Travels with Matthew

The excursion I was most anticipating on this trip was a kayaking tour of a mangrove forest in Bonaire. It was lovely—an informative and fun tour guide named Kim, lots of sunshine and a nice breeze to keep us from getting too hot, paddling along through tunnels of mangrove roots that open into hidden lagoons and ultimately the protected lake that sustains the forest. Unfortunately, I have no photos. I don’t have a waterproof camera, and I didn’t think to ask if it would be possible to bring a camera with me on the kayak, so I left my good camera on the ship. It turns out that the tour company loans out dry bags, so I could have taken the camera long. Oh well, the kayaking will have to be a memory that Mark and I share only between ourselves. You can look at some of their photos on their website.

After we returned to the ship from our kayaking adventure, we had a quick lunch and then went for a walk in the town, Kralendijk. (Don’t ask me how to say that.) Again, most of what was available to us were touristy shops—less bling but still a lot of low-end stuff—and again, it was really hot in the sun, so Mark gave it the obligatory hour and then headed back. I stayed out for a little while longer and got some nice shots of flowers and in the town. I never made it to the town center, though, because our stay on Bonaire was shorter than our other two stops, and I didn’t want to run out of time. (It didn’t seem to bother some other people, though. We were supposed to be all aboard by 4:30, but at 4:45, some guys were still sauntering in as if they didn’t have a care in the world or 3,000 people waiting on them to cast off. If there hadn’t also been an excursion arriving late, I think the captain might have left without the stragglers.)

Here are some photos of Bonaire. Of the three islands, I would most like to investigate this one most. Funny how that is since I’d never heard of the place six weeks ago.

Nature:

City:

(I loved this folk art hanging on the wall around someone’s yard!)

Where the two meet:

[Editor’s note: This is my last post. The return journey was uneventful other than hanging out with the guys we met—including two new ones from Mississippi, Kevin and Steve, who were hilarious—and finishing up Krakatoa, which was fascinating and informative but didn’t succeed in conveying the sheer horror of the explosion and the people who lived (and died—more than 36,000 of them) through the event.]

Of the three stops we knew we would be making, I’d never heard of Bonaire and only vaguely knew of Curaçao. (I certainly could not have found it on a map.) The name “Aruba” was by far the most familiar to me. Aruba is a beach-goer’s paradise. It offers miles and miles of white-sand beaches and sunny hours to be whiled away. Mark and I are not beach people.

The Aruba excursions offered by Princess didn’t strike a chord with us—many had beach time appended to them—so we decided early on that we would just walk around Oranjestad (the capital) to see what we could see. I guess we’re just naïve travelers who expected to find ourselves in a quaint town that we could walk through—a kind of tropical Short North, which is the art district in Columbus—with art galleries and bakeries and cafés and some reasonable shopping. What we found instead was a faux-authentic smattering of high-end shops selling Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and jewelry galore beside tourist shops packed with T-shirts and shot glasses—all surrounded by a fair bit of slum. We did go out and walk for a little bit. As we were walking along, we encountered a shipmate, Candice, who was pushing her daughter, Callie, in a stroller but was otherwise alone and looking for the nearest beach. She was having trouble finding it and was a little nervous walking by herself, so we accompanied her for about a half hour until we reached the beach she was looking for. People had told her it was 10 minutes away. After we left Candice, we headed back toward town, but the sun was very strong, and Mark got overheated and wanted to return to the ship after about an hour.

I’m a little more adventurous, so I stayed out a couple hours more and wandered through the poorer areas of town taking pictures. There’s not much more to report about the two or three square miles around Aruba’s port, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t give the island another shot. I think I’d just be more prepared next time and would put together a more concrete itinerary than just walking around the port. Here are some of my photos.

Here are a few shots in, around, and from  the tourist area adjacent to the port.

And some of just the natural beauty of the island.

In my wandering, I saw some other interesting sites that most tourists probably don’t discover.

Then there was this guy, who just made us laugh. His body—screened by the fence—is about as big as his head.

And I’m sure there are a thousand pictures of people with this sculpture promoting a local steakhouse, if I remember correctly. We had to add our own to the collection.

We’ve been meeting some interesting and fun people on the cruise, and though I’ve not really talked about them, I did want to mention a man named Bud (because I didn’t really get the chance to talk with her much, I’ve forgotten his wife’s name). Bud sat next to me at dinner on the evening we left Aruba. He and his wife were probably in their 70s. He has a full head of white hair cut short but not military-short and the kind of open, easy-to-laugh face that invites conversation. I can tell that he and his wife are favorites among their grandkids. They’re both incredibly sweet and genuinely seem to enjoy life. Bud is the president of his county-wide amateur photography group, and we got to talking just briefly about photography. Why this is particularly interesting in the context of Aruba is that because they can’t get enough time on an excursion for him to really take the kind of photographs he likes to take, he and his wife have for years been eschewing sponsored excursions altogether. Instead, they research ahead of time the locales they want to see (using TripAdvisor now, which seems to be much more useful than I ever thought; it’s been mentioned by several people on this trip) and rent a car. They drive themselves wherever they want to go and spend a long as they want setting up shots. I think that sounds great, and I’m going to suggest to Mark that we do a little more of that ourselves. It’s nice to take an excursion here or there—like the one we did in Bonaire and that I’ll talk about in the next post (yes, it’s over; I’m writing this on our first day at sea on our way home)—but we could have had so much more fun in Aruba, and though the cave trip in Curaçao was interesting, it had definite drawbacks, and we probably would have enjoyed it more if we’d visited it on our own as part of an itinerary we had selected.

I’m falling a tad behind on my blogging. Fortunately, I have lots of pictures to tell the story.

Monday night, the ship hit some wind and strong currents, and Mark started getting seasick after several hours of rocking. We decided to retire early and watch reruns of The Love Boat (which was a Princess ship, in case you don’t recall) on the ship TV.

Because of the medical delay that set our arrival in Curaçao back by four hours, we had plenty of time for breakfast and relaxing. I took some photos of the island as we navigated to the port.

At the last minute, I realized that neither of us had any small bills, so I stopped at the purser’s desk and changed out a twenty for singles. Then it was off to our tour of the Hato caves. We were only allowed to take photos in one location—partly to avoid disturbing the bats that live in the caves and partly to protect—in the words of our guide—the copyright. They’re commercially marketed.

The caves were interesting, if a bit hot and humid. I’d always read that caves are cool, so the temperature surprised me. The indigenous peoples used them for shelter more than a millennia ago. In more recent times—though still centuries ago—escaped slaves used them to hide.

After the caves, we took a short, guided walking tour of Willemstad, the capital of Curaçao and then struck out on our own for a little while. I am a little more adventurous than Mark, so when we wandered out of the tourist area—and when someone offered Mark some “good stuff”—he got a little anxious to get back to the ship. He was also hot and hungry and was coming down with the cold that I’m just plodding through. Here are some of the photos I took on our walk.

Here are some “artsy” detail shots.

(Notice the Hebrew above the door below; this is the oldest continually operating synagogue in the Western Hemisphere.)

This was one of the coolest clock towers I’ve ever seen. The photo below this one shows the figures that I assume emerge on the hour, though they appear to be stuck. They were mounted a few feet below the lowest bell but still 10 to 12 feet above street level.

And some architecture shots. The whole commercial area of town was colorful like this. It was beautiful, and you couldn’t help but be happy walking in the sun among the vibrant colors.

The local market on the right is right on a waterway, and the shopkeepers (from Venezuela) used to sell right off their boats. They come up on the sidewalk now to get closer to potential customers.

And these are the vendor boats from the other side.

Here is some indigenous flora and fauna (and one invasive species, urbis Markii).

These guys were everywhere. There were dozens of them in the lawn of one of the seaside hotels. I only show a couple species here, but there were many, all with varying colors and markings.

Willemstad was decked out for Christmas; this was just one of many displays. It was weird, though, to hear “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” piped into the arcades of the commercial district. (I’m not kidding. Along with Christmas songs by the Carpenters, Dean Martin, and others was that classic American gem.)

We got back to the ship around 5:30.

I would have like to have milked the visit for the four hours we had left in port, but that’s okay. We got cleaned up, had a nice dinner, walked a bit, then settled in to listen to the lounge piano player. Four of the fellas we’d met two nights previous wandered by and joined us, and we had an enjoyable evening dishing and listening to the piano.

It’s Wednesday as I write this. We’ve arrived in Aruba and are waiting for the announcement that we can go ashore. We didn’t see any excursions in Aruba that particularly interested us, so we’re going to just wander around. Perhaps we’ll buy a tour on the docks, but in all likelihood, we’ll just spend the day exploring on our own.

Today was much the same as yesterday except that I’m having rainbow sprinkles on my ice cream instead of chocolate jimmies. Actually, today was a little different in content if not in composition. But first, I should summarize our evening.

Yesterday was one of two formal nights on the Caribbean Princess. All the restaurants were to seat only the well-heeled, and they were definitely enforcing the rules. We saw more than one group eating in Horizon Court (the buffet, which is the refuge for the pedestrian masses on formal nights) each member of whom was dressed to the nines except one guy who had no jacket or was otherwise not up to snuff. Generally, though, people all over the boat were beautifully—if somewhat stodgily in the case of the men—attired. Mark and I were happily ensconced among the pedestrian masses. I think I had on a polo from Kohl’s and a pair of seersucker-ish shorts that needed to be ironed.

I don’t seem to have hit my culinary stride on the ship yet. I’ve been finding it hard to locate food that I find satisfactory except for the hot dog I had for lunch and a cookie (though the hot chocolate has thus far been excellent). Now, that’s not an aspersion (“Aspersion!” Can you tell I’ve been reading about the Oxford English Dictionary?) on the quality of food but rather a broken record that plays constantly through my life due to my thoroughly unsophisticated palate. Scrambled eggs steamed in pans instead of grilled. “Thin” ice cream. Flaccid bacon. Lots and lots of things I either can’t identify or wouldn’t touch unless it meant my survival. I did—well, Mark did—discover this morning that the breakfast buffet includes in one well-hidden corner a tray of waffles, so tomorrow looks more promising. This dietary diatribe is all to admit that my dinner last night consisted of mashed potatoes with gravy, a bun, and a chocolate chip cookie.

After “dinner,” we strolled about a bit and then wended our way to the Wheelhouse Lounge where an informal gathering of gay folks was to take place. Mark and I ordered drinks and perched ourselves relatively close to the entrance so we could spot any obvious “Friends of Dorothy” who might wander in. After a few minutes, a kind North Carolinian, Sam, touched me on the shoulder and asked, “Are you looking for the LGBT group?” We’re over there beyond the bar if you’d like to join us. We did and met about half of the 10 or 12 tuxedoed and suited men talking about their cruising experiences, their families, their careers, and what shows they planned to see during the rest of the cruise. Sam’s husband is Neal (or Neil or Niall—I didn’t get the spelling). We also met Rob and, later, his husband, Arthur (who was at a show featuring the music of Billy Joel, Elton John, and Barry Manilow) as well as two fellas from Northern California but whose names I missed. We were parked near the stage, and it was sometimes hard to hear over the steel-drum and iPad band. That’s also why we were unable really to meet the others in the circle.

After about an hour, the group began to break up. People had other things they wanted to see, and the ship’s entertainment generally went on into the wee hours. Mark and I wandered over to the piano lounge to catch some of the piano-player’s act. He was very talented, but his style was a little too florid for my taste. On one of our previous cruises, I spent a lot of time in the piano bar which was more participatory and raucous—we were encouraged to sing along and to make requests by throwing wadded up napkins on which we’d scribbled song names into a basket on the piano crowned by a miniature basketball hoop. This cruise’s piano man had a decent voice, though, and we enjoyed the music—most of which we knew—with Rob and Arthur, who had stopped by for a bit on their way to watch auditions for a singing contest modeled on TV’s The Voice.

Mark and I turned in a little after 10 and had a much better night’s sleep than we had on Saturday night. In fact, When I awoke at 7:45, the curtains were drawn, so I thought it was two or three o’clock. I can’t believe I slept completely through the night. I haven’t been able to do that for a very very long time!

This morning, like a good boy, I went to the gym and did a three-mile run on the treadmill. It had a wonky leg, so it was a bit like running across Galloping Gertie—the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge that shook apart during a windstorm in the early part of the twentieth-century. This ship doesn’t have a running track, so the treadmill is my only option. I’m not a fan of running on treadmills—it’s mind-numbing—but in about six weeks, I’ll be back in Florida. I can tolerate the treadmills here and in our condo gym back home for that long. Mark, like a bad boy, slept in, only rousing when I’d showered and said I was going to get breakfast.

We sought out a quieter, sunnier place to camp out on deck today. We got none of the former and too much of the latter. I thought the back of the ship was a no-children zone, but the kids screaming at the pool 20 feet above and behind me told me I was wrong there. Also, when we sat down in a couple lounge chairs, we were partly shaded, but within a half hour, they were fully in blistering sun. We sat in shade yesterday, and I still got a sunburn, so I thought it unwise to stay in that locale too long, even with suntan lotion on. After a short while, we relocated to the starboard side of the ship, which was facing north, and took up residence in the shadow of a bulkhead. There we spent about six hours reading and listening to music. I finished The Professor and the Madman and will try to get all the way through Krakatoa on the two days at sea on the way home.

It’s about 5:30 on the ship (4:30 in Columbus; we lost an hour overnight when we crossed into the Atlantic time zone), and Mark should be in the stateroom getting cleaned up. I think he’s going to want to go to the dining room for dinner tonight, so I should probably head down to the cabin and pull on a pair of long pants—required in the dining room even on casual nights. The breeze right now is lovely, though, and the sun is setting. I could sit here for hours and watch the black sea ripple past.

I didn’t take any pictures today, but here are some more I took yesterday.

These are the exhaust stacks, which I thought were visually interesting. I took several pictures of these, but I’ll only subject you to one.

This is one of the seating areas in Horizon Court (the buffet). The baubles on the ceiling were lit with LED or fiber-optic lights and glowed in oscillation. These could be found in all the dining rooms, too. They must have gotten a deal at Menard’s! (Actually, they created a nice ambiance.)

A shot out the back of the sip. Note the blue haze to the left of the wake. That’s our exhaust, and it could always bee seen. I have lots more shots of the sea with parts of our ship, with other ships, with no ships, but again, I’ll only subject you to one here.

These are a slide and I think a spray (turned off) in the kids pool. This was behind and above my in the shot above.

[Editor’s note: Internet access on the ship was only available at an exorbitant cost, so I wrote my entries but didn’t post them. Additionally, I left at home the adapter that connects my camera to my iPad, so I couldn’t upload any of my photos. I’ll be rolling the photos into the posts and posting the entries over the next few days.]

zzz
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This is the captain from the navigation bridge [read with a heavy Italian accent]…
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zzz
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This is the captain from the navigation bridge…
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zzz
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This is the captain from the navigation bridge…
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zzz
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This is the captain from the navigation bridge…
Sigh.
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zzz
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munch munch munch
glug glug glug
flip flip flip
…
zzz
phsh phsh phsh
click click click

That is a summary of the our first day at sea beginning with bedtime on Saturday night and ending at around 5 on Sunday afternoon. Lots of sleeping and taking it easy. Four emergency announcements between 2 and 4 a.m. Eating and drinking and reading a book, a nap, a shower, and some time roaming the deck taking pictures.

During the night (so I overheard), a man had a heart attack, and the captain summoned a helicopter to evacuate him back to Miami. Unfortunately, the helicopter couldn’t carry enough fuel to reach us, so we turned around and headed back toward Miami. When we got within the copter’s range, the victim was evac’d, and we are now four hours behind schedule. We’ll have to reschedule or cancel our excursion in Curaçao. (Heart attacks seem to be a loose theme to my cruises. Some of you may recall that on my very first cruise—which I almost skipped because of my irrational fear of large, moving ships—a passenger descending the stairs literally two arm lengths in front of me had a massive coronary. The medical staff later said that he was dead before he hit the ground.)

After being wishy-washy about it for two days, I finally broke down and bought the unlimited soda, juice, mocktails, and hot chocolate drink package. I turn into a cheapskate on cruises and struggled to justify the $7-per-day price. Because I’m prone to get dehydrated on vacation, I think it was probably the right choice. I can only drink so much hot tea and tepid water in a day.

I brought two books with me: Krakatoa, the story of the massive eruption and the world-wide effects of the eruption of the Javanese island of Krakatoa in the late nineteenth century. If I’m remembering correctly, it was the loudest sound in recorded history, and it pretty much destroyed the entire island and changed global weather for a year. I haven’t started that one. The other book I brought is called The Professor and the Madman. It’s the story of the Oxford English Dictionary and the confluence of the lives of the man charged with creating it (it took more than 70 years; he didn’t live to see it finished) and its most prolific contributor (with more than 10,000 accepted submissions), who happened to be imprisoned in the Broadmoor asylum for the criminally insane for killing a man that he mistook to be the phantom who, he imagined, had been plaguing him in his room at night. And when I said “Oxford English Dictionary,” you thought it would be a dry and dusty read, didn’t you?

I’m not going to caption the photos below; they’re pretty self-explanatory shots of the ship.

My business has had a few less-than-stellar years but many more not-too-bad years. This year, I’m happy to say, has been my busiest and best since 2008. I’m grateful for the work. It has been very stressful during the last few years to pass weeks by with no paying work and to wonder if this will be the year that I’ll have to get a “real” job. As grateful as I am, though, the workload can sometimes overwhelm—lots of books on the same deadlines, problem projects all demanding extra attention, the constant struggle to be creative. After several very busy months (for both Mark and for me), we’re taking a break and heading on a Southern Caribbean cruise. As I write this, I’m on a Delta flight from Atlanta to Ft. Lauderdale. We’re planning to have breakfast with some old acquaintances tomorrow morning and then board the ship around one o’clock.

So far, the trip has been pretty smooth. I’ve gotten a ton of projects done at the house over the last week or so—cleaning, getting out Christmas decorations, running my car to the repair shop, and on and on, so by this morning, I felt like I could take this time.

Howi is safely boarded at his vet where I’m sure he’ll be spoiled. The women at the counter were already mooning over him as we left. He’s quite a charmer, and I’m sure he’ll get extra attention. I just hope he forgives us for leaving him alone for 10 days. I actually feel a bit guilty about it; he’s been passed around a fair bit in his short two years—from whomever owned his mother to the young woman who surrendered him to the great folks at Buckeye Bulldog Rescue then to his wonderful foster family and finally us. I hope he doesn’t think we’ve just passed him on yet again.

I’ll provide details over the next several days (if I can get wifi; which sounds questionable unless I’m willing to buy a really overpriced access package), but the basic itinerary after we board is two days at sea (don’t expect a lot of news during those days, but I hope to put up some photos), then a day each on Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire. I hope to have something to write about, but I really expect to be able to put up some great photos. We then have two more days at sea on our way home (again, probably not a lot to say unless I get really philosophical).

As we roll into the hotel, is this the first sign of a rough road ahead— metaphorically speaking?

That was the wheel on my large, heavy roller bag. Sigh.