The Atlantic Crossing

Atlantic Crossing

This has been my first sailboat crossing of any large body of water, and it has a unique character unlike any other cruise I’ve been on.  Without ports, and without any ability to leave the ship, each person finds their unique way of being entertained knowing that they have many unstructured days ahead.

What made this a little less than delightful (for Beatrice, not Bob) was that we lost the internet antenna, so that all those who needed to be connected to the ‘outside’ world were prohibited from carrying on their online lives. Whereas we had previously been complaining about the cost of the internet on the ship, after a few days with no connection I think many would have paid in gold dubloons.  Di and Russ are in the middle of selling a house, and were getting offers to which they couldn’t reply; I was trying to hook up our internet for the Florida condo so it would be waiting for us.  And without Facebook and email, we were restricted to our on-board friends.  What was eerie was the inability to have any world news since the in-room TV is connected to the same supplier, and it too didn’t work, and we felt that had there been a world catastrophe, we’d have learned about it upon our arrival in St. Maarten.

Many of our fellow passengers have done some form of crossing either on their own, on bigger cruise ships or on one of the sister Clipper ships.  Therefore they know the routine:  read e-books; draw, paint, play cards or join in the vast variety of team sports provided by the sports crew: quoits, darts, sack races, deck golf, walk-a-mile, frog races (wooden frogs), quiz shows, or shanty sing-alongs and more.  There were opportunities to climb the mast to the crow’s nest; and all manner of exercise classes including walk-a-mile; morning aerobics, Zumba, tai chi, or water aerobics.  Some were doing a more discreet exercise routine -  going for the ‘most you can drink award’ and the ‘who can start earliest’ drinking group – 8:30 was the earliest I saw; and of course the most popular program – who can close the bar latest – a sport in itself requiring a steady arm, endurance, and a healthy liver.

Our routine consisted of breakfast; reading, in the lounge, library, or on the fantail; games of computer solitaire; naps; walking the decks and hanging out at the bar chatting with fellow passengers, 5pm cocktails & trivia quiz, 7:30 cocktails, dinner …and bed.  We hold a record for not having participated in anything else – somehow group games just don’t appeal and while the quiz might have been fun, if you were lucky enough to win, you had to write the 10 quiz questions for the next day.  And without Google for fact-checking we were at a serious disadvantage.

The weather was iffy at the beginning making for rolling seas, bumpy nights, and grumpy staff. According to them, this has been the roughest trip ever!  But, from mid-Atlantic, nearing the Caribbean, the seas have been calm, the temperature a good deal warmer, and the deck chairs are suddenly filled with bikini-clad people desperate to return to much colder climes with the tan to prove that they were on holiday.  More lunches were served al fresco at the Tropical Bar, and the mood is considerably cheerier.

The conversations began to turn towards home: what airlines were being used; what routes were being taken; which bags needed packing.  Psychologically we were each getting ready for a return to the real world. For some it was work the following week, for others another cruise, a few days in the Caribbean or simply a long flight home.

The most astounding piece of data provided by our cruise director was that of the 27 people who had gotten on in Athens, and who were disembarking at St. Maarten, three had absolutely no charges on their room bill.  How was that possible? Not a soda? Not a tour? No laundry? No wine? What were these people doing for 35 days?  We kept trying to figure out who the three were – but gave up. We certainly were not part of that group.

But as we prepared to depart the ship…turning in our stateroom key, paying our last bill and being given our passports, there was a bit of sadness.  We had made some new friends, shared some interesting times, and suddenly – it was over.

Our flights back were uneventful, and now the cruise is history.

 

 

 

 

Last Ports in the Canaries

The Canary Islands – Nov. 9-10

Having left the beauty of Morocco (that was sarcasm), we continued our southerly journey to the Canary Islands – part of Spain, but a good four hour plane ride from the mainland.  The Canary Islands are not named for those cute yellow songbirds, but rather for the word in Latin for DOG.  It is comprised of a series of volcanic islands whose main industry is tourism.

Our first reaction when learning about the tour on the island of Lanzarote was – who needs to see lava fields and dead volcanoes.  But knowing that for the next weeks there were no stops being made, we decided to get on the bus and see the countryside.  And are we glad we did!  The comfortable, two-decker, coach was filled to the gunnels as we headed out of the town of Arrecife to the southern part of the island. It is called the island of 100 volcanoes, but it actually has over 300. The last time that there was volcanic activity on this island was in the1820’s, with the last major eruptions in the 1730’s, and that is the ‘recent’ activity of which our guide made continuing reference.  But she hadn’t told us that critical piece of information at the beginning of the tour, and when one hears ‘recent activity’ it does put your teeth on edge.

The landscape was barren, black and inhospitable, but the buildings were white, the streets were immaculate, and where possible there were little spots of green.  Not much grows in fresh lava soil and with only 20 days of rain/year, hydroponic was definitely not an option.  So with no rainfall, the entire island has agreed that no water will be used for plants.  Theoretically lava soil absorbs the little bit of rainfall and retains it, but for the most part what one saw was beautiful black dirt. The best part of the tour was the National Park, Timanfaya, a natural museum whose only goal is to preserve the effects of the volcanos. The geothermal energy still present after 300+ years is so strong that when we were asked to hold a bit of lava soil, just shoveled off the surface of the ground, every pebble was hot.  They then demonstrated the heat right below the surface by putting some dry brush into a hole dug in the soil – within seconds the brush was ablaze. Next they poured some water down a cement tube, and whoosh! A geyser spurted up before our eyes. And lastly they showed us how the restaurant in the park cooks its chicken and pork over another hole in the ground, allowing the thermal energy to cook the chicken. (Many of us with rubber-soled shoes were a wee bit worried about having them melt as we walked on this ‘recent’ volcanic soil.

Having stopped to appreciate the effects, we hopped back in our bus and rode through this lunar landscape. It was easy to see why people film movies here – it was other worldly. The islanders  are allowing nature to bring this soil back to life  with no human intervention – first with lichens and small insects. To ensure that this process can continue without human intervention, no one is allowed to walk in this area. We could only take pictures from the bus as we drove through miles of eerie, black, red and green landscape.

They are trying to grow grapes here on the island - Malvasia wine - and we sampled some. Awful would be the word to use, but they get an E for effort.  Tourism has made this island famous, and it is one of the few places where the entire island has been named a UNESCO biosphere site.  While they are at risk of losing this title, the citizens appear to work very hard to maintain it and to protect their island from over-development. No buildings can be more than 2-3 stories high, everything is recycled, and you could see how neat and orderly they keep everything.  Normally when one arrives at a Caribbean port, the town is orderly and clean, but as you move outside the urban area things get less clean and the housing becomes more primitive.  Here at Lanzarote it appeared that this was not the case, and while tourists flock here for the beaches and the climate, the locals are working hard to keep everything in balance.

We returned to the ship for a lazy afternoon on the aft deck reading, while many of our fellow sailors began the task of packing their bags.  Tomorrow is the last port of call and those not going on the transatlantic portion will disembark, and a whole group of newbies will join us.

We enjoyed a last dinner with Jim and Karen, a delightful couple from Alabama, and Karen of Santa Rosa, CA. Both Karens’ were curly red heads, had wicked senses of humor and a cheerful positive attitude towards life.  On this particular leg there seemed to be quite a few ‘poms’ – British snobs who were hard to engage in conversation, and a few Americans who seemed just a wee bit too big for their britches. So it was fun to dine with more earthly people, and we drank to each other’s’ health, fair voyages, and the future chance to meet in some distant town. 

Saturday, November 10 – Las Palmas on Gran Canaria Island

Our last port, and early in the morning the disembarkation began.  We four waited until late morning to head out looking for WiFi – our last chance for speedy connections to the outside world.  The town of Las Palmas is a large commercial town with a lovely ‘old town’, great beaches and a thriving harbor where yachts, cruise ships, tug boats and other square-rigged sailboats (Esmerelda – a Chilean naval training ship and Christian Radich) coated the docks. The harbor was a welcoming location with large department stores, pharmacies and newsstands convenient to the tourist getting off a ship for a brief period of time.  We took a cab to the big Spanish department store where the top floor promised a café with free WiFi and the lower level promised a grocery store. What more could one want.  For about 1 ½ hours we sat in silence each one staring at a screen doing email, sending a blog, catching up on Facebook or reading the news.  We are starved for more data since BBC really doesn’t care much about our election now that all is decided.  We learned that Florida would go to Obama, that Gen. Petraeus was leaving the CIA having had a long-standing affair, and that the budget crisis was still front and center in Washington with both sides mouthing words of cooperation, but taking hard stands already.  Election? What election. It’s back to business as usual. Let us hope that Obama uses his mandate to be a wee bit more forceful with the intransigent republicans.  Things have got to get moving.

With all messages sent, we quickly got our groceries and hopped into another cab heading to the old town for a tapas lunch. Yum! Our only criteria were that there had to be tapas, beer and comfy chairs, and our cab dropped us right in front of just such an establishment. We dined al fresco on a sampler of four different tapas, we chatted, and we returned to the ship where the newbies were just coming on board.

Mandatory life-boat drill for everyone, dinner and off to bed. Adios Europe & Africa…. With a full complement of sailors – 122 in total - we’re heading South & West, and won’t see land for the next two weeks. The Atlantic Ocean lies before us…and Bob is in sailor-boy Heaven!

 

 

Morocco - Nov. 6 - 8

Casablanca – Election Day

We awoke to a sunny day as the ship worked its way through the highly industrial harbor of Casablanca, Morocco. All the dreams of Bogie and Ilsa were lost amidst the cranes, cargo ships and ferries that filled the harbor.  Again we were greeted with a mixture of men in jalabas, jeans or military uniforms.  Northern Africa is not a calm place, based on the number of policemen and guards whom we observed everywhere.

We boarded our tour bus with Niama, a Muslim woman dressed in jeans with her scarf on her head. She was a lively and enthusiastic woman who regaled us with history, stories and data relevant to our tour as we drove out of the port and into the metropolis of Casablanca.  Evidence of the time when it was under French rule was seen in the signage, the cars and ‘little Paris’, a part of town primarily settled by the French. But that was left quickly as we headed to the area where the government buildings were located, as well as the king’s palace.  We walked around the palace as we learned about the new king who is working hard to improve things for his people. He is married to a younger woman who studied IT and was not herself from a wealthy family.  She seemed to have a marked influence on her husband as she supports the fight against breast cancer, supports unwed mothers, and improves the role of women in the society. 

While Naima spoke with pride of the beauty to be seen around us, we saw a run-down, fairly impoverished city which if not dirty (there were certainly enough street sweepers about), certainly seemed stained by time, the sea and deprivation.  One can imagine a time in the 30’s when this was a beautiful seaside town, but it seemed just plain seedy. Young men roamed the street, this being a national holiday, and there was to be a football match which had gangs of men dressed in red or green – which also happen to be the colors of the flag of Morocco  - loudly demonstrating in the streets.  We stopped at a shop (a staple of all tours in foreign countries) where we were promised that everything was authentically Moroccan and supported by the government.  Of course, we understood that the shop would give a good ‘cut’ to Naima for everything purchased.  We spent a good hour of our tour in that shop filled with all things Moroccan: tea services, samovars, leather shoes, silver jewelry with the hand of Fatima as a theme, rugs, spices and tourist tchotchke. I did fall sway to a uniquely Moroccan spice called Ras el Hanout – a mixture of spices which smelled good enough to try on chicken or fish (contents unknown).

Next stop the new Hassan II Mosque – currently the mosque with the highest minaret in the world, and third largest mosque anywhere, with an inside capacity of 25,000 worshippers; an electronically moveable wooden carved roof;  and an outside marble courtyard able to hold an additional 80,000 worshippers.  It was built in six years by over 10,000 craftsmen and is THE reason people of the Muslim world come to Casablanca.  It was large, and no costs were spared in its chandeliers, Italian marble floors, its elegant hammams, and its miles of Moroccan carpeting.  But Oman’s mosque struck me as more impressive. 

We got a full education on how and why Muslims pray five times a day; how one does the various ablutions, and when.  While one can now do the ablutions at home with a modern shower, one has to stay pure before prayers – and if you pee, have sex, or in any way taint your body, you better stop by one of the 41 ablution fountains at the mosque to re-clean yourself before prayers. 

The balance of the tour was a drive-by of:  the Corniche; the Catholic church; the Jewish synagogue; the tar paper shacks of fishermen and dock workers who left their villages hoping for a better life, but didn’t yet find it; a gym with the delightful name “body sweat gym”; the up-scale residential area with tree-lined streets and security guards in front of most walled homes; and of course – Rick’s Café. While the movie was filmed in Hollywood, and the idea for the café comes from one in Tangier, an ambitious woman has opened up a restaurant, named it ‘Rick’s Café’, and rakes in the money from sentimental tourists. 

Having covered it all from the old to the new; the royal to the impoverished, we returned back to our ship in time for late lunch and a beer. And tomorrow when we awake, we’ll know who won the election.

Wednesday, Nov. 7^th

Neither of us slept well thinking of the election, but we awoke to BBC live as Obama was taking the stage in Chicago to give his acceptance speech. Whew! Thank god for the Electoral College.  There were many smiles at breakfast since most of our fellow passengers, in a straw poll on board had chosen overwhelmingly that we should stick to the known rather than the unknown. For us it was simple: whoever was in office over the next four years would choose the next two Supreme Court justices, and I knew whom I didn’t want in those life-long jobs.

With the promise of sunshine and warm weather, we piled onto our bus for our 3 hour ride to Marrakech. Neither of us was jumping up and down to be on the bus ride, but to sit on the boat in the industrial harbor of Safi for the full day did not give us any more delight.  While our tour guide droned on we stared out the window at a landscape of a truly third-world country: donkey carts as major means of transportation; men herding sheep and goats; men tilling the field behind a mule using a simple switch to urge the animal forward through the red soil; simple shacks with barefoot children playing outside; small road-side villages with all shops facing the road; men sitting in rudimentary cafes with their cups of mint tea; and everywhere red dirt.  The road reminded me of the ones we had driven in India – bumpy, narrow and poorly paved, with vast fields of fertile red soil sprouting green plants on both sides of the paved strip called a highway. The current economy of Morocco comes from three sources: fishing, agriculture and tourism.  With 50% of the population under 25 years of age, it will be at least a few generations before things move forward.

As we approached the metropolis of Marrakech, on either side of the road were enormous apartment complexes built by the king to encourage workers out of their shacks. The price was a mere $55,000 and most of them looked totally uninhabited.  We stopped at a McDonald’s – the only western bathrooms on the journey, and there we found all the comforts of home: Big Mac’s, fries and toilets. One gentleman on the bus actually ordered a big mac claiming that he tries to eat in a Mickey’D in every country he visits. Now there’s a lofty goal!!

Once in Marrakech we picked up our local guide in his brown jalaba, and elegant leather shoes, and he told us our itinerary: the main mosque (but only from the outside); the Medina; an old caravansary; the labyrinthine souk; the famous square with snake charmers, water pourers, clowns, monkeys and pick pockets; a traditional Moroccan lunch; the Kasbah (tombs of royalty); a shopping stop at one of the ‘best, most authentic, complete and perfect stores’ (aka the place he gets his cut of the action); and home again.

And that’s exactly what we did. We walked around the mosque, wended our way through the souk dropping bread crumbs as we went; dined on tomato salad, couscous and tandoor chicken at a restaurant which was once a private home; and walked our way through squares and tombs. What struck me no matter where we turned was not the beauty, but the red dirt.  The winding alleys of the souk were certainly colorful, filled with every known craftsman and product of the country, and our lunch was delicious, but the sense was one of going back in time to a more primitive period of man’s history. The cars may have replaced donkeys, the fake Rolex may be the new proof of wealth, but the poverty was palpable. It was India without India’s growing wealth.

I had hoped to see something of the mystical charm that envelops the name of this ancient city, and the weather certainly made everything shine in its own right, but I was very grateful to leave it after six hours and to return to the 21^st Century of our sailing boat.  I have seen Morocco, and I am certainly glad we went to both Casablanca and Marrakech, but I don’t feel that I need to return anytime soon.  (As I write this, I think of Daddy saying he had seen America, didn’t much like it, and was glad to be returning to Germany…so who knows, I may be fleeing to Morocco some day).

Only two more stops in the Canaries and then we start the transatlantic crossing. Wahoooo.

 

Motril to Tangiers - Nov. 1-4

Motril to Tangiers (Nov. 1 – 4)

Never have I seen so many happy passengers. We made it to Motril, Spain, late on Thursday evening  and docked, firmly to a long pier. The boat stood still, and everyone’s mood picked up. 

To reward us for our good behavior (no one mutinied, or tied the cruise director to the mast), we had our next-day tours to Granada, and the Alhambra, extended from a few hours to the full day. So, bright and shiny and ready for land, we boarded on our bus and left the fairly industrial town of Motril, heading for Granada.  The Spanish landscape reminded me of Greece with olive groves, fruit trees, barren rocky landscapes and goats hopping about.  In the background the Sierra Nevada mountain chain had a small coating of snow, and we were assured by our local tour guide that skiing in the area was quite popular.  After about an hour we arrived at the Alhambra – the zenith of Moorish culture – high overlooking the town of Granada.  It was a crisp fall morning, with blue skies and the promise of future warmth, as we met the very local expert guide Daniel – an Italian gentleman who turned out to be our best guide to date.

Entry to the Alhambra is limited for crowd control and our entry time was to be 9:30 am. If you dawdle about or miss your entry, you’re out of luck, so we hustled our way to the entry, listening to Daniel give us salient facts through our ear pieces.  This type of tour is always the best: each small group is on a unique frequency tied to your specific tour guide (If my chance you changed frequencies you may be listening to a tour in Japanese).  If you stay within a certain distance of the guide, you can hear him perfectly, but it also allows you the freedom to wander a bit to take that perfect picture without missing out on the information being provided. Its other benefit is that it allows the guide to speak in a natural way not having to scream or to constantly demand that we chickens stay close at hand.

To describe the Alhambra is for me impossible. It reminded me of Topkapi , in Istanbul– acres of carefully laid out grounds inside enclosed walls, containing palaces, gardens, fountains, and simpler homes for the common people. It was built over a series of years by the Moors as palaces for the sultans and survived intact until the 1490’s when the Christian influence won out. The Moors were driven out of Spain, and the Alhambra became an empty bastion used for some of the worst excesses of the Inquisition. 

Each of the palaces consisted of a vast series of rooms usually focused around a garden or small pond. From all rooms one could look out into one of these courtyards. On all walls there was elaborate and ornate tile work, sculpture, or engraved Arabic sayings & poems,(some of which Daniel would read to us).  Because Islam does not allow one to portray any humans or animals, the designs were primarily floral or geometric in nature.  Every inch from the floors to the ceilings was elaborately laid out and one could only imagine a time when the individual colors of tiles and paint were vivid, and when the white coating on the walls glistened. If you came as a visitor at that time, you would have to have been in awe as your eyes were drawn to the intricate and ornate detail of each space.

With every turn I wanted to take pictures, and yet I knew that no pictures could begin to capture the beauty, so I finally gave up and bought a guide book which had professional photographs taken when the sunlight was perfectly aligned, and the detail stood out with precision. 

After a good three hours, we wended our way back to the bus, which took us through ‘pre-siesta’, mid-day traffic to a hotel restaurant in Granada, where we had an enormous dining room to ourselves with a delicious buffet large enough to feed a group four times our size.

Our next stop was a quick walking tour through the old part of Granada, which Bob and I chose to skip (along with quite a few other weary passengers) and then as the sun was setting, we headed back to Motril, and our ship. We learned that the tall-ship, Sea Cloud, had been at our pier briefly that afternoon, on its way to the Caribbean also. This was the last night for those passengers who were getting off in Malaga, so there was much exchanging of email addresses and contact data, and while some of us went to bed, others stayed up and closed the bar. (Names hidden to protect the guilty).

Saturday – Malaga

With overcast skies and rain, we arrived at the very new ship’s terminal in Malaga. The departing guests were asked to be off the ship by 10:00 am, so those of us staying on dilly-dallied about until mid-day staying out of the way of the departures.  Then Russ, Di, Bob and I headed into the town of Malaga.  While this used to be a sleepy port, it is now part of the very touristy Costa del Sol (though we had no Sol to speak of). We were in search of free WI-FI, some beer and then a nice tapas lunch.  And all this was accomplished.  Malaga reminded me a bit of Barcelona, with a lot of pedestrian shopping streets, many upscale shops and department stores, and tiny alley ways filled with all manner of out-door eating establishments.  Being Saturday, there were many families out and about, and a large open-air market enclosed within walls which reminded me of the place in Budapest where Gay and I had wandered. 

Having enjoyed a lovely lunch, protected from the dripping skies by an awning, we wandered down to a large department store/grocery store - El Corte Ingles- which is a well-known chain in Spain. Each of us picked up necessities of life, not available on the ship, and ambled back to our floating home to meet the newbies who were joining us.  We were 71 passengers on the last leg, we lost quite a few at this port, but with the new influx we’ve grown to a compliment of 101….except six people who missed the boat –literally – so we left port as a group of 95, setting sail for North Africa where the missing six will hopefully catch up with us.

I noticed how those of us who have been on-board for a while tended to group together at dinner, while the newbies find their way about. It’s like they haven’t yet learned the secret handshake, so they’re not yet considered ‘one of us’.  This will disappear quickly, I’m sure.  We had dinner with one of the newbies – the ship’s doctor. It seems that with any ocean crossing, where ports of call are non-existent, it is required to have a doctor on board.  Dr. Irene Preis is a lovely woman from Wurzburg, Germany – part of Franconia. She regaled us with tales about her unique training required to be a ship’s doctor.  (On land she’s an anesthesiologist). The principal problems on a crossing, for which one requires training are: sea sickness, broken bones, and smoke inhalation.  It seems to be the case that ship-board fires are quite a regular happening – not large conflagrations, but small fires in waste baskets, in the galley or in the engine room.  We were curious as to whether she was visited often by crew members, but she said that because of the physicals which they are required to pass, it is not them, but the passengers who become her focus.  She was delightful to speak with and we’re assuming that we’ll see her in social occasions only.

Sunday – The Straits of Gibraltar and Tangiers

Early in the morning we staggered out of bed, grabbed some coffee and headed up on deck to watch as our ship passed the Rock of Gibraltar, and went through the Pillars of Hercules.  I always thought of the Rock as modestly inhabited, but it has 30,000 citizens and more Barbary Apes than there are citizens in Peacham (our measure of all populations). 

The straits are a narrow body of water, separating Africa from Europe, with just 7+ nautical miles separating them.  It is the area where one leaves the Mediterranean Sea and enters the Atlantic Ocean, and of course the weather was over-cast, with waves, and the wind once more on our nose.  As a result we arrived late in Tangiers, docking at an industrial dockside where men in Jalabas, suits or track outfits were awaiting us – along with the six missing passengers, who had to take a hydrofoil ferry from Malaga.

We chose to stay on-board since the write-up on Tangiers did not make it sound appealing. Its major site is a souk, but to get to it one had to fight off all manner of touts, beggars and youngsters and one was warned not to carry anything of value, and women should not travel alone.  So we sent Di and Russ as our emissaries, and we stayed on board relaxing, chatting with fellow passengers, reading and blogging.

I’m sure we should show much more get-up-and-go since it is highly unlikely that we will return to this part of North Africa, but it holds little charm, and at this point  and we are both wishing for the crossing to begin.  But first we have the Moroccan ports of Casablanca & Safi (tour to Marrakech), and Arrecife & Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.  And may the winds and waves be calmer so we can enjoy it all.

Note: A ‘straw poll was taken today on the US election…Obama won by a 5-1 ratio…one can only pray.