World Cruise 2012 Sydney to Sydney

Sydney–Darwin–Singapore–Kuala Lumpur–Penang–Mumbai–Dubai–Salalah–Luxor–Aqaba–Suez Canal–Alexandria–Istanbul–Anzac Cove–Athens–Venice–Dubrovnik–Naples–Civitavecchia (Rome)–Livorno (Florence)–Cannes–Barcelona–Lisbon–Le Havre (Paris)–Dover (London)–Bergen–Shetland Isl–Reykjavik–Halifax–New York-St Thomas–Aruba–Panama Canal–Puntarenas–Los Angeles–Honolulu–Papeete–Pago Pago–Auckland–Bay of Islands–SydneyFINISHED! But the vacation will continue for another two weeks.

Showing posts with label cruising. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Mykonos-NOs-NOs-NOs…

Weather was too windy—over 50 knots apparent wind speed over the deck and occasional bursts of wind over 50 knots—so the captain elected not to go to Mykonos. Now we have more of a problem with our credit card which had been sent from the US to Athens to Mykonos. Don’t know where it will go now or when.

There is a boat building contest on board which will be in a few days and one of our friends needs to test their boat so they asked to use our bathtub. They have to make a boat that will carry a six-pack across the pool and not sink inspite of inspired attempts to sink it. So we have turned that into a reason to have a party! We have lots of beer, they will bring some champers ( Aussie for champagne) and pizza at 1500 today.

No boat pictures until after the race, the boat is a secret until then!

Then we hope that at 1700 the captain will have gotten permission to enter the Dardanelles early and we will have a daylight transit of the Dardanelles. Another party! We have plenty of beer and they restock (free) our liquor every seven days so, while we don’t have an abundance of hard liquor (spirits in Aussie), we do have some. And food is free. Party time!!! We were going to have a sail-away party at 1400 from Mykonos but that won’t happen. One has to be flexible on a ship!

Monday, June 18, 2012

Pyramids and sharks...

No pictures so far. I have either erased the card or misplaced it. In any case I can't find the photos from our day at the pyramids.

Another early morning. We don’t normally mind getting up early but our body clocks are so screwed up—even though it’s a cruise and we didn’t think that could happen!—because for the last few days we have gone back one hour (Safaga, Egypt) followed by forward one hour (Petra, Jordan) followed by back one hour (Cairo) and tonight we’ll go back one hour (Mykonos) again. Or maybe it’s forward an hour, I don’t know anymore! We are also starting—oh, me, poor me, I can feel your sympathy—a sequence of many, many port days and not so many sea days. By July 7 we’ll see Mykonos, Istanbul, Athens, Naples, Dubrovnik, Rome, Venice, Florence, Cannes, Barcelona, Lisbon, and Le Havre.

The pyramids were everything we thought they would be and so much more in so many ways! Mohammed—not Muhammed, he told us, nobody but the Prophet is named Muhammed—was our guide, a very nice, knowledgeable man. He has a degree in archeology and is working on a masters in hieroglyphics. Who knew they even had such a degree? Since the bus ride is three hours each way, we had lots of time to learn more about both the pyramids and Mohammed that we ever thought we’d know. Most of which I promptly forgot. I do remember that the Pyramid of Cheops is the largest manmade structure—ever! It is a pyramid 142 meters (956 feet) high, contains two million limestone blocks, and the angle of the sides is exactly 48°. The mind boggles to even think about how they thought about all the mathematics they needed to construct that pyramid!

We were able to climb part of it using steps put in in modern times but we didn’t go too high so I don’t know how high the steps go. We could have crawled in an opening in the pyramid if we wanted but I didn’t particularly fancy crawling on hands and knees a fair distance (you can’t turn around until you get to the end of the passageway).

Our first view of the Pyramids. Looks like a residential area in the US, doesn't it? It is.

We're getting closer. Note the vendors waiting to pounce!

Flat Stanley meeting his first camel, in front of the Pryamid of Cheops, 142 meters high.

If your knees will survive, you may crawl into the Pyramid. And crawl back out!

One of the many, many camels (I know, they are actually dromedaries, but everyone calls them camels) available for hire.

Stanley is excited to see the Pyramid of Cheops

Randy, dwarfed by the Pyramid

Flat Stanley, Pam, and Randy. This gives you a good idea of the size of the blocks of limestone used to create the Pyramids.

You can get a camel ride around the Pyramid. But you may have to pay again to have the camel driver tell his camel to kneel down so you can get OFF!

Arguably the most famous three Pyramids. Unfortunately I only know the far left one is Cheops'.

The Sphinx and a pyramid with some of the covering it originally had.

Can you tell I loved the Sphinx?

The Egyptian version of a rest area on the highway. Literally ON the highway.

We saw the Sphinx as well and where we were amazed by the large size of the pyramids, we were amazed at the relatively small Sphinx. Not that it’s exactly small, it’s just much smaller than I imagined. Unfortunately, what overshadowed everything were the vendors! The vendors around the pyramids are by far the most aggressive and obnoxious of all that we have been subjected to in Jordan and Egypt.

As soon as a bus pulls up they start pushing trinkets and clothing on you. Literally pushing! If you won’t look at them (my technique is pretending to be deaf) they hold the item directly in front of your face, two inches away, yelling “one dollar!” or “five dollar” or whatever price. They will put items in your hands, drape clothing over your shoulder and then demand you pay them for the item you have “bought.” If you take a picture of the vendor (they are colorfully dressed and usually standing directly in front of what you want a picture of) they yell in your face that you owe them “five dollar” for the picture you just took. Any eye contact at all and more of them will converge on you. And never, never say anything to them. They block the door to the bus, they are inside the areas that I would consider part of the various monuments, there is no place where you can be left in peace to enjoy what you came to see. The whole experience is unpleasant at best and comparable to being in a feeding frenzy of sharks. But I refuse to let it spoil my experience of Egypt and the pyramids.

We had to stop at a shopping opportunity, actually a very nice, government run store with jewelry, inlaid wood items, and lots of other stuff. And, although a government-run store, bargaining was necessary. But it was a fun experience and not at all like the vendors at the pyramids. And yes, kids, we did finally buy something!

A ride on a feluca (sailboat) on the Nile and a buffet lunch in an open air restaurant on the Nile completed our day other than the three-hour bus ride back to our “home.” The feluca ride was nice—cool under the awning with a nice breeze—interesting but the best part was watching the “captain,” a 20-something young man, pull down the sail and glide into his mooring from a couple of hundred feet away, against the current, and with barely a bump as the feluca came to a stop. To me, a non-sailor, an amazing feat of seamanship. Of course he sort of spoiled it by demanding “tips, baksheesh” (baksheesh is apparently a bribe).

Are we actually going to get ON this feluca? Yup!

In full sail regalia, Cairo in the background. The horizon is a bit off because I am leaning back, reaching out over the edge, and a bit off-balance trying to get a decent photo of the feluca.

Drifting in (no motor is even available to help) to a perfect landing.

This shows just a tiny portion of the building un-boom in Cairo.

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Mumbai, Vultures, and Diclofenac

What on earth does that have to do with a ‘round the world cruise you may wonder. You may also wonder what diclofenac is. Or not.

India is a very religiously tolerant country (according to our tour guide, Meherrukh) and there are many religions practiced there. One is Zoroastrianism, a religion more ancient than most, which among other things does not believe in cremation or burial. They lay their dead out in “Towers of Silence” in the Hanging Gardens in Mumbai. The towers are open to the sky and the bodies used to be desicated by the sun and consumed by vultures (Gyps indicus). The towers still exist in Mumbai and their dead are still laid out there, but the vultures are gone, themselves driven to extinction by the use of diclofenac, a veterinary NSAID that causes kidney failure in vultures when they consume the bodies of animals dosed with it.

I love travel! I learn so much about so many things!

Our tour of Mumbai using Mumbai Magic tours was magnificent, especially considering we lost almost 4 hours of the tour! I highly recommend them to future World Cruisers or anybody coming to Mumbai. Farida and Meherrukh were our guides in two 20-passenger busses (12-13 in each bus so we had lots of room).

We had a general tour of the city of Bombay (or Bom Bahia, a good bay, corrupted to ‘Bombay’ until 1997) with stops at some of the more famous places and a few not so famous. Our guide calls it Bombay—as she has all her life—so I shall, too.

We got some sense of how many people live and work in Bombay by entering the Victoria Terminus (train station) via an underground road crossing. You would take your life in your hands to attempt to cross one of the central-Bombay streets where pedestrians, taxis, busses of all sizes and ages, motorcycles, trishaws, cars, and trucks are all in a supreme hurry to get somewhere and with an hearing-damaging cacaphony of horns blowing. The underground passage to the VT was as crowded, just with masses of people rather than vehicles, although our guide said the crowds were fairly light because it was a Sunday.

We walked through a fruit and vegetable market (no durians, however. Durians, if you don’t know, smell so execrably bad that they are banned in most hotels, busses, and trains. But locals—Thais, Malaysians, just about anybody in Southeast Asia—adore them! I ate one, once. Never again!), again crammed with people, buying, selling, moving, packing, cleaning up, sleeping, eating, smoking, drinking, for all I know some were probably having sex somewhere in the teeming mass of humanity.

Mahatma Ghandi lived in Bombay for many years, staying at a house that we visited. He owned very little, his room contained not much more than a pallet for sleeping, some books, and a spinning wheel. He loved to spin, he said it relaxed him. It is also the reason that, if you see a wreath around his neck, it will be of threads to commemorate his love of spinning. It also reminded him of his people and what they needed to do and to have. Because, I guess, he had so little in the way of possessions, the house doesn’t have many artifacts. What it does have are about two-dozen extremely well done dioramas of events in his life from the early days right up to his assassination.

From there we went to a Hare Krishna temple. Those of you reading this who lived in San Francisco in the 70s will remember the Hare Krishna monks at the San Francisco airport, a memory I am not fond of as they pretty much harassed all travellers with requests for money. Eventually they would be confined to only certain areas of the airport. But this Bombay temple was an experience of a whole different sort that has erased the negative memories I have of the Krishnas in the airport.

It was stiflingly hot in Bombay, and even more so in the temple where not a breath of air moved and there was a mass of humanity chanting on the upper floors of the temple. The smells of Bombay permeated the air. The chanters were separated by gender—although our guide says they didn’t have to be—and the monks were separated by a curtain from the chanters. We talked for a very short moment to a monk who sounded American but I didn’t have time to question him. And so we moved on, gathering our shoes, and heading to the Gateway of India and the “Taj.”

I think it’s hysterically funny that “The Gateway of India was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Bombay, prior to the Delhi Durbar, in December 1911. However, they only got to see only a cardboard model of the structure since the construction did not begin till 1915.”

This was a Sunday and it defies description how many people were at the Gateway! It was also our closest view of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the one that was bombed a few years back as was the Gateway. The Indians are, if this is possible, even more security conscious than we (US) are. Almost every building I went into had an xray scanner in use. (Don’t get me going on getting back on board the ship!)

We (the Oz and US tourists) were big draws ourselves in the crowd in fornt of the Gateway. Kim (the husband of the most prolific tour organizer, Narelle) was asked by too many Indian tourists to count to pose for pictures. And one resourceful entrepeneur was charging the Indians to have their picture taken with Kim and then charging them to print the photo on his portable printer.

We saw the Dhobi ghat laundry men (google it) and we heard about the Mumbai Lunch Box men (that, too) who have 100% accuracy. Married women have red in the part of their hair. Giving or taking a dowry is illegal. It is illegal to reveal the sex of a child to the mother before birth. A daughter is a stranger’s wealth. So much interesting stuff! Bollywood is not a place. And the best: there is a private club in Bombay which will not allow film stars or politicians as members. I so love to travel!
In the Gulf of Oman with guards posted

Noon 24° 05’ N

60° 25’ E