2008 Note: the 1st part of this posting is somewhat morbid, and seemingly not relevant, although it will make sense if you are reading posts from "bottom" up; ie. from earlier to later posting dates. If you insist on reading "downward" please persist, and you will get to cruise information.
Obviously, this is being written long after our return to Canada, three weeks ago. There are good reasons for the delay.In our last few days on the ship, we, and a lot of other people, developed a dry cough. Despite the exemplary sanitary practices enforced on Zuiderdam (hand sanitizing stations at every restaurant entrance, with personnel enforcing hand cleaning; enforced hand sanitizing before getting back on the ship after being ashore; and a plethora of hand-sanitizing stations all over the ship) a bug seemed to have gotten on board. By the time we were on the bus from the ship to Miami airport, about half the people on the bus were coughing.
June got over the bug relatively easily after getting home, although she was quite ill for a couple of days. For Gerry it settled more deeply into the upper respiratory tract, and eventually a bacterial infection got started. The worst was being awake all through the night coughing, and not being able to get any rest during the day (sleeping sitting up is just not on!). Eventually a course of anti-biotics, and a couple of puffers (broncho-dilator and steroids) seemed to turn things around, although there is a remaining cough even today.
Then there was a whole bunch of work associated with planning Gerry's mother's funeral. Scott had done a magnificent job dealing with the immediate necessities and getting planning started, but he very wisely left anything non-urgent to Gerry. That way Gerry got to dealing with the reality of Maria's death in a rather hands-on way, which was good; given how far away we were when it happend, and how long it had been since she died, it had a rather ethereal quality about it
The funeral was last Friday, November 3, in the afternoon. We picked the day because it was the earliest weekend day on which there weren't other commitments for someone who had to be there. Every other day was later, and had the potential of being problematical in terms of weather. As it happened, we picked the worst day of all the alternatives. North of Barrie we ran into blizzard conditions, with cars going into the ditch around us as we slowly inched northward. Fortunately, as we neared Midland, the conditions improved, although there was a lot of snow on the ground from earlier in the day. As it was, if it were not terribly tacky to not go to one's mother's funeral, we might have turned around.The funeral, at Maria's church, Holy Cross Lutheran in Midland, went well, and was well done, even if the weather had done it's worst. The assisting minister (a layreader in Anglican terms) had gotten rear-ended in the storm, and was in emergency getting checked out for whip-lash. Thus the pastor, Wendell Grahlman (Gerry had been in seminary with him), had to make it a bit of a one-man-show, although we at least supplied readers, June and our friend Paul Schumacher, and Gerry took the chalice at communion. We sang some good old German hymns, with a few English hymns thrown in for good measure. The women of the ELW (Evangelical Lutheran Women) had outdone themselves putting together a lunch for after the service; Maria had been one of their stalwart members, and they weren't about to let anyone leave hungry. We ended up taking about half the food home with us (Mary and Scott were glad for the sandwiches, and used them the next day for a birthday party for Adam and Tamara, with enough left over to feed a couple of Mexican teenage water-polo players who were billeting with them into the next week). June and Gerry got "stuck" with the desserts. At 4 p.m. the family went to the cemetery for a private interment of Maria's cremated remains. (For Gerry it was yet one more winter funeral, standing at grave side up to the ankles in melting snow! Why should this one be different?) The solemnity of the occasion was relieved, to everyone's relief, by Trinity (our 3+ year old grand-daughter) suddenly taking it into her head to take a run at the flat grave-marker, which was wet, and suddenly doing a solid bum-plant on her great grandma's grave. A good thing there was a board covering the hole, or she would have been in it! Grandma would have laughed - probably did. We went out for dinner in Barrie on our way home; it was still snowing on the way south and in Barrie, but not much south of Barrie the snow stopped, and it looked like a normal Fall night.So, those are the events that got in the way of finishing the saga of the cruise, and so from the early blizzard of November 3, let's pick up the tale of June and Gerry's cruising, in tropical Ocho Rios, Jamaica.
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Epistle #5 in this series ended with us at sea on Tuesday, October 17, under way from Columbia to Jamaica. We woke up the next morning just as we were coming into Ocho Rios Bay, about in the middle of Jamaica's north shore. Ocho Rios used to be a small port, for fishing boats, banana boats, and notably, ships carrying bauxite aluminium ore from Jamaica to Canada for refining. These days, it is the cruise ship capital of Jamaica, welcoming a couple of ships a day during high season - which of course makes it a very commercial place!
The Royal Caribbean ship "Rhapsody of the Seas" came into port right behind us, meaning the cruise ship pier was too short for both of us - which meant that Zuiderdam, huge as she is, got to use the old bauxite loading pier all to herself - which also meant that those of us going ashore got to walk over old railway tracks, and past assorted old junked machinery, to a rather slummy area where we could pick up our buses.We had booked to visit something called Enchanted Gardens, and then the Dunn's River Falls. The first turned out to be a gem of a place. Formerly the grounds of a resort that had closed for renovations some years ago, and for unstated reasons never re-opened, it has been turned into a botanical paradise, with every Jamaican plant imaginable growing along tumbling waterfalls. It of course has its tacky, commercial side (a cage with parrots and other birds that will eat off your hand and sit [and possibly also sh...t] on your head, while the locals take your picture), but scenically it is well worth the visit.
After this stop, the plan was to take us to a shopping centre. But a curious thing happened; our rather small bus seemed to have mostly Canadians and Europeans on it, who had had it with shopping. It became a "hell no, we won't go" moment, much to the puzzlement of our guide. She eventually got the picture; even if the bus went to the shopping centre, we weren't getting off! So, off we went to Dunn's River Falls.
By this time it was early afternoon, and the predicted high of 33 degrees Celsius had been exceeded, but as long as you stayed in the shade, it was tolerable. Dunn's River Falls has of course been overworked in Jamaican tourism literature. A river originating in the low mountains inland runs about 600 feet from the top of a plateau down to the ocean, over a series of rock "steps" and through shallow pools. Even today, overworked as it is, it is very beautiful. It is possible to climb the falls from sea level up to the top, in groups, guided by locals. Given the heat, we didn't expend the energy, instead walking up and down the path to one side of the falls. The falls themselves are much as one sees them in the tourism pictures and posters, but the surroundings are a fairly (actually more than fairly) commercialized park. We made the mistake of waking into an "artisans'" area, and were almost mugged by people trying to sell us tacky "crafts." We escaped, wallets intact, and returned to the ship, for a late lunch and to cool off. At 5 p.m. the inevitable sail-away party was held on the stern, complete with over-priced and under "rumed" rum punches. However, the gathering thunderstorms over the island as we sailed northward, and the spectacular sunset, made it worthwhile.
We went to sleep with the ship's position (we had Gerry's car GPS with us, and thus could check where we were) somewhere south of Cayo Largo, Cuba (where we had been between Christmas and New Year's earlier in the year). We woke up on Thursday morning, October 19,, still south of Cuba, but near the eastern tip of the island, which we could see quite well with binoculars. Then through the Windward Passage (about 50 miles wide) between Cuba and Haiti, to continue on our way northward. (Factoid: the Caribbean is very deep in this area; more than 4000 metres, 12,000 feet, or over 2 miles - meanwhile, life on the cruise ship goes on, fine food, formal dining, playing bigo, and the evening cabaret, with no one worrying about just how much water was between them and solid ground!)
After a day at sea relaxing, that evening was the last formal night of the cruise. By this time there seemed to be a definite formal fatigue setting in, with a number of people simply not showing up in the dining room. This was also a time for the dining room crew to show off; not the least of which was a formal parade of the baked alaskas, accompanied by Strauss's Radetzky March! Then on to the show in the Vista Lounge, with a spectacular song and dance presentation by the ship's singers and dancers. And then to bed, knowing that the next day would be our last, and that somewhere along the way we would have to pack.
We woke up on Friday, October 20, just as the ship was anchoring in the bay at Half Moon Cay. Our room service breakfast arrived shortly after, and we sat on our verandah, looking out at the beautiful island scenery, while the tenders were preparing to take equipment and people ashore. (2008 Note: the picture that is at the top of this blog is of Half Moon Cay from the Zuiderdam.)
Half Moon Cay is a Bahamian island leased by Holland America, and used by its cruise ships, usually as the first or last stop in a Caribbean cruise. It has its own tenders, much larger and more comfortable than the ship's own tenders; meals cooked ashore by the ship's kitchen staff, and a number of exploration tours that look at the land and marine life on the cay.We went ashore, but found that unless one stayed in the shade, it was just too hot. Definitely sunburn territory. After lunch we went out on a glass-bottomed boat to look at marine life on the reef, but unfortunately the boat operator was a bit of a speed maniac, so what should have been a leisurely exploration of a lagoon became an exercise in stop, look at fish, go at high speed somewhere, stop, look at more fish, etc. We took the last tender back to the ship, and cooled off before supper.
That evening we packed, as our suitcases had to be outside our cabins by midnight in order to be off-loaded the next morning. This turned out to be not an insignificant exercise; somehow, what we had brought, and managed to stow in very little space, had grown, and our cases were bulging. Nevertheless, we got everything stowed away, and went to bed; waking up after the ship had docked in Ft. Lauderdale.We had our breakfast on the verandah, watching the unloading of luggage. This was done by forklift truck, with luggage on pallets, and every once in a while a suitcase or two would drop anywhere from a few feet to 15 feet to the dock - makes you appreciate airline luggage handling. Eventually, our colour/number group was called to disembark, and after clearing immigration we claimed our luggage, which appeared not to have been among the ones dropped, and found our bus (better, the line-up for our bus) to Miami airport. This part of the trip was not well-handled, and we stood in hot sun and high humidity for perhaps an hour, while the shore staff sorted out which buses were going where.
Eventually we did get to Miami airport, supposedly being let out at the Air Canada area, but it turned out we had to lug our belongings probably half a kilometer down a concourse before getting to the check-in. Not the best way to end. The flight down had been delayed by a minor mechanical, so the flight home was about an hour late, but we made up about 30 minutes of that. Terminal 2 at YYZ was as bad as always, and our luggage took forever (no tears when T2 gets closed early next year). Then we had a close encounter with a customs guy who just couldn't believe that we hadn't bought bags of jewellery for him to confiscate (it seems that people who cruise buy jewellery, and don't declare it; I guess we are not typical). We eventually got out, and home, not too late in the evening.So there you have it, the last of the sagas of the Longworth-Mueller cruise.
The on-line pictures are now complete, so check us out at http://longworth_mueller.fototime.com.
And we'd be glad to have your comments.
June and Gerry
Back in good old Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
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