Thursday, August 28, 2008 – Romulo and Ixcel!

We thought we had seen beautiful, clear sea water in Grand Cayman, and of course we had. But when we arrived at Cozumel, we were astonished by the turquoise water, and the gradations of color, from deep cerulean blue to light aquamarine.

Cozumel has been a cruise ship port for 20 years, and there’s a major concentration of tourist shops at Punta Langosta where we docked. After toodling about for a quick hour, we caught our excursion bus to Chankanaab National Park, about 15 minutes away.

At Chankanaab, the 100 or so of us who had signed on for the dolphin excursion were broken into small groups of 12. Each group donned life vests and filed out on the docks that formed a square enclosure, cordoning off a 2,000 x 3,000 yard portion of the azure water with underwater hurricane fences. We could see the dolphins sticking their heads up, leaping and swimming around groups of tourists already in the water.

Our group assembled in the water, standing on a platform about 4 feet deep. One at a time, we did various activities with Romulo, a 15-year-old male dolphin with scars on his forehead, from skirmishes with other males fighting over the females we were told. We kissed and hugged Romulo. We got rides holding onto his dorsal fins while he swam upside down. We held onto a boogie board while Romulo pushed us from behind, positioning his round snout right on the sole of one of our feet—trust me, you can get going plenty fast this way.

At the end, we moved over for our “free time,” our “tiempo libre,” with two female dolphins, including one named Ixcel (sp?). They swam down the line of people, letting us run our hands along their sleek sides. They leaped high in the air. They splashed us with water.

Finally, it was over and we were led in our dripping suits into small TV viewing rooms where we watched video presentations of our group’s experience, miraculously edited in record time so that we could view it immediately, complete with slow motion sequences of our dolphin rides.
Finally, it was time to return to Conquest, and we joined the great throng walking out on the piers to the two ships. Inspiration was docked alongside Conquest. The Royal Caribbean ship Liberty of the Seas had also come to Cozumel, but was at a separate dock five miles away. No tender boats this time. The embarkation staff inserted our sea and sail ID cards one at a time as we boarded, each one making a loud “ding,” indicating one more passenger had returned to the floating city. Was anyone ever left behind? It happens infrequently, we were told—those who fail to reboard in time are aided by Carnival staff on land, and typically fly back to their port of origin, after paying a significant fine.

Aug. 27, 2008 – Reef and Rays!

At dawn Tom awoke and found we were sliding into our first port stop, Grand Cayman. To our surprise and awe, another great cruise ship pulled up alongside us, then another, until there were three floating hotels anchored in the azure waters a mile or two offshore. To our left was Liberty of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean liner, and to our right was Inspiration, the little sister of Conquest, about two thirds our size.

This was our only port stop where we were to travel to the shore by “tender,” meaning there was no deep water pier sufficient to dock the vast cruise ships and they anchored offshore, with smaller boats shuttling groups of cruisers to and fro all day.

On shore we waited for a while and then caught our bus to our chosen shore excursion. We were surprised when the bus turned into a residential area, but pleased that it showed us a bit of daily life, at least for those who could afford vacation homes in Grand Cayman. The bus route mystery was solved when we pulled up to a dock between two big houses on a canal which served the wealthy vacation homers, allowing them to launch their boats from their back yards.

The snorkeling boat crew immediately engaged us with high spirited banter, particularly the ring leader Rob, a Brit who was funny, articulate, informative, a great guide and host. All three crew members were sunburned white guys, the youngest seemingly in his 20s. Their boat Emerald Eyes was a flat bottomed, motorized, double decker catamaran.

We motored down the canal and Tom was stunned to see dozens of 2-3 foot long Honduran iguanas lounging in the backyard grass and docks of the wealthy homes. It was like instead of dogs or cats there were these cat sized lizards with incredibly back fringes and long droopy chin wattles.

In half an hour we neared our first stop, the coral reef that lined the mouth of the islands North Sound for many miles. The white lines of breaking surf clearly showed the location of the shallow reef. After brief instruction, the 50 or so tourists on board donned masks and snorkels and fins and slid into the incredible, swimming-pool clear turquoise water. Visibility must have been close to 100 feet. The reef was 3-8 feet below us, and we floated over it, hovering, occasionally flipping with feet or stroking with arms, pulled back and forth over the coral below by the waves.

The boat had laminated sheets of color images identifying about 60 species of reef fish, and Tom swam back once to look at it before coming back to find Lauren. We saw “Dorie” from Finding Nemo, a blue tang. We saw two different types of wrasse, fish that are one color in front and different colors in back, with a vertical stripe in the middle of their bodies demarcating the color break. Sea fans waved in the clear current, wafting gently back and forth. Millions of little fish of all kinds and colors ducked in and out of sheltering holes in the brain coral and stalk coral. We saw something called a trunkfish, who had a body like a triangular puffer fish and used its long snout to blow a little clear space in the white sand and root for food. One fish had a dark blue-black body pocked with iridescent dots all over its back, like electric blue stars against a black night sky. There were parrot fish and tiny iridescent blue guys with forked tales called blue chromiss. Finally, after all to short a time (about 40 minutes), the boat’s air horn signaled it was time to motor over a half mile or so to our next stop, the famed Stingray City.

In various books and web sites that reference snorkeling in the Caribbean, the Stingray City sand bar on Grand Cayman invariably is cited as one of the top snorkeling experiences in the region. As we pulled up, Rob explained that for many decades, island fishermen had been fishing in the deeper water beyond the reef, then they’d come into calmer waters inside the reef to clean the fish and chuck the guts and heads overboard. Over the years, stingrays learned to associate this area with a free meal.

The fishing boats may be gone, but the tourist boats now come in such numbers that Cayman wildlife authorities have forbidden tourists to feed the rays—only guides can now do so. All of us reentered the water, this time over 8-10 foot deep white sand several hundred yards inside the reef. Rob and his mate Nick proceeded to feed the rays squid while the rest of us swarmed like schooling fish. Lauren had a close encounter where the entire underside of a ray and brushed along her thigh. Tom stroked the undersides of several rays, which ranged in size from big dinner plates to big guys 3-4 feet in diameter. As Rob said, touching a ray did indeed feel like stroking a soft mushroom.

Finally, the tour boat brought us back to the dock, where we tendered back out to the ship. Tomorrow, swimming with dolphins at Cozumel…

P.S. It is now Saturday morning, Aug. 30 (my blog posts are several days behind!), and Hurricane Gustav is now northwest of Grand Cayman, expected to hit Texas on Monday or Tuesday. Weather is typical around Conquest--sunny with a light breeze. It appears almost certain we will outrun Gustav and make port in Galveston a day or two ahead of the storm.

Aug. 26, 2008 – Cruiser Bacchanalia!

Our third morning dawned much like the first two. We are finally getting to know the ways of this floating city. One floor down leads to the Promenade deck, sushi and coffee. Two floors up leads to Cezanne restaurant, the immense buffet where those too informal or impatient for sit-down meals can que up and load up. For us this morning, however, it was coffee and fruit early, followed by a real sit-down breakfast at the Monet restaurant.

We were seated with three other couples. One were 30 somethings from California who had resettled in the Dallas area, apparently so the husband could attend school to be a Chiropractor. She had broken her leg a few weeks before the trip and was in a wheelchair, but this had not seemed to dampen their spirits. Next to them was a most interesting young black couple. Her name was Saudi, and she had shaved her head almost bald. She hailed from New York city, and her favorite recreational activity was shopping, primarily for shoes. He was an installer of TV network systems for hospitals, a hunky fitness-oriented jocky type who had hunted for squirrels and rabbits in the forests of East Texas as a boy, but had somehow ended up with a high maintenance city woman. Down from them on the end were a very chatty and friendly woman from rural New York and her balding husband from France, who sat quietly and could rarely be drawn into conversation throughout the morning while his wife hailed forth in the nonstop stream common to women who have hit their stride. At one point, Tom the ex-reporter could not help probing to try to understand the psyche of Saudi the recreational shoe shopper. “Where should I go if I’m in New York city?” She politely tried to think of places where a nature boy could venture in the city that never sleeps—Central Park, maybe? Further probing about her favorite place revealed that the must-see spot in the city involved shops along Canal Street. Why was it called Canal Street, is there a canal nearby? I don’t know, never thought about that, it’s all about the shops don’t you see? Tom—the kind of shopping I prefer involves locally crafted artisan goods, preferably done by indigenous tribes in remote areas. Saudi—well, they do have quite a few ethnic artists, including some wonderful street painters who can sketch a remarkable likeness of you in minutes. And so it went…

That afternoon, time finally slowed to a lazy, limitless crawl, defined solely by movement from the Sky Deck’s cool water pool (adult’s only, rules say no diapers) to the adjacent hot tubs, and back again. Some reading in deck chairs to break up the routine. Some chevre and garlic pizza from the Sky Deck pizzeria (staffed by the omnipresent Asians, who were unfailingly smiling and friendly all over the boat) and red wine from the stateroom bottle (one of two that came aboard in Tom’s bag). Slide into the cool pool again. Marinate in the hot tub some more. You get the idea. I could get used to this. Boy, the kids would love it. They’d go ape ___ all over this big boat. Wonder if we should see about a multi-family spring break on one of these ships? Who would come?

(Fast forward to 7:40 a.m., Aug. 28 - As I type this, recalling the events of two days ago, the island of Cozumel has just come into view. I looked up from the keyboard, while sitting on our stateroom balcony, and there it was…a line of land on the horizon, strip of white sand beach along the near edge with green vegetation spreading behind it, what appears to be a tall red and white lighthouse. Miraculously, marvelously, no visible development marks this island. No buildings, no roads, no people. Wait a minute. This may not be Cozumel, not enough tourism development. That must be Cozumel away over there to the right, with the tall white oblongs of buildings clustered off on the farther horizon. As I type, a little white fishing boat emerges in view, not 500 yards from the massive Conquest, between us and the beautiful island. Except for the lighthouse, this could be what Spanish explorers saw when they first arrived—land at last, a pristine island of white sand and green trees, and one of the natives has ventured out in his little boat to say hello. Maybe you who read these words will see the photo I just took of the little boat and the island. I will certainly see that photo again some day, and read these words, and remember arriving at Cozumel on my first cruise.)

Back to Aug. 26…

After dinner this night, while finishing what had become our standard desert, the chocolate melting cake, we pondered the evening’s options. The cruise director and staff had planned a mondo party for our last night at sea before three days in port began. Tom was feeling pooped, but decided to gamely at least explore what this mega-party was supposed to be.

We arrived at Henri’s disco to find the man in charge was Chicken Little, the 21-year-old assistant cruise director with the hoarse English accent, hoarse as all cruise directors seemed destined to be from their continual exhortations for cruisers to have fun, fun, fun. Chicken had a cute English assistant who proceeded to swipe half inch bands of white “war paint” along the cheeks of anyone foolhardy enough to enter the dance floor. Chicken explained that we were the White Team, and we had to achieve certain ends to defeat the Blue Team and the Red Team. He taught us our team cheer, “Go White Team, Go White Team, Go!” We all then taught us what seemed to Tom like a complicated line dance involving a lot of right foot here and left foot there and a lot of jumping and turning. Then, when the crowd had its blood pumping, we chanted our way out the door and down the promenade, hooting our team cheer as loud as we could right past the equally deafening Red Team, holding our fingers up to form little W’s for white.

We ended up in the Tahiti casino, where cruise director Jen herself hailed forth in an excitable hoarse English shout that made Chicken Little seem shrimpy. She started up deafening dance tunes and pounded us through a series of group line dances, starting with the Macarena, then the chicken dance, then something British called the Piano Man that in one section involved some fun hopping like you’re playing the bagpipes. Just when we began to feel like flagging athletes in some kind of bizarre cruiser Olympics, we chanted out of the casino and over to the Degas lounge, scene of Tom’s failed but fun James Brown attempt. Here a mad American gal in cowgirl getup led White Team through a last series of outrageously fun stunts, including one involving three couples where the women rode the men like bulls in a rodeo.

Finally, as the midnight hour rounded, we toddled off to bed. One last treat awaited us in the stateroom this night. Lauren, observing with amusement the steward’s habit of leaving cleverly constructed little animals made of white bath towels, had decided to leave the cleaning crew a little surprise of our own. She created a very passable sea turtle, complete with little dark flecks of fabric for eyes, and had left it lying on the bed where we normally found the nightly towel critters. When we returned, exhausted from our high energy cruise night of deafening dancing, we found, there on the bed where Lauren had left her turtle, a replacement. The crew had responded to Lauren’s little joke with a tour de force towel swan.

Whew… We came, we saw, we partied like cruiser cattle. Tomorrow, Grand Cayman, snorkeling coral reefs and swimming with stingrays.

Carnival Conquest cruise log, Aug. 25, 2008 – Blue Water!

Despite staying up til close to midnight Sunday night watching cruisers go wild and crazy singing Karaoke in the Degas Lounge, we awoke around 6:40 a.m. Monday and emerged onto our balcony to find the ocean had changed. Gone was the gray-blue of the Texas near shore waters. Gone were the dozens of oil and gas production platforms, which had continued to bristle for hundreds of miles all around us into late Sunday night.

Instead we found a new world where the sea had gone cobalt blue--a startling, deep, royal blue--and the sky was splattered with cumulus clouds of gray and white that puffed by close overhead or lined the distant horizon in linear bands that piled up into billowing hills above and flattened into wide, gray lines with occasional fingers of dark rain coming down to the sea below. The rising sun shone through the cloud mass to the east, sending rays of light breaking through holes in the vapor. The horizon was unbroken, limitless, a sweeping arc from left to right, ocean meeting sky, the rim of the world clearly made visible, with no trees, no hills, no telephone poles or buildings or anything to break the sight lines. Transitory shadows of clouds were stark and obvious here and there across the otherwise uniform blue surface. Looking down from our stateroom balcony, the churning foam of the ship’s wake tinted the water nearest the hull a lighter, aquamarine tinge.

We did 8 a.m. yoga and found the young fitness center crew had a much more simple, active, approach, much different than what Lauren was used to at Yoga Yoga in Austin. This took place in the ship gym, high on the 12th floor above the prow, with windows all around showing the big blue sliding by way down below.

After this came breakfast, followed by the first power nap of the day. Then Tom headed off for an aerobic workout back at the gym on an elliptical trainer. Then we showered and dressed for the Park West company art auction.

The art auction was most interesting, not least because they were offering original works by Picasso, Chagall, Dali, Rembrandt and other famous “dead guys,” as the delightfully perky and charming ship’s art director Kelsey referred to them. After we strolled through the arrayed canvases sipping free champagne, we sat down and Kelsey rocketed us through the “fun ship” approach to art auctioneering, extremely fast and high energy, with lots of cheering and hooting. Nobody shelled out $14,000 for an original Dali piece done as a series of illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy, but several folks paid hundreds for the work of more current artists.

Lunch followed, and afterward the second power nap of the day (are you sensing a pattern?). This little snooze was truncated by a sudden announcement from the captain, whose strongly-accented voice was unmistakably different from the hoarse British huskiness of the cruise director’s frequent announcements. The captain’s message shocked us. A tropical storm named Gustov was heading northwest into the Western Caribbean, they had made a decision to drop our Jamaica port stop entirely, and instead go straight to Grand Cayman, then Cozumel, and add a new stop in Progreso on the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. No Jamaica!? Huh?! Lauren (and about 3,000 other fellow cruisers) were most bummed, as Jamaica mon had been one of the whole points of the trip. Oh well. Our swimming with dolphins shore excursion at Ocho Rios in Jamaica had been automatically cancelled. We decided to switch our Tulum trip at Cozumel to instead do a dolphin swim excursion there, and added a Mayan ruin trip at Progreso. Que sera, sera.

This sobering news, landing like a grenade in our stateroom as we groggily emerged from nappage, required immediate additional coffee for Tom, who had taken to mixing hot chocolate and coffee from the many 24 hour beverage bars, since there was only one place aboard ship that claimed to have good coffee, and it was suspect, since they had no organic beans and seemed to be searching for a clue when the topic was probed. News of the itinerary change and Gustav’s onset buzzed through the ship for the next few hours, and lines formed at the shore excursions desk as cruisers tried to shift plans.

Nonetheless, the evening unfolded as delightfully pleasant. We chose this moment to pop our bottle of Vino Verdhe and downed most of it in our stateroom, then carried full glasses up to the sky deck on the stern to see a spectacular sunset. The wind had died and the sea was like molten lead, smooth and liquid. We then stepped smartly back to our stateroom and donned our nicest togs for assigned dining, which for us occurred every night at table 222 in the Renoir restaurant. This was one of two nights at sea when the dress code forbade shorts and T-shirts and called for elegant attire. Tom wore the 1950s vintage shawl tuxedo jacket acquired for our wedding in 1988, stored in the closet all these years. Lauren wore a beautiful crimson dress, set off by a newly expanded and restrung pearl necklace which Tom had lengthened as an anniversary surprise.

Then followed Tom’s wild night of Karaoke. Originally, we wandered down thinking to sing one tune, and Tom signed up to sing Saw Her Standing There by the Beatles, but never got to it, as he was swept away by an impulse to join a competition to be James Brown in some kind of ship show, and instead sang I Feel Good, going up against two other guys. Unfortunately, the first guy smoked Tom and the other young fellow, who watched in dismay as this guy not only sang his ass off, but pranced around doing some pretty cool JB dance moves, including the famous splits. After witnessing this, we knew it was all over, and tried to concede, but the Karaoke director, a strangely stiff and rule-oriented young gal named Allison, required us to get out there and go down in flames. So we all hammed it up and there emerged a wild, back-slapping, friendly camaraderie among the three would-be JBs.

We finally returned to our stateroom close to midnight once again, to find that the housekeeping crew had left another one of their incredible towel critters on our freshly made bed. Unlike the strange but somehow cute little shapeless ghost from the night before, this was a far grander creation, a quickly recognizable cute little rabbit lying prone with long ears flopping back. We had never heard of towel critters before (!?), and pondered whether the finer hotels did this sort of thing.

Perhaps because of all the power napping, or maybe it was the extra coffee in the afternoon, or the fact that we had turned the A/C temperature up at bedtime and the room had warmed, but Tom awoke at 3:30 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep. This had a fortuitous turn, as the moon had risen, a horned new moon hanging above the horizon straight out from the stateroom balcony, sending a spectral glowing shine of moonlight across the water to the ship…supernatural, ghostly, beautiful. Tom prowled up on deck and had pizza and chocolate frogurt on the Sky Deck before going back down, discovering there were several cruisers still up and rowdy on this ship, parts of which clearly never sleep.

Carnival Conquest cruise log, Aug. 24, 2008 - We made it!

After winding through miles of twisting lines of passengers, we successfully navigated security and ship check-in and boarded the Conquest. We checked into our stateroom and promptly headed off to the sushi bar, marveling at the Vegas-like sprawling splendor all around, all done in French Impressionist themes. We visited the spa and gymn, took a walk on the breathtaking 11th floor wooden deck overlooking the multi-level pool and sun deck, and signed up for yoga at 8 a.m. Monday.

We were assigned dinner at 8:15 p.m. each night in the Renoir restaurant, table 222, where it appears we’ll be dining for the remainder of the cruise. This seemingly random assignment was made without our consent or consultation, but we have no complaints regarding the food or atmosphere. Lauren had Norwegian salmon, I had an Indian vegetarian spread, and we topped off with something they called a chocolate melting cake, which turned out to be to die for.

The ship is vast, complex, stunning in its diversity, and we are only beginning to sense its labyrinthine ways. To serve the 3,000 passengers, there must be at least 500 staff. The many floors, restaurants, decks, bars, theaters, clubs, gambling rooms, art galleries and shops boggle the mind.

After the evening meal, we strolled the upper deck again in the soft night air, seeing the ship decked out in strings of incandescent bulbs hanging from stem to stern. We could faintly make out the glint of stars in the Gulf sky past the bright lights of conquest, and could clearly see the great billow of diesel smoke puffing from the unmistakably distinctive T-shaped stacks protruding from the rear upper level.

We were on our way to the Toulouse Lautrec theater, when we discovered the ship’s art gallery. We ducked in and were chatted up by two delightful young Canadian gals who run the place. To our astonishment, they were showing original pieces by Picasso, Miro, Chagall and Rembrandt…huh!? They were promoting a champagne art auction at 12:30 p.m. Monday in the Degas lounge, urging us to come. (Drunk at lunch on a Monday?...already!?)

Finally around 11 p.m. we wandered back to the stateroom, to find our steward Juslin from Dominica and his housekeeping elves had turned down our bed clothes and left the strangest, cute little ghost of a critter, a towel curled up like a little creature on the bed, with two scraps of paper for eyes. Lauren and I puzzled over this thing for several minutes, and I finally decided to take a photo to prove its existence. We then uncorked one of our two wine bottles, a mediocre pinot noir, and sat on the balcony to see a wonderful lightning light show, which periodically lit the northeastern sky more than 100 miles away. All around us were the lighted shapes of oil and gas production platforms. Occasionally, a tanker would glide past only a few thousand yards away. I told Lauren one of my aha surprises of the trip so far was how much traffic and structure there appeared to be out in the open Gulf.