Blogs from Atlantic, Oceans and Seas - page 25

Thursday January 21st, 2016. At Sea. A lazy day today. Stayed in the cabin until lunch time. Went to the quiz and came second. M spent the rest of the afternoon teaching Stewart how to use MS Word and some of the other features on his laptop. After dinner we gave part II of the Pauline Daniels Shirley Valentine a miss and went up to Scott's bar where we watched Claudia perfom her first cabaret. She had a sore throat so it wasn't great. We stayed for a few disco tunes and then went to bed and read. Rio tomorrow!... read more

Sunday January 17th, 2016. Cruising the Atlantic Ocean No breakfast again today. M went to make a butterfly greetings card with Barbara Ashmore. At 11 am we went to Clive's lecture "Brazil - Sunny Smiles and Dark Secrets" which was excellent again. M walked 3 and a half miles on the treadmill before lunch. After lunch we went to Sue Walsh's lecture on hummingbirds. We hope to see a few of these amazing little birds on this trip. We didn't go to the restaurant for dinner as there was a deck party this evening to celebrate our arrival in South America. It started at 9.15 which would be right in the middle of our dinner and we knew we wouldn't get a seat if we went down to the restaurant. We settled for a bowl of ... read more

Geo: 16.7837, 96.1568From Vietnam, we flew to Yangon (nee Rangoon), the former capital city of Myanmar. Whereas Justin had a vague sense of Vietnam based on previous trips (albeit 18+ years ago), Myanmar was a mystery, an enticing one, but one for which we had no intuition, other than from news reports. Myanmar has been a military dictatorship/junta replete with human rights abuses and accompanying US economic sanctions for decades. A democratic thaw in the junta's grip on power began in 2011 with (largely) free parliamentary elections. Also, the junta has also been fighting a series of low-intensity wars, some of the world's longest-running with 17 various ethnic, religious and and narco-terrorist (heroin production) groups for decades. Thankfully for civilians caught in the crossfire, 14 of these groups signed ceasefires by October 2015. http://... read more

Friday January 15th, 2016. Cruising the Atlantic Ocean This morning we went to a lecture called "1492: Columbus and America - Falsehoods and Fantasies" by Clive Leatherdale, which was excellent as usual. M walked 3 and a half miles around the deck before lunch. After lunch D went to the photography lecture while M labelled the photographs from Mindelo. At 5.00 we got ready for dinner early in order to attend the Columbus Club Reception. This was a reception for those passengers who had cruised for more than 50 days with Cruise & Maritime. We were given a few drinks and some nibbles and the Captain came round and shook everyone's hands. There were hundreds of passengers there so we weren't elite. We chatted to the Hotel Manager who is from Italy. He introduced us to ... read more

Tuesday January 12th, 2016. Cruising the Atlantic Ocean En Route to Cabo Verde After a posh breakfast M went to craft with Barbara (who was on the Van Gogh World Cruise) and made a "Lace Card". At 11 am we went to see Clive's lecture on "Cape Verde, Slaves, Wavesand Busted Dreams". This was very interesting. The last time we were in Cabo Verde there were hundreds of real estate sales people trying to flog holiday homes as an alternative, cheaper destination than the Caribbean. Seems that this didn't take off - hence the Busted in the lecture title. A spanking new road has been build from nowhere to nowhere with the expectation that all these flash villas would be built but none have materialised and many prospective owners had their fingers burned with this investment. ... read more