, which is my next blog entry.

The Rainbow City: Cape Town

“There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”—Nelson Mandela

I’d long heard about Cape Town from friends, books and news reports—heard of its beauty, of its role in the worst and best of South Africa’s history, and of its culture and vitality. It indeed was all it is reputed to be.

One thing that was different than I expected, however, was the waterfront where the ship was docked. I knew that there was a complex there, but I expected some hokey Rouse-type development. The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront (named for Queen Victoria and her son Alfred, who visited in 1860) is more than that—it’s a city within a city. It takes the best of waterfront development, shopping mall and downtown street, and puts it all in the beautiful seaport area. With the fabled Table Mountain and Signal Hill rising above it, the setting of the waterfront is just about picture-perfect. A person could spend several days there and not exhaust its offerings—a fine aquarium, smaller museums and craft houses, shops, restaurants, sidewalk arts, and the jumping off point to get to Robben Island (more about that later). A place where visitors and locals mingle, nightlife and street life prevail.

We were not on the ship when it sailed into this lovely waterfront. Instead, we flew into Cape Town from our safari, and so had our first view of the city as we rode in from the airport. That drive was a study in contrasts. There is new construction around the city, including a massive new stadium in anticipation of the 2010 World Cup, but many older sites still in place. What stood out was the large township we passed—one that was formed during the apartheid years but still exists today. However, transition was visible. There were parts that were the shantytown of the photos we’ve all seen, but parts that were being renovated and improved into very nice homes. I suppose it’s a form of evidence of the change that the country is experiencing.

We would later see other shantytowns that were suffering the opposite change—a deterioration of condition. These, we learned, are the newer townships being formed by immigrants and refugees, mostly from Zimbabwe and Somalia. Some from both countries are in the same townships, and are not getting on well together. Other shantytowns have been abandoned, as the violence against immigrants from several months back has driven the refugees away. With 25% unemployment in South Africa, it’s a tense situation, as turning against the immigrant when times are tough must be something of a universal.

We arrived at the ship in the evening, and went out to the waterfront for dinner, at a Cape Malay-style restaurant, then wandered around the complex a bit. The next morning, we met a guide that we’d engaged through Hylton Ross, one of the big tour-guide companies, and four of us set out in a car with Kim, our guide, first up to Table Mountain, then through the towns and seaside areas on the way to the Cape of Good Hope. We were very fortunate in the weather that day, as Table Mountain was clear and the winds were low, so that the cable car was in operation, and our view from the mountain over Cape Town and the bays, ocean and cape, was clear and lovely.

I had particularly looked forward to the Cape of Good Hope, as it had captured my imagination ever since I’d read about it (and its challenge to explorers) as a child. We’d missed sailing around it, since we were on safari when the ship made that part of the journey (and probably a good thing—I’m told the seas were rough). So the drive was a kind of consolation prize. It was a picturesque drive through wineries, beaches and a number of pretty towns. One highlight was a stop at Boulders Beach, where we watched a colony of African penguins. It was molting season, and so the penguins were in a variety of conditions depending on where they were in the process.

The cape point itself was a bit eerie and windswept—exactly as I’d always imagined it. Along the way, we encountered ostriches and baboons along the road. In fact there were large baboons at the place where we stopped for lunch, as well as men whose job it was to keep chasing the baboons away—apparently, baboons can get pretty nasty with their propensity to steal food and other objects and fling pooh (and I’m not talking Winnie here).

We also went through the former District 6—an area of a once-thriving ethnic community, until the powers of apartheid deemed that they should all be moved to a township and removed from this prime real estate. Ironically, despite the massive displacement, the area that was plowed down was never re-developed, and to this day lies rather empty. There is an effort underway to get some former District 6 residents to return, but so far few have done so.

That evening, the ship had arranged a dinner for the people on the full voyage at Buitenverwachting, a well-known fine restaurant on the Constantia wine estate. Groot Constantia is the oldest vineyard on the Cape. When Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena, he selected their wines as substitutes for his favored French wines. The building where the restaurant is housed is an example of Cape Dutch architecture. The meal was excellent, the wine even better, and the company terrific. A nice evening all around.

The next morning we had arranged tickets to tour Robben Island, Cape Town’s answer to Alcatraz (actually, comparisons to San Francisco are apt in many respects—the two cities have similar feels). However, Robben Island reflects the greatest shame of South Africa’s history—it is where male, non-white political prisoners were held during much of the apartheid era. It is where Nelson Mandela spent the bulk of his 27 years of imprisonment.

The tour is well-organized and very moving and informative. You take a ferry from the pier where the prisoners used to be sent, and arrive on the island for a general overview tour. The island is much larger than expected, and had functioned variously in its history as simply a town, then an insane asylum and leper colony. It eventually came to be used as a prison, but also boasts a settlement of people who, during the prison era, worked in the prison and now work in the museum. There is even a school on the island, though it only goes up to the equivalent of the 7th grade. The children go the mainland for secondary school.

The guides in the prison itself are all former prisoners. Our guide, Wiseman, was himself imprisoned there for 10 years for anti-apartheid activities. It is a reminder of how recent this history is that Wiseman is a fairly young man. I doubt if he is older than 45. In fact, many of the children who attend school on the island are children of these former prisoners. Some of the former warders also work in the museum, in a variety of functions. It is a tribute to the reconciliation of recent years that former prisoners and warders can work side by side, but having read Nelson Mandela’s “Long Walk to Freedom” I can understand how that simpatico could have developed.

Wiseman gave us a clear view of the hardships of imprisonment, and the degree to which prisoners of different racial backgrounds were treated differently. Black prisoners received less food (both in quality and quantity) than other races, and were in many respects treated more harshly. Wiseman was in a “group” cell, where some 50 prisoners slept, at first on thin floor mats but eventually on bunks. We saw the cell where Mandela was kept—he was one of the isolated prisoners because he was deemed “dangerous.” That seems ironic today, given the role of reconciler he played upon his release, but then the U.S. only just recently took him off the list of “known terrorists.” Mandela certainly engaged in guerilla warfare in his time, in the long fight for freedom, but the line between those acts of sabotage and the wanton attacks on anonymous civilians that we see today is not a thin one.

After that sobering and educational morning, we spent the afternoon strolling the waterfront and doing a little shopping. We sailed away in late afternoon, with a surprising number of people on the pier waving goodbye. In fact, I was surprised at the number of passersby who took pictures of the ship while she was in port. I gather that, while cruise ships do call at Cape Town, it isn’t often that one is small enough to dock right at the V&A Waterfront. I’m so glad we did.

After a beautiful sail-away, we were bound for two days in Walvis Bay, Namibia, my next entry.

A Sad Interjection

“…As long as communities feel marginalised and victimised, terror will breed in ghettoes around the world. Inclusion and integration is the only way forward. Just to clarify, I am not saying we can hug terrorists and make them change. But we can change the hearts and minds of ordinary people and take away the breeding grounds. / The enormity of the task is daunting, but I really believe there is no other choice. It is no use waiting for a 21st century Gandhi to do it! You and I must do it, if we are to change the world...”
-Deepa Krishnan, owner of Mumbai Magic (the guide company we used in Mumbai), in her blog at http://www.mumbai-magic.blogspot.com/

As the horrors of the attacks in Mumbai have unfolded over the past few days, I’ve remained silent in my blog only because I have no words to express the sorrow over what this wonderful city and its fine people are enduring, and over the fates of the victims of the attacks. But I cannot just continue to post about our adventures (which, yes, I will update shortly) without paying homage to the courage and spiritual beauty of the people of Mumbai.

Somehow, when you have visited a place—and particularly when the visit has been very recent—tragedies like this seem all the more vivid. You think of the people you met, and pray for their well-being, and of the people you saw or did not meet, but know how deeply their lives are affected. I may understand a bit, having lived in one of the target cities (Washington, DC) on Sept. 11, 2001. The emotions of that day are still raw, and I’d imagine that the people of Mumbai may be feeling much the same.

The stories of heroism are starting to come out—of hotel personnel risking their own lives to secure the safety of others, of police officers once again putting themselves in the line of fire, of people on the streets taking steps to secure the safety of others—and they are no surprise in light of the sense of the spirit of the people I felt in my short visit there.

To the people of Mumbai, my heart is with you in this troubled time. May you emerge even stronger and wiser from your ordeal.

Safari in South Africa

“Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running.”

-African proverb

I used to wonder why people would go on game-watching safaris. After all, most people have seen those animals before in zoos. Well, now I understand. There is nothing to compare with tracking them and observing them in their own environment.

One thing I find extraordinary about game-watching safaris is their safety. You’d think that that hungry lion would as soon eat a human as a gazelle, but the fact is they leave the humans alone—at least in game preserves and at least as long as the humans don’t do anything stupid. In a game preserve (which was where we did our safari—the Madikwe Game Preserve), no hunting is allowed, so the animals are not conditioned to perceive humans as a threat.

Here’s how the safari works, at least where I was: People stay on the game preserve in lodges, and each lodge takes its guests out twice a day—in the early morning and later afternoon—for a game drive in an open-air truck which seats anywhere from 4 to 10 people. The seats are tiered so that all get a good view. Each truck is accompanied by a Ranger, who drives the truck, spots the wildlife, explains it all to everyone, and is responsible for everyone’s safety. There is also a tracker, who at least in the trucks run by our lodge, Madikwe Hills, sits in a jump seat at the front of the truck’s hood. We were very fortunate that we never had more than 6 passengers in our truck (so no one was stuck in the dreaded middle seats), and that we had a terrific Ranger (Frans) and Tracker (Max).

Every morning, we were awakened at 4:30 am (yes, that’s right, I willingly got up at 4:30) in order to be ready to start the drive at 5:00. This has two reasons: one, that’s when it is easiest to find some animals and, two, you get to see some spectacular African sunrises over the bush.

I will spare you the laundry list of animals we saw, and just give the high points. Suffice it to say, we saw all the “Big 5” (elephants, giraffes, rhinos, cape buffalo, and leopards) except the leopards (though our tracker and ranger certainly tried to find them for us), as well as a number of other animals, many of which I’d never heard of or seen before. It was entrancing.

One of the most fascinating experiences was on our first morning drive, when we came upon a pride of lions. There was a male lion asleep in the bush, and a female and two cubs walking around nearby—they’d been on one side of the road and crossed right in front of us. While the cubs played, the male roused himself and went about his business (have you ever seen a lion urinate? You don’t want to be near that stream). Pretty soon, we could hear another lion roaring in the distance, then this lion roaring back. This went on for several minutes, with the female and cubs occasionally adding in some noises. I have never heard anything like it. Frans explained that this was a friendly exchange—the lion in the distance is the brother of the lion we were watching, and when the two of them get together, they do something akin to hugging each other.

Once we moved along, we saw what the lions had been doing on the other side of the road—there were the remains of a wildebeest lying there (I’d never have recognized it as such, but Frans assured us that was what it was). We knew that those remains would not go to waste, because before we came upon the lions, we’d seen a jackal doing his thing—gnawing on the bones of an animal’s remains from some other predator’s breakfast. That’s what jackals do—pick the bones of others’ leavings.

After the lions, we came upon a herd of wildebeest, quietly going about their grazing. Frans referred to them as “the spare parts animal”—they have the head of a goat, the horns of a buffalo, and the body of a zebra. Unfortunately, the wildebeest set off in the direction of the lions, though we did not stick around to see the inevitable results of that particular meeting, particularly as we’d just seen one such result.

We also came upon a herd of elephants, which included a baby elephant running around and poking at the others in an apparent attempt to get them to play. It was adorable, but our ranger was very wary—apparently elephants are the animals most likely to attack humans, when they feel that their young are threatened. So he was always on high alert when baby elephants are in a herd.

We were to see quite a few elephants in our time there. In addition to the herd discussed above, we encountered groups and individuals in the road, on the side of the road, up hills, in bush, and pretty much everywhere. And yet, some people at our lodge never saw more than a single elephant, but did see a number of animals we did not.

The best elephant sighting was at a watering hole, where we encountered a herd of at least 20 that we could see. They were eating, playing in the water, etc., and making quite a noise of it. They were on three sides of us, and were something to observe. In particular, a fight between two males to establish dominance was fascinating—it wasn’t a blood fight, but instead a kind of play fighting, but with a very definite goal—which bull was the alpha elephant.

We’d encountered this herd after what was probably the best “treat” of all—the wild dogs. We know people who have been to this park several times and never seen them, yet we got to watch a pack of 23 for quite a while. This is a disappearing species—there are fewer than 3,000 of them left in the world. The dogs travel in a pack, with an alpha male and female, and can take down and eat another animal in a matter of minutes. The pack included 7 pups just two weeks out of the den, who were having a grand old time playing with a piece of cardboard while the adults sauntered by either ignoring us or giving us no more than sidelong glances. They then laid in the road, waiting for the youngsters to catch up.

One of the rules of the park is that no more than two trucks can be at a given sighting at a time. We were not really aware of this rule until this point, since it was rare to see the trucks bunching up, and there would be different trucks scoping out different animals at any given time. But the dogs attracted all the lodges, so the trucks were lined up at intervals along the route the dogs were following, with no more than two in any one place. These dogs move quickly, and could be miles away within an hour, so everyone was out looking while they could.

While the dogs were cute, there was no doubt of their deadliness. Not long after this encounter, they took down a wildebeest in a matter of minutes, devouring the animal alive. Believe me, no one was sticking an arm or leg out of the truck in their presence.

But really, the only time I felt at all threatened was when we encountered some cape buffalo. The herd was spread across both sides of the road, and many of them were watching us carefully with what seemed an evil eye. Eventually, all but one lost interest in us, but that one kept a careful eye out. We later learned that this particular herd used to be in an area where hunting was allowed, and recently had been moved into the preserve. So they did view humans as a threat, which is probably why we had the sense that they were a threat to us.

I will warn my friends and family now: I am so enthralled with the safari experience that I will be boring you silly with it for some time to come. And, if you are thinking about a safari, I highly recommend Madikwe Hills Lodge—the personnel are great, the food was really almost too good, and the overall experience was beyond all expectations.

There is so much I’m leaving out here—the astonishing beauty of the bush, the way the foliage totally transformed after rain, the eerie beauty of a thunderstorm coming in over the veld, the spectacular sunrises and sunsets, and the starry, starry nights. To all my friends who have lived in or come from Africa, I now understand the wistfulness in your voices when you speak of this wonderful continent. I know I will be back—how can I stay away, now that I’ve seen it?

Spice Island: Zanzibar

"Meet Cathy who's lived most everywhere, from Zanzibar to Berkeley Square”
-from the theme from the Patty Duke Show, an American television program from the 1960s

“Bismillah, will you let him go.”- from Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. It is used as a rebel chant for Zanzibar’s movement for independence from Tanzania.

To me, the name Zanzibar has always evoked the exotic and mysterious. The reality is perhaps a little less of both, but nonetheless intriguing. Part of Tanzania, it is separated from the mainland by a channel only 22 miles wide. It is only six degrees south of the equator, and you know it walking around—it is hot and humid.

Zanzibar’s claims to Western fame are diverse. Sir Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke used it as their base in searching for the source of the Nile. It’s where Stanley began his search for Livingstone, and where Livingstone set out on his final journey. It was home to a markedly ugly history in the slave trade and is the place where Freddie Mercury of Queen was born. It is one of the places on earth laying claim to the name “the Spice Islands” (Zanzibar is the name of the entire archipelago, though the main island is what is usually referred to by the name.)

Over the years, spices became important to the island’s economy, but changed its ecology. Its forests were all cut down to make way for spice plantations. It was a loss not just of the protective forests, but to one of the mainstays of the island: carving. There are a number of skilled Swahili artisans on Zanzibar, best known for their intricately carved doors. There’s more than 500 such doors in Stone Town (Zanzibar’s capital), many older than the houses they are on. But today they must bring the wood over from the mainland.

An effort to revive forestation came in the form of Jozani Forest, which consists primarily of red mahogany trees brought in from elsewhere, as well as a large swamp of mangroves. We spent a morning walking through this lovely forest, and visiting the mangrove area. The Jozani Forest is home to the rare red colobus monkeys, who managed to put on quite a little show for us. Several had babies in arms, which were darling to watch. I was a bit startled when one brushed past me on his way to meet some friends.

The enthusiasm we saw in Kenya for America’s President-Elect was equaled if not exceeded in Zanzibar. “Yes, we can” is a popular phrase, and we saw a number of Obama posters and bumper stickers around the island, including on what has become known as the “Obama Tree” in downtown Stone Town.

Heat, humidity and a bit of travel fatigue limited my ambition in Zanzibar, but I’d have liked to spend more time there. It seemed an intriguing place, with more to see than I got to see. One thing I loved about it is its lack of slickness. Like a number of the ports this ship has visited, Zanzibar has not quite developed its tourist trade, so you feel more that you are in a place than that you are part of an industry. That genuineness is part of the charm. I only wish I’d had more energy to experience more of it.

It will be a while before my next entry. We have three days at sea, followed by three days of safari and two days in Cape Town after that.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Mombasa, Kenya

“Haraka haraka haina baraka.” (“Hurry hurry brings no blessing.”) -old Swahili proverb

In Mombasa, hurry hurry is not even possible—it’s too &^$#!^* hot! I will confess, at the halfway point on the cruise and in heat and humidity both in the mid to high 90s, my spirit of discovery was flagging. So, though we had two days in Mombasa, I did little more than an organized city tour. Many of our co-passengers went on safari adventures overnight or for a full day, but as we have a 3-day safari coming up in South Africa, we opted out of those adventures from Mombasa.

The city tour did provide some interesting perspective, as we learned of the many religions that prevail in the area and a little bit about the lives of the people. While the area is 60% Moslem, there are strong Christian and Hindu communities as well. We visited a Hindu temple, which seemed a little more “hell-fire” than the ones we saw in India (i.e., wall carvings showing the horrendous fates of those who eat meat or drink alcohol), and saw a couple of massive churches as well as some more modest mosques. The Hindu community comes from an earlier generation’s influx of workers from India to build the railroad. They stayed on, and formed an influential base that now controls 60% of economic activity in Kenya, according to our guide. However, I have to take that figure with a grain of salt, as he cited 60% as the statistic for a great many things.

We also visited Fort Jesus, a stronghold that provided defenses through various foreign occupations. Though it couldn’t have been too much of a stronghold—it changed hands 9 times, usually in fierce battle. Originally built by the Portuguese in 1593, it was controlled on and off by Oman, and finally fell under British control around 1920 until Kenya obtained its independence in 1963. The fort also played a role in the slave trade, and was a place where prisoners were held an executed over the years. Its location now gives a lovely view of the Mombasa harbor, but its history evokes bloodshed and shadow. It also was where the movie Beau Geste was filmed.

We also took a walk through the narrow streets of Mombasa’s old town. Alleyways off to the side offered glimpses of the sea, and the streets were filled with people going about the course of their day. Here, and in the main business districts, the streets were filled with mostly males, but it was hard to determine where they were going or what they were doing.

There was a languid feel to the streets, possibly because of the heat. But it may have been explained by what I learned later in the day. Kenya has an unemployment rate of around 50%. Workers tend to live in small quarters, often with one family to a room, and a family earns on average the equivalent of $250 per year. With these close quarters and narrow means, people may well have been out just to get some air.

It was interesting to be an American visiting Kenya at this time, because of the excitement over the election of Barack Obama. I gave an Obama button to one woman who had been explaining to me how America and Kenya are now sisters, and used another in trade with a vendor. I don't know if we'd have felt as welcomed here a few months ago as we did now, but the election did create something of a bond.

I’m afraid my own languor kept me from exploring as much as I'd have liked. I guess that’s inevitable on a trip of this length, but it continued on into the next stop at Zanzibar (the next entry). We then have three days at sea, so I’m hoping to become re-energized before we make landfall in South Africa.

The Idyll Continues: The Seychelles

"We may not have much of a role to play in major global issues, but we'll do our part on the international cocktail-party circuit." - James Mancham, first President of the Seychelles (1976)

After being deposed in a coup in 1977, Mancham said, “It is no big heroic deed to take over the Seychelles . Twenty-five people with sticks could seize control."

The Seychelles apparently have an interesting history, having come late to the attention of the Western world and even later to independence. Smart people, when the French came they would raise the French flag and when the English ships were on the horizon, up went the Union Jack. But the islands’ history can best be summarized in two words: “Who cares?” The Seychelles is not about history, or culture, or any of that. It’s about beauty, water and what lies under the water.

Probably the most closely comparable place in the world I’ve been is French Polynesia. Lying just below the equator, the Seychelles is a series of lovely islands. The main one, Mahe, is where most of the population lives, but people occupy a number of the other islands as well, most notably Praslin and La Digue. These were the three islands that the ship visited. Personally, I only really visited one of the three—La Digue. The other two were visited only long enough to board a smaller vessel to go to some smaller, barely inhabited (or not inhabited) islands.

So I blew off Mahe entirely in order to go to Cerf Island. Or, more accurately, to go to the waters just off Cerf Island. Here, we fed some fish from our flat-bottomed boat, in order to see a living demonstration of the phrase “feeding frenzy.” Then, we went into a submarine to watch the life aquatic from its windows. Then, finally, we were given our snorkel gear and off the side of the boat we went (there were about a dozen of us) to see it all up close and personal. As in the Maldives, I saw fish I’ve never seen before and could not identify, but they were lovely.

Or next snorkel trip was the following day. Officially speaking, we were anchored off of Praslin, on which island we spent just enough time to get off the ship’s tender and onto a catamaran. Then, off we went to Coco Island, which is really just some rocks, a couple of palm trees, and a beach, but which is surrounded by an astounding coral reef. Here were seen any number and variety of fish, as well as manta rays, dolphins and turtles. However, most of these were not seen by me. I, unfortunately, got caught in a current and found myself at one point way too close to the rocks, then in rapid speed well on the wrong side of the rocks. No matter what I did, I could not get out of the current and certainly could not get back to the boat.

Fortunately, the snorkel crew was on the lookout for just this problem, and came out to get me in a zodiac raft. The rescue was a tough one, because I couldn’t get into the raft from where I was, so they towed me to the beach and then I was able to board it and get taken back to the catamaran. My one comfort is that almost everyone on our boat wound up being brought back by the zodiac—the currents were so strong that all but two people were unable to get to the boat on their own. The sea is a beautiful thing, but it also is powerful, and this was an object lesson in its power.

The trip back on the catamaran was more idyllic, as our captain played guitar and sang, and the crew set out fishing poles and, sure enough, caught their dinner for the evening.

One of the big question marks of this trip was how well the Seychelles’ coral reef is holding up. Jean-Michel Cousteau is on board the ship, and had let it be known that he hadn’t been to the area in some 14 years, and so was anxious to see the condition of the reef. I gather he was pleased with it. It suffered some damage from the 2004 tsunami, but otherwise is doing fairly well.

The other island at which the ship called was La Digue, and here Beth and I actually did visit the island. It’s a small, pretty island with very little by way of motorized transportation. Most people get around by bicycle or foot, and ox carts are the main “taxi” service on the island. No one place on the island is more than an hour’s walk from any other place, so we took a walk on its main (i.e., only) road, which formed a circle past the beaches then upcountry in the areas where people live. It seemed a lovely, peaceful existence and, since we were there on a Saturday, we could see families playing and barbeques getting started for the day’s relaxations. The pace was easy and the place was beautiful.

La Digue is noted for its black granite formations, most of which look pink. Gardens and homes are built around the huge formations—cleverly using, rather than fighting, nature. The beach Anse Source d’Argent is reputed to be the most photographed beach in the world (particularly with swimsuit models). And, in the Seychelles’ claim to cinematic fame: the soft-core pornographic film Goodbye Emmanuelle 3 was made here. So was the Tom Hanks movie, Castaway.

A note about Praslin, one of the islands we just passed through: we were going to go to Vallee de Mei on this island to see its famous coco de mer nut trees, but were seduced out of it by the lure of the water. But here’s the story learned by those who went on what came to be known as “the big nut tour”: Before the Seychelles were discovered, enormous heart-shaped coconuts weighing up to 40 pounds would wash up on the beaches of India. Inside the husk was a nut looking very like a key portion of the female anatomy. It was at first thought that the nuts grew on underwater trees—thus their name, "coconut of the sea." The nut grows on the female tree. The male counterpart is the 3-foot long catkin (with yellow flowers). These were theorized to be the biblical trees of Adam & Eve (the Tree of Good & Evil), with the Vallee supposedly Eden, the idea having been inspired by the erotic shapes of the nut and catkin.

Oh, well, it's a good story.

Next: Africa.

And Now for Something Completely Different

“…I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendents of the Atlanteans….”

-Lawrence Durrell, from Reflections on a Marine Venus.

By Atlanteans he’s referring to residents of the lost city of Atlantis, but this former Atlantan (Georgia) understands the sensation. Bodies of water fill me with peace, and being surrounded by water most assuredly does. Being on an island, or on a ship, achieves this for me. And being in the Maldives most certainly achieved it.

The capital of the Maldives in the island of Male, the most densely populated place on earth: 1 square mile with over 80,000 inhabitants. The population is growing, as young people move to Male from elsewhere in the country. Those who went into Male found it suffocating, both from heat and the press of humanity. We, however, spent only as long on Male as it took to get on a ferry to the atoll of Kuda Bandos, a coral island of breathtaking beauty.

The idea here was to do some snorkeling, but the concession was closed when we arrived, so we just hit the water and swam until we shriveled. With all the close-in coral reefs, the water was of a mix of colors, each more lovely than the last bit. The white sand beach was inviting, but the water even more so. After a couple of hours, the concession opened, and so out in the water we went again, this time to look at the coral and fish. I’ve never snorkeled that close to the shore before, nor over coral reefs in such shallow water.

It was startling to see such colorful coral so close in, and to see fish unlike any I’ve seen before. Now, I’ve never been good at identifying fish, so I have no idea what I was looking at, but many were of colors and patterns of great beauty. There was the big turquoise, rose and yellow one. There was the white one with the yellow and blue around the eyes. Then there was the orange and burgundy one—yes, Danielle, it must be a Hokie fish!

After this idyllic afternoon, we set sail for our next destination, the Seychelles. I went up to the top deck for the sailaway—a favorite pursuit of mine—and for the first time on this cruise was alone on the deck. The sun was setting at that moment, and the sunset was particularly spectacular that evening: a fiery red orb that left behind it a sky of many shades of rose. This over a city in which everyone seemed to be turning on their lights at once. And, over the city, the Muslim call to prayers sounded gently. The call no sooner finished than the recorded bagpipe music that accompanies all our sailaways came on. The weather at that point was ideal—the temperature was around 79 degrees and there was little humidity and a light breeze. Standing there, watching Male get smaller and smaller, I experienced one of those rare “perfect moments” in life. Never have I felt so free or so at peace.

A Happy Interjection

“To all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright, tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity, and unyielding hope.'' Barack Obama, Nov. 4, 2008

I interrupt this travel blog to interject not politics but pride. Today my country did what I believe is the right thing and elected a different and potentially shining future. For the first time since I left on this trip, I wish I were home to share with my friends and my countrymen this historic moment. This morning (still last night at home) I watched the returns with some new friends with tears in my eyes as “Obama Elected President” came on the screen and as this intelligent, articulate and thoughtful man set out the realities of the road ahead while acknowledging the tremendous historic moment at hand.

This came during a day at sea, which is a shame because I’d have liked to hear the reactions of the people of whatever country we’d be visiting. We do have some nationals of other countries on board, and they seem pleased with the results, and much of the staff and crew (nationals of dozens of different countries), while being of necessity circumspect, seem thrilled with the results. We’ll be in Kenya in a few days’ time—now THAT will be interesting.

Kerala: Life Along the Water

Down from the gardens of Asia, descending, radiating,
Adam and Eve appear, then their myriad progeny after them,
Wandering, yearning, curious—with restless explorations,
With questionings, baffled, formless, feverish—with never-happy hearts,
With that sad, incessant refrain, Wherefore, unsatisfied Soul? and Whither, O mocking Life?

-Walt Whitman, from "Passage to India", Leaves of Grass

Cochin is a city, comprised of a collection of narrow islands and peninsulas, in the state of Kerala. Kerala is best known for its backwater system of 29 major lakes and a network of canals and rivers around which life centers. Kerala had the world’s first freely-elected communist government, elected in 1957, and the highest literacy rate in India: 95%.

We had very little time in Cochin/Kerala—less than a day—and decided that the best use of that time would be a houseboat tour of the backwaters. Thank you, Luke, for suggesting this; it was a wonderful day. There were 9 of us on the houseboat, plus the crew and guide. People rent these for multiple nights—it had three bedrooms, three baths, a kitchen, living room and dining table. We had it for the day, which we spent floating through the backwaters and watching life along the waters: villages where people gathered, children walking to school, people working in the rice paddies, fishermen fishing and diving for mussels, laundry, dishwashing and bathing being done in the waters. It was a great way to see the countryside.

The drive to and from the docks was also interesting. The approach to driving we saw in Mumbai did not change on the more open roads. It looked like chaos, with people pulling in front of people, getting into what seemed the wrong lane, and generally speeding with what looked like reckless abandon. And the horns prevailed here too. Whenever anyone approaches anyone else to pass, there goes the horn. And there’s a lot of passing on these roads. It felt crazy, but the locals seemed to think nothing of it.

It was also not unusual to see all manner of animals along the road: cows, goats, and even an elephant. Some wandered free and some were tied up like dogs (of which there were plenty as well). The area was lively and colorful.

Back on the ship afterward, off we sailed for the Maldives—my next installment.

Mumbai--A Feast for the Senses

It feels
So easy
To be
One
In a billion.
That’s just statistic
For you
And for me
Poetry.
-Dilip Chitre, End Note

With all the warnings and negative descriptions I’d heard of Mumbai, the last thing I expected was to fall in love with the city. But fall in love I did: the people, the colors, the smells, the energy, the dignity, even the crowds. Maybe not the traffic, and certainly not the poverty, but most certainly the way the poverty is borne.

After three weeks in the Middle East, it was particularly striking to see women of all ages wearing so much color. Most women in Mumbai still dress traditionally, in saris and salwar-kameez (a pant and tunic combination) of bright or deep color. And why wouldn’t they? The loose, flowing garments are ideal for the heat and humidity, and their colors and styles are strikingly beautiful.

My first sight of a sari was on our guide, who met us at the cruise ship terminal. Beth had found an outfit called Mumbai Magic on the internet, and she and I, along with our friends Shirley and Ken, decided to take a private tour with them. They were very reasonably priced (cheaper than the cruise ship excursions) for two full days with a guide and driver. Mumbai Magic uses female guides, and Sandhya (I hope I’m spelling her name right) quickly proved to be the perfect guide. She knew a great deal about Mumbai, and her love for the city came through in her whole approach. Together with our driver, Mr. Patil (who navigated the scary Mumbai traffic with great aplomb), she helped make our trip something special.

The Fishing Life

Our first visit was to the Sassoon Docks, where the fishing boats come in each day and the catch is sold. If you’ve ever been to the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, well, this is nothing like it. Rather than the auction to commercial buyers, with the close of action very early in the day, the bringing in of the catch is just the beginning of the day’s activities at Sassoon. The duties are divided by gender: the men catch and bring in the fish. Then the women take over. All over the docks were groups of women dressed in their beautiful saris, and crouched on the ground shelling shrimp (and somehow keeping those saris clean). Other women were setting up market to sell the fish. And I’m told they drive a hard bargain. Men were gathered here and there to play board games—their work for the day was apparently done. The place was bustling and energetic. Sadly, photography was not allowed, so I’ll have no pictures to share of this astonishingly wonderful place.

Sandhya then took us to a nearby “village” where the fishing families live. It was made up of a maze of narrow alleys, with small, open homes facing onto the alleys all up and down the way. Inside, one could see televisions playing and, although it was somewhat dark and some of the families there living at the margin, many infusions of color. The Diwali festival had been the day before, and in its observance a number of families had decorated the little areas in front of their homes with colorful and artistic designs.

We were greeted warmly by many of the inhabitants. We came to the end of one street where one could see a fabulous view of the sea. Here were children of a range of ages playing, and one little girl determined to get into a photograph or two. The other children teased her a bit about it, but sure enough she quickly acquired a companion in her quest to look adorable and be part of the photo.

The Streets of Mumbai

In our car again, we drove through thick traffic with many honking horns. As we were to learn in Mumbai and again in Cochin, horns are an ordinary part of the driving experience in India: you are expected to honk if you are overtaking another vehicle (trucks are marked on the back “honk ok please”), and a lot of vehicles overtake one another. How they can tell which honk is intended for whom is beyond me, but despite what looked like constant traffic chaos, we did not see a single collision.

The buildings in Mumbai were interesting. There were many buildings built back in the period of the Raj, and still occupied today, but looking pretty well-worn. The rent control rules in Mumbai are very strict, and many landlords must charge today the same rent they were charging in 1945. That doesn’t leave money for improvements, so one can see a lot of older buildings being propped up by lumber and in need of paint. It makes me worry for the people here if there is an earthquake of any significant magnitude. I cannot imagine how those buildings could withstand it.

Echoes of the Raj

Speaking of buildings, after our visit to the fishing communities, we went the other extreme to see the still-functioning remnants of the Raj (British rule, which ended in 1947). First was the Victoria Terminus, one of the few (if not the only) still-operating UNESCO heritage sites. Ornate does not begin to describe the outside of this massive structure. Inside is no less so—gold leaf, marble and fine carvings all about. And it very clearly is still used as the main railway station. We were there a bit after the morning rush hour, and the crowds were about what you’d see in Grand Central Station in New York at rush hour. The trains looked a bit scary—they were packed to the gills, with people quite literally hanging out the doors. No air conditioning, so probably not a comfortable ride, but a very efficient way to move people in and out from the suburbs where so many reside. With 20 million residents of Mumbai, that is much needed.

Though we saw a lot of people at the station and elsewhere, we probably missed the real crowds. As mentioned, the day before (a Thursday) had been the Diwali festival, celebrating Rama’s return from exile, and so many people had also taken Friday off to make a long weekend of it.

Our other taste of the Raj was a visit to the University of Mumbai, with its fine old buildings and statuary. Some statues were of British men, some of Indian with the various headdresses and garments showing the many different religions and cultures of the country. Sandhya explained the British habit of ignoring people’s actual names and instead assigning descriptive names; thus, we were amused to see the statue of Mr. Readymoney, a philanthropist who’d done much to finance university affairs.

Life in Mumbai

We then paid a visit to Mani Ghavan, the house where Gandhi stayed when he was in town (for a total of about 14 years). It is now a museum devoted to the Mahatma’s life and philosophy. Very moving and inspiring.

When we returned to the streets of Mumbai, it was nearly lunchtime, and thus time for a sight I’d heard about and was anxious to see: the Dhaba-Wallahs going about their jobs. This is a brigade of some 5,000 men who pick up lunches from the office workers’ home in the suburbs every day, bring them into the city center by train, then deliver them by bicycle. Many of them are illiterate, and yet they manage to deliver some 175,000 meals each day with almost complete accuracy, using a color and number coding system that is the envy of Harvard Business School. It’s a very affordable service that brings home-cooked meals to workers each day (and if you saw how those trains were packed coming into the city, you’d see there is no way they could carry these lunches themselves).

Later that day we visited another example of a massive, complex business operation organized by a coding system that is run with nearly 100% accuracy: the Dobi Ghats. This is a huge municipal laundry done in rows of open troughs, where more than a thousand washermen soak garments, then beat them against rocks smoothed for the purpose, hang them to dry, then iron them in what must be very hot enclosures at the center of the troughs. They do laundry for individuals and families, for hotels and for clothing manufacturers. We could tell from the clothes lines where what was being done: white sheets flapping were from the hotels; little pink children’s dresses from the clothing manufacturers, and mixes of clothing for families. While we visited the largest Dobi Ghat, there are several of them around the city. This one handles some 250,000 articles of clothing and linen every day.

We also visited Malabar Hill, the posh section of town, and toured a Jain Temple there, filled with lovely carvings and shrines, while Sandhya explained the purposes and philosophies behind what we saw. The Jains do not believe in harming any animal, down to the tiniest insect, and so you will see Jains covering their mouths to prevent insects from flying in and being harmed or gently sweeping the ground in front of them to ensure they don’t step on and kill and insect. They seek nirvana by, little by little, letting go of attachments and desires. It seems a beautiful religion, and one that our guide was able to explain with an intricacy and enthusiasm to which I cannot do justice.

From here we paid a quick visit to the Hanging Gardens, which had been built on a water tank (hence the “hanging”), a favorite local picnic spot, and got a peek at the top of the Towers of Silence—the only view available to the casual observer. These Towers are important in the Zoroastrian religion, and serve as the funerary location—they do not bury or cremate their dead, but instead put them atop the Towers for nature to take its course.

Religion, Language and History

A word about religions in India: 85% of the populace in Hindu, but India has the 3d largest number of Muslims in the world. Four religions were founded here: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Christianity was introduced 2000 years ago by the Apostle Thomas. India is the primary home to Zoroastrians, also known as the Parsis, who fled Persia in the 9th century.

Diversity also shows up in India’s languages. India has 17 major languages as well as hundreds of dialects. Hindi is spoken by the largest number. Tamil is India’s oldest living language. Most languages are derived from Sanskrit. English is spoken , and like in the Middle East, is the language of commerce.

Mumbai is an island on the Arabian Sea connected by bridges to the mainland. It’s India’s financial center and home to Bollywood. The Portuguese acquired it in 1534, then it went to the British in 1661 as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza when she married Charles II. It was leased to the East India Co. for very little. By the 18th century, it was the major city on the western coast.

Elephanta Island

So much for my aside on religion, language and history: back to the travelogue. The above was the highlights from the first day. On the second day, a Saturday, we met Sandhya bright and early, and headed straight for the pier in front of the other two famous Raj landmarks: the Gateway of India, built to commemorate the visit of King George V in 1911, and the Taj Mahal Hotel, built by the industrialist J.N. Tata when other “grand” hotels of the time refused him admission because he was a “native.” The joke was on the snobs—those other grand hotels are gone now, but the beautiful Taj dominates the waterfront.

At this pier, we boarded a ferry for the hour-long ride to Elephanta Island. The ferry itself was a great slice of Indian life, as it was filled with families and couples headed over to Elephanta for a day outing. Upon arrival at the island, we packed onto a little train to take us to the entrance. It would have been a fairly easy distance to walk, but exposed to the direct sun, so a hot walk to start the adventure. Off the train, we began the climb up the 135 steps and intervening inclines, all the way lined with vendors selling all manner of trinkets. We were, however, grateful for them, as they were all under tents that kept the walkway shaded from the intense sun. Sedan chairs also were offered, and one of our group took the climb that way. The rest of us trudged, and were rewarded at the top by a breathtaking sight: the caves of Elephanta.

Inside the caves were pillars that had been carved from the sandstone some 1300 years ago. They each have intricate carvings at their top, and the walls are filled with larger carvings, each with much activity in carvings surrounding the focal point carvings. They were all designed to teach the moral lessons of Hinduism, and while some destruction—either deliberate or through the elements—has occurred, the carvers’ intent is still very clear. Within the main cave, no matter where you stood, you could see at least one of these carvings. Also in the cave were active shrines, where Hindu adherents came to practice their faith.

The trek back down was easier than the one up, and we had more leisure to watch the antics of the monkeys that live on the island, and haggle a bit with the vendors. By this time, the festive life of the island as a local family destination was in full swing: vendors selling roasted corn on the cob and other delicacies to passersby, and locals and foreigners all mixed in together for a colorful crowd. The ferry ride back was fun, as we were right behind a large extended family, whose children charmed us. The interaction of the family could have been anywhere in the world, except that here the women were in colorful saris, and thought nothing of getting on the floor of the ferry to ease a child to sleep. One mother put her son on her lap, and proceeded to gently and rhythmically slap his forehead. But it certainly worked; he quickly went to sleep and stayed asleep through all manner of activity and noise.

A Literal Feast

Back in Mumbai, it was time for a little shopping—a stroll through the crowded markets of the Colaba district. Then, the most fabulous lunch yet: a visit to Samrat’s, a vegetarian restaurant serving a thali-style meal. With a large metal tray in front of each of us, and individual bowls within the tray, they just kept piling on all manner of vegetables, legumes, pickles and other wonderfully flavored treats, all to be scooped up with bread or mixed with rice and eaten with the hand. It was delicious, and quite the feast. Stuffed and happy, we returned to our ship to sail off to our next India stop, Cochin. And that will be my next entry.