Los Gringos Viejos At Sea

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Jan 05, 2016

Los Gringos Viejos are now onboard MS Amsterdam, docked in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. That MS does not stand for Miz; it stands for Motor Ship, though she is of feminine grammatical gender. She will sail tonight about midnight, down across the Caribbean to Costa Rica and Panama, through the canal, then on south to French Polynesia (8 days at sea after the canal). There will be four island stops, then finally on to New Zealand and Australia. We disembark at Sydney, in sight of the famous Opera House, after 36 days at sea. MS Amsterdam then continues on and on, through many Asian stops, around the cape of Africa, across the Atlantic, and back to Ft. Lauderdale after 111 days at sea. We suspect our 36 days will be plenty.



This is our first cruise, so we thought we should start with bang. We hope it is not too big a bang. So far, so good; in the general population I am not among the more mobile any more, but among of our fellow voyagers, I am probably fair to middling. Carol, of course, still gets around like a mountain goat. When we lined up to get on board, there were two lines, one for those who could stand for half an hour or more, and one for walkers and wheelchairs. I would estimate that almost 10% of the passengers were in the wheelchair line. The ship is very solicitous of the disabled, including provisions to get them into lifeboats if somehow we hit an iceberg in the South Pacific and go down like the Titanic. Not likely; but with all this climate change, who knows?





Tonight we had dinner with Dianne and Larry Littwin, who encouraged us to come on this cruise with them. Once you have paid your ticket and boarded, everything seems to be free. So it was a delicious dinner in an elegant dining room, with no check. A total illusion of course, but quite nice anyway. Carol and Dianne were friends in New York in their twenties, when they both worked for Pergamon Press. Larry is one of the founders of Ticketron, a very early (pre-internet) way of buying show tickets in New York, later growing into tickets to anything, anywhere. They promise to be very interesting travel companions.

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Comments

[Anthony Q]

Good to have new adventures of El Gringo Viejo and the Mountain Goat to keep us entertained!

[Jim Bernhard]

Bon voyage!
You should have a wonderful time. And best of all--a full eight days at sea, uninterrupted by ports of call, with nothing to do but stretch out on a deck chair, sleep, read, work crossword puzzles, and wonder what time the next meal will be.

[Rachel]

That sounds like a wonderful start to this adventure. I'm glad to hear that they know how to make everyone comfortable, but I sure hope you never need the life boats! Please let Mom know I found the check and have deposited it. It was in my purse the whol
That sounds like a wonderful start to this adventure. I'm glad to hear that they know how to make everyone comfortable, but I sure hope you never need the life boats! Please let Mom know I found the check and have deposited it. It was in my purse the whole time of course. Looking forward to the next installment! R xox

[Lynn Beebe]

We're very interested in your cruising experiences, since we are taking our first in April, from Istanbul to Venice...only 7 days. It was so good to get your year end letter..ours will be out soon. We are both doing well....Love to you both...Lynn and Bill

[Gay and Don Dawson]

HI
Hello Carol and Martin You say you are coming to New Zealand on your cruise. Will you be berthing in Auckland? Do you get time off ship in Auckland? We would love to catch up with you and discuss life since Turkey!!! Would love to hear from you Regards Gay and Don

[Steve Engel]

Admirables of the Ocean Sea
Great to hear that you are "under weigh"--or nearly so. I take it you never did read David Foster Wallace's great, caustically funny article about a cruise ship adventure he undertook: "Another Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". You could look it up if wifi extends to mid-Pacific. Let me know your Sydney arrival and departure dates. Maybe there's a chance we could fly Hannah up there to greet the cousins closest to her own peregrine character.

[Sally Campbell]

Wow!
The McClains are at sea--what a surprise! Where in Polynesia are you stopping en route to Australia? Recall that 2014 in French Polynesia I sailed from Tahiti to the Marquesas Islands cruising two weeks in the Marquesas. A Terrific trip. I hope yours matches up, Then in October I completed the Polynesian triangle with my visit to Easter Island. (In case your lecturer didn't inform you, Polynesia is everything within the triangle formed from Easter Island to New Zealand to Hawaii. Have a fine time!