And so it begins, our six month odyssey to South America.
As I write this, it's about 10:00 a.m. on November 3, 2009, our third day aboard Holland America's MS Veendam and we're passing Puerto Vallarta, on the distant Mexican coast far to the east of us. This cruise doesn't stop in Puerto Vallarta. We are 200-some miles south of Cabo San Lucas, where we spent yesterday afternoon, and 1,000 miles south of our starting point in San Diego. We are 4,500 miles from the end of the cruise, in Santiago, Chile, although we'll leave the ship in Lima, Perú and spend the next 2 1/2 months at a volunteer project in the Andes (more on that later). In all, we'll spend the next six months in South America. Meanwhile, we'll pass this day at sea watching the waves go by and trying to do a little writing, as we proceed to our next stop tomorrow morning, in Zihuatanejo.
The sea is calm this morning. As I look out the broad windows of the Explorations Lounge (the ship's library/coffee shop) there are puffy, warm, tropical-looking clouds hanging in the sky around us. They appear soft, spongy, water-laden, and somehow friendly, and look as if they had simply lifted their cargo from the endless sea as the warm sea and sky here assume a sort of seamless continuity. It is easy to believe that any rain they might generate would be gentle, and warm – almost baptismal, cleansing, ceremonial.
There's a rhythm to life aboard a cruise ship, and it has taken us a few days to fall into it. But the variety of things to do, the excellent food, and the friendly staff have eased the process. And the quiet time spent in various nooks, crannies and seating areas is very appealing. I think I'm beginning to enjoy this way of traveling, although I'm not sure if the brief time we'll spend in each port will satisfy my curiosity. Also, we were both apprehensive about being cooped up on a ship for a cruise that will last more than two weeks.
But there are twelve floors on this ship, numerous bars, restaurants, hot tubs, a pool, the Explorations Lounge, and other places to hang out. There is good dance music in one bar, guitar and piano music in another, an all-female Hungarian string quartet in a wood-paneled lounge, nightly floor shows, and other things to keep us busy. One of the first things we learned was that e-mail can be expensive at ship rates so blogging would have to wait until we found ourselves once again on solid ground. But this is our first cruise and it has just begun, so we shall see.
The whole idea of a cruise to South America began with an e-mail to Carolyn from an old Peruvian friend she knew from her days there in the Peace Corps. Dr. Aquiles Lanao Flores is an economist who worked as director of cooperative programs for the Peace Corps for eight years. When he and his wife "La Morena" retired, they decided to return to Ayacucho, where they were born. As a retirement project, they began a "micro-credit" program to help poor widows of the brutality which swept through the Peruvian Andes during the 1970s and 80s.
In his email, Achilles had written something like 'Since you're now retired, why don't you come back down here and help us with the Program?' For a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (RPCV) like Carolyn, an invitation like that was hard to resist. She mentioned the offer to me, an inveterate dreamer, and the wheels started spinning. My first thought was "It costs so much to get to South America, we should plan to spend as much time there as we can." Also, having flown once to Bolivia to visit my sister, I wondered if there might be a more interesting way to go than flying. The thought of another cramped passage on an all-night flight was very unappealing. There was much planning to do if this latest dream, or fantasy, was going to happen. And we had no idea where to start.
Jeff Cobb mentioned a cruise ship website called Vacations To Go, and suggested scrolling down to the Repositionings section. That's where the cheaper cruises are, as the companies try to fill ships being moving to prime destinations when the seasons change. There wasn't anything there for us, but I found a gem in the South America section. Imagine that.
I showed the cruise to Carolyn, and after a day or two of discussion we agreed to just go for it, so I booked the cruise from San Diego to Santiago, Chile. It would be 19 days in duration. It sounded like an adventurous way to get where we wanted to go.
We had questions from the start, beyond whether we could stand to be cooped up on a ship for almost three weeks, and whether we'd find the 'quick hit' shore visits to be satisfying. Questions like what kind of clothes are required on a cruise ship – would we have to buy new stuff or could we cobble together enough duds to 'pass?' And what about visas, and all that paperwork stuff?
When we decided to turn the cruise into just one leg of a six-month trip – most of it to be spent on buses traveling through numerous countries – the question of clothing became much more complicated. According to Holland America's literature, there would be several "Formal Nights" on the cruise. Then we'd spend the next two and a half months high in the Andes (about 9100' high) in the very indigenous city of Ayacucho where formal wear is a rarity and the nights can get nippy. After that we planned to hop on local buses to visit southern Chile, then on to the hot and muggy parts of Argentina and Uruguay.
On a trip north to the US, we headed for Ross Dress For Less where I scored a nice looking tan sport coat for $30. If we needed to, we could just leave it somewhere along the way. I actually owned a couple of ties, some decent slacks, and a pair of shoes that would work. Then I bought a warm jacket at Costco so we kept the up-front costs to a minimum. Carolyn bought a couple of colorful, slinky gowns, and we were set to go!
Many (maybe even most) of the people we've met since moving to Kino Bay have taken cruises. Most of them seemed to like the experience and have taken several cruises over the years. Luckily, Tom and Jan Vala told us the cruise line we happened to choose, Holland America, was a very good one. We certainly had no idea when we pressed the "Pay" button and sent off our money. But Ted Reed warned us to "buy stretch pants" because the food is so good and plentiful on cruises. Other friends repeated his warning. We resolved to find the gym as soon as we boarded the boat, and maybe share dinner entrees.
When we researched getting from Santiago back to Lima, it only made sense for us to get off the boat when we docked in Lima and skip the last three days of the cruise. I checked with Holland America, and that would be no problem. It would raise our 'cost per day' of travel, but at a little over $100/day for transportation and all that good food, it still seemed like a good idea. We were committed.
The next several months were a blur getting everything ready so we could depart. First there was the problem of keeping our small inn on the beach alive while we were gone. Luckily, we talked our friends Bitsy and Elaine into hanging out on the beach and taking turns covering for us. Strangely, neither of them seemed to require a lot of arm-twisting. Then there was the problem of setting up lots of automatic payments so everything would run smoothly. And we put together a very long list of long-ignored repairs and other things to do before we left. We immediately started work on the list, but each item we checked off seemed to add another one at the bottom. Even though we started months before leaving, we were still hustling to the very end.
And finally it was over. It was time to head for the airport and forget (mostly) whatever wasn't done. We got a cheap flight to Tijuana (it's much cheaper to fly 'in-country' than across the border), caught a taxi to the border, hopped the trolley line to San Diego, and wheeled our bags to a hotel room for the night. In the morning, we caught the Coaster train north to Oceanside and spent the next few days with my sister Joan, her husband Kevin, and our three nephews, Bo, Luke, and Sammy. As always, it was a real pleasure to see them. Then, about midday on Saturday, Oct. 31, they dropped us off at the cruise terminal (a short walk for downtown San Diego) and we began the long boarding process.
As first-timers, we wanted to get there early in case anything went wrong. In the future, if we ever do another cruise, I think we should come about an hour after they begin the boarding process, to avoid the long lines. And as for anyone who wants to come down to the pier and 'see you off,' it was hours before we got aboard, found our cabin, waited for the bags to arrive, and finally made our way to the top deck for our Complimentary Sail Away Margaritas. It wasn't like in the movies where throngs of well-wishers crowd the pier waving as we pulled away. Anyone sensible had long ago left for home. The ship pulled away from the dock as the sun was setting and casting a greenish-golden hue across the San Diego skyline. Very shortly, we were past Point Loma and headed south. For us, at least, it was a beautiful and memorable moment.
After that, the days started ticking off more rapidly than we thought they would. We had signed up for a Shore Excursion at every stop in Mexico and Central America, but decided to wing it when we got to Ecuador and Perú.
We arrived in Cabo San Lucas for our first stop on the cruise. Carolyn and I had signed up for the America's Cup Challenge. It was one that two long-time sailors could hardly resist, and we got to grind the winches just like the big boys do. The boats were NZL 81 and NZL 82, two New Zealand America's Cup boats that are the more recent high-tech steeds to enter the public market. Everything on this pair of $15 million thoroughbreds was made of carbon fiber or something like it, and they were fast. Each was crewed by a selection of young buffed lads from Germany, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, and who knows where all. We did a short match race, got a lot of exercise grinding winches, and came back smiling. It's the only way people like us can play that high above our pay grade.
Other excursions included a nature walk in Zihuatanejo, the cliff divers in Acapulco (of course) and
several others. While we enjoyed all the Shore Excursions, the highlights seemed to be the Coffee Plantation in Guatemala and the tour of León, Nicaragua. The people at the Finca Colombia coffee plantation couldn't have been more welcoming and informative. They operate the farm their Spanish great-grandmother began in the 1920s, and do everything according to organic principles. The coffee they served after the tour was some of the best I've ever had. And just being in Nicaragua was one of the more exotic experiences of the trip, since it's not generally a tourist stop. But there is some excellent art at the museum in the old and very charming city of León, and some excellent food besides. So what's not to like?
The sea was mostly flat and gentle as we left San Diego and the ship has a kindly, easy, roll. The entire structure of the ship reverberates with a reassuring rumble as massive engines engage the ocean below, sending us inexorably forward, and southward to unknown encounters. The ship has stabilizers to damper the roll, giving the slightest motion to the day. The only time the ship showed much real motion was when we crossed the notorious Gulf of Tehuantepec and experienced the "Tehuantepecers" that blow across the low isthmus from the Caribbean side to the Pacific. We spent that time lying in our bunk and reading.
One of the more surprising, enjoyable, and interesting aspects of the cruise was the very international makeup of the passengers aboard. The Ship's Officers and Engineers, of course, were Dutch, the cabin attendants were Indonesian, and the ever-smiling and helpful young ladies at the Front Office were all Filipino. That was no real surprise.
But we always looked forward to sharing a dinner table and were surprised at the broad diversity of people aboard. We were told that the passengers were about 60% US Citizens, but that figure may be misleading. The couple occupying the cabin to one side of us were from the US, but she was originally from Argentina, and he was Italian. The lady in the cabin on the other side was also a US citizen, but originally from Egypt. We met people from South Africa, Honduras, Singapore, India, England, Chile, Japan, Australia, and lots of Canadians fleeing The Great White North as winter was closing in. There was a lot of German being spoken aboard, there was some Russian, and we met an elderly man from Hungary who loved listening each night to his countryfolk in the string quartet. Oh, we also ran into a few standard US folks, but they were definitely in the minority. Each night at dinner in the Rotterdam Room was a pleasant surprise.
It was also something of a 'grey hair cruise' as almost everyone on board was retired and could take the time to cruise all the way to South America. This was a surprise to two young (40-ish) Aussie girls who had hoped for a bit younger crowd. But we saw them later in the Mix Bar making conversation with some of the young crew. I think they enjoyed the cruise.
The only other time I was on such a large ship at sea – several days on a troop ship back in Boot Camp days – the motion was far more pronounced than the MS Veendam. That old troop ship was a tub with a round bottom carefully designed to maximize the effects of the ocean in order to induce the greatest possible discomfort. That's how it appeared to a young recruit from the desert, growing up about a thousand miles from the nearest coast and unfamiliar with the nautical life. We, the young and expendable, slept in "racks" (as the bunks were called) packed so tightly that, in order to roll over in the night, I had to slide out onto the deck, turn over and slide back in to sleep. But I was young then, and someone else was paying for the adventure.
But age has its privileges. This cruise is on my nickel, and the Veendam is a considerable improvement over that old troop ship. Life aboard a cruise ship seems so, well, civilized – a modern version of those PBS depictions of the privileged classes embarking for 'the Continent.' Except for a problem with over-air-conditioning in our section of the ship, and a persistent rattle inside the bulkhead by our room every time the ship heeled to port, it was an enjoyable way to 'ooze our way south.' We may even do it again some time – if there's one going someplace where we might want to spend some time.
And so finally we arrived in Lima – actually sooner than we imagined. We gathered our stuff, repacked our bags and rolled them down the gangway. We caught a taxi and headed onward into Lima and – but that's another story.