Where Are We Now?: Mexico

Monday, 6 November 2017

Back on dry land

So that was it, my first ever cruise. Seven days, three stops and over 2500 nautical miles travelled (or 3000 miles by very clever car). In maritime adventure terms, though, this was a mere Sunday afternoon drive. However, being my maiden voyage I had a limited idea of what a "voyage" would actually be like (my scope of knowledge being limited to cross-Channel school trips by car ferry, Sir Walter Raleigh's discovery of the potato, the Royal Navy travelling for several weeks to deal with the Argies in the South Atlantic, and Captain Kirk and the Enterprise and its five-year mission to boldly go where no toupee had gone before).

To some extent this spin around the Caribbean was not a lot more than an extended stay at a floating version of a Las Vegas 'resort' hotel, with the Oasis Of The Seas providing a dizzying enclosure containing 17 restaurants and 11 bars, four luxury brand boutiques, a running track, four swimming pools, six jacuzzis, an ice skating rink, yoga classes on the helipad, a casino, an open-air cinema which also doubles as a water show, and around 6,000 'guests' using 24 elevators (more of which later...).

The key difference, however, between Vegas and the Oasis is what you can do when the ship sails into a port. The choice of shore excursions is bewilderingly impressive, although the extensive options include plenty of premium-priced days out, some of which could set you back up to $145 each - heavy going if you're travelling as a family.

Plenty, though, are just happy to get off the boat for a bit to go shopping. Our final shore stop, Cozumel in Mexico, is a case in point. I say 'Mexico', but Cozumel is an island south of Cancún, and hardly representative of the whole country. There are long-distance excursions on offer, such as Jeep tours of Mayan ruins or dolphin encounters, but most of the disgorged passengers (including this one) seem content with heading straight for country star Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville chain restaurant to chug a giant cocktail and a burger, or do a quick whip round the shopping centre for jewellery bargains (a similar concept to the cruise terminal shops in Falmouth).

Cozumel is also a hub for these giant cruise ships: it's hard not use superlatives like "majestic" when you see several of these beautiful, gleaming boats berthed together. On our stop I counted five of them, including our own and its sister, Liberty Of The Seas from Royal Caribbean, and three from the Carnival line. The cruise industry is so competitive that you can't help but looking across at another ship and making comparisons of which had the nicer sun deck or the better looking swimming pools. That's also when you realise that the ridiculous number of facilities touted in the marketing blurb is all about breeding cruise line loyalty and even the sort of attachment to individual ships that people have for hotels.

But back to the shore visits. As with Haiti and Jamaica, you’d be hard pressed to feel like you’d absorbed Mexico for the day, but on the other hand, a day of pure indulgence in the sunshine, with some booze and retail therapy thrown in for good measure, is what holidays should be about. At the end of the day that's precisely what this cruise has been for the 6,000 on board. Some have been perfectly content to spend all seven days on a lounger doing nothing more strenuous than watching clouds skud overhead. Others have been on the gangplank at the first opportunity, like D-Day commandos champing to get ashore to zipline/kitesurf/snorkel/insert_activity_here.

And if truth be told, the shore visits provide freedom from a form of claustrophobia. That might sound mad for a ship as big as Oasis, but even in an 18-deck, 1100 foot-long gargantuan like this one, 6,000 people can very soon get on top of each other. On Saturday, our final full day at sea, with the sun playing hide-and-seek as we cut between Cuba and the Florida Keys, a shopping frenzy broke out in the 'Royal Promenade' as a rank of jewellery stands turned it into a ship-borne Hatton Garden. Like duty free catalogues on planes, there is a suggested glamour about it all, but the close-up reality is less so, with the laid out ‘designer’ watches and handbags looking more Peckham Market than upmarket.

With this retail feeding frenzy came zoo conditions as people, desperate for a bargain, stepped over their own to get to the front of the queues. This, then, leads me to the less savoury aspect of this trip: manners. We Brits are said to be distinguished by our observance of good etiquette, so the absence of it on board comes as an abrupt shock. Such is the urgency with which people have to get to their next meal or to the handbag sale that Ps, Qs and a basic "excuse me" suddenly become abandoned. I'm sure these same people are perfectly civil at home, or when out at the supermarket, but somehow a pre-paid floating resort experience gives them a sense of entitlement.

Nowhere is this more so than in the lifts. I mentioned this in my post the other day, but as the week has worn on, elevator etiquette has disappeared altogether. The 24 lifts on the Oasis never seem to be working all at once, which means the fight for space is excruciating. At meal times or any other peak period of inter-deck travel the lack of common courtesy is almost comically bad. Royal Caribbean claims the average age of its cruise passengers is 48, but on evidence of these last few days, I'd say it's at least 78, and these 'seniors' are a sturdy bunch. What they lack in walking speed they make up for in sheer bloody-mindedness to get to the front for coffee, discounted leather goods, free pizza - you name it.

I could go on about the elderly and their lack of manners (or lack of bipedal speed), but I can hear a voice at the back of my head saying "that'll be you some day". As I approach 50 on Saturday I sincerely hope that I don't become that discourteous or even that desperate to eat before 6pm, but then that also raises the question of whether I'd take a cruise again. I'll defer that for now. Because I know - and you know - that whether you're on a cruise ship or at the Get Lucky Big Casino Resort & Hotel in Las Vegas, there will still be an octogenarian riot for the Early Bird Special Buffet and there will still be a traffic jam of mobility scooters queuing to get into the breakfast cafes. Likewise the hotels of Benidorm and Magaluf.

Again, as I stressed a few days ago, I don't wish to appear a holiday snob. I just prefer a more genteel meal experience, and being someone who uses public transport to get to work, I like a holiday where I don't have to let a lift go because it's overfull, and I'll take the next one. Or next but one...

Despite all this, as I settle into my final stop - an airport hotel in Orlando - I definitely feel more relaxed than when I arrived here, which surely is what a holiday should achieve. But where does this come from? How can the technicolour maelstrom that has been life aboard the Oasis Of The Seas be anything like relaxing? It's quite simple, and it covers two-thirds of this planet's surface. Sitting on my 'stateroom' balcony at various times over the last seven days, with nothing but ocean all around us, I have been rendered utterly placid. Normally on holiday I will spend most of it with headphones clamped to my head listening to music. I've just realised that I haven't touched my headphones since the flight over from London. The ocean has been all the soundtrack I've needed when I've needed escape from the hubbub onboard.

Living next to the Thames in Greenwich for the last year, I have come to appreciate the power of water, that commodity, essential to all life. When I need some meditation time, I will grab a coffee from Costa and just sit on the wall near my flat, watching the river go by. Over this last week, I've done the same, albeit with an entire ocean going past. And whether it's the sea air or the sense of perpetual motion, I have found peace and an almost zen-like calm. That, for those who've been asking, is my takeout from my inaugural cruise. It's not about the "dining experiences", or the amusement factor of an ice skating rink at sea on a ship touring the Caribbean. It's not even about the wonderful, entertaining company I've been fortunate to keep during this trip.

No, it's about the ocean. So here's my tip, if you're going to go on a cruise (and there's nothing that says you shouldn't), get a cabin with an exterior balcony.

Wednesday, 1 November 2017

Island life

Yesterday morning the Oasis Of The Seas arrived in Haiti, and for this cruise newcomer it was a unique experience, waking up with an entire country hoving into view. Now, I know that anyone who has flown anywhere - including myself - will have experienced this novelty many times, but ideally from 38,000 feet. To see, for the first time, the trees, mountains and beaches of a ‘new’ country from the deck of a boat is something to savour.

It sounds corny - actually, it is corny - but you can’t help thinking what the early European explorers must have been like, casting first sight on the white sands of these islands (obviously, before claiming them in the name of the colonial power that sent them). Haiti, which shares an island with the Dominican Republic, is where Christopher Columbus is said to have landed in 1492, in his pre-GPS attempt to find Asia. "D'oh!" is, I believe, the appropriate comment. Columbus' 'discovery' was the 15th century equivalent of a truck driver misreading his satnav and getting wedged under a railway bridge. After running his ship aground near what is now the town of Limonade (Prop. R.White?), Columbus set about creating the first European settlement in the Americas - ‘La Navidad’, named after Christmas Day, the day they arrived. The rest, as they say, is history, from Columbus to Trump.

Somewhere in that timeline evolved the American cruise passenger, a creature with a recognisable descendency from the early settlers. Bold, fearless and fully prepared to consume all that lies in front of them. Just as those early pioneers felt no fear from a strange land with strange flora and fauna, the cruise passenger is unperturbed by a full elevator (a phrase I must use instead of "lift" as I am technically on American soil). There are 24 elevators on the Oasis serving its passenger decks and they are in constant use, shuttling the blessed 6,000 between decks, free food and sundry entertainments. Despite this, these elevators are rarely empty. Indeed, such is the demand, if there’s a gap - no matter how minuscule - people will cram in. Most notably this affront to good manners is at its worst amongst the more 'senior' passengers, who pile in like the front row of a rugby scrum, as if it was the last ride out of town and the buffet was about to close. This is often accompanied by a "Don’t mind me, dear", as a little old lady flattens you against the elevator's wall.

Even for a ship this size (for comparison, it is almost 200 feet longer than the Royal Navy's new 'super' aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth), it can become claustrophobic. There are, simply, people everywhere, usually moving slowly in packs seeking sustenance. The platoons of mobility scooters alone create urban rush hour conditions (early morning traffic reports: "There are brake lights all the way up to the entrance to the Windjammer Marketplace...!"). The vast Windjammer restaurant spans the entire width of the ship's crown on Deck 16 and during breakfast it resembles the Florida alligator farm I visited two years ago - a lot of leathery looking creatures circling each other in the hunt for food and a coffee tank not on its last dregs. This swirl of humanity at 7am can be overwhelming, especially if your idea of holiday bliss is a Tuscan village, empty in the searing afternoon heat.

This is why the shore stops are very welcome. Arriving in Haiti was a welcome reminder that cruising is as much about arriving as travelling, and not just about lying on a topside sun lounger as vivid blue ocean gushes past. The opportunity to go ashore was too good to decline, especially with access to a cabana on a private beach. In my ever-expanding list of holiday preferences, I'm not naturally a beach person, but the novelty value of these 'off world' excursions is that you get some sand between your toes, take a swim in warm ocean and look across the bay to the boat you arrived on. Momentarily you feel like you've visited the island, even if you haven't, actually, gone any further than the boundaries of a private resort owned by the company that owns the boat itself.

Over the course of seven days, we will have visited three countries - Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico. This, in itself, is not so strange for someone who has many times driven from Amsterdam to London through the Netherlands, Belgium and France. But even though this isn't the grandest of voyages - there's only so far you can go in seven days at sea - it's not without its adventure. Much of this comes at a premium, with an eye-watering array of shore excursions offering everything from zip-lining and kayaking, to dolphin encounters. Given the prevailing demographic on board, the shopping trips and wine tasting trips are probably the more popular. Cynical as it's easy to be about all this activity, and the sensual overload that being on this boat is, you have to remind yourself that you are, essentially, on board a giant holiday camp. In 1950s Britain, it would have been a daily regimen of knobbly knees contests and questionable beauty pageants; here, it's prize-bearing Halloween parades (in which people really do go the distance to dress up), karaoke contests and an at-sea casino where hundreds of dollars appear to be gambled - and lost - with crazy abandon.

For me, it's been illuminating so far and a truly fascinating exercise in people watching, too. Every American stereotype is on board, all - it would appear - having an exceedingly good time. As I write we have just docked in Falmouth, Jamaica. Named after the Cornish port, of course, and - according to the weather forecast, likely to be as inclement as every childhood holiday I had in Cornwall. Bring it on.