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 13 Sunday 18th January 2015 St Lucia

After a night of travelling on the Caribbean we woke up in St Lucia. Hot, 29C, sunny clear skies and still clear blue waters again.   I did a back bending yoga stretch session before leaving the cabin for breakfast. Staying flexible in body and mind are my only yoga goals, so I can often be found hanging upside down in all directions!

This morning we didn’t speak to any new passengers but we did bump into both the authors again  – Michael J Milford, who is carrying his book The Mansion with him making opportunist sales, he only has 2 left, and Brian McIntyre whose autobiography Have Boots will Travel is about to be published.  

Michael has had a few jobs from what I can gather before starting to write including the Merchant Navy. He also explained that in the 1970s he’d been a nursing assistant in mental health but couldn’t handle the hierarchy and was unable to modify his outspoken behaviour, like calling Matron darling. I think he also mentioned being deputy mayor at one point. Colourful, no nonsense character, champion  and spokesperson of the underdog. Now he lives back in his birthplace in Guernsey.

After breakfast we walked a little bit away from the port, where we were offered lots of unofficial tours and taxi rides on the way, declined and arrived “down town” in a cafe under an awning with an outside television showing first the cricket South Africa v. West Indies, and then a football match, Manchester City v Arsenal.  I found there was a unique atmosphere here. Everyone smiling, but a bit like when we were in Recife last year, (That's where Khachik's gold necklace was ripped off his neck in a market place) We both felt a need to be cautious, especially after we saw a liquor seller inside a cage for his own security!  It seemed as though something could kick off any time, but thankfully didn’t.   We made our way on to the fruit markets, the pop up stall holders and souvenir vendors who had heard of the ship coming in today. We browsed through beautiful craft here, batik,wood carving, coconut shell carving, beads, bracelets, a lot of different handicrafts.   Sadly there is poverty here and some very poorly looking people who so look like they need an NHS and a good meal. I was glad we’d taken some lunch with us today, but wished we’d taken more, although seriously it was a drop in an ocean, hopefully a little bit of comfort, although it wasn’t ever going match the comfort of rice and peas.

Polite notice

Pop up shop

We went to our first sail away party on the top deck today.  Entertainment team mustering up audience participation.  Loud Nelson Mandela tribute “Hope Johanna” and then Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” so Bob told us not to worry about a thing, because every little thing’s gonna be all right.  I felt really emotional when I heard that, We’ve done our fair share of worrying about things over our 25 years together.  Funny how things have a habit of turning out ok ;)

Clearance from the St Lucia port interestingly included clearance from the local airport as the runway is so very close to the water’s edge. Everything about the sail away was stunning, the colours, the warmth, the sun, the music and all the emotions.

So now we are heading for Aruba and getting closer to the Panama Canal,  then two stops in Mexico: Huatulco and Cabo San Lucas.

So here we are back in the cabin getting ready for our evening meal, so I will sign off for now and be back here tomorrow night as it’s a sea day and no chance of hi speed internet until Aruba. Bye for now.

Day 12 Saturday 17th January – St Maarten

When we got up this morning we were already in the Caribbean Sea at the island of St Maarten, on the Dutch side, moored up in the port which was ready and waiting for the passengers from several huge ships. The sea was a gorgeous turquoise blue and very very calm.  

Breakfast on board this morning was another real treat with a delightful couple called Barbara and Brian McIntyre – such kind and interesting people.  What lives they have had!  How we got to common ground went something like this. Brian asked: Is this your first world cruise? Yes, I said the others have been 3 weeks or less.  Where were the others he asked – I said Mediterranean, Norway and Brazil. He said Barcelona is nice…….next thing we were talking about the football ground, that he played football and a few other very interesting facts emerged.  He said he could have been professional in England as he was offered Portsmouth but “couldn’t afford it” (He looks about 70, maybe a little bit older, so there wasn’t the money in the game) Then came more football stories, like playing charity matches with Bobby Charlton, Bally, Hurst, Hunt, Banks and Peters at Wembley, collecting memories of the 1966 world cup squad, having signed tickets by all 11 players from that winning match.   He said those tickets are now all at the Manchester Football museum after he had them valued at the Antiques Road Show for £20,000!  His own footballing experience has all been in the far east, Singapore, Phuket, Hong Kong.  He has also written his autobiography entitled Have Boots will Travel – to be published in March 2015.  I can’t wait, so many funny stories, there was even a morning with Ronnie Biggs in there somewhere on a visit to Rio. Talk about a lovely start to the day. I am now looking for his autobiography "Have Boots will Travel" but perhaps it hasn't been published yet

On port days there’s no yoga class so I did a gentle stretch, and there’s no art class, so I have started another painting in the cabin, and there was no dance class – no practice done

Then came our day in St Maarten.  Moored in Philipsburg we walked but not fast as we need to acclimatise a bit to this wonderful tropical heat and baking sunshine.  It was a factor 50 day, and we have changed colour a little bit, taken lots of photos, hit the markets, the shops and 2 restaurants with free wi-fi. If you are on Facebook the photos have beaten the blog today. The first restaurant was run by two incredibly busy and hard working French women, with a great sense of humour – the café was called Delphine’s.  The second was a bigger complex on the shore called Chesterfields. This had some good rock guitar music playing nice and loud.  The rest of the day was palm trees, ripe coconuts, youth steel bands, loud singing, crowds of passengers.  Today’s acquisitions include a new sun dress for me and a very brightly coloured short sleeved shirt for Khachik for tonight’s Caribbean night.  Look how we roll!

Signing off for now. St Lucia 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 10 Thursday 15th January - More than half way across the Atlantic, temperature 26C.

The sea depth is now 4500m, sea temperature 20+ degrees C, quite choppy again, but very beautiful.  Mainly clear skies. On the ship everyone is out in the sun and there’s generalised good mood.  The clocks have gone back three times now, which feels like a special gift.

What did we do today? Up at 8, very gentle yoga, eat, art lesson, deck walk, coffee, crossword, eat, guitar talk, deck walk, tea, dance class, art in the cabin, eat, deck walk, cabaret, telly, blog, bed.

Highlights! We started a snowy landscape today and plan to finish in the next lesson. Not easy, but very uplifting, absorbing and relaxing. As always will share pics if it’s not too embarrassing. It’s lovely to do this with Khachik. So much of what we normally do is parallel, e.g. I practise yoga while Khachik follows football.  But we both seem to love the art.

The guitar talk was extraordinary. Paul brought his custom made acoustic guitar, 22 strings no less, made by the same guitar maker who used to build guitars for Led Zeppelin.  He described all the different acoustic styles, chords, finger picking, country, flamenco, jazz and blues, Eastern and Asian sounds, explained commonalities and then went on to demonstrate everything, surprisingly really well, including short performances like the Beatles Norwegian Wood in different styles.  Today he finished with Jose Feliciano’s version of Light my Fire. This hour was a real treat.  

Well, after today there’s one more sea day until we reach St Maarten, where we will feel land again (not that I’m in any hurry to do that) and can share the latest set of photos while we enjoy what the island has to offer.  So I will sign off for now and share tomorrow’s highlights, once again I really hope to have some sizeable sea life reports.  Bye for now from mid-Atlantic.

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 8 Tuesday 13/1/2015 The Captain’s from Iran - would you believe it?

We learned today at the world passengers’ lunch that the Captain of Arcadia, Aseem Hashmi, is from Iran.  It won’t be long I am sure before Khachik makes conversation with the Captain to ascertain where he was born and brought up, pinpointing more common ground again, and finding more reasons to laugh about the interesting connections we all have.  I can’t wait to find out if they do have mutual friends, or attended the same schools?  We enjoyed the meal very much, in the space reserved at night for Freedom Dining on Deck 3. We met 3 new couples none of whom we have seen before, in to the second week.  I have forgotten what it’s like to feel hungry, because the meals are all amazing, and it’s really hard to stop tasting new dishes, especially sweet things.

What can I say about the sea today?  We are in the middle of the Atlantic, which I thought would be rough, but its flat like a mirror, jet black with perfectly still and clear reflections of pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds.  I have never seen that before, it’s really beautiful.  I am still waiting for the sea life to appear, there’s no sign of anything.  We were told today the sea is 1000m deep, so I imagine the sea life is keeping busy elsewhere. As promised we have sunshine and another rise in temperature to 20C. Plenty of shorts and more bold sunbathing beginning.

Activities so far today – painting a mountainous/forest landscape, world passengers’ lunch, with our table hosted by Victoria Fletcher, a lovely member of the Admin team.  We have also been deck walking and taken a dance lesson – the quickstep, and an evening of song in the Palladium with Phillip Browne! Three more sea days to St Maarten. Beginning to feel like dancing in the ballroom – not done it yet, but feel like a little waltz.

Signing off for the night, good night all, back tomorrow.