Pictures:
1. This is the Funchal Fish Market. The row of black fish on the lower left side are the espada.
2. This is the welcome dancer from the Indonesian Crew Show.
3. The Saman Dance.
4. The Kecak Dance, King Rama and his wife Sita surrounded by villagers.
5. Part of the angkllung orchestra. You can see the two bamboo tubes on the one the girl in green is holding. The thinner sticks are the frame to hold the bar that strikes the tubes.
6. Diana on our veranda. You are looking aft and the white streaks in the water are the turbulence caused by the ship's screws. It's the bubbles produced by the cavitation effect that also cause the vibration at the rear of the ship. Sort of a free version of the old coin operated 'Magic Fingers' machines on motel room beds.
May 6 through 12 – At Sea. This will be the longest consecutive period I've ever been on a ship without stopping in a port, a full week. Personally, I like the idea. It provides plenty of time to relax, pack and prepare to meet the real world. Since my routine is so boring during this period I decided to group them together and just report the unusual events, if any.
First day out we had a deck cookout. Funchal has a large fish market and the ship bought a large tuna and several espada fish. I should have mentioned the espada when I was writing about Funchal but forgot to so here goes.
The espada is also known as the black scabbard or swordfish. They are caught in the deep waters off the coast of the archipelago and it's a favorite dish with the local population and has been since the early 1800s. Almost every restaurant and café offers a variety of meals based on this tender, white, mild fish. The filets may be very attractive but the fish is not. It's a long thin fish something like a barracuda but even thinner and more eel like. The snout is long and has barracuda like teeth. Very ominous looking. It's metallic black in color and has an iridescent look the oil on water. The inside of the mouth and gills are black as well. It has very large eyes and no pelvic fins at all. The skin looks leathery.
It's a bathypelagic fish. So it lives much to deep in the ocean for plant life to be present so being carnivorous the long, protruding fang like teeth make a lot of sense. Since there's not much if any light either, it lives between the 600 and 5,600 foot level, the thick skin and the large eyes also seem logical. They grow to over 43 inches in length but are mature at 3 feet or so. Before becoming mature they don't go below 500 feet or so. They were discovered by accident and developed into a resource when fishermen devised ways to fish for them. First time I saw them in the fish market here I didn't have a clue what they were.
Back to the BBQ. The chefs cut up the tuna and espada on large tables on the lido deck so everyone could see how they prepare a whole fish. The tuna was huge, fresh and sushi quality. Just across the way from the prep area were the large grills they set up for the on deck parties. It was sort of a shame to see them grill the tuna but it was delicious all the same. I took some of both fish and ate the espada first. It's very firm textured like tuna but absolutely white and much more delicate in flavor. It was excellent. The tuna was even better and that is about as good as it gets. Since the tuna had been frozen on the ship before preparation it was safe to eat as sashimi so I talked the prep staff into giving me a small piece. Since they have wasabi, although not very good, on board for the 'sushi' (I put the word in quotes because, while it's ok, it's really only sushi-like.) they serve at lunch and soy sauce is easy to find on the ship so sashimi was totally doable. It was excellent also.
The on deck cookouts are one of my favorite shipboard activities.
One afternoon they had the Desert Extravaganza Buffet at teatime. The deserts were excellent. Since it was teatime they also had scones and little girlie sandwiches (I mean, what's the 'no crust' deal?), which, sadly, I like. I rarely go to the teas. I mean, how many times a day can you eat anyway? But on special occasions I make an exception.
Another afternoon they had the Lunch Buffet Extravaganza. This is worth attending because they bring out all the fanciest food and the presentation is over the top. These two buffets have several things in common. The kitchen staff goes all out on the set up and the presentation. They carve watermelons with absolutely fantastic scenes. These are the guys you want to carve your Halloween pumpkin. They sculpt butter, ice, chocolate, marzipan and any other solid food they can get their hands on into all sorts of objects. This year they carved a huge basked out of a giant block of ice and used it as a fruit basket. Biggest one I've ever seen. They had a four-foot tall medieval castle made of chocolate. Loaves of bread formed into animals and objects including a sign with the voyage logo and inscription. Fruit and vegetable floral displays are located throughout the buffet, all edible of course. They're so pretty that no one ever takes any part to eat. I'm sure they wind up in the fruit salad. One thing I really enjoy is their fruit and cheese kabob display. The carve a base from a watermelon and then stick long wooden skewers with alternating layers of fruit and cheese into it. The green base with the multicolored top looks like a flower display. Pretty and delicious, a fantastic combination.
One afternoon they scheduled kitchen tours. That in itself is not that exciting but this was a tour of the deck 4 prep and cooking kitchen that's not normally seen. We've toured the deck 5 galley several times. That's the serving space and final prep area. Deck four is home to the butcher shop, the fish market, the bakery, the soup kitchen, the grill, the ovens, the produce area, the fruit zone and everything else needed to prepare meals for the passengers and the crew. It was not surprising that meat and fish are stored and prepared in separate areas but they are about as far apart as they can get. The soup pots are on gimbals, of course, and they're huge. Everyone I know agrees that HAL's soups are great so when the man who works in that area was introduced he got a nice round of applause. The salad prep area was larger than I expected and the butcher shop much smaller.
We toured successively colder storage areas for fruit, vegetables, meat, dairy, pastries and ice cream the last being the coldest. Next came the warmest and probably the most valuable, the liquor locker. They have some very expensive wines and liquors on the ship and there were several cases of each in the room and hundreds of cases of the normal stuff.
On the way to the galley we passed the crew hallway. The regular employees meet in the Boogie Lounge and the officers in the Viking Lounge. From my time in the Air Force I know that this is not a class thing. Larger bases had three clubs, Airman's, NCO's and Officer's. Even the smallest bases had an Enlisted Club and an Officer's Club. The system has several benefits for both groups. The main ones are that the officers can relax and be themselves and the enlisted don't have to worry that the officers are watching them. I can tell you for sure that the enlisted would rather have it that way, maybe more than the officers. Come to think of it the crew on this ship is just about the size of the smallest base I served on, about 450.
At 6:15AM one morning the ship's fire alarm went off. It wound up being a false alarm that they never could figure out. It was interesting to see how different people reacted to the situation. Those of us with military experience were not much bothered by it. Some people went into a total panic. The prudent thing to do is get dressed and wait for announcements. When I was dressed I looked out into the hallway to see if there was any smoke in my area. Obviously, there wasn't. I did see one lady, barefoot, in her bathrobe and life jacket heading down the hall to who knows where. Before Diana was even fully dressed the announcement came that it was a false alarm. Diana didn't think she could get back to sleep but I told her to just lie down for a while and if she couldn't sleep we'd go up to the Lido for breakfast. It was soon clear that the situation had not effected her much either as she was sleeping in five minutes.
We did go to breakfast at the time I normally do, which is early for Diana on a sea day. The Lido was much busier than usual at that hour; I guess the alarm disrupted everyone's schedule. This set some sort of president as Diana and I had breakfast together four sea days in a row, a personal best. Diana needs a lot more sleep than I do so if we go to bed at the same time, I'm totally slept out about 1.5 hours before she is.
The highlight of the days at sea was the Indonesian Crew Show. Their show is usually very ethnic in nature with traditional dances and plays. There's usually a Welcome Dance, Kacek Dance and a Saman Dance. In between they have singers and to close the show they have an angklung orchestra. Each of these probably needs a little explanation.
The Welcome Dance is a solo, highly formalized storytelling dance. Its roots are in a dance to welcome the gods to an event. It's very much like Hindu temple dances done in India. The costume is very colorful and the motions are very intricate and organized down to the fingers.
The Kecak Dance tells the story of the Ramayana (Rama's Journey), an ancient Sanskrit epic. In the story the Hindu sage Valmiki, a monkey like humanoid, helps King Rama (an avatar of the Hindu god Vishnu) fight the demon like King Ravana who has kidnapped Rama's wife Sita.
Religion Note: Hinduism is the only major world religion that I know very little about. It's complicated and I'm not willing to study it enough to really get it. For instance, the god Vishnu has had 10 avatars or incarnations. Among them are names you will recognize like Rama, Krishna and Buddha. There are many gods besides Vishnu, most of whom are locally revered but many are universal. Shiva is best known as the destroyer but it's not as bad as it sounds. He destroys in order to restore to proper order (dharma), like the demolition work before remodeling. Ganesha is another well-known figure. I'll let you Google him on your own for the story about how he got the head of an elephant. It's pretty good.
The Saman Dance is performed by dancers kneeling in a line facing the audience. They use their hands, arms, heads and torsos to perform synchronized movements that are a joy to watch. Sometimes they wear white gloves and a portion of the dance will be performed with the house lights out and the stage lit with black light. The white gloves glow and seem to be floating unaided in complex patterns.
The angklung is an instrument made from bamboo. It has two tubes tuned an octave apart that are suspended in a frame that allows the player to vibrate it back and forth to strike the tuned bamboo tubes. Each frame only plays the two notes so an angklung orchestra is like a bell choir; one person plays either one or two angklung when those notes are needed. It produces a sound that I find very pleasant. They usually play some American music and a traditional tune or two.
The Indonesian Crew Show is always a lot of fun partly because they seem to have such a good time performing for the passengers. Like the Filipinos, they always get a great reception and thunderous applause.
The last day at sea Diana and I spent more time on our veranda than we had the entire rest of the trip. It's nice to have one I guess but we almost never used it and it certainly would not be worth the extra expense to us.
Since we got this through a free upgrade it was fine. A few notes on the 'new' rooms all the way aft on deck 8. They are nicely appointed and large. I've seen where some people were not happy that they didn't have a 'walk-in' closet like the other rooms. We found that to be an advantage. The more traditional layout of the closets in this room allowed Diana and I to access items in the closet at the same time. Not possible in the narrow walk-ins in most of the rooms.
Being way aft on the ship the rooms are subject to more motion than more centrally located rooms. That doesn't really bother us much as we are not sensitive to the motion and actually find it to be enjoyable as long as it's not too violent. Also when the bridge changes the pitch of the screws cavitations occur and that causes fairly heavy vibration in these rooms. Again it doesn't bother me all that much. I wouldn't have had to bring my alarm clock because when they changed speed to pick up the pilot at a port the vibration woke me up and gave me time to get ready for breakfast and getting of the ship. Sometimes speed changes are necessary in the middle of the night and that was much less convenient. The short version of all this is that I would sail in these rooms again but would probably not pay the extra to book one. Based on the prices I could find on the Internet this cruise would have doubled in price if we had reserved this room. For less than two hours of use during the 62 days aboard that would have been some expensive patio.
Disembarkation in Fort Lauderdale was uneventful. I lucked out and got a Chevy Impala from Budget. This is the ideal rental car when carrying luggage. The trunk is huge. On a cubic foot basis it may not be larger than those of the Ford Crown Vic or Merc Grand Marquis but you can get more luggage in it because it has a better shape. Also it uses less gas and handles better than either as well.
After a couple of nights in Orlando with friends we headed west. I decided to cross the Mississippi at Vicksburg, Mississippi on I-20. This proved to be a good choice. The river was very high but not a problem. However on the Louisiana side the water was very close to the top of the levee. If it had gotten over the top a large area of the state would have been flooded. The trip was uneventful except for one section of the interstate where the traffic was completely stopped. My GPS has a routing that senses when you are going way slower than the speed limit and offers to reroute you. I hit the button and got a route that took me off the highway for a jaunt cross country that I'm glad I didn't have to figure out. When we got back on the highway was empty so I assume the blockage, whatever it was, was still in place.
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