Day 21 Monday 26th January 2015 A sea day, with lots of sea and sun, and a few clouds.

On the port side we can see more of Mexico in the distance, shades of pale lilac mountain ranges against the blue sky.  We have stayed this close to the coast since we left Huatulco and are making great progress towards Cabo San Lucas, where we will arrive tomorrow morning.   It has been 26C most of the day, with a not at all unwelcome cloudy spell allowing very comfortable time in the pool area. Binoculars at the ready, and you will be the first to know if we spot a whale!

At dance lesson we had a go at Rumba One, which we now know is a sequence dance, and then a sequence quickstep to Irish country music – sorry I have forgotten its name, but it was fast and confusing. We then reviewed the Square Tango.  So in theory if we ever did go to a dance we could join in with…..waltz, foxtrot, tango, rumba, jive, cha-cha-cha, quickstep and a few sequence dances.  My only concern would be not having a teacher to call the steps out!!!!!  It is wonderful having a professional dance teacher once a day for an hour. He’s called Jeffrey Dobinson and was himself in the first stage performance of Cats, and today he had a call from his son in the middle of the class which he took, only to find out that his son has got the part in Cats of Mr Mistophiles (sorry about the spelling), so Jeffrey was very happy and excited for him.

Art gave those who are colour blind an opportunity to come into their own with a pencil drawing of Mohammed Ali as a young Cassius Clay.  I have to say Khachik is a most talented artist, and ought really to enjoy more pencil or charcoal drawing. His work will be highly sought after in the exhibition on 29^th.

It’s Australia Day today, and as there are over 100 Australian’s on board there are a lot of things happening to celebrate the day.  Judy and Jim two of our dining partners are from a village near Brisbane, and reminded us of a Barbie on deck tonight, so we are not having the Black Tie 5 Courser, but instead open air eating.

After our trip to Cabo tomorrow there are two sea days (and one art exhibition) to San Francisco.  We have already been forewarned about the logistics of 2000 people having face to face interviews with immigration in San Francisco, so hopefully the excursions will happen without too much delay, or any hiccups.  We are relieved to say we do have the right visa waiver documents.

We are planning an independent visit Alcatraz on 30^th and have booked a 1960s hippy trip with appropriate flower power music in a psychedelic bus on 31^st.  

Time to get ready for the Barbie. See you tomorrow.

Day 14 Monday 19th January 2015 – A day at sea on the way to Aruba

We are now sailing along the most northerly coast of South America. The sea is 2 miles deep today, sorry not to be consistent, I can remember the Captain saying miles but not metres and my brain is too relaxed to convert it!  It’s 28C and a little bit cloudy now, although it has been clear most of the day, and all the sun loungers have been occupied. At several times of the day there’s a dj on the pool side playing a pleasant variety of music from the 60’s 70’s and 80’s.  In fact there’s a place for everyone on the sea days, people who want to stay indoors playing cards, people who want to learn how to use their I-pads, exercise, learn a language, make jewellery, patchwork, cross stitch, drink in a pub, do pub quizzes and play bingo, lie in the sun, pamper in the spa, shop in Harrods or buy clothes and jewellery, learn to use a camera,or ipad,  learn about art in the gallery as well as starting to paint, and use the library, practice yoga, work out in the gym, swim, listen to celebrity speakers.

There are no sea vessels anywhere to be seen, just miles and miles of subtly changing sea, sun and clouds. As we are not too far from islands there are now regular visits from seagulls and plenty of flying fish for them to dive for.  Because there haven’t been any big ones we have booked a whale watching excursion when we reach Mexico. This must be the best option, I am really longing to see whales and dolphins.  

We have had a restful sea day: art and dance classes, pool to cool down, deck walking and deep stretching. The art task was to sketch then paint an Indian woman, crouching on the ground digging or planting.  We are both pleased with our results.

 I chatted with our art teacher Easa today and asked him about his life since moving away from Manchester. It was so good to hear that his daughter is one of the production team for Pointless, we will be watching the credits from now on, and reminding us ourselves of the coincidences and stories of the cruise.

The dance class was mainly Ballroom Tango, with revision of the Rumba. We really need to practise, on our own and when other people are near enough to tread on.  Khachik has a cold and is dosing up on the day/night nurse, and taking it easy.

Have I mentioned that there’s afternoon tea 3-5 p.m. and there is a choice of cakes, scones, toasted tea cakes, hot food, sandwiches and fresh fruit? I have given the chocolate cake some stick this afternoon.  I try to eat fruit and drink peppermint tea at this time to make sure my clothes will still fit in the summer at home, but not today! It was really delicious

And did I mention dinner ;) ? We have 5 adventurous courses, starter, soups, sorbet, main, dessert, cheese and biscuits/chocolates, coffee and teas.  Tonight it’s a Gala Dinner with a menu by Marco Pierre White. It’s looking exceedingly good.  If anyone needs a special diet, the head waiter, Jovi, brings the following nights menus and the chef will make sugar free, gluten free, fat free, dairy free variations of the menu, so people on special diets never end up with a boring option.  Khachik does this with the desserts.  We have to scrub up and wear black and white tonight. It’s fun though. Make up, earrings the lot for me.

Of course that formal dinner arrangement is also a choice, you can have snacks 24 hours a day and eat things like burgers and chips, salads and sandwiches too.  You can choose from 5 different restaurants, some buffet, some waiter service. We have chosen formal evening and informal buffet lunch.  We will get to know 3 other couple really well this way in the evenings, and then meet and chat to many different people but not get to know them all as well at breakfast and lunch.

Signing off for now, next stop Aruba! Back tomorrow.

Day 11 Friday 16th January – the first seagull for 5 days

The Caribbean islands are just one night away now, 200-ish miles. We have just seen the first seagull for 5 days. :) The sea is even deeper, I heard the captain say 5000m.  It is another shade of blue today, more royal blue, and stunning. Our direction is more south-westerly now so we can even lie in bed and watch the sunrise as our cabin is on the port side. Every morning we try to get a sunrise pic, soon we can compare the sunrise as well as the art work.

At breakfast we met a couple.  The common ground?  Just 3 questions to get there! Where are you from? Hampshire, but not always, originally North Manchester. Oh I have family in Middleton. That’s where my parents live. It soon moved on to football teams, Dutch surnames and this season’s disappointments. Enough said.

Today’s lunch was slightly different in that there was an ice carving demonstration on the very hot pool deck, followed by an open air barbecue and live easy listening entertainment. The factor 50 was out today, as we haven’t sat in the sun until today, generally just passed through it to eat indoors, or had the odd 10 minutes in the open air hot tub. Today we were in the midday sun for about an hour and both felt the need for sun block as we are getting into a more tropical climate. Just as an aside, on the subject of heat, my joints feel the best they have been since Rio, even my shoulder. This is such good news and all contributes to feeling well.  The two women pictured with the ice carving became regulars at art, On the left is Jane, on the right her sister-in-law who was recently widowed.

Every day we get a noon navigation brief, followed by an explanation of something nautical, e.g. the origin of expressions like “go the whole hog” (slaughtering and serving a whole hog roast for a special on-board guest) “turn a blind eye” (Nelson putting the telescope to his blind eye to report all was well ahead) and today no explanation but there’s a superstition that you shouldn’t sail out of port on a Friday, because no good ever comes of it.

 

I can’t break the tradition of describing the fruits of our art class! “Good work” our lovely teacher says professionally and with such dignity, without laughing. We completed the snowy landscape, a copy of Easa’s original painting. Khachik’s looks great.  I wasn’t happy with my result.  I felt the colours were too bright, but Easa always says something constructive and maintains that if it makes you happy that is all.

The dance lesson yesterday was revision of the Quick step with the addition of a lock step. Bleuuugggh. Resigned to the fact that if there isn’t a person calling out EVERY step, we might lose it.  We thought we were getting better, but when he left us to the Quick step unaided at the end there was so much crashing and stamping on toes we will be lucky to be allowed back.  Today is going to be the rumba.  Back later with that info.  Probably next blog will be from St Maarten.  We are now 4 hours behind GMT.

Signing off for now, feeling super fit and stretched x

Day 9 Wednesday 14th – we can both paint a robin and dance the square tango!

Amongst all the new skills we are acquiring, painting robins and dancing the square tango are the best bits, but we have also started to look at the programme of talks and events during the day.  Today we had a lovely lunchtime hour with a young guitarist, half of a duo, who talked about the history of the electric guitar, origins of guitar music and styles and characteristics of famous guitarists.  He was a good player, I especially liked his Peter Green style rendition of Black Magic Woman. He was also really knowledgeable, encouraged questions, did many demonstrations and referred the audience to a couple of guitarists autobiographies that are in the ship’s library. I’m impressed.

Easa, the art teacher said Khachik’s robin today was beautiful, and it is. It is amazing how much we achieve in an hour, and after the class I feel I want to carry on.  This is good.  (“Compare the robin” will also be appearing on Facebook to entertain you in another 2 days when we are in St Maarten, high speed wifi permitting.) We will be changing media as we go round the world, using pencil and charcoal.  This pleases Khachik who unfortunately can’t distinguish colours.

After the dancing lesson today we were both aching a bit, probably because we’ve upped our game on the walking track.  We have walked. 7 laps today and danced the square tango for an hour (with a couple of breaks for demonstrations).  So to ease our aching legs we used a hot tub on the decks to soften up ready for a good stretch.  It was in the hot tub that we met a journalist and author, who  also called himself political activist. He and his wife are from Guernsey.  He is called Michael J, Milford and he was selling his latest book, even in the hot tub, sounds like sci-fi, called the Mansion, about someone who goes back in time to 1912, and tries to warn about the fate of the Titanic.

I have just found this on Amazon:

"Biography

I was born in 1938 in Guernsey Channel Islands, an Island just off the coast of France. When the war started I went to Halifax in Yorkshire England, and lived there for five years, returning to Guernsey at wars end. I did three years in the British army and five years in the merchant navy. I left school semi- illiterate. I could read, but my spelling was poor. For three years I lived in Australia, and went to Perth technical collage, and took courses in English and radio announcing, and passed on both subjects. I took up writing after I retired, as I had more time on my hands. My first book was called 'The Hypnotist' my second was called 'The Mansion' my third is called the 'Ernie Prettle story,' and my fourth is called 'Rainbows End', and I'm writing that now.

I'm 76 years old now, with no children of my own, and no-one to remember me, so I thought if I could leave something behind like a book on some persons book shelf, or in some-ones library, then in future some-one might remember me." 

With the extra walking, dancing, painting, immersion in water, stretching, lots of fruit, veg, seeds and fresh water we are feeling healthy.  We just have to deal with the quantities of food before we are worthy of body-is-temple status.

In our search for sea life I am delighted to say that the flying fish were active today, and where there are flying fish, there must be predators, so hopefully I will have some more sea life news tomorrow. We have passed the underwater mountain range, if you are familiar with tectonic plates you will understand why the sea was 1000m deep yesterday when we were travelling over it yesterday, and the sea is today much deeper, 3000 metres deep.

Signing off now, time is going very quickly, two more sea days until we get to the Caribbean. Back with you tomorrow.

Day 5, At sea from Vigo towards the Azores

SATURDAY already, and the time has started to go back, an hour last night and an hour tomorrow night.  We are on the Atlantic which interestingly is as still as a pond, no sign of sea life either, only stillness and bright sunshine, and a temperature of around 15C.

Today is a sea day, en route to the Azores, so far this has given us time for a cookery demonstration.  Then came our second art class – water colour of an autumn landscape, the original looks so subtle in natural grass and tree greens, dark reds and browns, and yet our trees look like poppies painted on astroturf against a vivid purple sky ;) It might be too embarrassing to share, so if I do post a pic it might be black and white.  Mine above, Khachik's below.  However Khachik has being colourblind as a possible reason ;)

We have also fully participated in our waltz class, without too many toe crunches  :) and a brisk deck 3 walk.  It’s both reassuring and unnerving on the Promenade deck.  This is where all the life boats are situated, it looks as though there are 20 with approximately 100 capacity each, and loads of huge barrels containing inflatable life rafts for 35 people each.  There also seems to be the call to a safety drill for staff every day – for emergencies like fire, man overboard etc. it’s reassuring to know everyone knows exactly what to do and has practised regularly, but unnerving when you think deeply about what it all means.

We are still overwhelmed by the sea and the sky, we are so happy to have struck up many more conversations and made friendly eye contact and gestures in the art and dance classes with some like-bodied people. The nautical vocabulary is increasing, unfortunately not the Portuguese we’ll need tomorrow, but we will do our best, we know “obrigado” which with a smile will get us a long way.  Tomorrow we will be writing about the Azores as we sail away on the first of 6 sea days towards the Caribbean.  We are in short very happy here.  Bye for now.