Tag Archives: cruise

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R421 Part 3

It’s fascinating, just how jarring it can feel to be subjected to unusually loud mariachi music while queuing at Reception! It really doesn’t suit the quiet, decorous aesthetic there (think Titanic staircase done on the cheap). 

We have now passed the halfway mark and are therefore already on our way home. Bleurgh.

We left Barbados late, yesterday, due to, to quote Captain Russell Hobson, gremlins in the engine room. As a result, we have been belting along all night and day. Not pootling and dawdling, like we did when we failed to get into St Vincent and instead spent two days dragging our heels (keels?) to St Lucia. The reason? A cargo vessel had holed its hull, and to stop it sinking, they moored it to the cruise pier. So, there went our parking space. The captain woke us all at 0645 to make sure we knew. How thoughtful.

The biggest complaint on board is the heat. Now, before you start (you’re in the Caribbean in November; what do you expect, sympathy?!), you need to know that the locals are complaining the loudest. There has been a stationary system of weather over the Caribbean for the past month or more, similar to the one over the UK. But where as the one at home has been grey and miserable, if dry, the one over the Caribbean has been a heat plume. It has been 29 degrees. OVERNIGHT. Even here, the weather can make you miserable! So, yes, while lying in the sun, 31 in the shade, with a cocktail in one hand and a book in the other, may be all very lovely, the islanders haven’t slept in days, poor souls. <Feel free to insert Nik Kershaw Wouldn’t It Be Good lyrics here>

On board, in our attempts to avoid going outside into the furnace of the outdoors, our days consist of crawling from one public room to another, in search of ever cooler air. The triumph was going to Deck 8, which, holding only the Indian restaurant, the card room and the cinema, we almost never go to. Turns out no one else does either! So we sit in the card room, at freshly-baized card tables, and read, while others do the communal jigsaw puzzles, in blissful silence and even more blissful cool.

The end result of which much indoorsing being that I have contracted the Aurora Cough, formerly known in better times as the Oriana Cough. Too much dry air-conned air. Not enough fresh, humid air. As we haven’t got off the ship since Southampton, I suppose I shouldn’t be all that surprised. We needn’t have bothered bringing the Rollator at all!

It is, to several powers more, very relaxing knowing you don’t have to get up, get off, run around, find the right currency, clothing, hat, sun cream, credit card, tour bus, taxi, etc. Likewise, since we gave up on the formal dining, due to table troubles (too far first and too empty subsequently), we don’t have to dress up for formal nights. The liberation is positively giddy. We bump into mates at 3 in the afternoon who are already off to their cabins to begin titivating for dinner at 6. It’s nice seeing how lovely everyone looks, and the beautiful dresses and jewellery and shoes are still plentiful, but it’s quite a load off knowing I’m not going to bother! I did bring the necessary equipment, but it’ll all go home unused.

My body clock is not a happy bunny. We’ve already starting losing hours as the clocks go back to going forwards. I hope that makes sense. It doesn’t get any easier with each time we do it, I can assure you. The drip, drip, water torture of one hour each time really messes with your head. How the staff are even upright, I have no clue. Even if I had got that job at P&O that I interviewed for back in the noughties, I doubt I would have lasted long!

We won the quiz a couple of nights back. For three years, I’ve been warning our team that we do not want to win, because the bottles of wine offered as prizes are more punishment than praise. If Brasso ever go out of business, P&O have a backup plan. They were all thrilled to win, however, of course, and chose the white. So the next night, having chilled it, they opened it. NOW they understand why I kept telling them it was a bad idea! We came fourth last night and no one minded one bit!

In addition to Qwirkle games and our post-quiz Qwirkle tournament, Dad and I are getting quite a lot of reading done. So far, I have read Medusa, which is a detective novel by Michael Dibdin set in northern Italy. Why I started with book 13 in the series, I wish I knew, but it’s the only one in the library, so somewhat out of my hands! I am now reading a Barbara Kingsolver called Unsheltered. I do like her writing. Some of her turns of phrase are so gorgeous, I have to read them aloud to Dad. Who has now also read Medusa. In one day. He has also read all three books in a detective series by L.S. Hilton, namely Maestra, Domina and Ultima – also largely set in that part of the world. He also read a Donna Leon he had never found before – Third Nero. It’s nice to see him so engrossed.

He has now largely adopted my thing of not watching tv while on holiday, although I do occasionally find him checking the headlines on the BBC when I come out of the bathroom! Otherwise, he mostly contents himself with the Daily Fail digest that gets handed out at Reception, although, as they now print fewer copies in order to save the trees (!), he doesn’t always get one. The other nice, cool place is the Library, but, sadly that only has four chairs, usually occupied. Unless you want to sit in an office chair by a computer terminal. Yes, they still have those! But it means Dad can have a sit down while I browse for us both. The books are very big and heavy – probably to dissuade us from popping them in a suitcase, or maybe just to make them more resilient to poolside abuse– so I cannot carry more than four at a time, but two each usually lasts us the best part of a week.

I have also read a book that Vicky lent me, The Asylum by Carol Mackie. Wow. What a tale. And all true as well. Which makes it all the more awful. Not a read for the faint-hearted.  However much we may rail against the way society works these days, it is leaps and bounds better than what she had to deal with in the seventies and eighties. For those of you not inclined to read it for yourselves, essentially a girl is sexually-abused by her brother. When she tells people, they lock her up in a mental asylum for being a “fantasist”.  Having always been brought up to view social services as basically well-intentioned if helpless, this was quite a shock to read, I assure you.  Never judge anyone, because you have absolutely no idea what they are going through on a day-to-day basis that you don’t see.

Here endeth the Third Lesson.

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R421 – Caribbean on Aurora 29 Oct 2024

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, when we set off, the sky was a solid grey and the whole world was dingy. Today, we woke to blazing sunshine and blue skies. Tomorrow, we should get to 20 degrees.  Welcome to cruise R421 to the USA and Caribbean, on board P&O Aurora. We aren’t going to the USA, nowhere near, but, hey, don’t let’s let a little thing like accuracy get in the way of a good sales pitch, P&O. Heaven forbid!

So, anyway, here we are. Aurora is her same reliable, if somewhat weary-looking, self. The occasional blown double-glazing in the restaurant; so far only one lift without a working screen, so you don’t know what deck you’ve arrived at; and a LOT of familiar faces – crew and passengers alike.  On the plus side, my lovely Lenora – the chef who saved me from starvation earlier in the year – is here, and fussing over dad already. A little kindness goes a long way around here. Sadly, however, it seems that Carnival and P&O Cruises have decided that they don’t want disabled people on their ships anymore, so this may be our last ever foray.

Last November, Carnival introduced new rules for the mobility impaired.  Yes, you’ve guessed right. This is not going to go well. They have concluded, somehow, that there is no such thing as ambulatory disability. You’re either in a wheelchair, or you’re a pain-free spring chicken.  Essentially, Aurora has five Evac chairs, to assist those in wheelchairs to do stairs in an emergency.  That’s it. On an adults-only ship that caters to 2000 older, more faithful, clientele. Five. Now, this is, in itself, not a problem, because, if our lives depended on it, Dad and I can both do a couple of flights of stairs, no problems. We might be distinctly unhappy pain-wise afterwards, but we can do that in our lifeboat! Oh no, says Carnival. No, no and no again. That cannot be allowed.

Now, if those of you with excellent memories cast your minds back to 1999, to our first ever cruise and the Pineapple Juice Incident, you will recall that, in the Good Old Days, we used to board at Southampton up a shallow gangplank, the same as we use to disembark on Port Days. However, as this meant crossing the quayside, a member of P&O staff marshalled the passengers, so that we didn’t step out in front of a passing vehicle.  For those who were not around at the time, the PJI occurred when Mum and I were stopped, with Nana and Dad behind us. We were held so that a forklift laden with fruit juice cartons could pass by. The driver hit a bump, his load shifted, then fell, and he ran straight over it, sending what can only be described as a tidal wave of pineapple juice all over us. Think Hokusai’s The Wave, but a LOT stickier, and you’ll get the picture.

After that excitement, P&O Cruises decided that this was not an optimum arrangement (!), and they purchased an air bridge. Now, the trouble with air bridges and ships is that the tide is constantly going in and out. So the air bridge has to adjust its height all the time. It cannot stay stationary like an airport version. To prevent the climb from getting too steep in either direction, they use a zig zag formation. This is all very well and good, but it adds a couple of hundred yards onto the walk. This was described to us on Tuesday as “only short”, by people who clearly wouldn’t know a mobility impairment if they were punched on the nose by one. The end result being that they had to introduce a bunch of wheelchairs and people to push them, to get passengers the extra distance to the ship.  All local volunteers, often retired or students, and mostly lovely, chatty, friendly, kind people.  You turned up, checked in and asked for a chair, and they would trundle you up in the lift and along the air bridge to the ship.  In recent years, as my ME has progressed, we have used two chairs, one for dad and one for me. Originally, it was mum and me and we made dad walk, but now he’s 91, I think he’s entitled to a bit of a sit down.

All this reminiscing has a point, I promise.

Meanwhile, back in 2024, in recent months, my GP has changed my medication. This has resulted in what can only be described as misery for me – nausea, vomiting, constant heartburn, and indigestion so bad, I have to sleep with extra pillows – it’s been fun.  Anyway, I am assured that my system will acclimatise soon, but in the meantime, I have been feeling fairly sorry for myself.  And also, which is tricky when you’re trying to pack for a holiday, unable to bend over for fear of setting off the more horrid of the symptoms.  This meant that, firstly, we didn’t pack until the night before, when Dad’s lovely carer, Josephine, was around to do the work, and secondly, I was feeling pretty ropey after a 2.5 hour coach journey.

Returning to the new anti-disabled rules, we are now required to complete an online form in advance of departure, to clarify that, whilst we can do stairs in an emergency, the extra walk along the air bridge is too far, and we need assistance. I duly filled out a form for dad, and then immediately did the same for me.  I even grumbled to him that I had had to start from scratch, all over again, entering much the same information twice. When we got to check-in, only his name was on the list. They had no record of my request.  Remember, I’m already feeling quite unwell (although you cannot admit that, in case they think you’re infectious and send you home).  Foolishly, I glibly assumed that, having done this for years already, upon realising that the form had not been saved or whatever, they would shrug their shoulders, write me in by hand, and give me a chair. Hahahahaha. Nope.  They said that the new rules were “no form, no chair”, and it was just tough that the system hadn’t saved my request, I would have to walk it. No flexibility, no kindness, no understanding, nothing. I was even told that Carnival Head Office have so little to do with their time, that they apparently sit and watch the CCTV cameras, to make sure that no one whose name is not on the list gets a chair. The utter implausibility of this completely flummoxed me. I don’t even know how to think down to that level of stupid, never mind respond to it effectively.

So now we are sitting in the departure hall, facing the prospect of having to go home, because they don’t have a form with my name on. Instead, I was told, repeatedly, that if I did not walk on, I would be denied boarding and sent home, because I was clearly too frail to leg it to a lifeboat.  Trying to explain that a few stairs in an emergency are not the same as a good chunk of a mile without a seat or stopping point, was fruitless, and I had a panic attack. I sobbed my heart out, but they were utterly impervious.  Dad suggested that I take his chair, and we take turns every few feet, but that wasn’t allowed either. Why the hell not was never really made clear. Eventually, they got the Rollator walker out of the bag (we brought it for dad to use on long piers!), and said I could use that.  My pointing out that that won’t reduce my leg pain, or the four days of pain afterwards while my body tries to make fresh ADP, was also received by a wall of Computer Says No. Funnily enough, being repeatedly told to Calm Myself doesn’t magically stop a panic attack. Who knew?! I have never been so thoroughly bullied in my life.

In the end, I was force marched onto the ship with the walker, and had to stop several times, unsurprisingly. Surreally, I was allowed to stop and sit on the walker as many times as I wanted. But, just to make sure there was enough salt in the wound, a pusher followed behind me, WITH AN EMPTY WHEELCHAIR. Apparently, this was so that, if I became unwell on the walk, I could have a sit down in it. But if I did sit down, I would promptly be denied boarding and returned to the terminal! Seriously, you couldn’t make this shit up. What kind of a Machiavelli-trained sociopath came up with this nonsense?! Not only did I have to endure the pain, but I could see a chair and not sit in it!  Orwell would have been impressed.  Huxley would have had conniptions. I cried the whole way.

All this to “improve Health & Safety” for passengers and crew alike. How it helps anyone, I have no idea. I just think they’ve decided that young people have more disposable income, and a longer projected lifespan in which to spend it with them, so the old and infirm can sod off, and then they can raise the prices and increase their profits by bleeding the youngsters dry instead.

So, now we are on Thursday, Halloween, having endured the above on Tuesday, and I am still popping painkillers like nobody’s business. I’m not sleeping because of the painsomnia and poor Dad is at a loss to help.  The wifi works, the door keys work, (most of) the lifts work, the sea is lovely and calm, and the sun is shining, but Heaven help you if you’re ambulatory disabled, because you can get knotted.  All because the second online form wasn’t saved by the system. What would have they done if I had submitted mine first, and it was Dad’s that wasn’t saved?! Bully a 91-year-old man to tears?!

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R401 Part 11

I hope you appreciate how hard I’m working at trying to keep on top of things on this cruise!

So, I THINK today is Monday. Therefore Costa Maya. Which isn’t Costa Maya, per se, that’s the name of the area – it’s Mahahual, specifically. The Captain tried very carefully to pronounce it correctly last night, but I remain unconvinced.  So far, his pronunciation has been pretty bloody awful, so I’m going to assume he got this wrong too!

I didn’t sleep a wink last night. No idea why, because it was quite rough, so I should have been lulled quite easily, but no. I think I finally passed out at abut 6am. Which was 5am because the clocks went forward. AGAIN. So we are now at GMT -5. I think. Probably.  Maybe. At the moment, I just trying to focus on keeping track of which way is up. Anyway, although a tad yawny, I do feel quite rested, because when I did crash, I was spark out for over 7 hours. Dad got up, dressed and left the cabin and I never knew. He’s getting quite good at it! 

Talking of which, until I shared a cabin with Dad, and indeed until last night, I never knew a human could get hiccups in their sleep. Now I know. It’s quite funny, but then I find other people’s hiccups funny all the time, so it’s even cuter when they’re asleep!

So, welcome to Mexico.  White sandy beaches? Tick. Turquoise waters so clear that you can see down to the bottom? Tick. Water so blue it’s almost glowing neon/ mercury bright?! Tick tick tick. Palm trees so plentiful, it looks like the entire coastline has a green Mohawk haircut? Tick. Sunshine so bright, it makes the water sparkle? Tick. Purpose-built concrete cruise ship pier that is over half a mile long (each way), with no stopping points, shade, seating or buggy service? *sigh* Tick. It’s all very pretty, but we’re not going to be able to explore if Dad has to walk a mile just to get there and back, however refreshing the breeze may be. 

Mind you, we are moored next to the Mariner of the Seas, the Carnival Breeze AND the Oceania Sirena, so that’s an extra 3,500-4000 passengers on the Mariner (who will also be alongside us in Cozumel tomorrow), 4,400 passengers from the Carnival Breeze, and 803 on the Oceania Sirena (no, we’ve never heard of it either – and it’s not really moored, it’s anchored off (probably because the bigger stuff takes priority these days!). Plus about 2000 of our own. Plus crew from all of the above! 

Costa Maya is very flat indeed. From the canteen on Deck 12, we cans see for about 20-25 miles at sea, and, moored here, we can see the best part of that over the land and trees as well. There is precious little here that sticks out above the trees, except a large thing that looks like a Mayan temple, but has what might be flumes sprouting from it. There may be more stuff on the other side of the pier from us; I’m sat with my back to it and twisting around is not something my back approves of, right now. So I’m stuck look at bright blue water and trees as far as the eye can see.

For a place so beautiful and with such bright white beaches, it seems astonishingly undeveloped. This is a Good Thing, because it remains utterly beautiful. Other places that were once this lovely suffered from very badly-planned and badly-designed development, rendering them ugly and virtually worthless – Acapulco, I’m looking at you, right now. There, you now have to literally drive out of the town to a different bay altogether to get to a beach that doesn’t have a skyscraper hotel between you and the water, and you have to pay because their beach is “private” to residents only. This, here, however, is how it should be done.  

The history bit

 The Mayan culture has first signs of agriculture and settlement dating to around 2000 BC, and their descendants today number around 6 million, and still refer to themselves as the Maya. There are 28 surviving Mayan languages still in use.  Hieroglyphic-style writing has been found dating from 300 BC, although only three or four books survived the Spaniards. They used fig tree bark to make paper, which was more durable than papyrus. All of which was ended when the Spanish took over, by force, in 1697. Although, to be fair, the Aztecs had already done a pretty thorough clearout of Mayan texts, together with inventing a new fake history for their own books, to make them look like the rightful heirs to the area. The Spaniards started book burning in the Yucatan area first, including that led by Bishop Diego de Landa in July 1562, stating that the books contained “nothing in which were not to be seen as superstition and lies of the devil”, so they burned them all. He was amazed at the level of distress this caused to the locals. Really?! Talk about not reading the room!

There is a continuing debate about whether it was the Olmecs or the Mayans who invented zero. The Olmecs were further inland, but both used a seashell symbol in their Long Count Calendars to signify zero. 

Update on the reef: Our route away from Belize City meant traversing over 20 miles of channels between the coral, which meant the pilot had a very long shift! The Mesoamerican reef stretches over 700 miles along the coast of Central America and over 500 square miles, from the Yucatan Peninsula to Honduras, passing Mexico, Belize and Guatemala on the way to South America. It is home to the world’s biggest fish – the whale shark – and the one of the largest population of manatees. In places, it is only 900 feet from the shore, in a couple of places, it meets the land. If you’ve heard of the Blue Hole, made famous by Jacques Cousteau, it’s here. Come and dive, but make sure you eat Lionfish before and after. The invasive species is killing the reef and everything on it.  Simon Reeves was right about that.

Happy birthday, Eastenders! 39 years old today! 

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Stranded in Ketchikan – life just isn’t fair

The Celebrity Millennium has engine troubles and is stranded in Ketchikan, Alaska.  I can think of worse places to be stranded. Ketchikan is a beautiful little town.

http://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/news/news.cfm?ID=5493

Am really quite jealous.  Mind you, Juneau I would not want to miss.

Which port would you most like to be stranded in? 

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This could be a further game-changer

The world of cruising is being rocked by revelations on a fairly regular basis these days.

Recently, there has been the departure of virtually everyone with any authority at P&O Cruises UK.

Then Mickey Arison, himself, steps down as CEO of Carnival (although remains Chair?!).

Then there are all the route restrictions, as discussed in another recent post.

And now? This.

North American Emission Control Area affects route choices

I had not heard of this. Bravo to Cruise Critic for spotting it.

If you click on the link, you will see a little map of the United States, with a black line drawn around it. From 1 January 2015, this means that if you want to sail inside the line (i.e. stop at most US ports apart from southern Florida), you have to use low sulfur fuel, which costs a fortune. Maryland port officials are unofficially estimating a cost increase of around $150 per passenger.

Carnival UK has kept this very quiet. I would imagine the first place we will see an effect is in less liners, such as Cunard and the Queens, doing the London-New York run, and the utter demise of any special offers on those routes.

Let me know if you spot anything, and I will post anything else I learn.

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It’s not just me!

If you are a regular reader and sometimes wonder if I get a little over-whingey and critical of P&O’s treatment of it’s passengers, you may enjoy reading this article.

Arcadia? Never again!

WARNING: It is quite long.

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Where do we go from here?

Literally, where do we go?

If you take a look at any cruise company’s website these days, you will see a LOT of cruises to Norway and the Baltic.

Why?

Because there is nowhere else that is safe to go.

Let’s start with the Mediterranean: Italy, fine. Turkey, fine. Syria,? Erm, no. Israel? No, because for some reason the cruise companies have had an almighty attack of cowardice, despite the fact that the Foreign Office have no problem with us going there. Egypt? Nope, not at the moment. Libya? Nope, no visits to Leptis Magna for us any time soon. Tunisia? Er… Malta, phew, yes! Let’s go to Malta!

So the only cruises available in any number at the moment are to the Western Med. Precious little, if anything at all for the Eastern Med.

Okay, so that’s the Med. What about the Caribbean? After all, US ships go virtually nowhere else? Well, it’s okay, but it’s not 100% cheery there either:

Robbed in St Lucia

Shot in Barbados

The cruise companies may well soon start avoiding certain islands altogether.

Of course, this isn’t every island and these incidents make the news because they are so unusual, but the overcautious nature of cruise companies, particularly those owned by Carnival, an American firm, who start with the assumption you are going to sue them and work backwards from there, means that avoidance may become the name of the game in very short order.

And then there is South America. Let’s go the Falkland Islands and see the penguins. Well, we were going to go to Argentina. And, of course,we’re not allowed to do both…

What about the Indian Ocean and the Pacific? In the past, we have been turned away from the Seychelles (pirates), Bangkok (bombs), Tokyo (too crowded!)… the list goes on.

So, the world is literally getting smaller, both for the populace as a whole, but particularly for cruise ship passengers, and I have a feeling it is only going to get smaller, as cruise companies avoid more and more places for fear of what might happen.

I don’t want to make you miserable, but you may just want to bear it in mind when you’re planning your next jaunt. There may well be at least one place, possibly more, you get diverted away from, possibly with very little notice or warning.

I would be interested if any of my readers have been anywhere that might be perceived as a bit dodgy recently, and how it was for you. Please let me know, and maybe together we can persuade the cruise companies that there is more to life than fjords.

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P&O stops Argentina stops

P&O Cruises UK has today announced (although we, as passengers, already knew) that for the foreseeable future, P&O ships will not be docking in any ports in Argentina. This is because of the continuing political tension regarding the Falkland Islands.

P&O cruise firm stops Argentine port stops

Recently, Argentina has been turning away ships that have already visited the Falklands and refusing them permission to dock, anyway, so this is purely an extension of their own policy, really. If they don’t want the fairly well-heeled passengers that travel by P&O to spend their money in their country, that’s fine with us.

It’s a shame for some passengers, because Ushaia is the jumping off point for excursions to the Antarctic, but that’s where we stand.

Ironically, I think it’s actually rather hard to dock in the Falklands. Cruise Critic.co.uk explains (Stanley Cruises – CruiseCritic.co.uk), “The area is so windswept and the seas around it so fierce that only about half of the cruise ships scheduled to call at Port Stanley actually make it. Since there is no dock, even if the ships themselves can get into the harbor, the tenders are often unable to handle the wind and high seas. It’s no great surprise, then, to discover that the harbour itself and the areas surrounding it has more shipwrecks from the 19th-century shipping trade than any other harbour in the world … some 20 hulls are actually visible from the town when the tide is out.” So some passengers may end up seeing neither the Falklands nor Argentina!

Mind you, the odds of seeing Port Stanley are still better than for getting into St Helena. I met a man who had visited St Helena four times and had never got ashore, because the swell can reach 40 feet. Forty feet.

South America is a big place, mind you, so I’m sure the passengers will still enjoy their cruises. But it’s interesting to see P&O taking a stand. Bon voyage.

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Fame at last

I was asked to write a piece for Cruise International Magazine about the Alaska trip.

I wrote a piece. The editor hated it. I rewrote it from scratch. He was happy.

What appeared was a mishmash of the two submissions, along with quite a lot of text that wasn’t mine, several photos that weren’t mine and the most monumental editing error imaginable. If you don’t know the difference between Central America and South America, that’s fine, but don’t change my text, because I DO know the difference. To clarify, this trip went to CENTRAL America. I have never to my knowledge set foot in South America – it’s still on my List.

Here is the version as printed. Enjoy.

alaska article as published