So, today we were scheduled to take the city tour with Rafa. However, our plans have unexpectedly changed. Ed has been dealing with what the Ship’s doctor has diagnosed as a torn intercostal muscle (the muscle that runs between the ribs) since a bad coughing attack on November 27. It’s been painful, but he’s been a trooper, dealing with the pain as best as he can with ice compresses (that we make in zip lock bags from the ice bucket in the room – or simply holding a cold can of coke or beer to his side) and hot tub visits (horrors!), but as the days progress, the pain is still there and he has begun to bruise extensively. The doctor is confident this is all a side effect of the muscle tear, but because the bruising is severe, today is the day to get a 2nd opinion on-shore while we are in a large city with good medical care.
Thus – our unexpected medical tour of Manaus!
The ship organizes everything for us seamlessly. We arrive at the gangway at 10 and we have a driver/translator who will take us to the hospital and accompany us throughout the day. The sweet nurse meets us at the gangway, hands us our referral papers and we are off to see the surgeon. Makell, our translator, is a doll. He works for the port authority and is very well spoken, and used to shepherding folks like us through the Brazilian medical systems, not to mention well- versed in the city’s culture and history as well. He gives us a little semi-tour, pointing out some of the more well-known buildings – like the Opera house which at one time was surrounded by streets paved in rubber so as not to disturb patrons with the noise from horses hoofs and carriage wheels as they rode past the building. (Manaus was a pretty over the top town back in the day – its residents, all European immigrants – spent tons of money on glitzy architecture, clothing, and just about anything else that could be used to show off their wealth.)
At any rate, Makell keeps up the conversation, talking about Manaus and his home town (not here), until we reach the hospital, which turns out to be a Maternity hospital. Well, what can we say? This particular hospital is one of the best in the city, and has an agreement with the port authority to see ship passengers quickly, which is of utmost importance to us since we are sailing at 4pm today. And see us quickly they do! We have no sooner signed paperwork and paid our 150 Brazilian Real ($39.95 USD) fee, then we are in with the doctor explaining the situation and showing off Ed’s bruised torso. He orders bloodwork (only $43 USD), getting the results in under 1 hour, which results in a prescription for Amoxicillin and Prednisone, and a clean bill of health to continue sailing back to Miami.
Phew! Huge relief! So, next stop is the pharmacy where we get the pills (all pre-packaged in boxes and bubble packs), a tube of Ben-Guey (correct Portuguese spelling!) and off we go back to the ship with plenty of time before all aboard. We couldn’t have asked for better care from our ship’s doctor and nurses to Makell to the Brazilian surgeon. If something like this had to happen, we are glad it happened here, because it was truly an excellent experience.
And that, as they say, is that! We spend the rest of the day hanging about, relaxing, and feeding Ed antibiotics and Aleve!
Thursday, December 5, 2019
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
12/4–Manaus
Today we are docked in Manaus, but true to form, there is always some sort of little twist! Today’s challenge is that we cannot walk in the port, but will need to take a shuttle to the port entrance. This would normally be fine, but we have 33 people on our trip today, and coordination, as we have found, can be challenging. The good news is that everyone does meet in the lounge before disembarkation, so at least we are all together. As it turns out – BONUS – Rafa has managed to dock our river boat right across the pier from where we are docked – so no shuttle bus! Excellent! We tell everyone in the lounge we will be meeting Rafa outside, just go left off the gangway – he has on a bright shirt. Smooth as silk, right?
Wrong! By the time everyone straggles off of the ship, we end up missing a handful of people who clearly didn’t listen when we told them not to get on the shuttle. And, well, yes, they got on the shuttle. Which means we have to now go find them at the port entrance. Sigh. Herding cats. After some brief consultations with the river boat captain and the local guide, we end up boating over to the main entrance where Rafa and Ed go in search of our missing tour members. They arrive, unhappily, but nonetheless here on the boat with us finally and we are off to explore the Amazon for another day.
Our little boat seats us all pretty well, it’s the typical semi-rickety little quick river ferry that is used to cross over to close in towns (not the big overnight ferries as we had in Santarem). They are everywhere in these waters, whipping around and across the river. It’s fine, if not a bit noisy and the sound system occasionally doesn’t work, so I end up shouting information back to the other folks on the rear deck. With the breeze, it is quite delightful out on the water and we spend our time alternately listening to David, the local guide, and staring out the window at the river coastline. After about an hour of boating, we reach our first destination – the pink dolphins! We are swimming (in a manner of speaking) with the pink dolphins that are indigenous to these parts. The location is this little floating dock out in the middle of the river, where those of us partaking in the swimming don our life vests and hop in the water on a platform submerged about 3 feet.
The water is great, and the dolphins are amazing – but you have to be really careful because the platform isn’t that wide and all of us manage to fall off it into the deep water at least once! I float over to the corner where it’s a little safer (or at least easier not to fall off) and watch as the dolphins swim around and jump up after being fed by the “trainer” guy. They are aggressive little things too – they know they are getting fish and they will bump you out of the way to get their treat! They almost knocked me over as I was getting out of the water!
Only 10 of us are allowed in at a time, so when we switch off, I get to stand on the platform taking pictures while Ed gets in – which is great because you can really see the dolphins so much better from up on the main platform. You don’t have to worry about the water or being knocked over or you know, drowning, which makes viewing much more fun.
Rafa is in the water along with Ed and a couple others from our group – and the dolphins seem to really like him, but maybe not in the right way! They tend to circle him and are apparently bumping him in places he’d prefer not to be bumped. Makes for a pretty hysterical time – particularly for those of us who are safely out of the water. Once we’ve all had our turn, we dry off as best we can then head back to the boat – but not before stopping at the little snack counter for a nice cold Antarctica Beer! Nice refreshment to fortify us until our next stop at the Tucano Indian tribe.
Another 1/2 an hour or so on the boat, and we are dropped off at the meeting grounds of the Tucano tribe where members are here to dance for us. The tribe is dressed in their traditional costumes of feathers and loin cloths for the men (tightie whities for the little boys) and handwoven skirts for the women. Chests bare, feather headdress for the men, feathers in the hair for the women, they dance around their large palapa communal hall playing handmade bamboo flutes and stomping out tunes with anklets adorned with seed pods. There is even a mom holding her baby and dancing along with the rest of the tribe – very sweet (I ask for a picture of her at the end). Of course we aren’t allowed to just sit idly by, the tribe comes and grabs all of us to dance along with them which makes for a fun little interaction.
After the dance we are left to explore their makeshift outdoor kitchen where they have smoked ants, grubs and other delicacies for us to try. We both try the smoked ants, which are actually pretty palatable – like smoky little popcorn kernels. I avoid the grubs, simply from a consistency standpoint, but the folks who try them say they aren’t bad. Have at it!
Then its back on the boat to cross through the meeting of the waters – this time the Amazon and the Rio Negro where you can actually feel the temperature difference between the two rivers. It’s super hard to get a good picture of the confluence, but suffice it to say, it’s an amazing sight – the tan, muddy waters of the Amazon right up against the dark black Rio Negro. Pretty impressive. What isn’t hard to get a picture of are the fires burning out in the jungles. You can see them particularly well from here, driving home the damage that is being done to this special ecosystem of the earth. It’s a shame.
From here, we are ending our tour at a floating restaurant, Rainha da Selva (which means Jungle Queen), for a buffet of local delicacies, including river fish, fruit, fried plantains, etc. The setting is awesome, on a deck overlooking the Solimoes River on one side, the jungle on the other. After lunch we go for a walk up a wooden boardwalk that leads us through the jungle, past the monkeys who are coming to visit (ostensibly to see if we have any food for them), and out into the rainforest preserve for a beautiful view of the flooded forest and the water lilies. A picturesque setting, so peaceful and green, and not a mosquito in sight (which is a huge bonus as we’ve all been petrified of swarming bugs carrying deadly rainforest diseases).
Back to the boat, we relax for the 40 minute ride back to the pier, crossing through the meeting of the waters again and enjoying the scenery – if not the heat, which is back with a vengeance, even allowing for the river breeze.
We are let off right at the pier again, with a very quick walk onto the ship and the A/C. Docked overnight, we could choose to go out again this evening to explore a little of Manaus proper, but we are quite happy to stay aboard, in the nice cool air and enjoy shipboard cuisine. Plus, while we are not the easily frightened tourist type, everyone here has made a point of telling us to be very careful out in the streets of Manaus – don’t wear any jewelry, keep your purses close, backpacks on the front, etc. Even David, the local guide, told me to take off my thin gold necklace if I was going out on tour with them tomorrow. So, really, why? We’re happy to spend an evening on the ship doing what we are becoming much better at….doing nothing!
Wrong! By the time everyone straggles off of the ship, we end up missing a handful of people who clearly didn’t listen when we told them not to get on the shuttle. And, well, yes, they got on the shuttle. Which means we have to now go find them at the port entrance. Sigh. Herding cats. After some brief consultations with the river boat captain and the local guide, we end up boating over to the main entrance where Rafa and Ed go in search of our missing tour members. They arrive, unhappily, but nonetheless here on the boat with us finally and we are off to explore the Amazon for another day.
Our little boat seats us all pretty well, it’s the typical semi-rickety little quick river ferry that is used to cross over to close in towns (not the big overnight ferries as we had in Santarem). They are everywhere in these waters, whipping around and across the river. It’s fine, if not a bit noisy and the sound system occasionally doesn’t work, so I end up shouting information back to the other folks on the rear deck. With the breeze, it is quite delightful out on the water and we spend our time alternately listening to David, the local guide, and staring out the window at the river coastline. After about an hour of boating, we reach our first destination – the pink dolphins! We are swimming (in a manner of speaking) with the pink dolphins that are indigenous to these parts. The location is this little floating dock out in the middle of the river, where those of us partaking in the swimming don our life vests and hop in the water on a platform submerged about 3 feet.
The water is great, and the dolphins are amazing – but you have to be really careful because the platform isn’t that wide and all of us manage to fall off it into the deep water at least once! I float over to the corner where it’s a little safer (or at least easier not to fall off) and watch as the dolphins swim around and jump up after being fed by the “trainer” guy. They are aggressive little things too – they know they are getting fish and they will bump you out of the way to get their treat! They almost knocked me over as I was getting out of the water!
Only 10 of us are allowed in at a time, so when we switch off, I get to stand on the platform taking pictures while Ed gets in – which is great because you can really see the dolphins so much better from up on the main platform. You don’t have to worry about the water or being knocked over or you know, drowning, which makes viewing much more fun.
Rafa is in the water along with Ed and a couple others from our group – and the dolphins seem to really like him, but maybe not in the right way! They tend to circle him and are apparently bumping him in places he’d prefer not to be bumped. Makes for a pretty hysterical time – particularly for those of us who are safely out of the water. Once we’ve all had our turn, we dry off as best we can then head back to the boat – but not before stopping at the little snack counter for a nice cold Antarctica Beer! Nice refreshment to fortify us until our next stop at the Tucano Indian tribe.
Another 1/2 an hour or so on the boat, and we are dropped off at the meeting grounds of the Tucano tribe where members are here to dance for us. The tribe is dressed in their traditional costumes of feathers and loin cloths for the men (tightie whities for the little boys) and handwoven skirts for the women. Chests bare, feather headdress for the men, feathers in the hair for the women, they dance around their large palapa communal hall playing handmade bamboo flutes and stomping out tunes with anklets adorned with seed pods. There is even a mom holding her baby and dancing along with the rest of the tribe – very sweet (I ask for a picture of her at the end). Of course we aren’t allowed to just sit idly by, the tribe comes and grabs all of us to dance along with them which makes for a fun little interaction.
After the dance we are left to explore their makeshift outdoor kitchen where they have smoked ants, grubs and other delicacies for us to try. We both try the smoked ants, which are actually pretty palatable – like smoky little popcorn kernels. I avoid the grubs, simply from a consistency standpoint, but the folks who try them say they aren’t bad. Have at it!
Then its back on the boat to cross through the meeting of the waters – this time the Amazon and the Rio Negro where you can actually feel the temperature difference between the two rivers. It’s super hard to get a good picture of the confluence, but suffice it to say, it’s an amazing sight – the tan, muddy waters of the Amazon right up against the dark black Rio Negro. Pretty impressive. What isn’t hard to get a picture of are the fires burning out in the jungles. You can see them particularly well from here, driving home the damage that is being done to this special ecosystem of the earth. It’s a shame.
From here, we are ending our tour at a floating restaurant, Rainha da Selva (which means Jungle Queen), for a buffet of local delicacies, including river fish, fruit, fried plantains, etc. The setting is awesome, on a deck overlooking the Solimoes River on one side, the jungle on the other. After lunch we go for a walk up a wooden boardwalk that leads us through the jungle, past the monkeys who are coming to visit (ostensibly to see if we have any food for them), and out into the rainforest preserve for a beautiful view of the flooded forest and the water lilies. A picturesque setting, so peaceful and green, and not a mosquito in sight (which is a huge bonus as we’ve all been petrified of swarming bugs carrying deadly rainforest diseases).
Back to the boat, we relax for the 40 minute ride back to the pier, crossing through the meeting of the waters again and enjoying the scenery – if not the heat, which is back with a vengeance, even allowing for the river breeze.
We are let off right at the pier again, with a very quick walk onto the ship and the A/C. Docked overnight, we could choose to go out again this evening to explore a little of Manaus proper, but we are quite happy to stay aboard, in the nice cool air and enjoy shipboard cuisine. Plus, while we are not the easily frightened tourist type, everyone here has made a point of telling us to be very careful out in the streets of Manaus – don’t wear any jewelry, keep your purses close, backpacks on the front, etc. Even David, the local guide, told me to take off my thin gold necklace if I was going out on tour with them tomorrow. So, really, why? We’re happy to spend an evening on the ship doing what we are becoming much better at….doing nothing!
Tuesday, December 3, 2019
12/3–Boca De Valeria
Today we are visiting the little village at “the mouth” (Boca) of the Valeria river, which is the closest we will come to “true” Amazonian river village life. The village reportedly only has about 100 residents, living in stilt houses with one church and a small school. While traditional, it is still a little bit of a touristy stop, because any cruise ship that sails the Amazon stops here, so apparently people from all over come to greet the passengers – particularly the children. Because Sandy, the guest lecturer has already prepared us for the spectacle, we strategize our visit and decide we don’t want to be on the first or 2nd tender, because we can already see from our balcony the tons of people who are onshore waiting for the tenders. They appear as little black dots, almost like trees, but they are increasing in numbers, so we’re pretty confident they aren’t trees!
No hurry! We relax, have a light breakfast, then finally head down to the tender, thinking we’ll be safe from most of the swarms. Au contraire Pierre! When we arrive and the tender dock there are hundreds of children all lined up to greet us – I only wish I could have had my camera out to video them! They are lined up like some sort of gauntlet we must walk through to reach the path to the village – with hands stretched out to pat us on the shoulder, or shake our hands. Its really heartwarming in an odd sort of way – even though we know they want dollars! At any rate, we reach the end of the child alley, and two little ones take my hand to escort us to the village. They are cute and silent (because they speak no English whatsoever), and somehow we pick up a third, older boy who tries to translate or at least speak a little bit of English.
It’s quite sweet. We walk along the sandy path to arrive at the front of the village where we take our pictures with the aforementioned sloth, and then with some other odd red furry fox looking creature, who decides he likes me and pokes me on the side of my face with his nose. Yikes! (We found out later that he was actually a South American coati, a member of the raccoon family.) At least the boys were in the coati picture, albeit one of them was none too happy about it!
We wandered past the church and the little school to the end of the “front” part of the village. We know there are more houses down the path, but we’re ready to let the boys go on their way, so we give them their guide “tips” and tell them to go get more people! Even though it’s early, it’s hot, so we figured it was a fine time for a beverage – and there just happens to be a bar at the end here, playing some fun Brazilian music with a “cold beer” sign. That’s for us! Up the stairs we go, to plop down on the deck with our very cold beers, watching the comings and goings of the kids, the passengers and the sloths that are turning up in everyone’s arms. Very fun.
As we hang out and relax, the only customers here so far, a German passenger walks up, gets his beer then turns to us and asks, “Are you from the ship?” Um, what could we say? That is just like all the Cruise Director jokes about passengers asking if the staff sleeps ashore! We managed to stifle our laughter and politely tell him yes, we are, and he proceeds to ask us if we’re nervous being here, he says he thinks “it’s a little bit scary.” We’re not really sure to what he was referring? The kids? But no, we aren’t scared, we’re actually really enjoying this day and we thought for sure we wouldn’t.
Finishing our beverages, we decide to go explore the path past the “front” part of the village to get a glimpse of “real” village life. Turns out, it really is a real village and there are tons of stilt houses lining this path that winds it way along the edge of the Valeria river. Once out of the cruise ship melee, it’s peaceful back here, walking amongst the houses with their fish hanging to dry, wood fired stoves cooking breakfast, men hanging about chatting on porches and all the cool hanging gardens that people have fixed up, some planted in old canoes and then hung about 4 feet off the ground. They do have power out here – at least the power lines are stretched through the village – and there are a couple of satellite dishes here and there – but there doesn’t seem to be much more in terms of basic amenities. Definitely no running water that we can see. So, wow, really, its a true little Amazonian village!
Once back in the front part of the village, we see that tons of people have finally come ashore. Our new friends Nancy and Margie are here, Nancy with a Macaw on her arm. We find another sloth (there are a shitload of sloths here) just hanging out on a chair watching a dog with her nursing puppies, looking like he wanted to join in on the fun. We are about to head back to the ship, when we see all the staff heading into the village to give out the items they have collected from the crew. Every visit, they bring donations – clothes, school supplies, things the crew themselves have donated, and also food the ship donates to the village. We figure we’ll stay to watch this – so we grab our stilt house beer table and watch the festivities.
It’s lovely to watch – all the kids do a good job of lining up, but still, they are so excited to get anything, and they come away with a pair of shoes or a shirt of shorts showing all their friends what they got. So sweet. We grab another beer while we watch – then buy a bunch more to take back to the ship – at a dollar, they are the best bargain so far! Then its back to the tender, and to the ship, and to another stunning sunset as we sail to our furthest port – 1,000 miles up the Amazon to Manaus.
No hurry! We relax, have a light breakfast, then finally head down to the tender, thinking we’ll be safe from most of the swarms. Au contraire Pierre! When we arrive and the tender dock there are hundreds of children all lined up to greet us – I only wish I could have had my camera out to video them! They are lined up like some sort of gauntlet we must walk through to reach the path to the village – with hands stretched out to pat us on the shoulder, or shake our hands. Its really heartwarming in an odd sort of way – even though we know they want dollars! At any rate, we reach the end of the child alley, and two little ones take my hand to escort us to the village. They are cute and silent (because they speak no English whatsoever), and somehow we pick up a third, older boy who tries to translate or at least speak a little bit of English.
It’s quite sweet. We walk along the sandy path to arrive at the front of the village where we take our pictures with the aforementioned sloth, and then with some other odd red furry fox looking creature, who decides he likes me and pokes me on the side of my face with his nose. Yikes! (We found out later that he was actually a South American coati, a member of the raccoon family.) At least the boys were in the coati picture, albeit one of them was none too happy about it!
We wandered past the church and the little school to the end of the “front” part of the village. We know there are more houses down the path, but we’re ready to let the boys go on their way, so we give them their guide “tips” and tell them to go get more people! Even though it’s early, it’s hot, so we figured it was a fine time for a beverage – and there just happens to be a bar at the end here, playing some fun Brazilian music with a “cold beer” sign. That’s for us! Up the stairs we go, to plop down on the deck with our very cold beers, watching the comings and goings of the kids, the passengers and the sloths that are turning up in everyone’s arms. Very fun.
As we hang out and relax, the only customers here so far, a German passenger walks up, gets his beer then turns to us and asks, “Are you from the ship?” Um, what could we say? That is just like all the Cruise Director jokes about passengers asking if the staff sleeps ashore! We managed to stifle our laughter and politely tell him yes, we are, and he proceeds to ask us if we’re nervous being here, he says he thinks “it’s a little bit scary.” We’re not really sure to what he was referring? The kids? But no, we aren’t scared, we’re actually really enjoying this day and we thought for sure we wouldn’t.
Finishing our beverages, we decide to go explore the path past the “front” part of the village to get a glimpse of “real” village life. Turns out, it really is a real village and there are tons of stilt houses lining this path that winds it way along the edge of the Valeria river. Once out of the cruise ship melee, it’s peaceful back here, walking amongst the houses with their fish hanging to dry, wood fired stoves cooking breakfast, men hanging about chatting on porches and all the cool hanging gardens that people have fixed up, some planted in old canoes and then hung about 4 feet off the ground. They do have power out here – at least the power lines are stretched through the village – and there are a couple of satellite dishes here and there – but there doesn’t seem to be much more in terms of basic amenities. Definitely no running water that we can see. So, wow, really, its a true little Amazonian village!
Once back in the front part of the village, we see that tons of people have finally come ashore. Our new friends Nancy and Margie are here, Nancy with a Macaw on her arm. We find another sloth (there are a shitload of sloths here) just hanging out on a chair watching a dog with her nursing puppies, looking like he wanted to join in on the fun. We are about to head back to the ship, when we see all the staff heading into the village to give out the items they have collected from the crew. Every visit, they bring donations – clothes, school supplies, things the crew themselves have donated, and also food the ship donates to the village. We figure we’ll stay to watch this – so we grab our stilt house beer table and watch the festivities.
It’s lovely to watch – all the kids do a good job of lining up, but still, they are so excited to get anything, and they come away with a pair of shoes or a shirt of shorts showing all their friends what they got. So sweet. We grab another beer while we watch – then buy a bunch more to take back to the ship – at a dollar, they are the best bargain so far! Then its back to the tender, and to the ship, and to another stunning sunset as we sail to our furthest port – 1,000 miles up the Amazon to Manaus.
Monday, December 2, 2019
12/2–Santarem
First Amazon port! Yay! We are finally here and get to meet Rafa in person after all this time and communications! We’re all excited, except for the fact that suddenly we are told that we will be tendering instead of docking. Oh jeez! And we have 44 people on this tour – not exactly the easiest thing to do – getting tender tickets for all of us. Plus, bless Rafa’s heart, he had reserved and paid for vans to take us to the boats for our river/nature cruise, and the van operator told him they sold the vans to another operator – without giving him back his money! So, we have to take taxis (4 in a car) for an extra $10 US each to get to the boats. What a nightmare – for Rafa, and of course an inconvenience for us – but hey – it’s Brazil –what can we expect? The ship keeps preaching – this is a 3rd world country, the buses are not air conditioned, the guides don’t speak good English, please don’t expect much….so…hey, what can you do? And we are paying far less than the ship tour prices for our tours, so you roll with the punches!
We manage to organize everyone, and get most of us off on the 2nd tender. Rafa meets us at the port entrance and after hugs and kisses, we hop in a taxi with Mary Lynn and Doug, and head to the pier. The cabbie if wonderful. He gives us a city tour, all in Portuguese, which we can sort of translate and figure out – so we see the cathedral, the church, the main square, the fish market, the “product” market, it’s great, and he’s so sweet, dropping us off across from the pier, saying aqui, aqui. Ok, we’re here. But, there is no one else here? What gives? Fortunately we are in contact with Rafa, confirm we are in the right place, and finally people start showing up and we find the other guides (who had been there since 9am – because we all thought we’d be docking and be there early – but not to be – and had gone off somewhere for coffee or refreshments or whatever) and get organized. We have become the unofficial organizers of the group, so we count everyone off – and send off 22 folks on one boat – while waiting for Rafa and a few others who were “lost” at a museum where the cabbie erroneously dropped them.
Finally, we are on the boat and out on the river, sailing along past the city proper and into the meeting of the waters (the “wedding of the waters”) – where the Tapajos meet the muddy Amazon River. Originally,we were scheduled to have 3 or 4 smaller speed boats for the tour, but Rafa has managed to wrangle us 2 larger boats – like the ferry boats that ply the river between Santarem, Belem and Manaus. These are 2 levels – designed for freight on the first level and passengers on the second. The upper level comes complete with hooks over head for hammocks – which is how you sleep on the 2 and 3 day trips up and down the river. All open air, very communal, and for us, a great way to experience our first tour of the Amazon (sans hammocks – we have chairs instead).
The meeting of the waters is really wild, there is literally a line where the muddy waters of the Amazon meet the clean water of the Tapajos, and standing at the railing, with Jean (one of our local tour guides) we can watch how the two rivers mix and see the borders of each so clearly. Soon, we leave the Tapajos and sail into the little lake area where, if we weren’t so late from the tender disaster, we would have been able to walk through local villages and meet some residents. But, as we have lost at least and hour plus, we can only sail a little ways into the peaceful lake areas, staying on the boats, past huts with locals fishing and washing the dishes in the river, kids playing on the river banks and little long-tail boats motoring by us that remind us very much of Thailand. All the houses (huts) are on stilts because the river rises so high in the wet season. Now, at the end of the dry season, it doesn’t seem possible the water could ever get that high. It must be an amazing sight to see once the banks flood.
Turning around, we head back out to the main Tapajos river, passing by Santarem city, now accompanied by Igor (I think that was the other guide’s name) who talks to us about the city, how much it has changed and lamenting about how the development has overtaken nature, pointing out a huge new development where they have bulldozed all the trees and packed the houses so tightly together there isn’t any space left for greenery. Guess it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, it is always the same,the sad price of progress. Particularly more sad here because of the loss of the rainforest and what it means for our planet in the long run.
About 30 minutes later we arrive at a totally secluded area of the river, where there are white sand beaches devoid of any human activity. It’s gorgeous and peaceful, and the boys (which is how I am now referring to Igor and Jean) tell us that these are some of the best beaches – although they will disappear during the wet season. After navigating around a sand bank that reaches out into the river we turn in toward the shore, heading to an area with palapa huts and some structures further back up the beach. Turns out this is our lunch spot, and the boats run right up on the beach, with the help of the restaurant guys who guide us in just like they do on the tarmac of an airport! Once aground, they pound a huge steel stake into the beach to tie up the boats, and we disembark via a gangplank that ends right at the waters edge. Too fun!
I tell Jean how cool this is, we’ve never been on a boat this size that just pulled right up onto the beach – and he is just astounded that this is a first for us! It’s the only way to get to these beaches, and obviously just a normal thing here. Lunch is a feast of all sorts of local fish dishes, served family style at a huge long table under an open air gazebo. You know me and fish, not the best of pals, but every one of these dishes was fantastic. From the fish balls to the grilled fish (my favorite) to the fish sauteed with onions and other veggies, everything was perfectly done and (if you ignore the rice!) just the right amount of food that didn’t leave us stuffed that late in the day.
After finishing our big beers (and buying more to take back to the ship), we traipse back across the sand, and reverse course on the open water, past the main town of Santarem and onto the pier where Rafa has managed to find a bus to take us back to the tender pier! Bravo! It’s a typical Amazonian bus – no air, windows open, not a seat to spare, just like Oceania has been warning us about in all their tour descriptions (!!) but it is a bus and much preferable to trying to find 10 taxis to ferry us back here.
We bid farewell to Rafa, who will now fly to Manaus to meet us there in 2 days, and hope the tender back to the Insignia where the nice cool A/C and refreshing shower are waiting for us. Santarem sends us off in style with a lovely sunset as we sail further into the Amazon looking forward to the adventures that still await us.
We manage to organize everyone, and get most of us off on the 2nd tender. Rafa meets us at the port entrance and after hugs and kisses, we hop in a taxi with Mary Lynn and Doug, and head to the pier. The cabbie if wonderful. He gives us a city tour, all in Portuguese, which we can sort of translate and figure out – so we see the cathedral, the church, the main square, the fish market, the “product” market, it’s great, and he’s so sweet, dropping us off across from the pier, saying aqui, aqui. Ok, we’re here. But, there is no one else here? What gives? Fortunately we are in contact with Rafa, confirm we are in the right place, and finally people start showing up and we find the other guides (who had been there since 9am – because we all thought we’d be docking and be there early – but not to be – and had gone off somewhere for coffee or refreshments or whatever) and get organized. We have become the unofficial organizers of the group, so we count everyone off – and send off 22 folks on one boat – while waiting for Rafa and a few others who were “lost” at a museum where the cabbie erroneously dropped them.
Finally, we are on the boat and out on the river, sailing along past the city proper and into the meeting of the waters (the “wedding of the waters”) – where the Tapajos meet the muddy Amazon River. Originally,we were scheduled to have 3 or 4 smaller speed boats for the tour, but Rafa has managed to wrangle us 2 larger boats – like the ferry boats that ply the river between Santarem, Belem and Manaus. These are 2 levels – designed for freight on the first level and passengers on the second. The upper level comes complete with hooks over head for hammocks – which is how you sleep on the 2 and 3 day trips up and down the river. All open air, very communal, and for us, a great way to experience our first tour of the Amazon (sans hammocks – we have chairs instead).
The meeting of the waters is really wild, there is literally a line where the muddy waters of the Amazon meet the clean water of the Tapajos, and standing at the railing, with Jean (one of our local tour guides) we can watch how the two rivers mix and see the borders of each so clearly. Soon, we leave the Tapajos and sail into the little lake area where, if we weren’t so late from the tender disaster, we would have been able to walk through local villages and meet some residents. But, as we have lost at least and hour plus, we can only sail a little ways into the peaceful lake areas, staying on the boats, past huts with locals fishing and washing the dishes in the river, kids playing on the river banks and little long-tail boats motoring by us that remind us very much of Thailand. All the houses (huts) are on stilts because the river rises so high in the wet season. Now, at the end of the dry season, it doesn’t seem possible the water could ever get that high. It must be an amazing sight to see once the banks flood.
Turning around, we head back out to the main Tapajos river, passing by Santarem city, now accompanied by Igor (I think that was the other guide’s name) who talks to us about the city, how much it has changed and lamenting about how the development has overtaken nature, pointing out a huge new development where they have bulldozed all the trees and packed the houses so tightly together there isn’t any space left for greenery. Guess it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, it is always the same,the sad price of progress. Particularly more sad here because of the loss of the rainforest and what it means for our planet in the long run.
About 30 minutes later we arrive at a totally secluded area of the river, where there are white sand beaches devoid of any human activity. It’s gorgeous and peaceful, and the boys (which is how I am now referring to Igor and Jean) tell us that these are some of the best beaches – although they will disappear during the wet season. After navigating around a sand bank that reaches out into the river we turn in toward the shore, heading to an area with palapa huts and some structures further back up the beach. Turns out this is our lunch spot, and the boats run right up on the beach, with the help of the restaurant guys who guide us in just like they do on the tarmac of an airport! Once aground, they pound a huge steel stake into the beach to tie up the boats, and we disembark via a gangplank that ends right at the waters edge. Too fun!
I tell Jean how cool this is, we’ve never been on a boat this size that just pulled right up onto the beach – and he is just astounded that this is a first for us! It’s the only way to get to these beaches, and obviously just a normal thing here. Lunch is a feast of all sorts of local fish dishes, served family style at a huge long table under an open air gazebo. You know me and fish, not the best of pals, but every one of these dishes was fantastic. From the fish balls to the grilled fish (my favorite) to the fish sauteed with onions and other veggies, everything was perfectly done and (if you ignore the rice!) just the right amount of food that didn’t leave us stuffed that late in the day.
After finishing our big beers (and buying more to take back to the ship), we traipse back across the sand, and reverse course on the open water, past the main town of Santarem and onto the pier where Rafa has managed to find a bus to take us back to the tender pier! Bravo! It’s a typical Amazonian bus – no air, windows open, not a seat to spare, just like Oceania has been warning us about in all their tour descriptions (!!) but it is a bus and much preferable to trying to find 10 taxis to ferry us back here.
We bid farewell to Rafa, who will now fly to Manaus to meet us there in 2 days, and hope the tender back to the Insignia where the nice cool A/C and refreshing shower are waiting for us. Santarem sends us off in style with a lovely sunset as we sail further into the Amazon looking forward to the adventures that still await us.
Friday, November 29, 2019
11/29 to 12/1–Sea/River days
Nothing exciting to report. We spend our days at lectures, watching a movie (the latest Lion King), hanging out, writing the blog, reading. It’s what sea days are all about.
We entered the Amazon River in the early morning hours of 12/1, so we didn’t get to see the actual sail in (which probably isn’t much). But when we wake up, we are definitely in the muddy waters of the Amazon with shorelines filled with trees, trees and more trees. We sail all morning long, arriving in Macapa for our “technical” stop about 2 hours late (which worries us for tomorrow in Santarem!). The technical stop is just for the Brazilian authorities to come inspect and clear the ship to sail up the Amazon, we don’t get off or anything, just sit here at anchor out in the river waiting for the process to be done.
The ship is finally cleared and we begin the journey up the Amazon a little after 2 – which is only an hour after the original schedule. However, one of the annoying things about this ship is there is little to no information about the navigation or what is happening outside our windows. The captain barely speaks. He gives his noon report like an robot: sea depth, sea temperature, lat/long, air temp, weather. Done. No navigation info, no estimated arrival times, no information about the Amazon, nothing. And Carson, the CD, while adorable, isn’t much better. His whole spiel, 3x a day mind you – including during dinner! – is about what’s going on around the ship. It’s really frustrating and annoying. We haven’t even had the equator ceremony, which should have been today since we just crossed it. And while that is understandable because of the “technical” stop, its still sort of, oh, I don’t know, haphazard? Or something.
Sigh.
The other annoying thing is the buffet. You are not allowed to serve yourself, they have line staff that serve you. Which, from a hygiene point of view is awesome. From a practicality point of view? The worst! They are totally understaffed (yeah, NCL owns them, what do you expect?) so you end up just standing in front of the food until someone can come over and serve you. Just give me the damn tongs! I could have served myself, eaten and come back for 2nds by the time I get one piece of chicken. Argh.
Oh, and you don’t get a tote bag in “normal” rooms, only concierge or higher (which is just chintzy).
Ok, rant over. We’re going to the Amazon (well, technically, we are IN the Amazon), we’re movin’ on.
Tomorrow: Santarem – at last!
We entered the Amazon River in the early morning hours of 12/1, so we didn’t get to see the actual sail in (which probably isn’t much). But when we wake up, we are definitely in the muddy waters of the Amazon with shorelines filled with trees, trees and more trees. We sail all morning long, arriving in Macapa for our “technical” stop about 2 hours late (which worries us for tomorrow in Santarem!). The technical stop is just for the Brazilian authorities to come inspect and clear the ship to sail up the Amazon, we don’t get off or anything, just sit here at anchor out in the river waiting for the process to be done.
The ship is finally cleared and we begin the journey up the Amazon a little after 2 – which is only an hour after the original schedule. However, one of the annoying things about this ship is there is little to no information about the navigation or what is happening outside our windows. The captain barely speaks. He gives his noon report like an robot: sea depth, sea temperature, lat/long, air temp, weather. Done. No navigation info, no estimated arrival times, no information about the Amazon, nothing. And Carson, the CD, while adorable, isn’t much better. His whole spiel, 3x a day mind you – including during dinner! – is about what’s going on around the ship. It’s really frustrating and annoying. We haven’t even had the equator ceremony, which should have been today since we just crossed it. And while that is understandable because of the “technical” stop, its still sort of, oh, I don’t know, haphazard? Or something.
Sigh.
The other annoying thing is the buffet. You are not allowed to serve yourself, they have line staff that serve you. Which, from a hygiene point of view is awesome. From a practicality point of view? The worst! They are totally understaffed (yeah, NCL owns them, what do you expect?) so you end up just standing in front of the food until someone can come over and serve you. Just give me the damn tongs! I could have served myself, eaten and come back for 2nds by the time I get one piece of chicken. Argh.
Oh, and you don’t get a tote bag in “normal” rooms, only concierge or higher (which is just chintzy).
Ok, rant over. We’re going to the Amazon (well, technically, we are IN the Amazon), we’re movin’ on.
Tomorrow: Santarem – at last!
Thursday, November 28, 2019
11/28–Trinidad’s Hindu Temples
The second part of our tour takes us further south in Chaguanas to the Dattatreya Temple compound and the largest Hanuman Murti outside of India. On the way, we stop for a few minutes outside another little used, but still pink and picturesque, temple for some background on the Indian and Hindu religious history.
Trinidad today is 35% Christian, 30% Hindu and about 10% Muslim. Everyone tends to respect each others’ religion, without much strife between them, going so far as to celebrate every holiday regardless of your religion. The Religious schools operate in the same fashion, admitting anyone, not simply whatever religion the institution practices. But, this wasn’t always the case. Under British rule, while the Indians were considered “free” and told they could practice their religion, they every time they built a temple, the British tore it down. Thus the Indians had to hide away to build their temples, and ended up in small segregated areas outside of the main city of Port of Spain. This is where we find ourselves now, looking out over this little temple that is snugged into the houses and buildings around it.
A 20 minute drive, though the little town gets us out into more rural surroundings, with houses, big and small that display different colored flags. Turns out that each flag color represents a different god. While not traditional in India, these flags were created during British rule, when the Indians weren’t allowed to show their religion. They got creative, created flags for each god, hung them outside their homes and the British never knew any better. A few twists and turns down little country lanes, then a sharp turn down what looks like an alley brings us to the Hanuman temple. We can see the murti (statue) from the road as we circle the complex to get to the parking area. It’s crazy big – 85 feet tall – and vibrantly painted (freshly – they just repainted it a while back) and standing incongruently out in the middle of the courtyard with fields all around it. (Turns out the village people donated their land to create the area for the Murti, so that is why it looks like it is sitting out in the middle of nowhere, with no development terribly close by.
We are the only visitors, so we have the place to ourselves as we circle the murti counter-clockwise (with our shoes on, because there is special dispensation here in Trinidad when it gets so hot that your feet will burn), looking at the cool little water way that circles the statue (it’s man-made but with fieldstones as walls, so it gives the impression of water flowing through a streambed), peering into the two shrines placed on either side of mammoth statue, and just generally reveling in the peace and the magnificence of this thing. There is also a rather large camel facing Hanuman, which is his pet camel (not traditional, by any means!) who keeps watch over Hanuman and protects him.
The temple complex adjacent to the murti has a smaller Hanuman statue that preceded this one sitting in the courtyard, and the more traditional elephants outside the entrance door, as well as some spectacular carvings and dome work in the exterior portico area. Inside, the main temple is much more traditional, with the different gods enshrined in smaller temples, the array of star-gods and traditional incense, etc. We aren’t allowed to take any photos inside, so we just walk through looking at all the different Deities and their Trinidadian representations (which are just like the Indian ones, quite frankly).
On our way back to the car, the proprietor of the little shop on the premises invites us inside to look around. We browse a bit, looking for another small Ganesh, but to no avail. Before we leave though the owner shows us a book that has the history of the murti and the yogi who founded the temple and oversaw the construction. He walked us through the entire process, showing us some great photos of how the concrete construction was implemented, the carving, painting, etc. He also gave us some background on the yogi himself, and how he ended up here in Trinidad (which totally escapes me now!). Every one here is definitely very sweet and open and talkative with us. We finally extricate ourselves from his lovely, but long, history lesson, snap a couple of quick pix of ourselves with the camel guard, then hop in the car for the Temple in the Sea.
Otherwise known as the Waterloo Hindu Temple, this temple was built back in the 1800’s by Sawdass Sadhu, in spite of the fact that no one was allowed to build a temple anywhere on British land. He asked the British if he could build it “Not” on their land, and they laughed at him and said yes – which began a 20 year odyssey where he dumped rocks into the ocean about 100 yards offshore to build a foundation, then finally built a little Hindu temple in the sea for worshipers. Creative!
It is also very picturesque, and while the original temple was not very sturdily constructed, collapsing years ago, in 1962, after the Independence of Trinidad the government made a huge effort to ensure all religions were respected equally, and put funds together to fix up the original temple (they had to build a whole new exterior structure, keeping only the original crudely constructed domed roof) , and build a new one with a causeway attached. It’s a great story of dedication and creativity, and a beautiful place for reflection and prayer. While we are exploring the little original temple, a caretaker comes over and unlocks the gates for us to take a closer look and photos. He also says we can pick some flowers to hold while we are in the temple if we want (even though there are signs every 10 feet telling you NOT to pick the flowers). Again – so sweet!
On one side of the shoreline facing the temple is the cremation grounds for Hindus of the area, and there is a cremation just being completed while we are there. Not quite as dramatic as the Kathmandu cremation temple, it’s actually more beautiful and serene and a little more private. On the other side of the shoreline is the only place where people can dump their used or broken icons and religious pottery that is no longer in use. Reminds us of the cave complex in Luangprabang, only more exposed to the elements.
It’s pushing on 2 pm, so we know its time to head back to town – the traffic can be murder here. But, before we go back to the ship, we decide we are all hungry, so Jenelle takes us to one of the best Roti places on the island – the aptly named Hi-way Roti. Aptly named because it is literally right on the highway – but not accessible by it! You have to drive down these little narrow neighborhood streets to access the very small parking lot (and we can’t even get there because of road work, so we parallel park on the side of the road. You can see how people would just stop on the highway to come here – it almost looks like there are steps leading up from the road (not that its allowed anymore – if it ever was!). Walking through the open air eating area in front of the restaurant, every local there turns and stares – we have been the only white folks everywhere today, but here, we really stand out like a sore thumb! Jenelle just carries on, ignoring everyone, and getting in line (it’s 4 deep at 2:30 in the afternoon) to help order our roti. We decide on splitting one chicken roti (since we are having dinner at Polo Grill tonight, we don’t want too much food this late in the day), and Jenelle opts for the goat, which she says we can share.
The plates come out, and boy are we glad we opted for only one roti! It’s maybe not 1/2 a chicken, but there’s a lot of meat on the plate, like maybe a couple of airplane breasts and a thigh? It’s cooked in a yummy red sauce, accompanied by mashed chick peas (which I avoid like the plague) and the best, fresh, warm roti we’ve ever had. Just awesome. We pick our way through it, not even trying Jenelle’s goat, and end up eating all the meat but leaving a good portion of roti for Jenelle to take home with her. And all for less than $7 US, including a bottle of water (no alcohol here – or anywhere that we have seen actually!).
Now it is definitely time to get back to the port. We had wanted to go to a grocery store, but even that seems out of the question at this point in time. Heading down the highway, chatting amiably, we pass through a huge rain storm which producing large swaths of standing water on the road, one of which completely engulfs our car – it’s like being underwater for a few seconds, only surrounded by other huge hunks of metal hurtling down a highway. Scary! But, to Jenelle’s credit, she handles the car beautifully, as she has done all day. It is not easy driving around here, and we’ve felt completely safe with her from the get go.
We arrive at the port with plenty of time, say goodbye to Jenelle then walk through the little market set up outside (nothing interesting) and head toward the security check in. But, on our way we pass by a little liquor store that has cases of beer, taking a chance we wander inside looking for 6 packs. Sadly there are none in the refrigerator case, so we sigh, and start to leave when the owner says, I have one 6 pack left, and goes into his office to get it. Yes! Success! He apologizes for being low, but says they are closing for the holidays so they can go vacation in Kissimmee. Hey, everybody’s gotta go somewhere I suppose!
Back onboard, we sailaway at the appointed hour (this is one all aboard you do not want to miss!), and proceed onto our normal routine. Dinner in Polo is excellent – even though they have a special T-day dinner, with Turkey of course, we’re not wasting our last night here on turkey! Ed has surf and turf and I have the awesome seared tuna – and all is right with the world.
Onto the Amazon. Yay!
Trinidad today is 35% Christian, 30% Hindu and about 10% Muslim. Everyone tends to respect each others’ religion, without much strife between them, going so far as to celebrate every holiday regardless of your religion. The Religious schools operate in the same fashion, admitting anyone, not simply whatever religion the institution practices. But, this wasn’t always the case. Under British rule, while the Indians were considered “free” and told they could practice their religion, they every time they built a temple, the British tore it down. Thus the Indians had to hide away to build their temples, and ended up in small segregated areas outside of the main city of Port of Spain. This is where we find ourselves now, looking out over this little temple that is snugged into the houses and buildings around it.
A 20 minute drive, though the little town gets us out into more rural surroundings, with houses, big and small that display different colored flags. Turns out that each flag color represents a different god. While not traditional in India, these flags were created during British rule, when the Indians weren’t allowed to show their religion. They got creative, created flags for each god, hung them outside their homes and the British never knew any better. A few twists and turns down little country lanes, then a sharp turn down what looks like an alley brings us to the Hanuman temple. We can see the murti (statue) from the road as we circle the complex to get to the parking area. It’s crazy big – 85 feet tall – and vibrantly painted (freshly – they just repainted it a while back) and standing incongruently out in the middle of the courtyard with fields all around it. (Turns out the village people donated their land to create the area for the Murti, so that is why it looks like it is sitting out in the middle of nowhere, with no development terribly close by.
We are the only visitors, so we have the place to ourselves as we circle the murti counter-clockwise (with our shoes on, because there is special dispensation here in Trinidad when it gets so hot that your feet will burn), looking at the cool little water way that circles the statue (it’s man-made but with fieldstones as walls, so it gives the impression of water flowing through a streambed), peering into the two shrines placed on either side of mammoth statue, and just generally reveling in the peace and the magnificence of this thing. There is also a rather large camel facing Hanuman, which is his pet camel (not traditional, by any means!) who keeps watch over Hanuman and protects him.
The temple complex adjacent to the murti has a smaller Hanuman statue that preceded this one sitting in the courtyard, and the more traditional elephants outside the entrance door, as well as some spectacular carvings and dome work in the exterior portico area. Inside, the main temple is much more traditional, with the different gods enshrined in smaller temples, the array of star-gods and traditional incense, etc. We aren’t allowed to take any photos inside, so we just walk through looking at all the different Deities and their Trinidadian representations (which are just like the Indian ones, quite frankly).
On our way back to the car, the proprietor of the little shop on the premises invites us inside to look around. We browse a bit, looking for another small Ganesh, but to no avail. Before we leave though the owner shows us a book that has the history of the murti and the yogi who founded the temple and oversaw the construction. He walked us through the entire process, showing us some great photos of how the concrete construction was implemented, the carving, painting, etc. He also gave us some background on the yogi himself, and how he ended up here in Trinidad (which totally escapes me now!). Every one here is definitely very sweet and open and talkative with us. We finally extricate ourselves from his lovely, but long, history lesson, snap a couple of quick pix of ourselves with the camel guard, then hop in the car for the Temple in the Sea.
Otherwise known as the Waterloo Hindu Temple, this temple was built back in the 1800’s by Sawdass Sadhu, in spite of the fact that no one was allowed to build a temple anywhere on British land. He asked the British if he could build it “Not” on their land, and they laughed at him and said yes – which began a 20 year odyssey where he dumped rocks into the ocean about 100 yards offshore to build a foundation, then finally built a little Hindu temple in the sea for worshipers. Creative!
It is also very picturesque, and while the original temple was not very sturdily constructed, collapsing years ago, in 1962, after the Independence of Trinidad the government made a huge effort to ensure all religions were respected equally, and put funds together to fix up the original temple (they had to build a whole new exterior structure, keeping only the original crudely constructed domed roof) , and build a new one with a causeway attached. It’s a great story of dedication and creativity, and a beautiful place for reflection and prayer. While we are exploring the little original temple, a caretaker comes over and unlocks the gates for us to take a closer look and photos. He also says we can pick some flowers to hold while we are in the temple if we want (even though there are signs every 10 feet telling you NOT to pick the flowers). Again – so sweet!
On one side of the shoreline facing the temple is the cremation grounds for Hindus of the area, and there is a cremation just being completed while we are there. Not quite as dramatic as the Kathmandu cremation temple, it’s actually more beautiful and serene and a little more private. On the other side of the shoreline is the only place where people can dump their used or broken icons and religious pottery that is no longer in use. Reminds us of the cave complex in Luangprabang, only more exposed to the elements.
It’s pushing on 2 pm, so we know its time to head back to town – the traffic can be murder here. But, before we go back to the ship, we decide we are all hungry, so Jenelle takes us to one of the best Roti places on the island – the aptly named Hi-way Roti. Aptly named because it is literally right on the highway – but not accessible by it! You have to drive down these little narrow neighborhood streets to access the very small parking lot (and we can’t even get there because of road work, so we parallel park on the side of the road. You can see how people would just stop on the highway to come here – it almost looks like there are steps leading up from the road (not that its allowed anymore – if it ever was!). Walking through the open air eating area in front of the restaurant, every local there turns and stares – we have been the only white folks everywhere today, but here, we really stand out like a sore thumb! Jenelle just carries on, ignoring everyone, and getting in line (it’s 4 deep at 2:30 in the afternoon) to help order our roti. We decide on splitting one chicken roti (since we are having dinner at Polo Grill tonight, we don’t want too much food this late in the day), and Jenelle opts for the goat, which she says we can share.
The plates come out, and boy are we glad we opted for only one roti! It’s maybe not 1/2 a chicken, but there’s a lot of meat on the plate, like maybe a couple of airplane breasts and a thigh? It’s cooked in a yummy red sauce, accompanied by mashed chick peas (which I avoid like the plague) and the best, fresh, warm roti we’ve ever had. Just awesome. We pick our way through it, not even trying Jenelle’s goat, and end up eating all the meat but leaving a good portion of roti for Jenelle to take home with her. And all for less than $7 US, including a bottle of water (no alcohol here – or anywhere that we have seen actually!).
Now it is definitely time to get back to the port. We had wanted to go to a grocery store, but even that seems out of the question at this point in time. Heading down the highway, chatting amiably, we pass through a huge rain storm which producing large swaths of standing water on the road, one of which completely engulfs our car – it’s like being underwater for a few seconds, only surrounded by other huge hunks of metal hurtling down a highway. Scary! But, to Jenelle’s credit, she handles the car beautifully, as she has done all day. It is not easy driving around here, and we’ve felt completely safe with her from the get go.
We arrive at the port with plenty of time, say goodbye to Jenelle then walk through the little market set up outside (nothing interesting) and head toward the security check in. But, on our way we pass by a little liquor store that has cases of beer, taking a chance we wander inside looking for 6 packs. Sadly there are none in the refrigerator case, so we sigh, and start to leave when the owner says, I have one 6 pack left, and goes into his office to get it. Yes! Success! He apologizes for being low, but says they are closing for the holidays so they can go vacation in Kissimmee. Hey, everybody’s gotta go somewhere I suppose!
Back onboard, we sailaway at the appointed hour (this is one all aboard you do not want to miss!), and proceed onto our normal routine. Dinner in Polo is excellent – even though they have a special T-day dinner, with Turkey of course, we’re not wasting our last night here on turkey! Ed has surf and turf and I have the awesome seared tuna – and all is right with the world.
Onto the Amazon. Yay!
11/28–Thanksgiving day in Trinidad
Not your traditional Thanksgiving! No turkey for us, but what turns out to be a really fun 1/2 day touring the island with our own guide. We were originally scheduled to arrive at 8am, but they changed that to 10a a while ago, so we’ve had to trim down our tour schedule, which didn’t please us, obviously. And we are getting even more irritated as we sail into the harbor – we are here around 9, making us hopeful we will be early, but they dock so slowly, it was painful. It took over 45 minutes to come alongside – and it’s a big, commercial cruise terminal dock! It’s not like some little backwater place! Then, once we are docked, and we watched the “port officials” come aboard, it takes forever to let us off the ship. We have rescheduled our tour to start at 10:30, and with these delays, we’re fearful we’ll even be able to make that (this is reminding us of Adelaide!).
Finally we are allowed off, and we rush off to the Hyatt Regency, fortunately right next to the cruise terminal, to meet our guide. We weren’t 100% sure if this was a private tour or we’d have others with us, but when we arrive, it is just us and Jenelle, our wonderful guide for the day. We set off immediately, driving out of Port of Spain and heading toward Chaguanas to tour a local market.
On the way Jenelle talks about Trinidad, explaining about immigration and how many Venezuelans are coming across – some legally,some illegally – and how the government is favorable to this and helping what I’ll call “refugees” get established and get jobs. As we drive through Caroni, where the sugar and rice used to be grown, she explains that Trinidad is the 3rd richest country this side of the Caribbean due to the oil and the gas, and how the working population turned from agriculture to oil and gas work because it paid so much more. Tourism, which is growing and could be a huge industry, is never advertised (which is so different from most other islands, heck, most other cities around the world…..yes….I’m referring to Asheville as I write this!).
Entering the town of Chaguanas, Jenelle expertly navigates through car and people choked streets, going around slower drivers, letting others turn in and out in front of us. Its an exercise in patience and skill, of which she has an abundance. The sidewalks are lined with retail stores selling everything under the sun, and there are people everywhere – it is crazy busy. I ask Jenelle if it is always this busy, and she says this isn’t busy, Saturday is busy! Oh my gosh!
We pass the market, then circle the block to wait in line for the parking lot. We are fortunate in that there are spaces available, otherwise we would have had to wait in the street until someone leaves. Probably due to the time of day, it’s a little late for most shoppers here in the market. This place is huge, too. There are maybe 100 or more vendors with everything from farm fresh fruit to vegetables to fresh caught fish, and these great “hairy” crabs! As a matter of fact, that’s the first stall we come to – the hairy crab stall, where they have these things bundled up in bunches, tied together with stalks of thick grass. They’re amazing! And the ladies of the stall are so sweet, they show us how to take the hair off the crab, then cut the legs off and crack open the shell. They’re just like blue crabs, only in miniature – and with all that hair!
We progress from the crab into the main seafood hall where there are baby sharks and tons of other yummy looking fish, then head through rows and rows of produce, with Jenelle giving us a commentary on everything, what it is and for what recipes it is used. We walk by sorrels, which look like a purple star fruit or something. These are only seen around the holidays and are used to make a special spiced drink for the season. Then there are breadfruit looking fruits, huge pumpkins and squash, tons of yummy cabbages, peppers , potatoes, cassava -well – you get the point. If you need any produce, this is the place. It makes us crazy that we can’t just start shopping and then go somewhere to cook everything. There is an upstairs level (which is good for photos of the market below) which houses clothing and other supplies, including this great little stall that is one-stop shopping: Instant passport photos, gifts, commissioner of affidavits, Lasko fans, brooms and mops. What more could you want?
Circling back downstairs, we pass through the fruit section with all sorts of citrus and odd rose apple type products.. One of the vendors sweetly hands us one of his Pegs, a little tangerine type fruit, for us to try. It’s excellent, just like the ones we have in Chiang Mai, actually. Then we move back to the sweet section, where they are selling Jalebi! Yes, my favorite Indian snack – Jalebi! Along with some other delicious looking snacks called Kurma. After taste testing the Kurma, it’s like fried pastry dough doused in brown sugar glaze (oh yum), we can’t resist it and buy a 5TT bag (less than $1 US) of the Kurma, and then a Jalebi for $1 US. The girl also throws in a piece of what they call fudge as a gift. So sweet.
Next stop: the Hindu temples of Trinidad.
Finally we are allowed off, and we rush off to the Hyatt Regency, fortunately right next to the cruise terminal, to meet our guide. We weren’t 100% sure if this was a private tour or we’d have others with us, but when we arrive, it is just us and Jenelle, our wonderful guide for the day. We set off immediately, driving out of Port of Spain and heading toward Chaguanas to tour a local market.
On the way Jenelle talks about Trinidad, explaining about immigration and how many Venezuelans are coming across – some legally,some illegally – and how the government is favorable to this and helping what I’ll call “refugees” get established and get jobs. As we drive through Caroni, where the sugar and rice used to be grown, she explains that Trinidad is the 3rd richest country this side of the Caribbean due to the oil and the gas, and how the working population turned from agriculture to oil and gas work because it paid so much more. Tourism, which is growing and could be a huge industry, is never advertised (which is so different from most other islands, heck, most other cities around the world…..yes….I’m referring to Asheville as I write this!).
Entering the town of Chaguanas, Jenelle expertly navigates through car and people choked streets, going around slower drivers, letting others turn in and out in front of us. Its an exercise in patience and skill, of which she has an abundance. The sidewalks are lined with retail stores selling everything under the sun, and there are people everywhere – it is crazy busy. I ask Jenelle if it is always this busy, and she says this isn’t busy, Saturday is busy! Oh my gosh!
We pass the market, then circle the block to wait in line for the parking lot. We are fortunate in that there are spaces available, otherwise we would have had to wait in the street until someone leaves. Probably due to the time of day, it’s a little late for most shoppers here in the market. This place is huge, too. There are maybe 100 or more vendors with everything from farm fresh fruit to vegetables to fresh caught fish, and these great “hairy” crabs! As a matter of fact, that’s the first stall we come to – the hairy crab stall, where they have these things bundled up in bunches, tied together with stalks of thick grass. They’re amazing! And the ladies of the stall are so sweet, they show us how to take the hair off the crab, then cut the legs off and crack open the shell. They’re just like blue crabs, only in miniature – and with all that hair!
We progress from the crab into the main seafood hall where there are baby sharks and tons of other yummy looking fish, then head through rows and rows of produce, with Jenelle giving us a commentary on everything, what it is and for what recipes it is used. We walk by sorrels, which look like a purple star fruit or something. These are only seen around the holidays and are used to make a special spiced drink for the season. Then there are breadfruit looking fruits, huge pumpkins and squash, tons of yummy cabbages, peppers , potatoes, cassava -well – you get the point. If you need any produce, this is the place. It makes us crazy that we can’t just start shopping and then go somewhere to cook everything. There is an upstairs level (which is good for photos of the market below) which houses clothing and other supplies, including this great little stall that is one-stop shopping: Instant passport photos, gifts, commissioner of affidavits, Lasko fans, brooms and mops. What more could you want?
Circling back downstairs, we pass through the fruit section with all sorts of citrus and odd rose apple type products.. One of the vendors sweetly hands us one of his Pegs, a little tangerine type fruit, for us to try. It’s excellent, just like the ones we have in Chiang Mai, actually. Then we move back to the sweet section, where they are selling Jalebi! Yes, my favorite Indian snack – Jalebi! Along with some other delicious looking snacks called Kurma. After taste testing the Kurma, it’s like fried pastry dough doused in brown sugar glaze (oh yum), we can’t resist it and buy a 5TT bag (less than $1 US) of the Kurma, and then a Jalebi for $1 US. The girl also throws in a piece of what they call fudge as a gift. So sweet.
Next stop: the Hindu temples of Trinidad.
Wednesday, November 27, 2019
11/27–St. Lucia–island tour and Antillia Brewery
That’s the end of our historical tour, now we are off on a scenic drive to the west side of the island, also called the “countryside", for great views over Marigot. The roads are definitely small, twisty and steep, which makes me ever so glad we weren’t able to find a car here. Much more relaxing letting someone else do the driving, particularly someone who is local and knows what they are doing!
The little lane (that is the main road, btw) runs up and down over steep hills and little valleys, before we turn uphill again toward the coast for Marigot. We stop at a crowded lookout platform where EVERY tour (local and otherwise) stops for photos. it is an excellent view, down to the protected harbor with the high dollar villas and cottages dotting the hills around the sailboat and yacht choked bay. Nice pix! There is also, of course, a little shop here selling everything from batik beachwear to rather expensive Banana Ketchup and local snacks. We did try the Banana Ketchup, and it was quite good, but not at $6 US a little bottle. Hopefully we can find more in a grocery store in Castries.
Back on the van, we have to sit for about 5 minutes waiting for the other vans to leave and unblock us, then we are retracing our route, back down the mountain and into the flatlands of Roseau, where the banana fields are located. Bananas being the main export here, the fields stretch forever, with little fruit and souvenir stores dotting the side of the road where the banana field owners are selling their wares. We stop for Genil to give us a banana growing lesson, and manage to snap a photo (through the van window) of a blooming banana plant. We’ve been to banana plantations before, but it was nice to get a refresher – I’d forgotten that banana trees only produce fruit once, then they are cut down and the “suckers” that grow out of them begin to create a new tree.
Onward through the country we ride, reaching our last destination, Anse La Raye, a typical little St. Lucia village where we have 20 minutes to wander through the souvenir stands, the beach (a pretty little cove) or through the little town where there is a nice looking church and the typical houses of the island, stacked side by side, touching each other, or built together.
We wander the streets, grab a beer from a vendor, then hop back on the van for our return to the city. It was a nice little 3 hour tour, and we still have tons of time before all aboard at 4:30. So, once we are back to the Castries harbor, we head over to the ferry to go to Point Seraphine, the other cruise ship terminal where the larger ships dock (in this case, today the NCL Gem is here – which has some symmetry for us since that is our next ride in January!). The Gem however, is not the reason we are here, nor is the “duty free shopping.” We are here to check out the local Brewery, Antillia Brewing. The $5 return ferry drops us off virtually right in front of the little open air wooden palapa that houses Antillia Brewing – wow! Its such a great setting, right on the water looking out over the bay. And the beer is equally great – Ed has a wheat beer and I have chocolate porter. I don’t care how hot it is, I’m a chocolate porter girl – and this one doesn’t disappoint! We sit in the shade, with a nice breeze and good wifi enjoying our beers and whiling away the time until we decide to head back across the harbor.
We manage to miss one ferry, but then wander through the shopping area, find the restroom and then catch the next ferry back to Castries central. There we wander through the central town, finally finding the grocery store that is packed – and I mean absolutely packed – with people. The check out lines are 20 people deep. School has let out and the place is filled with kids, parents, just an overload of people. So much so that we abandon all thoughts of shopping and leave within minutes.
With still over an hour to kill, we head back to the terminal and find our way upstairs to one of the restaurants (the one with A/C, not the open air one!) for a last beer before heading back to the ship. A nice cool ending to a pretty nice day in St. Lucia.
Back on board, it’s our normal routine, gym, dinner, show. Now we are ready for our non-traditional tour day in Trinidad.
The little lane (that is the main road, btw) runs up and down over steep hills and little valleys, before we turn uphill again toward the coast for Marigot. We stop at a crowded lookout platform where EVERY tour (local and otherwise) stops for photos. it is an excellent view, down to the protected harbor with the high dollar villas and cottages dotting the hills around the sailboat and yacht choked bay. Nice pix! There is also, of course, a little shop here selling everything from batik beachwear to rather expensive Banana Ketchup and local snacks. We did try the Banana Ketchup, and it was quite good, but not at $6 US a little bottle. Hopefully we can find more in a grocery store in Castries.
Back on the van, we have to sit for about 5 minutes waiting for the other vans to leave and unblock us, then we are retracing our route, back down the mountain and into the flatlands of Roseau, where the banana fields are located. Bananas being the main export here, the fields stretch forever, with little fruit and souvenir stores dotting the side of the road where the banana field owners are selling their wares. We stop for Genil to give us a banana growing lesson, and manage to snap a photo (through the van window) of a blooming banana plant. We’ve been to banana plantations before, but it was nice to get a refresher – I’d forgotten that banana trees only produce fruit once, then they are cut down and the “suckers” that grow out of them begin to create a new tree.
Onward through the country we ride, reaching our last destination, Anse La Raye, a typical little St. Lucia village where we have 20 minutes to wander through the souvenir stands, the beach (a pretty little cove) or through the little town where there is a nice looking church and the typical houses of the island, stacked side by side, touching each other, or built together.
We wander the streets, grab a beer from a vendor, then hop back on the van for our return to the city. It was a nice little 3 hour tour, and we still have tons of time before all aboard at 4:30. So, once we are back to the Castries harbor, we head over to the ferry to go to Point Seraphine, the other cruise ship terminal where the larger ships dock (in this case, today the NCL Gem is here – which has some symmetry for us since that is our next ride in January!). The Gem however, is not the reason we are here, nor is the “duty free shopping.” We are here to check out the local Brewery, Antillia Brewing. The $5 return ferry drops us off virtually right in front of the little open air wooden palapa that houses Antillia Brewing – wow! Its such a great setting, right on the water looking out over the bay. And the beer is equally great – Ed has a wheat beer and I have chocolate porter. I don’t care how hot it is, I’m a chocolate porter girl – and this one doesn’t disappoint! We sit in the shade, with a nice breeze and good wifi enjoying our beers and whiling away the time until we decide to head back across the harbor.
We manage to miss one ferry, but then wander through the shopping area, find the restroom and then catch the next ferry back to Castries central. There we wander through the central town, finally finding the grocery store that is packed – and I mean absolutely packed – with people. The check out lines are 20 people deep. School has let out and the place is filled with kids, parents, just an overload of people. So much so that we abandon all thoughts of shopping and leave within minutes.
With still over an hour to kill, we head back to the terminal and find our way upstairs to one of the restaurants (the one with A/C, not the open air one!) for a last beer before heading back to the ship. A nice cool ending to a pretty nice day in St. Lucia.
Back on board, it’s our normal routine, gym, dinner, show. Now we are ready for our non-traditional tour day in Trinidad.
11/27–St. Lucia–St. Mark’s and La Toc Battery
We are on a ship’s tour today. I know, I know, it’s totally surprising, but we really didn’t have any idea what else to do, we couldn’t find a car rental (and once we are here, we see there is good reason why) and don’t cherish the idea of spending a whole day onboard without anything planned. Thus, the ship’s tour. Although, once again (we’re not sure how we have done this), we think we are going on a different tour than what we have booked. We have one print out, but it doesn’t match our itinerary. Not that it matters – they are both scenic tours, so what ever! We have 20 in our group, which is fairly manageable, and our tour guide, Genil, is adorable and fun. We’ve already been warned about the transportation (Oceania is big on giving explanations/warnings about everything – in this case, the buses are Japanese, not ideal for people over the height of 6’2”, Max. weight is 250 lbs, etc., etc.), but honestly, it’s a fine little bus with really good A/C.
Genil gives us the basic history of the island. It was fought over by the British and the French for control of the harbor because it was safe and deep and was a refueling station for ships going further south. Each country won the island 7 times with the British finally prevailing. As we make our way up into the hills above the harbor, Genil gives us little facts: it is illegal to wear camouflage here (we already knew that from Sandy) because the police (military militia sort of – it’s some odd configuration of security personnel) where camo, and there was a time when people would wear camo and “cause trouble” then blame it on the police, thus the law prohibiting anyone but the police from wearing it); St. Lucia only got electricity in 1964; it takes 5 hours to drive around the island and there are no street signs to tell you where you are because, I think, there aren’t any street numbers to the houses? Maybe? I know for sure she told us the locals just give directions by landmarks and descriptions and that if you didn’t know how to drive in reverse, you couldn’t drive in St. Lucia, because you were always having to reverse to let cars pass from the opposite direction (which definitely explains why there were no car rental places available when we looked).
Our first stop is St. Mark’s, an old Colonial-era house at the top of the Morne Fortune mountain, reached by a tiny narrow switch back road facing the Castries Harbor. The house is owned by a shipping family, the man, a Scotsman married a local woman, and had a family who live here today (they only open the lower level to tours). They were obviously important society people here on the island with collections of African and European art, and a curio table filled with British royalty memorabilia, including this Fergie and Prince Andrew commemorative dish – obviously from far happier times.
The tour takes in the dining room, with beautiful mahogany furniture, precious glass and ceramics from around the world and the iconic painting of fishermen on a beach by a local artist. The light filled living room runs the entire width of the house and is decorated with overstuffed chairs, lovely Persian carpets and family photos on the grand piano in the corner (giving you a little odd feeling of intruding or spying or something – walking through someone else’s personal space while they are upstairs). Out back on the veranda we are treated to rum punch and fried bananas and plantains, which we take and then wander around the porch, looking at at the gorgeous views over the harbor.
A few minutes of looking at the scenery and we are back on the bus (after shooing off some ladies from the other bus who obviously got confused) and heading toward La Toc Battery, the British fort built in 1888 to protect the harbor against the French. While La Tock had an excellent location with views across every possible attack direction, the French never came back to claim the island, so the fort was abandoned in 1905 and sat unprotected and unpreserved for years.
Then, in the early ‘80s, Alice Bagshaw, who moved to the island from Pennsylvania (I believe) with her husband, bought the battery because she felt it was languishing and needed to be preserved for history. She spent hours researching the battery, even went to Britain and had help from the military there to uncover information regarding the building of the batter, and tons of money to rehabilitate the site, cutting down the overgrown trees and even hiring a guy with a big Catapillar tractor to move the one remaining cannon from the shell room to the top of the fort where it should be placed as originally used (PS – the story goes that Alice looked all over for someone or something to move the cannon, and this guy who owned the Catapillar said he could move anything, so he came up with the Catapillar, moved the cannon almost to the right spot before the tractor broke and had to be trucked out of the fort, never to be run again! Thus, the cannon is facing the wrong way, and there is a cylinder block from the Catapillar next to the cannon as a memorial.)
Alice was also an avid scuba diver and explored all the areas around the harbor, finding over 900 glass bottles from various eras which are now displayed in the soldiers’ war shelter area. We tour the bottle display, which is really quite fascinating, looking at how the bottles were originally found covered in barnacles and coral, then looking at all the different styles once they were cleaned (of particular interest were the blue bottles that were simply called “poison” bottles, because they were only used to store poisons).
We move from the war shelter to the shell store rooms, where in one there is a photo array from the restoration, all yellowed with age, but clearly showing Alice in the middle of the restorations – from original shots of the reforestation that took place over the old fort, to the removal of the foliage to that darn tractor! Then there is the display of shells, which Sunny just has to play on, but its getting far too warm in there to stay and let him run rampant over the displays, so we make our way outside for just a little breeze, hit the restroom and then wait with Genil for the rest of the group. As we are hanging out Genil tells us that Alice just turned 80 on Saturday, but she’s had to slow down recently because she fell and needed a hip replacement. The doctors told her to take it easy, and she’s had to close her silk screening business (she’s obviously a go getter!). It’s such a small island (even with 180,000 population), that Genil saw Alice the other day at the grocery store shopping. Sweet!
Genil gives us the basic history of the island. It was fought over by the British and the French for control of the harbor because it was safe and deep and was a refueling station for ships going further south. Each country won the island 7 times with the British finally prevailing. As we make our way up into the hills above the harbor, Genil gives us little facts: it is illegal to wear camouflage here (we already knew that from Sandy) because the police (military militia sort of – it’s some odd configuration of security personnel) where camo, and there was a time when people would wear camo and “cause trouble” then blame it on the police, thus the law prohibiting anyone but the police from wearing it); St. Lucia only got electricity in 1964; it takes 5 hours to drive around the island and there are no street signs to tell you where you are because, I think, there aren’t any street numbers to the houses? Maybe? I know for sure she told us the locals just give directions by landmarks and descriptions and that if you didn’t know how to drive in reverse, you couldn’t drive in St. Lucia, because you were always having to reverse to let cars pass from the opposite direction (which definitely explains why there were no car rental places available when we looked).
Our first stop is St. Mark’s, an old Colonial-era house at the top of the Morne Fortune mountain, reached by a tiny narrow switch back road facing the Castries Harbor. The house is owned by a shipping family, the man, a Scotsman married a local woman, and had a family who live here today (they only open the lower level to tours). They were obviously important society people here on the island with collections of African and European art, and a curio table filled with British royalty memorabilia, including this Fergie and Prince Andrew commemorative dish – obviously from far happier times.
The tour takes in the dining room, with beautiful mahogany furniture, precious glass and ceramics from around the world and the iconic painting of fishermen on a beach by a local artist. The light filled living room runs the entire width of the house and is decorated with overstuffed chairs, lovely Persian carpets and family photos on the grand piano in the corner (giving you a little odd feeling of intruding or spying or something – walking through someone else’s personal space while they are upstairs). Out back on the veranda we are treated to rum punch and fried bananas and plantains, which we take and then wander around the porch, looking at at the gorgeous views over the harbor.
A few minutes of looking at the scenery and we are back on the bus (after shooing off some ladies from the other bus who obviously got confused) and heading toward La Toc Battery, the British fort built in 1888 to protect the harbor against the French. While La Tock had an excellent location with views across every possible attack direction, the French never came back to claim the island, so the fort was abandoned in 1905 and sat unprotected and unpreserved for years.
Then, in the early ‘80s, Alice Bagshaw, who moved to the island from Pennsylvania (I believe) with her husband, bought the battery because she felt it was languishing and needed to be preserved for history. She spent hours researching the battery, even went to Britain and had help from the military there to uncover information regarding the building of the batter, and tons of money to rehabilitate the site, cutting down the overgrown trees and even hiring a guy with a big Catapillar tractor to move the one remaining cannon from the shell room to the top of the fort where it should be placed as originally used (PS – the story goes that Alice looked all over for someone or something to move the cannon, and this guy who owned the Catapillar said he could move anything, so he came up with the Catapillar, moved the cannon almost to the right spot before the tractor broke and had to be trucked out of the fort, never to be run again! Thus, the cannon is facing the wrong way, and there is a cylinder block from the Catapillar next to the cannon as a memorial.)
Alice was also an avid scuba diver and explored all the areas around the harbor, finding over 900 glass bottles from various eras which are now displayed in the soldiers’ war shelter area. We tour the bottle display, which is really quite fascinating, looking at how the bottles were originally found covered in barnacles and coral, then looking at all the different styles once they were cleaned (of particular interest were the blue bottles that were simply called “poison” bottles, because they were only used to store poisons).
We move from the war shelter to the shell store rooms, where in one there is a photo array from the restoration, all yellowed with age, but clearly showing Alice in the middle of the restorations – from original shots of the reforestation that took place over the old fort, to the removal of the foliage to that darn tractor! Then there is the display of shells, which Sunny just has to play on, but its getting far too warm in there to stay and let him run rampant over the displays, so we make our way outside for just a little breeze, hit the restroom and then wait with Genil for the rest of the group. As we are hanging out Genil tells us that Alice just turned 80 on Saturday, but she’s had to slow down recently because she fell and needed a hip replacement. The doctors told her to take it easy, and she’s had to close her silk screening business (she’s obviously a go getter!). It’s such a small island (even with 180,000 population), that Genil saw Alice the other day at the grocery store shopping. Sweet!
Monday, November 25, 2019
11/24 to 11/25–Sea Days
The first sea day keeps us busy going from the history/cultural lecturer (we have once again lucked out, Sandy Cares, the lecturer is fabulous with her teaching background, she makes every presentation very interesting and full of fascinating facts), the chef cooking demonstration, the afternoon movie (The Hustle – stupid, but we sat through the whole thing) then back to Sandy’s lecture. Sort of fills up the day.
The show is the production cast, who are great, and the cruise director is originally from Asheville! We will eventually corner him to talk about our hometown, but in the meantime, he’s fun to watch and listen to his jokes and entertaining information.
We have 2 comedians onboard – one an Irish comedian who is quite funny and the other an American who does comedy and magic, also funny, but not as much as the Irishman. I’m going to jump ahead here, because they both put on 2 shows each over then next 4 days, and while we enjoy both, man, this is a tough crowd. At 2 of the shows, we were the only ones laughing. We think a lot of the jokes just went right over peoples’ heads. It was a little brutal there in those shows.
Aside from that, we do our norm – gym, lectures, lunch, lectures, gym, dinner, show. I’m not going to bore you with everything – suffice it to say – this is just the sea day placeholder!
The show is the production cast, who are great, and the cruise director is originally from Asheville! We will eventually corner him to talk about our hometown, but in the meantime, he’s fun to watch and listen to his jokes and entertaining information.
We have 2 comedians onboard – one an Irish comedian who is quite funny and the other an American who does comedy and magic, also funny, but not as much as the Irishman. I’m going to jump ahead here, because they both put on 2 shows each over then next 4 days, and while we enjoy both, man, this is a tough crowd. At 2 of the shows, we were the only ones laughing. We think a lot of the jokes just went right over peoples’ heads. It was a little brutal there in those shows.
Aside from that, we do our norm – gym, lectures, lunch, lectures, gym, dinner, show. I’m not going to bore you with everything – suffice it to say – this is just the sea day placeholder!
Saturday, November 23, 2019
11/23–Oceania Insignia
Condo cleaned (well, beds stripped, trash out), car packed, we hit the road at our desired 8am departure time. It’s a little less than 3 hours to Miami, and we have a Dollar Tree stop in between, so we want to give ourselves plenty of time to turn in the car and get to the port. All goes according to plan: Dollar Tree is right on the way, where we stock up on cough drops and cough medicine (Yep, either the Red Tide got us, or the Celebrity Crud did – but we both have developed a cough – ugh!), along with other toiletry supplies; the drive across Alligator alley is smooth and relatively traffic free; we find the rental car return in Miami without a hitch (we switched from the port return office to one in a mall about 10 minutes from the port after we read reviews about how horrific the port office was, too small, standing in line for hours, shuttle taking forever – with 6 huge ships in port, no way we were getting into that mess); Uber to the port showed up fast and we were on our way a little before noon.
The port was – as I mentioned above – crazy busy with all the ships. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the pier location for Oceania, it was never mentioned in the doc’s and we thought there would be a big LED sign showing pier locations (as there is in Ft. Lauderdale, or maybe it’s Barcelona), but no such luck. We thought it was at E, so we fortunately directed our Uber driver to that area of the port while I frantically searched the web for info. I finally found something that said Oceania and Azamara type ships docked at Pier J, and after confirming this with a security guard, we continued all the way around the port complex to the last pier on the opposite side of the island. Phew!
Bags handled, porter tipped, we head upstairs to check in, which goes according to “status” – suites, concierge, etc., first, us verandah peons last. It took a while to get an open agent, but once at the desk it was quick and painless. Arriving onboard, we immediately headed to the Terrace cafe for lunch, but that wasn’t happening – it was jam packed without a table to be had. We traipsed out onto the Waves grill and patio area, managing to snag one of the last 2 tops available. Into the fray for lunch, where someone asked me what Steamship Round was, (we were served our steamship round – and everything else (one of the differences on Oceania, virtually everything on the buffet is served to you – with the exception of rolls and some fruit, you have to wait for a server for all food)and then back to the somewhat quieter patio/pool area. As we are eating, we are surveying the other passengers, and oh my gosh, the demographics are not at all what we expected. I am one of the youngest people on this ship, besides the crew! It’s amazing! And a good 1/3 of the ship have mobility issues (canes, walkers, wheel chairs). What are these people going to do in the Amazon where there are rainforest hike tours and little boats that need to be boarded to see the river and the sights??? This is going to be interesting……
After lunch we reserve our 4 specialty restaurant dinners, all late (8:00 and 8:30) because the suites and concierge got to reserve first and they took all the good times. But, nonetheless, we have 4 dates, including Thanksgiving, which will be nice. Then we settle in to wait for the cabins, which are available at 3pm. And then its the normal embarkation day, get the luggage, unpack, go to the muster drill, then try to find the Cruise Critic gathering for sailaway that is supposed to be in the Patio by the pool. That area though is where the band is playing, so the get together doesn’t really materialize, and we spend sailaway upstairs in the nice breeze watching Miami fade from view.
Off we go on our 25 day Caribbean and Amazon odyssey.
The port was – as I mentioned above – crazy busy with all the ships. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the pier location for Oceania, it was never mentioned in the doc’s and we thought there would be a big LED sign showing pier locations (as there is in Ft. Lauderdale, or maybe it’s Barcelona), but no such luck. We thought it was at E, so we fortunately directed our Uber driver to that area of the port while I frantically searched the web for info. I finally found something that said Oceania and Azamara type ships docked at Pier J, and after confirming this with a security guard, we continued all the way around the port complex to the last pier on the opposite side of the island. Phew!
Bags handled, porter tipped, we head upstairs to check in, which goes according to “status” – suites, concierge, etc., first, us verandah peons last. It took a while to get an open agent, but once at the desk it was quick and painless. Arriving onboard, we immediately headed to the Terrace cafe for lunch, but that wasn’t happening – it was jam packed without a table to be had. We traipsed out onto the Waves grill and patio area, managing to snag one of the last 2 tops available. Into the fray for lunch, where someone asked me what Steamship Round was, (we were served our steamship round – and everything else (one of the differences on Oceania, virtually everything on the buffet is served to you – with the exception of rolls and some fruit, you have to wait for a server for all food)and then back to the somewhat quieter patio/pool area. As we are eating, we are surveying the other passengers, and oh my gosh, the demographics are not at all what we expected. I am one of the youngest people on this ship, besides the crew! It’s amazing! And a good 1/3 of the ship have mobility issues (canes, walkers, wheel chairs). What are these people going to do in the Amazon where there are rainforest hike tours and little boats that need to be boarded to see the river and the sights??? This is going to be interesting……
After lunch we reserve our 4 specialty restaurant dinners, all late (8:00 and 8:30) because the suites and concierge got to reserve first and they took all the good times. But, nonetheless, we have 4 dates, including Thanksgiving, which will be nice. Then we settle in to wait for the cabins, which are available at 3pm. And then its the normal embarkation day, get the luggage, unpack, go to the muster drill, then try to find the Cruise Critic gathering for sailaway that is supposed to be in the Patio by the pool. That area though is where the band is playing, so the get together doesn’t really materialize, and we spend sailaway upstairs in the nice breeze watching Miami fade from view.
Off we go on our 25 day Caribbean and Amazon odyssey.
Monday, November 18, 2019
11/18 - 23–Sanibel, what can we say?
It’s like coming home, sort of, although they always say you can’t come home again. But here, well, you really can. It is like we’ve not been away for 3 or 4 years now. Virtually everything is the same, same restaurants, same shops, same same. We are staying in a completely different location, though, right off the causeway on the Bay side, overlooking Punta Rassa and the mainland. The condo is really nice, 2 bedroom, 2 bath. Great kitchen and open floor plan. The lanai never gets sun, which is perfect – its even cold out there – but we’d rather that than the baking hot sun. Weather has been fantastic, 70’s during the day and low 60’s with a tradewind at night. Couldn’t ask for more.
We did the circuit of the island plus Captiva and Ding Darling on Tuesday, hung out Wednesday then did errands. Walked the beach on Thursday and went for our anniversary dinner at Il Tesoro on Friday. All in all a great 5 days. Will we come back? Maybe. It is so familiar and comfortable, but then again, so is Asheville in the winter, just a tad colder (but we also have a fireplace there, so, really who cares?).
Next up: Oceania Insignia and the Amazon!
We did the circuit of the island plus Captiva and Ding Darling on Tuesday, hung out Wednesday then did errands. Walked the beach on Thursday and went for our anniversary dinner at Il Tesoro on Friday. All in all a great 5 days. Will we come back? Maybe. It is so familiar and comfortable, but then again, so is Asheville in the winter, just a tad colder (but we also have a fireplace there, so, really who cares?).
Next up: Oceania Insignia and the Amazon!
11/18–Off to Sanibel
Debarkation was a dream. So smooth. We all (crew included) were worried and expecting the worst, but hoping for the best. And the best is what we got. Went off exactly as scheduled. The first walk off passengers left at 6:30 and we went on from there. We didn’t have to rush so much, we had reserved the car for 9am, so we had plenty of time. We had breakfast in Luminae, said goodbye to all our great waitstaff, then gathered our backpacks and hit the gangway a little before 8. What the heck, we’re ready – we’ll hopefully not be charged extra for the car.
We exited in the Suites/Global Entry line, which as per usual was probably slower than the normal lines, but again- we aren’t in any rush! Outside we had to walk forever to get to the taxi line, but once there – there was no line and we were in the car and out of the port in no time. 10 minutes later we are at the rental car center and heading in to get our car. Seamless. Except for the couple (on our cruise, and even in a suite because we’ve seen them in Michaels and Luminae) who are virtually running into the car rental center. We’re just walking over to the building, fast, yes, because that’s how we walk, but not crazy rushing. This woman is bound an determined to get there first. Fine, we don’t care. But as we get into the building, she hesitates to look at the directional signs, and we just walk toward the Budget rental counter. She’s behind us now as we make our way along the Disneyesque rope line, but suddenly, she just ducks under the rope line to end up at the front of the line – directly in front of us. I’ve just had enough, so I look at her and say “really?” And she looks and says, “Oh, I was going to let you go in front of us.” Yeah, right. I swear……people!
Sigh.
Now at the rental counter, the agent says she doesn’t have our compact car, but can upgrade us for $10/day. No. We don’t want a bigger car and we aren’t paying $10/day, so she goes outside to find a car. 10 minutes later (yeah, she was gone a long time), she comes back and says she doesn’t have a compact, but she is upgrading us for free. Well, thanks, that’s very nice. Finally we get to the car, and upgrade, it may be, but it hasn’t been washed, there are all sorts of odd marks on it (looks like tape or something? We took pictures to cover ourselves) and it smells suspiciously like smoke. Great upgrade. But, at least we’re on the road, and its way earlier than we had even dreamed.
We make it to Ft. Myers for shopping by 10:30, then get gas (because the gas wasn’t full either!!!) and arrive on Sanibel a little after noon to check into our totally cool unit in Mariner’s Pointe. This is the first time we’ve been on the Bay side of the island, and this little unit is fantastic. It’s a 2 bedroom, 2 bath, all nicely updated with a fantastic lanai that overlooks the bay and the causeway bridge. It’s absolutely perfect. We settle in (the only negative is that is on the 3rd floor and hauling those suitcases up those stairs is a workout!), organize and relax a bit before hitting The Jac (new owners, remodeled!!!) for happy hour (still great apps for $6 and cheap(er) wine and beer) and then lanai sitting and relaxing for the rest of the night.
We exited in the Suites/Global Entry line, which as per usual was probably slower than the normal lines, but again- we aren’t in any rush! Outside we had to walk forever to get to the taxi line, but once there – there was no line and we were in the car and out of the port in no time. 10 minutes later we are at the rental car center and heading in to get our car. Seamless. Except for the couple (on our cruise, and even in a suite because we’ve seen them in Michaels and Luminae) who are virtually running into the car rental center. We’re just walking over to the building, fast, yes, because that’s how we walk, but not crazy rushing. This woman is bound an determined to get there first. Fine, we don’t care. But as we get into the building, she hesitates to look at the directional signs, and we just walk toward the Budget rental counter. She’s behind us now as we make our way along the Disneyesque rope line, but suddenly, she just ducks under the rope line to end up at the front of the line – directly in front of us. I’ve just had enough, so I look at her and say “really?” And she looks and says, “Oh, I was going to let you go in front of us.” Yeah, right. I swear……people!
Sigh.
Now at the rental counter, the agent says she doesn’t have our compact car, but can upgrade us for $10/day. No. We don’t want a bigger car and we aren’t paying $10/day, so she goes outside to find a car. 10 minutes later (yeah, she was gone a long time), she comes back and says she doesn’t have a compact, but she is upgrading us for free. Well, thanks, that’s very nice. Finally we get to the car, and upgrade, it may be, but it hasn’t been washed, there are all sorts of odd marks on it (looks like tape or something? We took pictures to cover ourselves) and it smells suspiciously like smoke. Great upgrade. But, at least we’re on the road, and its way earlier than we had even dreamed.
We make it to Ft. Myers for shopping by 10:30, then get gas (because the gas wasn’t full either!!!) and arrive on Sanibel a little after noon to check into our totally cool unit in Mariner’s Pointe. This is the first time we’ve been on the Bay side of the island, and this little unit is fantastic. It’s a 2 bedroom, 2 bath, all nicely updated with a fantastic lanai that overlooks the bay and the causeway bridge. It’s absolutely perfect. We settle in (the only negative is that is on the 3rd floor and hauling those suitcases up those stairs is a workout!), organize and relax a bit before hitting The Jac (new owners, remodeled!!!) for happy hour (still great apps for $6 and cheap(er) wine and beer) and then lanai sitting and relaxing for the rest of the night.
Sunday, November 17, 2019
11/17–Land ahoy–Nassau!
Six days, and finally there is land. Although, quite frankly, this crossing was so great, we didn’t really care all that much. It wasn’t like we were dying to get off onto dry land, but, as it is our last port, we of course will go ashore.
But not quickly! Our game plan is to get off around 11 or so, then walk down to Arawak Cay, the Fish Fry, and have lunch at Curly’s (where we’ve been before) or some other restaurant over there. Since its a slow day, we order breakfast in the cabin, which of course means we aren’t hungry at all by the time we finally make our way off the ship at 11. But, hey, we can just wander. Which we do. We hit the Straw Market which really doesn’t do much for us, beachy stuff, carved wood – we're just not into the market. But the interesting thing is that there are quite a few shops that have notices from the market that they are closed and cannot be opened – and we are assuming they haven’t paid their rent or something, because all the merchandise is there, just behind big tarps with the notice. The bubble is everywhere…..
After the Straw Market, we head toward Arawak, but end up stopping at the Tiki Hut at Junkanoo Beach because a guy handed us a flyer for drink specials.Well, what the hell! We could get 3 beers for $12, which for Nassau is pretty cheap. So, we hung out at the bar, with the blaring music, where they (so smartly!!!) made you clean your hands with Purel (I mean, the bartender literally held the bottle out and squirted it into our hands after we ordered – no opt-out option!). I love it!
To cement our happiness here, another bartender asks how we are doing, and when we ask him how he is doing, he says, “I can drink for free all day, how do you think I’m doing?” Best reply ever!3 beers later (shared between the 2 of us, of course!), we wander down to the beach to just watch the goings on – it is packed. Every beach chair filled, tons of crew (there are 3 ships in port), plus an adorable bachelorette party with the bride in a white bathing suite with great captains cap and veil, and all her bridesmaids in hot pink one pieces with “Girls get Nauti” on the front, and little black lace puffs on the back. Cute! Yep, it’s party city here – especially with a Carnival ship in port.
We decide we are not hungry enough to go to Arawak Cay, and just head back toward the port, stopping at Pirate Republic for beers and snacks. We spend a great hour or two (slow service, but what do we care?) sitting on the 2nd floor balcony, watching the world go by, with Coconut Porter (yum), Pilsner, chicken wings and a pretzel and beer cheese (good, but not stellar – although at this point with all the beer, its exactly what we need!).
Back on the ship, we finish our packing and just sort of hang out until we sail. Gym, one last beer and wine from Mark at the Pool bar, then of course Michael’s – where we find out we are famous! Ed, because as one of the lady’s has said – you always get your own beer – you want a glass tonight? That’s different. And I sit next to a guy who looks at me, as Cransdon gives me my bottle of wine to pour, and says “Oh, you’re the one who pours her own wine!” Yep! That’s me! Cransdon’s been doing that since maybe day 3? If he’s busy, he just puts the wine bottle on the bar and gives me a glass. I know how to do the rest! Too funny!
Dinner – excellent as always – Comedian, completely funny (to us – the rest of crowd was really slow to get into his act), and then to bed for our last night in our awesome little sky suite on the Reflection. People choose this ship as the best on the seas – and quite frankly, even though we know we have been in the “suite” bubble, it has been absolutely fantastic. Can’t say enough about it – just a fabulous 2 weeks.
And now….. we are off to Sanibel…a homecoming of sorts!
But not quickly! Our game plan is to get off around 11 or so, then walk down to Arawak Cay, the Fish Fry, and have lunch at Curly’s (where we’ve been before) or some other restaurant over there. Since its a slow day, we order breakfast in the cabin, which of course means we aren’t hungry at all by the time we finally make our way off the ship at 11. But, hey, we can just wander. Which we do. We hit the Straw Market which really doesn’t do much for us, beachy stuff, carved wood – we're just not into the market. But the interesting thing is that there are quite a few shops that have notices from the market that they are closed and cannot be opened – and we are assuming they haven’t paid their rent or something, because all the merchandise is there, just behind big tarps with the notice. The bubble is everywhere…..
After the Straw Market, we head toward Arawak, but end up stopping at the Tiki Hut at Junkanoo Beach because a guy handed us a flyer for drink specials.Well, what the hell! We could get 3 beers for $12, which for Nassau is pretty cheap. So, we hung out at the bar, with the blaring music, where they (so smartly!!!) made you clean your hands with Purel (I mean, the bartender literally held the bottle out and squirted it into our hands after we ordered – no opt-out option!). I love it!
To cement our happiness here, another bartender asks how we are doing, and when we ask him how he is doing, he says, “I can drink for free all day, how do you think I’m doing?” Best reply ever!3 beers later (shared between the 2 of us, of course!), we wander down to the beach to just watch the goings on – it is packed. Every beach chair filled, tons of crew (there are 3 ships in port), plus an adorable bachelorette party with the bride in a white bathing suite with great captains cap and veil, and all her bridesmaids in hot pink one pieces with “Girls get Nauti” on the front, and little black lace puffs on the back. Cute! Yep, it’s party city here – especially with a Carnival ship in port.
We decide we are not hungry enough to go to Arawak Cay, and just head back toward the port, stopping at Pirate Republic for beers and snacks. We spend a great hour or two (slow service, but what do we care?) sitting on the 2nd floor balcony, watching the world go by, with Coconut Porter (yum), Pilsner, chicken wings and a pretzel and beer cheese (good, but not stellar – although at this point with all the beer, its exactly what we need!).
Back on the ship, we finish our packing and just sort of hang out until we sail. Gym, one last beer and wine from Mark at the Pool bar, then of course Michael’s – where we find out we are famous! Ed, because as one of the lady’s has said – you always get your own beer – you want a glass tonight? That’s different. And I sit next to a guy who looks at me, as Cransdon gives me my bottle of wine to pour, and says “Oh, you’re the one who pours her own wine!” Yep! That’s me! Cransdon’s been doing that since maybe day 3? If he’s busy, he just puts the wine bottle on the bar and gives me a glass. I know how to do the rest! Too funny!
Dinner – excellent as always – Comedian, completely funny (to us – the rest of crowd was really slow to get into his act), and then to bed for our last night in our awesome little sky suite on the Reflection. People choose this ship as the best on the seas – and quite frankly, even though we know we have been in the “suite” bubble, it has been absolutely fantastic. Can’t say enough about it – just a fabulous 2 weeks.
And now….. we are off to Sanibel…a homecoming of sorts!
Saturday, November 16, 2019
11/11 to 11/16–Sea days
It’s all about the routine! Well, I shouldn’t say that, but we do fall in to a predictable pattern of our days. There are 4 lecturers aboard, 2 we have sailed with before (Lisa, a teacher and historian who is delightfully entertaining and Steve, a Titanic historian who has great stories and anecdotes about the ship and the disaster) and 2 new folks (Elliot who was a sports broadcaster/editor/producer for NBC and is “that guy” who has all the answers and provides a lot of the color commentary for the announcers, and Pino, and Italian engineer who talks about the “blue” technology of the sailing industry, i.e., clean technology). Needless to say, with 4 lecturers, we’re busy all day long.
So, that’s how we’ve spent our days, learning interesting facts about Spain, Brothels (yes, Lisa has 2 presentations on brothels – the first women CEOs in America!), behind the scenes at the Superbowl, plastic pollution in the ocean and the orphans of the Titanic.
In between of course we have time for drinks and food. I don’t normally rave about ship food, the Luminae food is all excellent, but there is one dish that has stood out so far: Hamachi tartar in an avocado. This thing was a) beautifully plated, and b) extraordinarily tasty! So I had to take a picture. That’s a sliced avocado halved formed over top the Hamachi tartar with fish flakes and roe on top. What can I say?
We spent our days in lectures, our nights on the balcony watching the water. And I saw my first shooting star! So exciting! I couldn’t believe it. So of course every night I scanned the skies for more, but no, that was my only one. It was enough! Pretty awesome.
Sunday, November 10, 2019
11/10–La Laguna and back to Santa Cruz Tenerife
It’s an easy drive back down to La Laguna – one road (albeit narrow) that leads right into town. We find the parking lot easily enough, although it is a pay lot and everything I saw said it was free – it is what it is. Then we commence to wander into town (after I unknowingly drop the parking ticket on the ground, and thankfully Ed sees it, so I can rescue it. That would have been a disaster!). We pass through the Plaza del Adelantado with its beautifully manicured trees and church on one side and monastery on the other. Crossing the street, we walk into the pedestrian area under a canopy of Christmas lights that ruin the effect of the 15th century buildings, but probably look gorgeous at night. The town’s layout was used as a template for lots of cities and towns across Spain and in the new world, and it does have a familiar feel to it – grand buildings lining cobblestone streets, huge churches on pretty squares and cafes with outdoor tables dotting the street.
Our first stop is the Cathedral De La Laguna, where a christening is being held. The interior of the church is immense with high white washed walls and gothic arches. The main altar, where the babies are being blessed, is surrounded by beautiful stained glass windows, and leads to the long center aisle that ends with a monstrous organ. A side chapel holds a gorgeous golden Jesus. Beautiful. Outside, the cathedral is the typical white and grey stonework design seen in most of these islands. Further into the village, we pass the Teatro Leal, then ending at the Iglesia de la Concepcion with its tall brown stone bell tower grandly presiding over the town. It’s a beautiful little town, and a nice walk, but oh boy is it crowded – and mostly with what appear to be locals. It’s a lovely Sunday morning, and obviously everyone is out for a stroll and maybe a bite to eat.
We’ve researched 2 restaurants here, both near the car park, but our first choice has conflicting opening times. Knowing we have options, we head back that way, finding a really pretty little church square directly across the street from the, yes, closed restaurant. They open at 1, but that’s far too late for us and our 3:30 all aboard time. Plan B time again, we walk to the next block to La Cava de Aguere, a wine bar that looks like it has good tapas. Success this time, as they are open, and completely empty – we’re their only customers so far today. A lovely older couple owns and operates the cafe, the wife front of house, hubby back of house. Taking a seat at a front table, the wife greets us and doesn’t appear to speak much English, which is fine, I can practice my broken Spanish! She does have English menus, which is a huge help, and we settle on a plate of sausage and 1/2 ration of cheese for Ed, along with the special “fried” artichokes with Iberico for me, adding a 1/2 portion of bread with which to wash everything down. Ed of course has beer, now I must choose the wine. I have my painful Spanish discussion, basically saying I’d like white wine, and can she suggest something. I also tell here I like everything, pero Chardonnay no! She asks if I want wine from the Canaries or from the peninsula, and I tell her either, so she brings over 2 to taste. Both are excellent, but I end up choosing the one from Lanzarote, which is quite good and has a really interesting bottle. We happily sip our beer and wine, waiting for the food. Ed’s comes out first of course, being easily prepared. Mine takes a bit longer, and when it arrives, the artichokes aren’t actually fried, but baked (actually microwaved – we wondered what Papa could possibly be cooking in the micro back there, now we know!), they are soaked (almost poached) in this excellent rosemary laced olive oil and literally melt in your mouth. So very good! After another round of drinks, we finish up our meal, and I decide to splurge on a bottle of Lanzarote wine (a whole 16 Euros!) to take back with me. I figure if they take it when we board, I’ll have it for Sanibel anyway.
The parking lot is only a block away, and we find the parking quite reasonable at a total of 1.05 Euros. We can even pay that in cash! The ride back into Santa Cruz is simple, as is navigating into the port. The only drawback is that it is Sunday and there isn’t a grocery store open on the island, so we have no way to stock up for the crossing, or buy gifts for the crew. That’s a little bit of a bummer.
Car turned in, walk back to the ship accomplished, we spend the rest of the afternoon on the balcony watching the comings and goings of passengers up and down the dock. There’s something going on with us, we must be missing someone, because we have officers on the dock looking toward the port gates and a guy on a phone, also looking down the dock. A shuttle bus pulls up about 5 minutes before we are scheduled to leave, but then quickly pulls away and we can see if anyone gets off or not. But, end up sailing right on time, so, who knows? Unless we can coax the information out of someone, we’ll just have a mystery on our hands.
We do have one mystery solved, though. When we arrived back in our room we had a note from a new butler telling us Rudolf, our original butler has left the ship due to a medical emergency, which of course concerns us, because he seemed fine, but we didn’t see him that often. Nemanja, who is taking over for Rudolf comes to meet us and lets us know Rudolf is being treated reportedly doing well. He has high blood pressure and diabetes and they were concerned about him staying on during the crossing. That’s a relief. We had a helicopter medical evacuation on Saturday, but that apparently was a passenger. There was an ambulance this morning at the pier, and that may have been Rudolf. To add to this medically challenged segment of the blog, one of the Cruise Critic folks disembarked today in Tenerife as well. He had high blood pressure issues and the medical staff were concerned about him crossing so he and his wife (who organized all the cruise critic activities) left and were flying home.
On that note – we are now sailing across the Atlantic, in a little bit of rocky seas, on our way to Nassau on Sunday!
11/10–On to Chinamada (Tenerife)
Our goal is Chinamada, a community high up in the Anaga mountain range, consisting entirely of homes that built out of caves. Supposedly 2/3 of the cave homes are underground, with only satellite dishes protruding out the top. There is also a restaurant up there where I had thought we could have lunch, although with our aborted hike, we are too early for lunch at this point. But no matter, off we go on increasingly more narrow roads to see what we can see.
Once we turn off the main forest route, we find ourselves on a seriously one-lane road that winds along the sides of the cliffs facing the valleys and then the sea. It’s really sort of mind-boggling how people can live out here! There isn’t anything for miles and all of a sudden a house pops up. Then a whole huge community, called Rio, appears out of nowhere with may 20+ houses? And on that road? You have to be hardy to live on this part of the island, that’s for certain.
We’re captivated by views, less so by the road, but we’re extraordinarily lucky that there is no one else out driving this early on a Sunday morning. We stop as much as we can to take pictures of the little villages, the gorgeous green terraced gardens and then these amazingly huge mountain formations, one with this large chiseled peak proudly sitting at the top. It’s just gorgeous. Finally, we start to see little dwellings appear, tucked into alcoves in the mountains. Then, boom, we are here – at the end of the road in Chinamada. Here is the restaurant, La Cueva, all locked up and definitely closed (even though they say they are open at 10a – which is only about 10 minutes away) and a little school or church or community center or something where the parking lot is located.
We hop out to investigate and end up just walking around the little lanes, looking at the little garages cut into the rock, and houses literally built into the mountain. We now see what they mean about being 2/3 underground, only the front portion of most houses is on display, the rest lying underneath the rock. Crazy! Hiking up a path, we pass an abandoned looking house (hey, fixer upper! Let’s buy it and move here! Ha! Not that I couldn’t spend the rest of my life just staring out at the incredible landscape, but there is no way on earth I’m learning how to drive on that little teensy narrow road to get here!) and more lived in houses (one has a dog, so it is definitely occupied) that apparently you need a cart on which to haul any supplies up. The steep path leads to an over look facing The Roque de los Pinos, a volcanic dome that has somehow amassed a forest of Canarian Pines on it. Beyond the rock, the volcanic peaks stretch away falling off into the ocean in the distance. Fabulous.
Wandering back down the path, we get a good look at the restaurant, and how the facade is built into the rock. You can see the concrete that is used to meld the roofline into the mountain face. In the distance you can see this type of construction on all the houses up here. It would be so cool if we could tour some of these places, but, of course, they are private homes, so unless we meet some random friendly local who invites us in, we’ll just have to live with our imagination. Turning the corner at the end of the path, we reach the literal end of the road, with a bunch of trucks equipped with what looks like dog cages parked along the side. There is another path here that takes you down the hillside, through beautiful terraced fields. We wander down it a bit, enjoying the spectacular views, but turn around relatively quickly – we’re not hiking the whole 4.4k to the next village as the sign post indicates! There are tons and tons of trails here, which would be great if we were staying here for a few days and not on a tight schedule of a few hours.
Back to the car, we get organized to retrace our drive down the mountain, now aiming for La Laguna, a World UNESCO heritage site (that a lot of the tours are going to visit, but if we can find parking, it is the perfect place for lunch). As we are getting ready to leave a car comes flying up the road and goes into the restaurant. Guess they really are opening, just a little late. But that’s ok, we’ve got our Plan B locked and loaded. We head out, Ed brilliantly navigating the teeny little roads. As we proceed though, there are more cars on the road. One that backs up to let us pass, and another one at the entrance to Las Carboneras that stops on the side of the road so we can pass and wind our way through the definitely one lane (but 2 way) street through the village. Phew.
We make it back to the main road without seeing anyone else besides some hikers, but as we are turning downhill, a line of cars are coming up and turning toward Chinamada. Good time to get out of Dodge! We won’t have to worry about passing on that teeny precipice lined road. As we descend back into the valley, we decide to stop at the Mirador Las Ingles for a quick peek. Arriving at the turnaround, we find the walkway roped off with danger signs. There is some falling down looking building on the side of the stone pathway also blocked off. We console ourselves by taking a few pictures looking back over mountainsides with clouds that look like they are separated from the peaks by some sort of force field, hovering just above them and following their contours. We don’t know what the Ingles Peak looks like, but this is a pretty gorgeous alternative. As we are retreating to the safety of the car, another car comes up and the driver (a guy) decides he’s going out on the closed viewpoint anyway, he just moves the big blockade fences and squeezes around. His girlfriend is not so adventurous and stays by the car. We don’t wait to see what happens, but instead head back toward the main road, stopping at this little road that is cut through the rock walls.
Turns out this is the beginning (or end) of a trail that leads down to the Pico de las Ingles we were just trying to see from the overlook. A group of hikers has just finished their hike and are taking a really cute selfie as we head through the narrow entrance to the trail. It’s a fabulous view, the rock walls leaning so closely into the lane, all moss covered and carved from years of rain water running down their face. Ferns crowd the bottom of the walls, with pines crowning the top, leaning in, making for a very pretty canopy above. We wander down the lane far enough to see it proceeds far downhill, to far for us to try it out. As it turns out, it is probably a pretty long and strenuous hike, so our decision to go back to the car was the right one.
Continuing on our journey downhill and out of the mountains, we pass car after car coming up into the park. When we get to Cruz del Carmen, where we were virtually alone just a few hours ago, the parking lot is packed and cars are parked haphazardly all over the road for meters before and after the entrance. Wow! It’s the same when we reach the Mirador Jardin, it was jam packed with cars and people! When we were there we were all alone! OMG, it so pays to get up and out early. Now our aborted hike looks like an even better decision since it meant we missed most all of the traffic (human and automotive) on the way in and out of Chinamada!
11/10 - Tenerife
Its another early morning on the ship – we are docking at 7 and there are 4 other ships in with us today, so we want to make absolutely certain we are at the Cicar rental office first. Luckily, we are the first ship in, and even though we are at the 2nd to last berth (sigh), we figure we can still beat everyone else to the car rental. So, we set the alarm, get up, shower, breakfast and head out around 7:15, even though the office doesn’t open until 8.
It’s a long walk over to the ferry terminal building, but since we skipped the gym this morning, this counts! The weather looks variable – cloudy with spits of raindrops. It’s a lot warmer than it looks too, so by the time we are at the office, we are pretty drenched, even without all the layers. We hang out downstairs in the ferry terminal, waiting to see if anyone comes to the office. After a couple of wrong staircases, we finally manage to figure out how to get up to the 2nd floor – they’ve got all the doors locked, which seems strange to us (I even had to rescue a crew guy who walked up there and got stuck in the vestibule between 2 locked doors!). There’s a big sign saying that if this office is closed, check the office in the parking lot, but we take that to mean that if they are closed during siesta go to the lot. So, we stand up by the office, hoping someone will show up before the Costa ship disgorges its 100’s of passengers who you know won’t have a problem renting and driving cars all over the island (our ship passengers, not so much!!). We figure if no one comes by 8:10, we’ll call them.
As we hang out on the 2nd floor balcony overlooking the ferry ticket office, a port police guy walks by, and gives us this weird look, like what are you doing there you stupid Americans, but doesn’t say anything. Then a few minutes later, another guy walks by, looks up and says, that office is closed, you need to go out into the parking lot. Muchas Gracias Senor! At least he was nice enough to say something! Now we understand why Google Maps kept sending us to the parking lot where the cars are located – we knew to park there, but the office there if brand spanking new.
So, we hoof it back to the lot, and fortunately are the only customers there a little after 8am. We get our car, then as we are setting up the GPS and organizing we look over to the office, and there is a line a mile long. Good timing!!! And we’re off – heading toward the northern end of the island and the Anaga Rural Park. But first we must find gas, because we only have 1/4 of a tank.
The first station we see is inaccessible from the highway on which we are traveling, so we figure we’ll find one somewhere up the road. There must be service areas along the highway. Not! We are already off on the rural road going into the mountains and nary a gas station to be found. Ed just pulls off on the first exit, and I quickly Google gas stations, luckily finding one pretty close to the exit and we are saved from running out of gas in the middle of some little mountain road. Big relief – and it turns out that we are in the town I had on our itinerary for later in the afternoon. Pretty funny!
Gassed and ready to roll, we resume our drive up into the volcanic mountains of Tenerife. The crowded village buildings quickly give way to forests as we navigate the small little windy road that rises up into the mountains. There was obviously a big storm here last night or earlier this morning, because the roads are soaking wet and strewn with tree and rock debris, making driving even more interesting! It’s still cloudy and overcast up here in the mountains, and with every turn, the wind gets stronger, whipping the trees around us. We pass through areas where we can just see over the edge of the road with sweeping vistas, then are plunged into darkness as we drive through tunnels of trees that form a canopy over the road.
We reach Mirador Jardin, the first overlook pretty quickly, hopping out of the car to take some photos, where we realize just exactly how much the weather has changed! It is wicked cold and windy up here – time to layer back up. Cold and wind aside, it is absolutely gorgeous up here with long views down the valley and into the town of La Laguna and out across the Eastern mountains to the sea. Stunning, and we’re all alone up here with the view all to ourselves. Climbing back into the car, more for warmth than for any rush to really leave, we continue our upward journey through more tree tunnels and around more craggy rocky roadsides to reach Cruz del Carmen, the trail head for the hike we want to take today.
There’s still plenty of parking in the Anaga information center lot, so we snag a space and go look at the informational signs. We’re too early for the info center (which is a bummer because I wanted to get more information on the park and trails), so we just head into the forest to begin a short hike on the Path of the Senses, a 1 1/4K loop trail that takes you along the old royal road than linked the towns of Anaga and La Laguna. We start out on a boardwalk lined with moss covered trees, that takes us into the fresh smelling forest. Then the boardwalk ends, and the muddiness begins. The rest of the trail is a series of earthen paths, slick from the rain, with only occasional wooden steps or planks set in. It’s gorgeous, and a little eerie with a lot of fallen trees and precariously leaning trees. The loop trail we want descends down to the Mirador del Llano de los Loros, where there are said to be great views of Santa Cruz and the dam of Tahodio, but we realize pretty quickly on that we aren’t going to make it there. While not exactly treacherous, the muddiness of the path makes for really poor traction, even in our good lugged shoes. Plus, we are descending, and you know the old saying – what goes down, must come up (ok, ok, you get my point though). We make an executive decision to abandon the outlook and turn back uphill to return to the car park.
We didn’t get as far as we would have liked, but caution is the better part of valor, and we’re further validated by a sign post on the trail that says “In wet weather conditions or when humidity is high, mud may impeded your journey along this path. In such circumstances we recommend you return to Cruz del Carmen via the footpath that led you to this point.” Gotcha, we’re turning back!
It was still a lovely walk through gorgeous forest and undergrowth, without another sole around. We diverted off on a couple of offshoot paths to find trail markers and display boards talking about how the area was once deforested and has now been replanted, and one area that was a firebreak but has been replanted now. You can totally tell the difference in the trees and bushes too, it was really fascinating. Back in the parking area, we walk out to the viewpoint at the end of the lot for more magnificent views over the valley, then we escape to the warm car and head further north into the rugged mountains.
Friday, November 8, 2019
11/8–Gibraltar
Today is a do nothing day. We had originally booked a wine tour, but it got cancelled so now we have no plans but to walk around the town for a bit, then go get lunch at Bruno’s the restaurant we like here!
We actually sleep in a bit, then hit the gym, breakfast and make our way out onto the dock by about 10 or so. The Azamara Journey is here with us – which is just so bittersweet since we were supposed be sailing her across the Atlantic until they cancelled the Cuba ports. Oh well, we’ve got Quest in February to look forward to at least.
So, into town we go. It’s a 20 minute walk which is warmer than we expected. There is a really cold wind, but the sun is up and shining making us really warm on our trek. We persevere and get into town proper – which is crazy bedlam crowded city! Yikes. We’re not staying here long – it’s just not comfortable! We head to the post office, mail the birthday card (our primary reason for coming into town), then boogie on back to the waterfront – with a pit stop at the grocery store where we find a great box of chocolate on sale that we can give to Lilyanna, our restaurant hostess (who we’ve sailed with before and ply with chocolates!).
Navigation successful (last time we had problems finding Bruno’s), we hang out snacking on that awesome Provoleta with chorizo and wings. It’s sort of a tradition now.
Then, well, it’s back to the ship to hang out in the windy sunshine on the balcony, waiting for sailaway.
It’s picture perfect as we sail, so we’ve got more photos of the Rock (like we need them!), then it’s onto our evening routine. Tomorrow, our first day at sea.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
11/7–Fuensanta Monastery and Cartegena
Once again, we are making our way up windy little roads into the hillside, arriving at the Fuensanta Monastery, where a miracle is said to have occurred. It has something to do with a holy fountain (thus the name Fuensanta) and the Madonna appearing to one of the hermits who used to take care of church. Whatever the miracle, it is important to pregnant women and women with new babies who come here to be blessed.
Beyond the miracles, it is just a gorgeous monastery perched up here in the hills. The views are spectacular, and the building itself is totally different with a facade of bricks interspersed with varying sized squares of river rock. Pretty impressive. So too the interior of the church. The black Madonna featured prominently in the altar was saved from the purges and the wars, and when everything was finally calm, it was revealed to the people of the city by displaying it on the balcony of one of the buildings in the heart of Murcia (the one with the weird Yeti type figurines above the doorway). The Madonna being saved was sort of another miracle, in its own way!
Another stunning feature of this church besides the gold and silver and stained glass windows, is the dome fresco. It simply stunning. A representation of all the different individuals, represented by their professions, who live in the area, all circling around Jesus. Totally unusual and unusually beautiful.
A few minutes left to wander, then its back to the van for the ride back to Cartegena. This is a jam packed tour, with no time for lunch really, so I’m glad we brought the last half of yesterday’s sandwich to snack on during the 45 minute ride back to the coast. Once in Cartegena, we proceed on a walking tour around the town. Cartegena is the 2nd biggest city in the region and is a strategic city. It was built here because it is easy to defend. Water on one side, and 5 mountains inside the city walls that allow defenders to see their opponents when they are miles away. There were numerous silver, lead and iron mines once in Cartegena, and we see a lot of tin roofed cuppolas in the building designs.
Cartegena lost a lot of its population when the mines were closed at the start of WWI. People migrated to S. America but also to Algeria when it was a French colony. Many became French citizens and then moved to France after Algeria claimed independence – so a lot of families have very mixed geneology.
There are some incredibly beautiful buildings here, very reminiscent in style to Barcelona architecture, because the main architect who helped rebuild the city after WWII went to school with Gaudi and had the same design principals. Lots of Eclectic style, but many Modern art using iron, glass and balconies as features.
There are also some really neat iron sculptures – like the one of the soldier sitting on a bench that I cuddle up to! Oh, and the weird head just sitting out in the middle of the grass. Definitely eclectic!
Our walk takes us through the town and around to different little areas of beautiful buildings towering over us. The surprising part of the walking tour are the Roman ruins that are all over the city. They were discovered when people tried to renovate buildings – the city requires any renovated building to provide parking underneath the structure. When developers began to dig for the parking lot, they found the ruins – which must be protected. We walk past parts of the old city walls, and view through a glass canopy, where the original city streets were built a full story lower than where we are standing. There’s a section of the ruins that has also been preserved inside a building where signs point out the layers and ages of the ruins (which is totally cool). As we walk toward the ampitheatre, there is a whole wall of photos that show how the progression of the excavations – how the city looked in certain years, and how each site was excavated. This is only a taste of the interesting artifacts and museums here, which works out well, because we’ll be back next year and now we have a whole list of things to do in the city!
We end the tour back in the main square, where half the group can hardly wait to be let loose into the shops (they were really frustrating Carlos asking him when the tour was going to be over and if they’d have time for shopping….ay yi yi). Anyway, we totally enjoyed this little introduction to Murcia and Cartegena, and Carlos was one of our best guides yet. Bidding farewell to Carlos, we head up the street for a beer and wine, then wander for a bit ourselves, window shopping and looking around.
Then, it’s back to the ship for our nightly routine and Gibraltar!
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