Blog post

Two more sleeps

It is interesting to consider the bodies reaction to travel. For the most part we adjust to where we are and yet there is a piece of us the longs for the familiarity of home. This is my fourth week “on the road”. I am ready to be home and I am looking forward to Saturday and the arrival, not the travel. It is a 16 hour journey. That will be a long day of sitting and waiting to sit some more.

All of the good intentions to get some writing done on this trip did not result in the volumes that I had hoped. I am disappointed by that. I have however had a wonderful time, travelling with Jim, experiencing new and exciting places with good friends and working with the lovely people from UVI, the BVI and the USVI. I feel rested and recommitted to the work at hand.

Head, Heart and Body – an integrated conversation. So many articles … so little time.

At home the Christmas busy – ness with family and friends will have my attention for the next week or so. It seems that January will offer the first opportunity to get serious about the work again. How time flies …. and so must I if I am to be on time for class this morning.

Missing all of you ….

Tuesday in St Thomas

I love it here. It is the most beautiful beach I have ever seen. The water is clear and blue. The sand is perfect and you can walk out for a hundred meters and still touch bottom. I can’t believe that more people have not found this exquisite place. The bar tender is wonderful. She works hard and manages people with an unparallelled skill. She gave up a position with the University of Massachusetts for this tropical office which she loves. I get it. It is a fabulous place to wake up every day.

It is sooo tempting to think about applying for a position with the UVI for a semester and working with people here for 3 months… I think there would also be work with the BVI and the government of the USVI if I were here. We could get a big house on the hill and enjoy the climate and the water for a few months…. Of course the house would be big enough for lots of quests ….. hmmmmm

A few of my favourite on board shots

marjorie and me on deck 10

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Puerto Rico

We disembarked yesterday. it is hot and humid in San Juan … very different then what folks at home are encountering. This morning Marjorie and I go to St. Thomas. yesterday we walked around Old San Juan, watched a wedding from our balcony and had a wonderful meal in a very ‘in’ place with great fish. It is weird how when I layed down the bed seemed to still be moving with the waves. We could see the ship out of our window here at the hotel and this morning it was gone. An adventure ending and a new one beginning. Off to St Thomas. I can’t seem to get the pictures to upload here so I will work on that when I get there. I must be holding my tongue in the wrong place… Maybe I could email them to Julia and have her insert them … I will resolve it today…

Last day at sea

Last night we attended the variety show on board ship. It was a salut to broadway and was actually quite good. A couple of nights ago there was a comedian, Fred Klett. He was extremely funny. I thought my sides would split. It was one of those … you had to be there … experiences that will stay with me for a long time. He did a bit about growing up in a large family and bed time with 7 kids in the room. And another about his brothers 5 of them one after another jumping out of the second story window after seeing Mary Poppins. His father asked each of them why they had jumped after the first atttempt didn’t work. “We thought he didn’t do it right!!” The last one jumped without the umbrella. His father asked him why. “Well it didn’t help them” he answered.

It is funny how as humans we don’t learn from other’s mistakes. I find too that it is difficult to fully describe an experience so that others can enjoy it vicariously. I just talked to mum and dad and it was great to hear her tease me about the acupunture and the wrap therapy. They were surprised to hear from us out here in the ocean and wondered where the picutres were. You may be wondering too. The connection is so slow that I am afraid to even try from here. Saturday when we get to the hotel in San Juan I will make another attempt. We have great picutres to share. I will embed them into the story so far so you can get the visual.

One of my favourites will be the picture Jim took this morning at 4 am. I woke up early. The clocks had changed again and it was bright out so I got up to check on the time. 4am… full moon with light bouncing off of the water. It was eery and beautiful. I am so glad I didn’t sleep through that.

It is time to get gussied up for dinner. We are going to a special restaurant to celebrate Bill and Lynda’s Anniversary. Dressing for dinner has been fun. Gotta go relax some more!! Talk to you again soon. Tomorrow the beach at St Martin.

Still at sea

I must apologize for the lack of regular communication. It is not as easy to access internet and upload pictures here as it will be in St Thomaas.
It is our fourth full day at sea. it si amazkingly beautiful and calm and BUSY. We are alwasy eating or drinking or sitting in the sun. Yesterday morning there was a beautiful rainbow off of our veranda that hung there above the water for about an hour!! Yesterday we passed the half way mark between Las Palmas and ST Maarten.
Our fellow travellers have been making presentations on what they know for sure. We have two 90 minute sessions each day. Hans explained his six styles of mediation. I did a quick PULSE check. Dan did an existential look at truth, goodness and beauty. Today Lynda and Marjorie take the floor to talk about group interaction and intercultural differences in mediation respectively. I am enjoying the talks as I am enjoying the wine tasting. Yesterday we bought reidel wine glasses after having tasted four wines in a tasting that moved the wines from glass to glass for comparison. It was great. We are skipping the wine tasting today to get some sun time. That is not something I have had enough of yet. Maybe in St. Thomas.

I hope everyone had fun at Yvonnes last night. I missed you, although we did have a Tuesday toast with Cakebread…. I thought about calling … Jim’s phone rang yesterday while we were on deck. It was his dentist’s office reminding him of his appointment next week. We are still in touch no matter where we are….

Las Palmas – the last land before the sea

Christopher Columbus started his journey from here. I have pictures that I will post later today of one of his vessels. I had embedded them in the word document but I see they don’t appear in the posting. They are on the card in Jim’s camera. It is good to have the internet again.

Watch for the pics later.

The Santa Maria at Los Palmas

Pictures to follow

Pulling in to Tenerife

Yesterday we were in Lanzarote, a volcanic Island off of the coast of Morocco. It wasn’t a sparkling place to go. Madeira, the day before was delightful. At dinner we all agreed that we would all go back there in a minute. At Madeira we rode the gondola to the top of the mountain (600 metres), looking into everyone’s gardens and at their roof tops. The view was spectacular. Then we walked to past the botanical gardens to the church a where men in straw hats put us in willow toboggans and slide down the asphalt streets for 2 kilometres with us. It was quite a ride. I accidentally called Mandy after the ride and woke her in the middle of the night. Sorry, Mand.

Five of us got in a taxi to go back up to the church. That was a bit tight and with the 80 degree angle of the slope and the windy roads it was as much fun as the ride down in the toboggans. We took the gondola back to town and had wonderful beer and cod fish for lunch under the cable of the gondola. The people of the island were very polite and pleasant and at the end of the meal we were served Madeira wine from a small wooden cask that had been home made. It was a great meal and the little shops were wonderful too. We bought some Christmas table runners in the market that was full of lace and embroidered table linens.

Top of the hill with our ship in the background at Madeira

The waters are calmer now and the outside temperature is pleasant. We are pulling into the harbour at Tenerife as I write and it is time to go for breakfast and visit the town. There is a rainbow on one of the peaks right now. This is also a volcanic island with lots of peaks and valleys. It is the biggest of the Canary Islands. More about it tonight… Thanks for staying tuned.

Lanzarote

Lanzarote, which seemed a little barren, also had stalls in a market. We wandered through and then sat and had beer and conversation until we got back on the bus for the ship. The ships satellite was down yesterday so there was no internet. Hopefully today I will be able to access and post this entry. So far it has been a travel log, not as insightful as past entries. It seems to be a whirl wind of activity with not enough time to just sit and think. I am sure that will change once we get to sea.

Tenerife

The church where we left our new back pack.

Missing the fun – A Day in Medeiros

We are about to disembark for Madeiras, a small Portuguese settlement on an Island called Funchal about 350 miles west of Casablanca which is in the north of Africa. Mandy has a good friend from high school whose family name is Madeiras. I wonder if her relatives are from here. Madeiras is also the name of the local wine which we will report on tomorrow.

Since we left Barcelona many things have happened. A full day at sea to get to Malaga was on rough seas. The stories we heard from people who had been on the ship for 14 days told tales of high seas and storms coming around Italy. Sunday was quiet. WE spent a couple of hours in the Persian Gardens, a lovely spa experience with steam rooms and Turkish baths and saunas. We all gussied up for a formal dinner and had a great time there and at the cocktail party that Dan organized before hand. The group had an opportunity to share their stories. That was cool. Hans is from Denmark but is a real world traveler. His friend and colleague is very nice. She is from Kosovo.

We arrived in Malaga on Monday morning. It is a great little Spanish town. We walked around the Moorish fort and Cathedral and found a Picasso Museum and house that he used to live in. All of them are closed to tourists on Monday’s … That seemed ironic. The one day we are in port, everything is closed. It was cold. We had coffee on the main street which was wonderfully decorated for Christmas, bought some very cute boots and headed back to the ship. I wandered into the acupuncture clinic and booked myself a treatment for after dinner.

After the treatment I went back to meet Jim at the cabin. I looked out the window and there was the rock of Gibraltar. The only thing missing was the prudential words circling it. It was VERY COOL to see. We passed through the straight between Africa and Europe at about 10:30 PM and headed out to sea. It was great. That is the second time Jim and I have sailed between Europe and Asia on the Bosphorus in Istanbul in 2004.

So I had my first acupuncture treatment and what I learned is it does hurt and you do bleed a little. It also works. I feel great. I had another appointment today, this time on my face. I will be a new person when I get back. I also had another detox treatment with algae. I lost 71/2 inches in one session. Amazing.

Today was another rough day at sea. If you were here, Punch, you would feel at home. We are still in the North Atlantic. Tomorrow we dock in Funchal at Medeiros. The temperature has improved to about 19 degrees but the seas are still 10 feet. It is rock and roll time … just like it was last night at the Karaoke event and tonight in the bar with a GREAT piano player named Wally B.

The access to email on my phone has been intermittent but I did get one message from Martha Hall Findley that made me scratch my head. Then at dinner we ran into a couple from London, Ontario who told us that things were weird at home on the political front. Marjorie had had a message from her dad to say check the politics and we finally found the Canadian News that the ship publishes and we were shocked by the news. I hate that I am missing all the fun.

So today is an ‘at shore’ day and so are the next 3 after that. We are sailing each night to the next Canary Island. The water and the air is warmer now and I may be able to put my turtle necks, tuques and fleece away and break out the shorts or at least the capris. It is hard to believe that three of our 14 days are already done.

Leaving Barcelona

Yesterday we left Barcelona. We had a nice breakfast at the same Lobo Bar as we had the day before. It was raining cats and dogs. We got the luggage together and called a couple of cabs to head to the ship. There didn’t seem like any point in trying to see more of the city with the weather the way it was. Two taxi’s, six people and 18 pieces of luggage (or so we thought) headed toward the harbour. A couple of blocks from the hotel we came upon a traffic jam. Horns were honking. Everyone was leaning on their horn for 30 to 60 seconds at a time. Our driver was doing the same. He opened his windo to add his voice to the expression of anger and ‘bang’ a grocery bag full of water hit the car and dumped inside. It hit hard as if it had some from the 3rd or 4th floor. The driver was not happy and we were still stuck. It was unbelieveable.

We got to the port, got out of the taxis and they dashed off right about the time that LYnda noticed that her red hanging bag with her formal wear was not with us. Was it in the taxi? or at hotel? We all went in to sign in and then Lynda and bill had the concierge phone the hotel. They had the red bag AND Bill’s duffle bag. He hadn’t even realized that it was not with us. Jim and Bill got in a cab, went back to the hotel and retrieved the bags.

Once we had our bags we had a lifeboat drill. That was fun.

We convened for dinner and met the rest of our party. After dinner we waited for the ship to pull away. Appartently we were waiting for people arriving late and left port about 9 pm. It took about an hour to manoeuver the ship through the dock area and then we were at sea. The band started up. They were great. It was disco night.

This morning JIm and I went to breakfast, met some nice folks. Then we spend two hours at the spa. It was great. Lynda and I are off to shop…. You can do that here. It is acutally a very nice boat. Talk to you tomorrow. Please email me or add acomment so I know you are out there!!!!