Barcelona to Abu Dhabi: Four Days on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden
There are times, believe it or not, that even I, the word-smitten Intlxpatr, am at a loss for words. For one thing, while part of my writing is documentary, in case I get old and forget my great adventures, another part is because I really do love writing, and sharing what I have learned. For me, another part is that I have discovered as I write, I tap into a part of me that is figuring things out I don’t even know I am thinking, and I look at what I have written, and I am a little astounded, and then I have to ponder, mostly thinking “where did that come from?” Lastly, I try to be entertaining, in case anyone is reading this but me.
We never thought we were cruisers. We have always considered ourselves independent travelers, and we were fearless. On our first attempt at cruising, on a one-ship line that no longer exists (Voyages to Antiquity), we went on a cruise called The Passage of the Moors, starting in Seville, Spain, and going to a variety of places in Morocco, then returning to Spain. It was a real eye-opener.
In our hotel in Marrakesh, we had dinner with a disgruntled cruiser, a man who was annoyed we were spending so much time off the ship, touring cities and sites, and not spending enough time at sea. “This isn’t what I call cruising!” he complained as we ate exquisite food in our five-star hotel after our visit to the Djem al Fna.
AdventureMan and I were high as kites; we had exited the group after lunch in the caravansarai and toured the souks ourselves, ending with settling ourselves in a delightful restaurant overlooking the Djem al Fna and spending a couple hours enjoying the spectacle. We speak Arabic, we can read the signs, and we’ve been here before. We were high on being alone again, not part of the group, and creating our own brand of adventure.
Four days at sea is heaven for a lot of people. This part of the trip excited me, going along the coastline of southern Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, and the coast of Yemen, places I have not yet explored and never dreamed I would have the opportunity. This was exciting to me!
I loved that we have these interactive maps in our cabins, so we know where we are in relation to the geography.
And this is what we saw:
Above are little islands off the southern coast of Saudi Arabia / Yemen.
Our greatest fun every day was hitting the spa, early in the morning. We always had it all to ourselves. I would awake early, head up to Horizons for coffee and catching up on e-mails, then go back to the cabin to find AdventureMan. We would go to breakfast. We would go to the spa. On our first day at sea, we had some excitement.
We spent about a half an hour in the pool, relaxing, exercising and soaking up some early morning sun. We are just finishing up and stretching out on a double lounge when the ship’s captain announced a Pirate drill.
A pirate drill! Passengers were asked to leave all outer decks and balconies and shelter in the interior of the ship. I made my way down to our room and sheltered in our bathroom, which is interior, to shower off all the salt water from the spa.
All this and it isn’t even 10:30.
We read a lot of books. We went through the Bab al Mendeb (the Gate of Tears) a choke point in the sea world, particularly strategic for transporting oil and gas. This is what Wikipedia tells us:
Etymology. Arabic بَاب اَلْمَنْدَب (bāb al-mandab) means “Gateway (Bab) of anguish”, or “Gateway of tears”; the strait derives its name from the dangers attending its navigation, or, according to an Arab legend, from the numbers who were drowned by the earthquake which separated Asia and Africa.
There were no announcements on board, no mention of the nature of the terrain through which we were passing. The majority of the passengers were either clustered around the tiny swimming pool or relaxing in their cabins.
Visibility is poor.
As we exited the straits and turned toward Oman, off the coast of Yemen, the waters became more turbulent.
As we were bouncing along in the back of a truck into Wadi Rum yesterday, we were talking with the Czech couple who had – just co-incidentally – been on several trips with this same ship’s captain. They had dinner with him now and then, and one of the things he told them is that most passengers who take the long cruises, the really long cruises, longer than our 21 days, get really bored and critical after the first couple weeks. The captain said they go to extraordinary lengths to keep the passengers from getting bored.
I cannot imagine. 21 days is long enough for us. There are activities. Today a woman is talking about Egyptian painting of the tombs, and another speaker will talk this afternoon about the future of weather. There are two women who teach bridge, and there is a crafts lesson this afternoon on how to make a ribbon bracelet.
Oceania’s major selling point is “the Best Cuisine at Sea.” There is a lot of emphasis on the food, the specialty restaurants, wine tastings, and special dinners with wine pairings.
We like good food. We like good wine.
We are going back to Toscana, the Italian restaurant, tonight. AdventureMan would like to try the fish he saw Buti deboning the other night. I like the angel hair aglio oglio pasta. They have good roast vegetables. We enjoy the meal.
The days at sea loom large and even good readers can go a little stir-crazy. There is a great library – and, as I said, a lot of focus on food, what will be served where, how it will be served, and who snagged reservations to the specialty restaurants.
The demographic on the Nautica is interesting. We learned from another passenger that 50% of the people on this cruise are first-time cruisers with Oceania (that would include us.) My guess is that most of us first-timers are destination driven, and we check that out as often as possible, talking with our fellow passengers.
Our fellow passengers are probably 60 – 70% American. The second largest percentage would be British or Canadian, and then there is a scattering of Australians, New Zealanders, etc. There are probably 2% Japanese, Chinese, and Korean. There is a Nigerian couple and the Czech couple, but both of those are now Canadian.
It’s an interesting mix and a very well-traveled mix. I haven’t met anyone on their first cruise. We are encouraged to “grab a drink and make a friend,” and it is easy enough to do; there are all kinds of opportunities to meet other people and get to know them, whether in eating venues or on shore excursions.
Mostly, we like to mix on shore excursions and up in the Horizons Lounge, where tea is served at four. We have actually only shown up for tea once – it is heavily attended on sea days, and we don’t like crowds. We head up to Horizons on days when people are elsewhere, and often run into people we’ve met on the excursions or even in our hotel in Barcelona. One kind woman and her husband spent a night off the ship with friends in Haifa; she shared a wonderful cracker recipe with me full of seeds and good things. It tasted of sesame and was light and healthy. Another couple is Ed and Alan, from San Diego, who won’t be getting off the ship until South Africa – a very long trip. They were supposed to go to Qatar, and then, suddenly, Qatar was scrubbed from the itinerary, and Saudi Arabia was added. Then Saudi Arabia was scrubbed and Bahrain was added. You have to stay flexible. We learn a lot by listening to our new friends.
Our housekeeper back in Pensacola, sends us photos that assure us our cats, Ragnar and Uhtred are feeling secure and doing well (Ragnar chews on things when he is anxious.) She tells us Pensacola is very cold – in mid-November! This is unusual, but the world is changing and we have to keep on our toes.
We eat our lunch at the Terrace, the weather is so much warmer, and the sea temperature and the air temperature are the same – 86 degrees F. The captain tells us how deep the water is underneath us – 1000 feet. There is a part of me that wishes he wouldn’t tell us.
We read during the afternoon and AdventureMan naps. Out on the balcony, it is almost too hot, and sultry. People are dressed in tropical prints, shorts, bathing suits and cover-ups.
The sun goes down very suddenly, and it is time to get ready for dinner. The FIFA World Cup in Doha continues to get mixed press, but Nautica will carry some of the matches, a really good call for Nautica, as this is a time when passengers can get bored and cause trouble.
On Sunday, we have a church service, interdenominational, held in the Nautica Lounge. The cruise director, Carson, tells us he originally trained as a Youth Minister, his family built a Baptist Church in Tennessee, but his sermon is very Episcopalian, very scripture based, on the two major commandments and The Good Samaritan. His message is that “we are to go and do likewise,” like the Good Samaritan, who nursed the stranger and cared for him. He tells us that we are 23 nationalities of passengers on board, and 49 nationalities on the crew. He tells us that when we travel, we meet the stranger and discover he is like us. It is harder to hate when the stranger becomes familiar. I loved the sermon. I am able to share it with AdventureMan when I get back to our cabin. We had minutes together before he left for his lecture on Egyptian Tomb artists.
When he got back we decided to go to the Grand Dining Room for a Sunday Brunch, which seems to be a big deal. When we got there, there was a long line, a big crowd, and the Grand Dining Room is entirely enclosed.
AdventureMan looked at me and I looked at him and we walked away, quickly, up to the Terrace dining room where we could sit outside. We discovered much of the food was the same, only not crowded, and plentiful. As we left, passed our table along to Miguel and Marguerita, our next-door neighbors.
It’s a quiet day. I did a couple Sudoku, and plan to go through and eliminate garbage photos. AdventureMan is catching up on sleep. It’s a great day for it.
I like sea days. They give me a chance to catch up. And actually, one is enough, two is enforced luxury, and by the third day, people start to go crazy.
We change times again, losing another hour. I get up early and go up to Horizons to have some coffee and catch up on e-mails. Join AM and we go to breakfast, most of the time at the same table. I eat oatmeal and berries, AM shares a corner of his croissant so I don’t feel deprived. We go to the spa, the highlight of our morning, and loll in the hot sloshing water and then sun for a while on the daybeds. It’s early morning still – we have it to ourselves most of the time, and we don’t worry too much about the sun being too strong early in the morning. The weather has changed. It is definitely hot. I feel lucky that it didn’t get hot and sultry like this until after we left Aqaba.
AdventureMan goes to a lecture on Egyptian magical beliefs; I finish going through all the photos and upload the latest. I teach myself how to Air Drop photos from my computer to my phone. I enjoy the rest.
AM is searching around on our screen (we usually watch the navigation page, as we are going through the Bab al Mendeb and we decide to try the Grand Ballroom for a change, for lunch. When we get there, it isn’t crowded and we like today’s menu. AM has an Indian variety meal, and when finished, asks for more samosas, which they bring him – a lot! I have the peppercorn hanger steak and a “pate’” which seems to be a cooked pate’. We both have chocolate mousse with a tiny amount of raspberry coulis. We are both delighted with our lunch.
He goes to a lecture; I go up to the tenth deck to try to capture photos of Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen – photos are hazy but show distant mountains.
Dinner comes, I am so totally not interested, but we go to the Terrace for the Middle East Market special. The foods are actually pretty good. I just get tired of eating by dinner time.
I think I am a little bored, and my body tells me I need more physical activity. The walking track doesn’t do it for me. We spend a lot of time taking the stairs, which is good for us both. I see a lot of people really loving the cruising time, pool time, socializing, loving all the food and wine, going to tea . . . I am restless. I need to move. I am missing my laps in the pool!
We are eager to see Salalah.
AdventureMan and I often visit places that we see very differently. We have visited small villages where AdventureMan says “just kill me now! I would drink myself to death if I had to live here!” and I am already mentally buying sheep’s wool and learning how to spin it into thread and yarn, weaving on a large loom.
So I am thinking what I would do to survive if I had to live on a ship for a long time between ports. I think I would have to organize. It’s what I do. I would start a book club. I would find people interested in theology and start a monthly meeting sharing different viewpoints. I would find fellow Episcopalians and schedule early morning services or Compline – surely there is an Episcopal minister aboard among all these people on board. I would start a ports series, where we share with one another what we know about the upcoming port. We would find small tour operators to take us to out-of-the-way places, to meet with local craftspeople, or to have a meal with local people.
Organizing takes a while, you have to be patient. Once I had a few things going well, I would stretch, create some interest groups, like a stitchery group – only I would also include crew members who shared the same interest. While now, there were women teaching bridge, I could imagine a weekly match-up of all bridge players, including crew; it would be both democratic and keep things interesting. Challenging.
I like a little more purpose to my life.
At Sea: We Need to Talk About Ashok
Those of you who know AdventureMan and I personally know that we are relentlessly self-reliant. With all our years of moving and living in a variety of countries, we have needed to be, but in truth, we are wired that way. You will laugh when I say I am uncomfortable even introducing this topic.
Our beautiful room comes with a butler.
It has been an awkward dance, but Ashok, our butler, is a pro at assessing people and working with their preferences. We don’t need a lot of service, and he has found ways to make himself useful to us anyway. Discovering I like Ginger Beer, he scoured the bars, alerted his contacts, and made sure our little refrigerator was well stocked with AdventureMan’s Coca Cola, and my Ginger Beer. He was always polite and pleasant.
The night we had decided to have dinner on the balcony after our day in Taormina and had saved parts of our sandwiches from lunch, we also found a generous tray of hors d’oeuvres waiting for us when we arrived late back to the ship. We had to admit, it was really nice, he had intuited well what we might like.
When we got tired of dressing for dinner and asked to have dinner in our room (part of the perks), he served us with elegance and grace, and made it so much fun that we indulged every few nights.
When AdventureMan wanted his laundry done professionally, Ashok made sure it came back very quickly.
In spite of our self-reliance, Ashok learned how to make himself invaluable to us. And, in truth, we really liked him, and loved our discussions with him. We were impressed with his resourcefulness, and his delight in making things happen. He seemed to delight in delighting us.
We are at sea for two days, en route from Messina to Haifa, Israel.
I was wide awake by five, so I got up quietly and dressed, grabbed my computer, found a cup of coffee at Barista’s, and headed up to Horizon’s, the forward observation lounge to check e-mails. Over 300 e-mails, horrors! I spent a while just deleting, then responding to the few requiring attention – requests from Air France for rating how I liked my flights, and a couple e-mails from friends. Most of the time, in this large lounge, it was just me and one or two others. I did get a nice photo of the sun coming up; it looks a lot like the day before.
When I headed back to our cabin, AdventureMan was just getting up, so we went together to breakfast where I am so delighted to find marinated herring and smoked salmon, two of my favorite things in the world. (It’s my Swedish blood talking.) AdventureMan finds herring abhorrent, and so does the Indonesian lady dishing it up; when I say a bright cheery “thank you!” her response was meant to be a smile, but it was a little twisted by disgust. I also had my virtuous oatmeal, with virtuous fresh blueberries – so much temptation, but my blood sugar is well within normal and I want to keep it there.
After breakfast I introduced AdventureMan to a new thrill – the spa pool at the front of the ship. It is just below the Horizons Lounge, and we had noticed that if you enter the pool by the stairs, you are visible to the people in the lounge. It doesn’t bother AdventureMan, but I figured out how to enter from the side, so as to remain unseen. The spa is very warm to hot, and can be made to bubble, so we had a wonderful twenty minutes in the hot tub in the fresh air, then we headed back to our room.
This early morning trip to the spa, having it all to ourselves, became another guilty pleasure. So lovely, so indulgent.
This quiet sea day, I napped a lot. I meant to read. I meant to update this journal. I napped. I don’t even feel guilty, it felt so good.
Our cabin as all shades of grayish green, sea colors. The walls look almost gray, but there are streaks of green in the wall paper. The upholstered headboard is a very pale shade of sea-green. The furniture and pillows a little bit darker shade of green, and the two pashmina throws to keep us warm are almost an exact match to the furniture. It’s all very soothing.
There is a little “couch,” really more of a love-seat, where I can fall asleep very easily.
Space is smartly allocated so that there is plenty of closet space, with doors that open so you can see everything, and enough hangers. (Enough hangers! I didn’t have to ask for more!) There are enough drawers to stow things in neatly. The bathroom has two upper-side cupboards, and two lower cupboards with shelves, too. There is more cupboard space in the bathroom than we need; we can keep everything in cupboards, out of sight. (This is a first.)
The ship is very silent. We don’t hear the motors, or the anchors dropping or lifting. We feel little sways and jerks now and then. At one point the weather changed briefly, we had rain. At night the ship swayed enough to cause some to have problems with balance, but it wasn’t much. We can feel the boat rock side to side, just a little, now and then. It is like being a baby again, held against your Mama as she walks about, feeling safe and secure. I napped a lot.
Dinner this night at sea was an Italian Market special, and we ate once again in the casual restaurant but dressed up a little. As it was a little cold and windy, we ate inside instead of at our usual table on the back terrace. It was one of my favorite meals – grilled Italian vegetables (mostly eggplant and peppers) and a big bowl of an Italian kind of Bouillabaisse, a fish stew, and it was wonderful.
In the restaurant, I could overhear a conversation I longed to join, two tables away, about Amor Towles and A Gentleman in Moscow. I tried to see who the people were, an assortment of six, but I am not sure I would recognize them again. Another woman, seated nearby, was very blonde with a bright red pashmina wrapped around her shoulders – I’ve always envied that drama, and know it isn’t really my style.
Even though I napped a lot during the day, I slept well this night for the first time since Barcelona.
We slept fairly well through the night, awakening around five but getting back to sleep again for another day at sea. Nice breakfast on the Terrace (my virtuous oatmeal, this time with fresh raspberries), followed by another early visit to the spa, where at that early hour, we have it all to ourselves. We were out in time to get ready for the Veteran’s Day/ Remembrance Day Ceremony at 9:15 in the Nautica Lounge. It was simple, short and sweet.
We were back at the Nautica Lounge just a short while later for another enrichment lecture on the Knights Hospitaler and Knights Templar, which helps put everything in context for our upcoming trip to Acre while we stop in Haifa.
We nap and read through the quiet afternoon as we pass south of Crete and Greece, never seeing a speck of land. Tonight is dinner at Toscana, the ship’s specialty Italian restaurant; we have dinner reservations at seven. We know a waiter who works there, Buti, and he has been waiting for us to come see him.
The problem, for us, is that by late afternoon we are already closing down. We’ve always been this way, but when we were younger, we really didn’t know it. We dress, I wear the one little black dress I have brought for special evenings, with a red scarf, my own toast to a little drama. When we get to Toscana, there is a line, the restaurant isn’t open yet so we go into the library. Shortly, the Jewish Shabbat began, and we left to give them privacy, got in the line, and very shortly got in and asked to be seated in Buti’s section.
Buti treated us like gold. We felt so special. When I ordered, he insisted I add a small dish of pasta, angel hair aglio oglio, and when he brought it, it was perfect. He also brought a small bowl of sambol oelek sauce, which I know from Kuwait and Qatar, spicy hot peppers in a little vinegar, absolutely divine. I also had Veal Marsala, and AdventureMan had a Caprese Salad and Linguini Cioppiono. Altogether, it was a lovely meal. All around us people were laughing and talking, a single man at the next table was reading Saul Bellow, and as nice as it all was, it was slowly elegant and we got restless. We skipped dessert, which is a really good thing, because my blood sugar was 123 the next day, which gave me a good wake-up call.
I loved the sambol oelek, and I loved the angel hair pasta. It’s hard for me to be gracious after five at night. When we got home, we were exhausted. Everyone is so kind, wanting to make us feel so special, and I just feel tired and happy to be back in my room getting ready for bed.
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