Category Archives: Travel

Travel

No longer under the Southern Cross

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Fall                                       Moon of Thanksgiving

No longer under the Southern Cross.  The Veendam sailed at 6pm on November 22nd with someone else in the lanai state room 351.  Ipanema Plaza hotel room 601 picked up new guests after 2 pm on November 24th.  Seats 31 g & h got new occupants soon after 5:30 am on the 25th as did seats 21 c & d after 9:10 am on the same day.  The Super Shuttle returned to the airport for more passengers around 10 am.

Then, and only then, could we come inside our very own home.  No one to confirm, no immigration vouchers to sign, no customs declaration to fill out, no 5:45 dinner seating to make, no tickets to process, no luggage to check.  Just come in, set the bags down, breath a sigh of relief, then get in Rav 4, drive to Armstrong Kennels, pick up four very happy dogs, keep them from jumping in the front seat, herd them in the house.

Oh, yeah.  Things go on.  Still, part of the pleasure of home is its predictability, its relative routine that lets the mind and body run free for things other than travel.  I know, sounds funny doesn’t it, but home can let you have a kind of relaxation and freedom that vacations don’t grant.  On vacation you have to think about the money you’re spending–oh, you don’t? well, we do–where you’re gonna eat, what you’re gonna do tomorrow, how to squeeze an amount of enjoyment out to justify spending all this money and frustration in air travel.

I know, that’s the dark side of vacations, but traveling the red eye from Rio can firm up the recollection of the dark side.

Kate wanted me to print out all the post I’ve made on the trip, so I did.  It amounts to 60 pages or so, plenty of documentation about the up side.

Anyhow here we are on the cold, cold grass of home and glad to shiver on it.  No, really.  Hey, I’m a Minnesotan after all.

 

Travel

So Big

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Fall Waning Autumn Moon

Yes, it’s a canard. The sea is so big. The thing is, it is. Out here, some miles east of Charleston, South Carolina and many more from somewhere in Europe, out here where water pushes out from the ship as far as the eye can see and further, out here under a night sky with no light pollution at all save that from this ship, out here we can be anywhere on this vast world ocean, anywhere on this watery element, the true normal for this blue planet, not the abnormal land on which we humans spend most, if not all, of our time.

The ocean here has a depth of over 10,000 feet, 2 miles of water, beneath us, we skim over its surface and know it only by waves, white caps, floating seaweed and the occasional ship passing by faraway. Meanwhile on this ship we go about our human, land dependent activities, eating food grown on the land, except for the cobia I had for lunch, and those things, too, that usually do on land, sleeping in beds, walking past other people we don’t know getting on with their lives.

Up in the dark night sky the silence deafens, falling around this small object afloat in the bathtub of the Gods. The imagination stretches out, reaches it, all the way to the stars. This is the thing we can do, the thing that makes us like the ocean, wide and deep, every changing, our depths truly unknown, our heights never summited. We may be frail, a passenger lost in the wake of the ship would be lost for all time, never found, but we have a world ocean or two within, continents, planets, stars.

I spent the last 30 minutes outside our cabin, leaning on the rail, spreading my imagination across the ocean as it went by, touched Jupiter and extended myself right out of our solar system to the stars. This is the glory and the shame of humanity. Whatever we can imagine we can breath into life, be it for good or ill.

It’s the same night sky over Minnesota.

October 18, 2011 Late Afternoon

The blue skies have turned gray and a light rain pelts the deck. We have moved down the Florida coast throughout the day, starting the morning parallel to Jacksonville and now to Orlando.

Ships move slowly, part of their charm. I love slow travel, travel that negates the power of jet engines and time swallowing leaps from one same airport to another. Trains move slowly, too. Slow travel allows the journey to be as much of the trip as the destination. Even cars move too fast for me these days.

Today has been our second day at sea. I remembered them as relaxing and they are. Though cruise lines work hard to make something available every minute, complete with overly cheerful cruise directors pitching them over loud speakers (sort of like elementary school. Not my favorite part of the cruise experience.), this introvert finds even walking among the crowds on various decks tiring.

My antidote? Go to the lower promenade deck (our deck) and watch the wake of the ship, or go to the stern and watch us plow through the ocean. These don’t sound like much, but I find them soothing, meditative. BTW: Speaking of the wake, check out the Machado poem at the bottom of the page. As I watch the wake, I think of the path disappearing, stirred up water foaming white, then fading back into calmer waters, the ships passage leaving no trace. If a multi-ton ship leaves no trail in its wake, how much less you and me?

We’ve moved slowly today. Breakfast in the room, read on the deck chair, nap, snack, back to read.

Hopefully tomorrow will be the same. Vacation.

It won’t be though. We have a shore excursion through the everglades plus a document search required by US immigration before it at 7:30 am.

October 19 2011

Ft. Lauderdale. Going to see the Everglades today. Wearing my Sierra Club t-shirt since we’ve been in a big struggle with a potash company down here that wants to continue polluting the Everglades.

Didn’t sleep as much as I need last night. Saw a movie until 11:20, then listened to the thunder and saw the lightning of a storm we passed through on our way to Port Everglades. A storm at sea adds a little rock and roll though the ship’s stabilizers handled it well. Woke up at 5:30 am as we slowly made our way past the glittering lights of Ft. Lauderdale complete with a curved auto bridge outlined in lights.

The weather is, as you might expect, humid and warm. Not hot. Not yet. It’s still fall here, though a very Southern fall. Once we take off for Santa Marta, Colombia, our next port, temps will increase right along until we pass through the equator in Ecuador. Then, they’ll start falling again. Slowly.

Today we disembark, take our passports, ship id and a transit card (whatever that is) for a round of kiss and tell with the US Customs folks. Hard to say why. Might be watching for terrorists, I suppose, but the bad scenario takes a bit of tv thriller imagination. Still, we have to do it.

Looking forward to the Everglades excursion since I’ve never been this far south in Florida. More when we return.

Oct. 19, 2011 Port Everglades 1:00 pm

No joy on the Everglades. Got up at 6:30 am, ate breakfast (in room), got our documents in order for the US customs folks and got in line at 7:20. And stayed in line. For a long time. Until 8:00 am. Then, we got clearance, walked over the gangway and back onto US soil. Temporarily.

We handed over our passports to Holland America, in Florida for some reason, (they hold them to clear customs for the rest of our ports of call), walked outside to a rainy, warm morning. No Everglades tour. “It’s howling out there.” Oh. Well.

So we’ll go back on the ship. We try to reenter through the door we’ve just come out. Security personnel push back out into the rain. If we hadn’t come outside, if someone had told us there was no point, we could have turned around and walked back on the ship.

But no. We passed the security zone. We had to go stand in another line and wait for a different security personnel to let us out of Florida and back on the ship. Couple with this rising early and standing long, I was not a happy cruiser at that moment.

Earlier, I had watched as we docked in Port Everglades. A large blue sign said, Welcome to Florida. We had a tug that nudged us along the channel from the side, then turned perpendicular and put its rubber shrouded nose onto us just ahead of the stern and pushed us into the dock.

On the elevator up to the Lido deck for lunch I asked a guy how he was doing. And he told me. “I met up with the Jones Act.” he said, “I can’t leave the ship.” “The Jones Act?” “Exactly, I’d never heard of it either. It says if you board a ship in a US port, you can’t leave it in a US \port.” Now, I’ve heard of that odd rule, but I have no clue why it exists nor why it’s called the Jones Act.

The upshot for this guy? “I have to stay on until Santa Marta, Colombia. Course there are worse things than being stuck on cruise ship.” Looking on the bright side. Seems that if a cruise ship allows a passenger to disembark in such a situation, the fine is $4,000 to $5,000. Cheaper to let this guy ride for free. Which is what they’re doing.

The internet was down all last night, due, I imagine to the electrical storm. It’s now back up, but I’ve apparently forgotten my password so I’m waiting for the internet gut to show up and reconnect me. Kate and I sit next to each other in Scandinavian recliners looking out the window of the Explorer’s Lounge toward a lovely parking ramp and power generating station. Oh, and off to the side there are sea going containers parked, waiting for a ride.

Travel

Pathmaker, There Is No Path

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Fall Waning Autumn Moon

After dinner. The Rotterdam Dining Room has huge lamps, four feet high, with wooden men and lions carved into them for décor, otherwise they look like street side gas lanterns. The wine steward used to work for Marilyn Carlson as a butler on the Radisson Cruise Lines. He was, he said, her butler of choice when she cruised, which was once a year or so. She also came to each launching to swing the bottle of champagne.

He has never been to Minnesota but he offered to work as our butler for free. If we would sponsor him. When I said, “You’ll work for us to free if we pay to get you into the US?” he laughed.

Our table, number 31, sits at the stern of deck 8 and overlooks the wake of the ship. Because we chose the 5:45 seating, we also get to watch the sun go down. Can’t get better than that.

Here’s a testimony to empirical observation. As we head south toward Ft. Lauderdale, we had the bow into oncoming white caps, a moderate swell as I said before. When I looked at the LED screen showing our progress, the scroll bar the bottom said winds N. I knew that couldn’t be right. Sure enough the Captain came on and told us the winds were from the SSW.

He also told a story about the Bermuda Triangle. He gave what must have been meant as a reassuring analysis of the wrecks and disappearances there. He explained that neither extra terrestrials nor magnetic disturbances were to blame. The only law at work explaining disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle is the law of gravity, he said. Even though he said that statistically there was nothing unusual about this body of water, his focus on wrecks and disappearances left quite another impression.

Due to cruise ships affected with norovirus there is, too, a somewhat disturbing emphasis on sanitation with hand sanitizers located all over the ship and small signs encouraging the careful washing of hands. I say disturbing because I find myself avoiding touching any common surface, a bit dicey when going downstairs. Besides, I don’t like this feeling that contamination lurks around every corner. Our germ-phobic culture in the US actually encourages the spread of disease by ensuring that only the toughest bugs survive.

As Kate and I walked around the promenade that runs all round the ship, we noticed Jupiter risen in the West. I’m looking forward to seeing the Southern Cross and other south of the equator constellations. That’s not till post Ecuador, however, a week plus from now.

Travel

On Board

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Fall Waning Autumn Moon Sunday, October 16th, 2011

Somewhere south of New York City in the Atlantic.

We traveled on the earth by taxi and town car; we traveled in the air by plane; we now move across the ocean. That’s earth, air and water and each mode of transportation has fire as a critical element of its engine. Earth, air, water and fire. We’ve touched them all in this journey and we’ve only begun.

Our flight got started an hour late due to air traffic control issues in Newark. As a result, Kate and I walked through an empty dock and became the last two people to board. The Holland America folks seemed relieved we had arrived.

Walid and Ismail, our cabin attendants, presented themselves shortly after we boarded. They are pleasant Indonesians, a characteristic shared by all Indonesians I’ve met. The bartender at the Ocean Bar, Daniel, hails from the Phillipines. He has three children there and works roughly a year on the ship then heads home for two months. He takes off on October 21st and seemed eager.

Adyana, our waiter, also Indonesian, is quiet and says bon appetit a lot.

Our table in the dining room, either by luck or early booking, abuts the rear window of the ship so we can watch the wake and wherever we’ve been as we eat.

The Veendam is a medium sized cruise ship, but it seems very large to me. It has a suspended glass sculpture that spans two decks in an open atrium. Some of the décor comes close to early brothel, the busty bronze dancers on the door to the showroom for instance.

Our room, Cabin 351, opens on the lower promenade deck, starboard side. We have a glass wall between us and the deck, non-see through tinting on the outside gives privacy during the day.

So far it looks like we might be the young kids on board. More tomorrow morning after we get better acquainted with the ship.

October 17th, 2011

9:45 am EST

Somewhere off the east coast. North Carolina? Not sure.

Marcus Samulesson, former chef at Aquavit, is a guest chef on this cruise. Kate picked that up. Our dining partner, Maurine, comes from Sydney. We’ll pick up some more, three perhaps, since we’re at a table for 6.

After dinner I wandered the ship a bit, getting acquainted.. After the Pinnacle dining room, upscale cuisine, is a small lounge area that had a string quartet last night, Adagio. Further on the ultra hip Mix bar with clever lighting, lots of flash gives way to about a hundred feet of jewelry shop. Also, cigarettes on sale there, $65 for two cartons. Geez, when I quit a pack was .50.

Up on deck 12, the sport deck, there is a basketball court, a tennis court and lots of satellite, radar gear. A doppler with the familiar dome and another swept back critter. This deck also has a jogging area that is 13 laps to the mile. Not so great. Also on this deck the Crow’s Nest, a restaurant that wraps around the bow with glass walls, offers straight ahead views day or night. I especially like the Crow’s Nest early in the morning, before anyone’s up. A quiet sanctuary with a view of the sea.

We’re on the Atlantic with moderate swells, some chop and no land in sight. A couple of container ships headed north are all we’ve seen. Our cabin on the lower promenade deck overlooks the ocean and opens onto a wooden deck that runs a quarter mile around the ship. I’ve already done a mile on it this morning. Great resistance when headed toward the bow.

Our glass wall to the promenade deck has tinted glass on the outside so, while daylight, no one can see into our space. At night, with lights on in the cabin, we’re an exhibit in a zoo. See the funny man typing. He’s bald. Is he a monk, daddy?

Getting to sleep last night was a chore. New bed, new temperature adjustments. Once asleep, however, I slept through until 7 am. A great nights rest. The ocean rocked us into lullaby land.

The travel exhausted both of us last night. Kate organized the cabin, then we collapsed. I’m lucky to have such a well-organized wife. She likes to get things in order.

Up this morning for breakfast with Dhani as our server. “Dhani boy,” he said. Kate asked if he could sing it and, by god, in a soft voice he belted out a line or two. The Rotterdam dining room has a very elaborate, baroque almost, décor, which gives off a modestly upscale image at night, but in the light of day, as with all upscale restaurants, it looks a little forlorn, as if it needed its rest.

Internet is .40 a minute so I’ll post only after I’ve got a few written here in OpenDocs, the free office suite made available by Java.

Pictures, which were requested by a couple of you will come up, too, perhaps tomorrow. From the Atlantic, good-bye.

Travel

Packing

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Fall                                                    Waning Autumn Moon

The packing has begun.  Items have been sorted for relevance, need and weight.  A long trip that extends through several time climactic zones, from equatorial to sub-Antarctic, combined with a small space, the stateroom, makes challenges inevitable.

Should I take the table-saw just in case?  Hmmm.  No.  How about four pairs of shoes?  Hmmm.  No.  Wait.  A dress pair for the formal nights.  A hiking pair for the shore excursions.  Sneakers for my workouts.  Sandals for the heat.  Well.  Maybe so.

Taking a full computer keyboard along is an oddity of my packing.  I have a compact netbook computer, one that I bought because it had a near full sized keyboard, but I don’t like typing on it for extended periods of time.  So, I take a keyboard with me.  It travels just fine amongst the clothes.

Of course the meds.  And how much underwear?  How many shirts?  What will we buy?  Gosh.

At some point this morning we’ll be done, then we’ll have to weigh everything.

The dogs go over to Armstrong’s this morning, too.  Busy.  Gotta go.

 

Travel

Details

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Fall                                                       Full Autumn Moon

Off to the city of Andover to get stakes marked with orange fluorescent paint.  Why?  We exurbers put these to mark the edges of our lawn so the city snowplows plow the street and not our frontyards.  This is what comes of not having sidewalks.

Usually I don’t put these in before Halloween since they make such good Halloween prank possibilities, but I’m going to this time.  Just in case though I got twice what I needed.  I can redo it if I need to when we get back.

New filter in the furnace.  Salt in the water softener.  Then turned it off.  Saturday I’ll turn down the temperature on the water heater, clear out the refrigerator and turn it down, too.  Lights on timers.  You know the drill.

One last garden chore.  Putting down mulch, then spreading composted manure on top of it.  Tomorrow or Saturday.

Saturday we take the dogs over to Armstrong Kennels, their new home until Thanksgiving.  We’ll pack and weigh Saturday.  We have no intention of paying heavy bag fees.

Learned yesterday that our lanai cabin has two deck chairs for our exclusive use.  That’s a bonus.

Sheepshead tonight.  It’s in the cards.

Family, Travel

News from Ha’il

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Fall                                                            Full Autumn Moon

News from Ha’il*.  Mark reports having to leave a restaurant with a friend because it was about to close for prayers.  During prayers many businesses in Saudi Arabia lock customers in so they can continue shopping or eating.  This is at least three times a day, could be more since there are five prayer times.

He also commented on the number of funeral homes:  0.  Families inter their own dead, then have three days of mourning.

Likewise:  no cinemas, bars, karaoke places or houses of ill repute.  But, there are Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Bengalis, Philipinos, Brits, Americans, New Zealanders, South Africans.

The area around Ha’il has very old mountains and looks like Monument Valley or Arizona, he says.

Interesting to have an embedded informant in the heart of Arabia.  More illuminations to come.

 

* Ha’il is largely an agricultural centre, specializing in grains, dates and fruits. A large percentage of the kingdom’s wheat production comes from Ha’il Province, where the area to the northeast, 60 km to 100 km away, consists of irrigated gardens.
Ha’il is well-connected to other urban centres to the south, by road. Buraydah is 300 km southeast, Riyadh is 640 km southeast and Madina 400 km southwest.
Modern Ha’il is city of a widespread centre, and numerous parks.

History
1836: A local dynasty is established with Ha’il as its centre, by Ibn Rashid. Ha’il thrives from controlling the pilgrimage route across the desert, connecting Mecca and Iraq.
1891: The Rashidi clan make Ha’il the capital of large parts of Arabia, known as Najd.
1902: Najd loses Riyadh, but is recognized as a kingdom.
1908: The Hijaz Railway opens, beginning the decline of Ha’il.
1921: Following an attack by Ibn Saud, the rulers of Ha’il has to surrender.–

Great Wheel, Travel, Weather +Climate

A Year of Two Springs

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Fall                                                  Full Autumn Moon

A cool rain and a chilly fall evening with wet gold stuck to the bricks and asphalt, a low cloud cover and darkening twilight skies.

Though ready to travel there is a sadness in missing the rest of fall, the transition from this still part summer, part cooler season time to the bleaker, barren time of November.  It is a favorite season, the continuing turn toward the Winter Solstice.

We will leave it behind, first for the warmer, much warmer Western Caribbean, then sweaty Panama and hot Ecuador.  As we move south, we move into spring with milder temperatures, then, in southern Chile among the fjords and glaciers and around Cape Horn, the southern equivalent of the far north, where temperatures will be cooler.  So, for us, 2011 will be a year of two springs.

And, a shortened fall.

Meanwhile, Mark in Ha’il, Saudi Arabia faces 97 as a typical daytime high.  Gotta wonder what global warming has in store for the desert kingdom.  Sort of the old petrocarbons coming home to roost.

Travel

Distracted By The Future

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Fall                                                         Full Autumn Moon

Just realized I’m going to have change my headings once we’re south of the equator. Seasonal reversal in the Southern Hemisphere. I knew about it, of course, but hadn’t factored it into the blog.

These days I have my eye on the National Hurricane Center. Right now it says what I want it to say at least through a week from Sunday: no tropical cyclones. This is the hurricane season, so that could change.

As our embarkation approaches, I find myself withdrawing from now in anticipation of then. A violation of the be here now idea, I know, but it seems the pull of vacation exceeds the adhesion of home. Based on previous experience, this process will reverse itself about a week before the trip ends.

Why did we choose a vacation lasting right at 6 weeks? Because we could, of course. But, why a cruise?

I just read a remark by Simon Winchester, author of Krakatoa and most recently, Atlantic, in which he dismissed large ship cruising because it takes away the direct experience of the ocean. He has a purist point, I suppose; but, some of us were born to sail the ocean blue in small craft, appreciating each swell and squall, but another large chunk of us can neither afford that nor desire it.

Here’s what appeals to me about a cruise. Being on the ocean, cosseted or not, puts us on water, the element that covers 70% of the earth’s surface. That experience, perhaps not as dramatic as Winchester prefers, has a magic of its own. Sort of like traveling through space instead of our atmosphere. A primal difference.

Kate finds the unpack and pack once part of cruising a primary benefit. In cruising the hotel goes with you from country to country, eliminating the schlepping of luggage from train or plane or car and back again.

Relaxation comes as a corollary. The less schlepping, the more relaxing. Relaxation alone makes cruising a wonderful vacation. You have a cook, a maid, a ship to explore, few demands. That means time can be devoted to reading, drawing, exercise, enjoying your partner’s company, sleeping. Here, the ocean adds a good deal. Contrary to Winchester, the ocean’s presence cradles the ship and, when the weather is good, rocks us to sleep. There is, too, something about being on a ship, on the ocean, away from everything land bound that frees the mind.

Cruising does limit the kind of in-depth exposure to a culture that many people enjoy. Shore excursions, except the priciest, tend to stay with driving limits of the port. Still, even when I have traveled hotel to hotel, unless we rent a car, our excursions are limited and even with a car, you can still see only so much.

The bigger limit than nearness to the port is time. A cruise ship is rarely in a port more than two days. That short period of time makes serendipity almost impossible. This is a big downside for me, but compensated for by the relaxation.

Cruising is a particular kind of vacation, not the kind I would prefer every time, but for a celebration together with an emphasis on relaxation, it’s the perfect post-retirement mode of travel.

 

 

Travel

Trail’s End

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Fall                                                          Waxing Autumn Moon

Just put into place the last plans.  A visit to Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio and Corcovado.  Sugar Loaf is the mountain illuminated in this photograph.  It was familiar to me from other shots I’d seen of Rio.  To reach its top requires two different cable car rides.  That we’ll do the day we leave.

Corcovado, which we will do the day we arrive in Rio, has the famous statue of Christ the Redeemer.  It is, so far, the only well known tourist site we have on our entire cruise.  The rest are places more known for their geography and culture than for their tourist appeal.

On our second night in Rio we will attend the Plataforma, a show that features the costumes and dances of Carnival.  Since we will probably not get to Rio for Carnival (and wouldn’t want to even if we could), this should be an interesting evening. I should say night since in typical Latin style the show starts at 10pm.  These events are at the very end of our cruise and represent a farewell to the journey and South America.