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| There's always work to be done |
We have a two-metre swell, the white horses are out in force and there’s the tiniest bit of
motion, but nothing your typical cruiser can’t handle. The Spanish Main used to mean gold now, mi
hearties, gold to steal from the Spanish and take back to dear old Blighty. However, things have moved on since the days
of good old Sir Francis Drake and supplies of precious gold to be plundered
have been replaced by supplies of hard
drugs for, mi dears, we’re bound for Cartagena, not the city in Spain but the
one in Colombia, the country that is capital to the world’s drugs trade!
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| The morning after the night before and the one on the left is starting to look aggressive |
So what will we be seeking?
Cartagena by all accounts is a beautiful town, full of Spanish colonial
architecture and a sight to behold, something we hope to give you a taste of on
the blog.
And for Mr and Mrs A, this will be the first time they have
placed their little tooties on South American soil. Looking at the prices of cruises from such as
Chile round Cape Horn to Argentina and Brazil or the land-based tours to places
like Machu Picchu or the Iguassu Falls, it could well be the last!
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| Thought you might like a peek in one of the gents toilets on board. Even in here, the decor is something else. Notice the neatly rolled face flannels which double as mini hand towels |
We now realise what a fun day we had yesterday with dear old
Father Time once again. We’ve already
had the episode of Mr A blogging through the night when he thought he was blogging
in the early morning. Well, yesterday we
had the “We’re always one hour out”
episode.
When we got to Fort Lauderdale we were already disorientated
enough by the clocks going forward while we were on our way to the airport when
we had to put our clocks and watches back 5 hours for the States. Then it was a case of “put your clocks back a further hour for the Cayman Islands”. While Mr A duly put his bedside travel clock
back this time, he unfortunately forgot about his watch, so all day long real time was an
hour earlier than we thought. And, as is
often the case, it’s no good relying on getting the time from Mrs A as her
watch battery is bound to have run out or her phone will need charging. But, to show willing and to keep up with the
latest trend, she did have her Fit Bit
on or whatever she calls her latest gadget, but still it didn’t help as that
was also an hour out. So much for
self-correcting technology! We thought
the food and drink service hours seemed to have gone awry, we watched the last
tender from the shore come to the ship an hour late, the dining room for our
evening meal seemed to open at the wrong time and the evening show (two
performances) also seemed to have started late.
But good old Mrs A finally put her finger on it and at last our equilibrium
was restored.
This morning there have been two highlights so far. After a relaxing spell following breakfast we
went to El Bacio, a rather nice
coffee, tea, and hot chocolate café on Deck 5. Last cruise we enjoyed working our way
through the ship’s cocktail list as our evening apéritif. We need to resume that task this time, but we
also thought of another one for this cruise - to work our way through the list
of coffee cocktails, all of which can be had as part of our free drinks package.
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| Look carefully at the 3rd one down |
My eyes lit on the 3rd one down. I could just imagine the taste thrill I would
get from that. I asked the waitress if I
could have one. She blushed coyly. I
said: “You know what I mean” and, with that, I narrowly
avoided getting chucked off the ship at the next port.
The second highlight was our complete and utter humiliation at
our first quiz of this cruise. We were
our usual team of two, feeling quietly confident as to our abilities based on our
many quiz wins on a number of previous cruises.
Well, 4 out of 15 was not a propitious start. I mean, why does anyone want to know the unit
number of the army surgical hospital in MASH was? Who knew that the first Olympics
to be televised were in 1936 – should have known that Adolf would have had that
covered! And do you know what Michelangelo’s
first name was or which century Star Trek is set in? No, and neither did we. We left feeling deflated, with a sour grapes
feeling that there were massive teams here and there in the room and no limit on team size –
disgusting!
Having started with considerable Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder following the débacle that was our first appearance at a quiz on board, we
had a short spell up top where a glass of wine was enjoyed while watching a
Spanish-speaking family of grandfather, father plus two children attempt to
play on the putting green next to us.
While it is real grass, a closer inspection suggests that it
needs a heavy roller on it a number of times as a bare minimum and our aspiring
golfers were seriously challenged.
However, the pattern which followed is one that I suspect is quite
normal – a tentative start was replaced by ever-growing confidence and an
awareness of the need to hit the ball ever harder in order to get it where the
player wanted it to go. This approach
was clearly in full swing as a golf ball rapped my ankles quickly followed by a
number of anguished shouts of muchas apologiosas in Spanish to which I felt I
had no option but to waft them away politely and in a carefree manner as if to
show that I would wince inwardly for now and worry about any bruising later.
To my surprise however, that litigation near-miss didn’t calm
the grandson’s approach and his game now developed into a round of ‘pitch and
putt’. By now we had finished our drinks
and decided it was time to move on to the Captain’s Welcome Party in the Sky
Observation Lounge. This was not to be
missed, we thought, as it was only open to Elite members and above so, as we had
now been admitted to the ranks of la crème de la crème, we wanted to savour the
experience and drink it all in.
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