This is day 96 of the cruise and at this point maybe I am a bit blue and when that happens my mind goes in funny directions. We are close to home, but yet, far away. As somebody said yesterday, it is like the cabin-fever we may have had early in the cruise, but in reverse.
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The other day in St. Helena, we were at the base of the Jacob's Ladder attempting to take a picture of the very steep 699 step staircase. There was a woman from the ship, who is not a passenger, age about 30 [?], very attractive, longish blonde hair. She always dresses very nicely when ashore, in flowing Ali Baba Pants. You know, the silk-like flowing ballon-legged slacks, tight at the ankle.
Well, she was about 10 steps up, two hands on the railing with her legs up on the rail posing for photographs. Her captive audience were aging Amsterdamers attempting, like me, to get a picture or even attempt to walk up the stairs.
Of course the way was blocked by her and by now a couple of her boy friends wanting to appear cool and get in the picture with her.
Now, when we were kids my mother would say, "That is showing off and you don't do that". That type of bringing up turned me, and perhaps my siblings, and later my kids, into people that do not want to bring attention brought to themselves.
It also, I think, implanted in me at least, a bit of wonder what was wrong with me when I did not feel comfortable 'showing off'. Maybe not, but all my life I have struggled, to some degree, with this fear of drawing attention to myself. I still do not want to get up on the stage as often happens to people in the Queen's Lounge on performances when they have a comedian or magician or the like. Yet, there are certain people that will make damn sure that they are sitting right in the front row where the entertainer can see them, talk to them and possibly ask them to get up on the stage.
I think that I prefer my approach to situations like this.
I don't know where I am going with this writing but I wanted to get this written down as it sometimes helps me grasp the situation a bit better.
Oddly enough, last night in the Lounge, a magician walked off the stage and came in our direction, but deferred to Jim, who was dragged up along with another fellow. Jim and Gail usually position themselves in the lounge to be far enough away from the stage so as not to get picked. Jim handled it very graciously by the way.
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Well, we got the internet going after about a 14 hour shut-down last night and this morning. That shutdown did not help my mood much but also, did not unduly upset me.
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When in St. Helena there was some damage done to one of the tenders due to it's cleats being ripped out by the swells when tied up ashore. There was also the odd person that suffered some bruises when bouncing around when boarding or disembarking. The crew does a good job under bad circumstances, but there are some people who have difficulty on a flat surface let alone a bouncing entrance to a life boat/tender. There were some who went ashore with walkers in spite of advice to the contrary from the ship.
Jim and Gail joined us as we waited to find out if we were going ashore and we had quite an enjoyable time seeing all the activities from the luxury of our balcony.
Today when were hovering at our 'anchorage' about 1/2 mile from shore, the ship sent a tender in to check out the conditions. It was at the concrete steps, that is in fact the landing, for about five minutes before the captain came on the intercom and announced that the Safety Officer on board the tender advised not to try to land the passengers today because of the swells were 'worse than St. Helena'.
That tender, when returning to the ship was met by a series of about six very large swells that just seemed to come out of nowhere, but we could see them coming about a mile before they hit the tender. It was bit of a thrill to see the tender rolling and pitching down mother natures roller coaster.
So, instead of landing the ship did 'scenic cruising' of Ascension. Actually we saw more of the place in the two hour circumnavigation than we would have by stepping ashore methinks. The town looked like a small collection of utilitarian buildings but there was the spire of a church visible a few feet from the erstwhile landing site.
The ship allowed a bevy of entrepreneurial merchants on the ship during our two hour sail around the island. We stepped down to see what was on offer. They had post cards, stamps, tee shirts, and the usual load of trinkets. People were buying everything and everything, it was like a feeding frenzy, as the ship's cruise director called it.
The island has a lot of very expensive looking military communication hardware on it for sure. The UK has a very strong presence and the RAF has a base here, military flights only, come and go. The BBC has a station of some sort here as well. The peaks are dotted with towers and domes for all sorts of purposes. The RAF does allow a few number of seats for civilians apparently. There is a hotel and a guest house. Population around 1000? The US is also represented here. Wind turbines are installed in numerous locations and we saw what looked like facilities to off-load oil for power generation I can only assume.
The authorities here do not really have much to gain by having 900 elderly cruisers walking around the streets for a few hours and they appear to make it as difficult as possible for people like us to spend a day on Ascension.
The apprehension of possibly getting off did break the day up for sure, and we saw a green sea turtle as we hovered, porpoises later and we witnessed the sea worthiness of a tender rolling in a heavy swell. All in all, not a bad day and nobody hurt and no damage to property as well.
We now have three sea days and then we are in The Cape Verde Islands, north of the equator, for three days before heading due west to the Caribbean.
Pics.
- Fellette and her first glimpse of Ascension.
- The reconnaissance tender going in.
- The tender coming back 10 minutes later, rolling.
- Vendors coming on.
- Panorama of the island.
- Feeding Frenzy of shoppers.
- Black Rock, white from bird droppings.
- The tender landing spot, below the yellow crane.
- The town of Georgetown.
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