Gelli goes South-ish

Fourteen days later, and with only hours to go, Table Mountain slowly began to loom out of the sea ahead. Covered in cloud to be sure, but still an amazing sight, and one I never really expected to see. Stunningly, our aborted Luderitz stop mean't we were actually early arriving, whilst the weather (which had sounded dodgy at best) had suddenly brightened dramatically – decent heat, lots of sun and blue sky's, albeit with cloud on the table, made for a great arrival.

And just like that, it was over, and I left my home for the previous 2weeks. And which will be my home again in a month's time. Immigration and customs were no problem, and I was back in Africa. A free shuttle took me to the waterfront, and from there on, I was back on known ground. In Cape Town, the atmosphere was electric. National shirts, flags and colourful hats were all around. Fans of all nationalities were singing, dancing, cheering and laughing. It was great. The town was pretty much one large party zone, and at least half the population seemed to be blowing vuvuzela's at every opportunity. Just walking into town to collect my tickets was enough for me to be sick of them and their monotonous droning noise, to the point where I started fantasising about turning one into a way of blowing out poisonous darts, which I could use to subdue all other vuvuzela blowers. The problem is, I would probably need to carry several tons worth of darts, which is just not practical...

Instead, i'll just enjoy the atmosphere for the evening, and then leave sharpish to get myself into position. The opening game is 48hours away, but the fun starts here.

Life seemed to go surprisingly quickly onboard, though I couldn't say why. I had expected a slow pace of life and the journey to drag on, but it actually seemed to go faster than pretty much every other long sea voyage I have been on. And to be fair, it was fast. I'm used to 14-16knot average speeds. The ms Westerdam on the other hand, was whacking along at an average of almost 23knots, which is somewhat rapid for a large vessel. Add in a 20knot headwind which slowed us a bit, and it all contributed to a very brisk chilly breeze on deck for most of the last week or so.
The Equator was crossed one morning at 3am, and King Neptune made his traditional appearance the following afternoon. It was the ships first crossing, and first for the vast majority of crew and passengers. The crossing the line ceremony was performed, but was fairly tame. Only staff members (who had volunteered) were allowed to take part, and the watching German passengers were almost more bemused than anything else. Being an American owned ship, I later discovered that they are so scared of being sued that they never allow non-crew to take part, and even the crew all have to sign several waivers first. I think it quite sad that a centuries old tradition is now constrained by the threat of legal action.

Part of the crossing the line ceremony

Only a few days later, and we started to see one or two birds, a few dolphins and then the occasional ship. And just like that, we arrived at Luderitz in Namibia. I was looking forward to a few hours ashore and potential to maybe even catch up briefly with some acquaintances, but the cruises now near-legendary poor organisation and planning kicked in again. We were in anchorage by 6:30am, and they expected the ship to be cleared by the authorities and disembarkation to begin by 7. But this is Africa. And a very small, remote town in Africa without regular international arrivals to boot. I knew there was no way in hell that the authorities would be out to the ship so early, but it was obvious that the crew/etc hadn't realised this. They seemed surprised that nobody came out until 8:30, and the ship was not cleared before 9. But by then, time was short and all shore leave was cancelled. Almost 400 passengers disembarked – many of whom were being bused directly to Windhoek (A good 10hours or so by bus) to fly home that evening, and several of whom did not even previously realise that the ship continued to Cape Town. And were thus understandably annoyed to have missed out on visiting.

A few hours of looking at Namibia later, we laid anchor, and slowly left the anchorage for the blast down to South Africa and our last night onboard.

Luderitz from anchorage in the early morning

With the humdrum tasks out of the way (waiting at ports at odd hours, changing ships, calling at odd Spanish islands: that sort of thing) it was done to the normal job of sitting on a boat at sea. I never go out of my way to come up with a routine, but at sea It just seems to kind of happen.

Though the food is all inclusive, it is not actually all that amazing. Whilst i'm sure that the fancy sit down/dress up food is pretty good – on the couple of occasions that I went, it was good, no doubt – the buffet stuff (which, as somebody with no dress up clothes who has to eat, spent many hours at) is more hit and miss. The eggs at breakfast seem average at best, the bacon has been cold, crispy and streaky, and sausages tend to be a single very small one: Omelettes have also been less than impressive, and the coffee, as previously mentioned, has been absolutely atrocious.

As such, i've tended to generally ignore breakfast. I'll lounge around and go for an early lunch at 11.30 or so: a toastie/sandwich for brunch, followed a couple of hours later by lunch, often from the Asian buffet. An odd if slightly intriguing issue is that all the food portions are quite small. For an all inclusive ship, generally used by (mostly fat, if watching them disembark at Barcelona is in any way typical) Americans, the portions are tiny. Which means pretty much every mealtime, I end up eating two meals. That makes me sound like a fat b*stard, but i've been eating less than normal even with two meals at every meal.

During the afternoon, i wander the ship, stopping every now and again to talk to somebody or watch something, or find a spot to sit and read or work: sunbathing or sitting on the sun deck rapidly became unattractive due to the nature of the cruise – Though it can have it's moments, being surrounded by lots of old, fat, naked German people is not always highest on my list of priorities. I'll have a fajita as a late afternoon snack, sometimes with a few beers. Dinner will either be booked and taken with some South African-Portuguese i've become friends with, or casually in the lido. I'll then generally watch a film or DVD from the ships library before wandering out for the evening. Though there is lots of laid on entertainment, a large chunk of it is obviously orientated to an elderly German audience (and some of the names are/were big in German entertainment) and I have generally foregone it. I'll instead sit in the casino, talking to the ever rotating staff – mostly Eastern European or Filipino – with some others, or wandering into the Sports bar (which has no sports) or Piano bar (where there is, at least, a Piano and player). At the end of the evening, when the Germans are in bed or occupied elsewhere, i'll go on deck – favourite spot is the stern on Deck 3 – and watch the night slide by. Stars in the sky, whispy clouds and relatively cool temperature can make it great.

I've now also got used to the other passengers, and their composition. When I was young, I used to occasionally read or watch of tragedies, which listed nationalities of those on board – a plane, for example would crash killing 100, of whom 80 might be from one country, and 15 from 1 or 2 others, leaving 4 or 5 oddballs from often unlikely and far away parts of the world. As a 10-12year old, I would always have a strange morbid wonder why these sole nationals were there, and what their story was. Now, if, such a tragedy would occur (and obviously if you are reading this, it hasn't, because it wouldn't have been uploaded), I would be the oddball. Out of the 1920 capacity, there are barely passengers 800 on board. Of those, roughly 70 are not German, and as far as I am aware virtually all of whom are South Africans. According to the cruise director, anyway, I am the only Brit. I also lower the average age of the passengers substantially. Of the 800, I would conservatively guess that 750 are at least old enough to be my parents, and probably 730 or so, grandparents. 4 younger German girls i'd come across in Barcelona left at Tenerife, leaving me in the youngest 10 passengers on board.

Basically, there are 4 children with their parents (one of the kids, Fabio, and his parents are ¾ of the aforementioned Portuguese-South African group), 2 German lads who have won a competition to the World Cup, and another ethnically Portuguese guy, Jose, plus myself, and a large German guy with his blonde accomplice who look exactly like you imagine a blinged up drugs baron and his porn star partner would look. Everybody else is significantly older.

Thus I now get a week at sea, with a load of old-age naked sun-bathing foreigners for company. What could be better?

Two days later, and the Canary Isles loomed up out of the early morning mist. Santa Cruz de Tenerife loomed largest, which is probably a good thing as that was where the port we were due to call at was. On my trip to St. Helena we had originally been scheduled to call at Tenerife, but the plan had changed and we had had to be content with sailing past and watching the evening lights. And with Tenerife not really being on the way to many places by surface, I had never expected to ever visit. But stopping was a small bonus I was not going to complain about.

Santa Cruz harbour information maps were seemingly of use only to Jesus, or those others able to walk on water...

With stunning inevitability, I had arrived in Spain on a public holiday (as per my last trip north, in Vigo), meaning that Santa Cruz was basically closed. The town was set up with dozens of stages and it looked like a great party was going to occur. Sadly, though, it would be after we departed. Which left me to wander around for a couple of hours: Santa Cruz is a fairly pretty looking town, but not somewhere that really jumped out at me as a must return. I suspect that for Tenerife and the Canaries in general, the place to be is out of the towns, and in the country, up in the mountains and national parks. And that was an option unavailable to me.

Instead I spent some time sending and downloading emails and wandering through closed streets, before stocking up on some booze supplies which I hoped to smuggle aboard, and then sitting and watching the world with a bocadillo and real coffee (the free coffee on the ship is truly dreadful. It is gnats piss to beat all gnats) and then a beer before ambling back on board, showering and then an hour later watching as Tenerife slowly disappeared into the background: the end to a small diversion from the many days of sea, of which we now have 7.

The MS Westerdam in Santa Cruz harbour

The cross-ship transfer had, like pretty much everything else, been a bit farcial and poorly planned but had essentially taken place without incident. My bags arrived and our new ship, the MS Westerdam, had an almost identical layout meaning I did not spend hours wandering around lost. Well, not deliberately, anyway. With departure not slated until 3am, I had headed back out at midnight, partly as I wasn't yet tired and had nothing better to do, and partly out of curiosity: I followed small packs of crewmen from both ships out on leave, and taking a different direction from the port, had stumbled upon a (now mostly closed) shopping centre which would have been of significantly more use if i'd known about it before – cheap supplies and a large internet cafe could have been utilised. Instead, I amused myself watching the mass of Filipino crew pretty much buy out the entire stock of a small Asian grocer near the port entrance (masses of bottled water and instant noodles were purchased. As these are all people who work on the ship, this is probably significant, though I'm not sure which worries me most: their need to buy food or water), and also form huge queues at a local McDonalds and Kebab shop. I then took a quick stroll back round the port where local youths with their booze, thumping music and souped-up boy-racer cars were starting their Friday nights, and headed back on board around 2am.

I awoke with us well under way, and, allegedly, with no more changes to ship or plans still to occur. The daily program had been delivered to my “stateroom” (a fancy word for the level of accommodation I am in) which indicated that despite a delay of 27hours to the timings I had received and been working to all along, and with a significantly longer stop in Tenerife listed, we are actually scheduled into Cape Town 9hours earlier than planned. If I had known that, I would have arranged to collect my hire car that same day, and thus leave Cape Town a day earlier. Even if I had just gone 200km or so, it would have allowed myself much greater leeway in my onward journey. Instead, it's going to cost me a nights accommodation and forces 2 long days of driving. But it is, at least, vaguely useful information.

As I suspect will become normal, I didn't really do very much. I watched the Southern coast of Spain glide by in the distance and occasionally wandered around a bit or had a snack or drink. I have a list of tasks I want to get done whilst on board, which remain as yet untouched; ditto my books. That evening I had a couple of beers on deck whilst watching as we passed through the Straits of Gibralter. The mass of light of the mainland oddly punctuated by the looming blackness of the Rock of Gibralter, whilst Tangiers on the opposite side looked far more inviting at night than it has done from my previous approaches by ferry, or, indeed, land. As we passed the rock, we also passed another cruise ship, lit up in multicolour like a slightly surreal christmas tree. I had already worked out that we were travelling at a pretty decent rate of knots, though there is no information as to just how fast - the rate which we overhauled it helped confirm those thoughts, and I idly wondered just how fast. By last orders at 3am, the last bit of land was just a small line of lights deep on the horizon. The next time we see mainland (though not any land) should be Namibia in 9 days time – anything else likely means we have major problems.

The Noordam in port and, below, the Noordam and Westerdam together in Palma harbour in the early morning