mattersofthemoment

We pull into Cartagena as the sun rises out of the mist. I am struck by the beauty of the white skyscrapers reminiscent of Santos in Brazil. We have only 6 hrs in port so we have to hustle a bit‎ today. We wander off the ship and see a lot of parrots, flamingos, monkeys and peacocks in the little tourist garden. Continuing outside we are met by a barrage of tour guides selling their services.

A well dressed man in a Panama hat ‎grabs us and says he will give us a city tour. We only want to go to the old city so he drops the price. He flags a cab and we all hop in. Our guide is Gino and our driver is William. He offers us a 3 hr tour and he is so nice, we accept. We stop at an old Fort, then in front of a big fortress. There are dozens of vendors hawking tee shirts, hats, cigars, jewellry – but if you politely say no thanks, they say OK. Still, it is distracting.

Gino lived in Manhattan for 3 years and speaks good English. He is 70, goes out dancing with his wife every Saturday night, church on Sunday and knows his history. He handles all our questions. We drive by the beach in the new city and Gino points out a house the Clintons own. Apparently they like to come here to dance too. We stop at an emerald jewellry factory and Marie makes a purchase. Then in the old walled city we walk around among narrow bacloneyed streets. Many people greet Gino and some say he is the mayor.

We look into the St Peter Claver Catholic church. There is a statue of St Peter talking with a native woman outside. St Peter was a Jesuit who would go down to the docks and comfort slaves who were arriving from Africa. Cartagena das Indias means Cartagena of the Indians (natives who eventually won freedom back from Spain). ‎Gino says the government recently negotiated a truce to end the drug wars, but politicians here are very corrupt. This is South America. America seems to be following its leed we think. Gino says his church took up a collection for medicine donations to Venezuela. These are good people.

We’ve had enough of the heat – 47 deg C real feel! Wilhelm takes us back and we all part. We highly recommend Gino and Wilhelm. However, the crowds, the traffic and the heat reminds us why we don’t enjoy big cities as much anymore. Ciau!

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Day 6 is a sea day and marks the halfway point of our cruise. We awake to a calm sea as we sail due west just off the Venezuelan coast.

What is happening over there we wonder? In 1978 I had visited Caracas for a day and remember the strange juxtaposition of sky scrapers and shanty huts. Right now‎, in addition to the economic crisis, their president Nicolas Maduro has just dissolved their legislature permanently, sparking a democracy crisis that is reverberating through the whole region. I wish I had made a donation to the produce sellers yesterday.

We spend a lazy day relaxing on board by the Lido pool upfront. Somehow we get some black grease on our bathing suits that HAL will clean for us. We enjoy Pompano (our favorite Florida fish) for dinner and meet a nice man from Sechelt, B.C. He lost his wife 2.5 years ago and his kids encouraged him to go on a cruise holiday. At dinner we spot Fr Pat and he looks well again.

The towel animals are getting better.

The sun rises as we are still about 120 miles NW of Aruba. We have not seen another cruise ship on our journey yet but lot’s of freighters. Yesterday we saw a number of small 3 man sail boats that were being paddled at the front while another played out a fishing net at the back: Haitian fishermen it seemed.

Fr Pat Connoly joins us for breakfast. He is a Jesuit who taught film at a Jesuit university in Los Angeles where he still lives. Retired last year he serves as Chaplin on 3 or 4 cruises each year. He has an inside cabin, has to pay his own air fare and there is no stipend. Irish, he cannot sit out in the sun but reads and relaxes in the shade on board. He says HAL hires Catholic Priests out of tradition, not due to staff religiosity. He tells us of his world travels and teaching career. He is originally from Minnesota. We promise to meet up at happy hour. A very educated and sensitive man, we are blessed to have met him.

We dock in Aruba at 1 PM. After some wifi at Starbucks we hop a local bus for Eagle Beach. The beach is spectacular – mile long crescent shape; blonde sand with no shells again, turquoise water like a warm bath and endless tiki huts for shade. We ‎swim around and wait patiently for happy hour. We grab 2 Heinekens. We grab 2 more. Great end to a great beach day.

There is one other ship in port – the Star Pride of the upscale Windstar line.‎ Back on ship we enjoy a fish dinner followed by an outdoor Caribbean party‎ under the stars. We do the conga and a line dance. Way too much fun!

As we dock in Curacao, it is not as windy this time as it was last year. We went to a beach and the sand was blowing in our faces. This time we are planning to just walk around the world heritage site town centre known for its colourful architecture.‎ Unfortunately I drop my camera on the deck when drinking coffee. It won’t work now but I still have a BlackBerry phone and tablet and Marie has the same camera backups.

‎We enjoy the free wifi and walk into the town centre. It is very hot. We walk through an old Fort and explore some small shops. We walk by a casino. There is of course casino on board the ship too.

We find the fruit and vegetable market. I notice little boats moored behind the stalls. They are from Venezuela 30 km away. We are told that they are allowed to stay for 90 days. During this period some journey back and forth to restock the produce. People are starving in Venezuela as their economy has collapsed. They have money we are told but their store shelves are empty. We wonder how they would have enough produce to sell it here. There have been migrant deaths due to drowning as Venezuelans try to reach Curacao by boat.‎ Sad situation.

We make it back to the ship completely wilted from the heat. At Mass Fr. announces that he has come down with a gastro-intestinal disorder and cannot celibrate the Eucharist. We will have the liturgy of the word only and he will head down to the infirmary. After we sing the opening hymn, Fr. Pat announces that another priest has just stepped forward. A Monsignour from Miami is cruising with his mom and finishes the Mass! There were close to 200 present – we all gasped with joy.

We generally love sea days. You can kick back with that favorite book in the shade. Dip in the pool and plan for your next port. We slept well and as we arise the ship passes the SE corner of Cuba. As the sun rises, we now officially enter the Caribbean. We do some walking on the promenade deck. This design of ship permits an uninterrupted circuit around which is .5 km.

We go to Mass. There is a Irish priest; there are 40 of us. He does a great job. All H‎AL ships have a Catholic priest on board to celebrate Mass primarily for the Filipino crew we believe. Oceania had a weekly inter-faith service. Carnival had nothing. Oceania has other benefits like historical/cultural enrichment lectures. Carnival is like a frat party which we can no longer stomach. Royal Caribbean and Norwegian are also a little too loud for our tastes now too.

We grab some deck chairs in the sun and gaze out at the sea. We meditate about how Jesus and his mother Mary felt as Jesus entered Jerusalem knowing what was going to happen. About noon we pass by the south western peninsula of Haiti – an area that was hit hard by Hurricane Mathew in 2016. Lot’s of sorrow and hope. There are rugged mountains and it rains briefly.

We meet some very gracious staff from Indonesia. We have some delicious shrimp for dinner and go to bed early.

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We slept well after a great dinner of salmon and roast beef, The king bed is great. Our cabin is quiet and there is very little rocking of the boat. Dave saw the sunrise over the Caribbean as we made our way to Half Moon Cay, the private island HAL bought in 1196 for $6M from the Bahamas.‎ Dave had a dip in the Lido pool which is surprisingly fresh instead of salt water.

The Zuiderdam (pronounced zoyderdam) has 11 decks and was built in 2002. There are 1916 guests and 800 crew. Gross tonnage is 82,000. Hence it is a medium sized ship, even small by today’s standards. This accounts for the fact it never feels crowded on board and people are not in a frenzy. It feels “low key” and average passenger age is late 60s by estimation.

Half Moon Cay is gorgeous. Blond crescent shaped sand beach a mile long, cyrstal clear torquise water and rocly shoals at each end. There are no shells here – only a few small sandstone pebbles. We catch the taiil end of the yoga on the beach class taught by a young Poiish lady. The tender ride in was smooth.

Back on board we have tuna steak and crabcakes for dinner. The food is very tasty on HAL. We meet friendly people from Texas, Oregon, Florida and ‎Colorado. We have some laughs at the comedian show.

Check in was effortless. We arrived at the Park and Go lot at 12:30 and we’re in our cabin at 1:30 PM. Only hitch was Marie’s photo at check-in failed and we had to go to guest services on board for a retake. They also made me carry our box of wine all the way to our cabin. I had lot’s of offers of help from fellow passengers!

We walked around the ship and had a light snack in the Lido. We like the Zuiderdam – spacey, quiet and uncrowded. Did not have to bring our life jackets to the emergency drill.‎ Room is great – a large ocean view. Found a couple of pieces of glass and a pill on the floor.

The sail away was 75 min late and some people were napping. When the fog horn went off, we awoke with a start.

Bon voyage on our first cruise day to the Panama Canal.

This beautiful Jacaranda tree‎ is struggling to put out its yellow blossoms. It has been so dry here of late. There are other colours of this wondrous tree including purple, fuscia and blue.

It is native to Central and South America, Cuba, Hispanola, the Bahamas and planted in Florida is seems.  The one above is in our previous condo community.  I check on each year to see how it is doing.  I love the shape of this tree, the colour and its will to survive.

One or our favorite activities in Florida is yoga.  Marie attends frequent classes at Yoga Bird Studio about a 10 min drive from our condo.  Dave has been going to weekly outdoor yoga classes at the Alliance for the Arts park nearby.  He got interested in yoga thanks to Marie’s yoga classes at Galilee last fall.

The outdoor yoga class is absolutely fantastic under the apricot trees.  The smell of fresh soaps and BBQ pork wafts over us from the nearby green market stalls.  There is always live music playing in the background.  Chip Woodrow of Yoga Bird does an excellent job of instructing.  He says things like “If you tried it, you did it.”, “It’s your practice.” and “Yoga is not a competitive sport.”  Hence everyone is made to feel welcome no matter what level you are at.  It is a special time of calming, breathing and relaxing your thoughts. After you finish you feel really focused and balanced in your body, mind and spirit.  Dave looks forward to continuing his yoga practice back home.

Yoga practice for Marie and I is a great way to honour our temples; as our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.  Marie studied yoga at Yahweh Yoga which is clearly Christian based.  This is what we practice.

 

In the moment, we give God thanks for the gift of yoga.

One of the fun activities we discovered around Fort Myers is to attend a MLB spring training baseball game or two.  There are two stadiums and two grapefruit league teams playing here:  Boston Red Sox at Jet Blue Park and Minnesota Twins at Hammond Stadium.

This year we saw the Toronto Blue Jays play the Twins and the Boston Orioles play the Red Sox.  Hammond Field is newer and very impressive.  We attended the game with John and Anita Jarrell from Saskatoon.  John and I went to U of W together many years ago.  We reconnected at a class reunion and discovered that we were both coming to the same area in Florida each winter.  Hence we have reunited our long time friendship.

Anita is a great and gracious host and we have met their daughter Beth who has been coming here with her family for many years too.  They stay on Sanibel.  We have become quite enamored with the lifestyle there through our association and also through seeing our other friends Dick and Carol who live there.

Marie and I also ventured out to Jet Blue Park to see Boston beat the Orioles.  We had fun singing ….Love that Dirty Water.. Oh, oh, Bastin you’r ma home! Learned some new expressions like: “Knawk it out of the pawk!” and “Where did we pawk the caw?”  A lot of Bostonians made the day memorable for us.

We have made plans with the Jarrells to attend a Jays game or two here next year, God willing.