ANTARCTICA & IBERIA 2015: 9 Ascension Island to Cape Verde Islands

Saturday, April 25, 2015

Back to the same old routine at sea, with little to do. The lectures are now on topics not connected with this cruise just to fill time - few are of interest to me. Marilynn continues keeping busy between scrabble games in the morning and bridge in the afternoon. I surface out of our cabin after 4:30 PM when the bar is open

Yesterday we had a break in routine as we crossed the equator heading north. King Neptune and his court came on board with his judge, barber, doctor, prosecutor and enforcers who set up on the bow to initiate those who had not crossed this line by sea before. The barber, who was equipped with a giant set of shears really didn't cut hair, but had initiates lay on a table to be covered in liquid chocolate before being send to the "doctor" who was wielding a huge mock knife. One they left his table they were well covered in something red that looked a lot like blood. They were then sent into a forceful shower fed by seawater through a fire hose before being required to kiss a dead fish. Having been through a somewhat similar treatment on another equator crossing by ship we were exempted this time, but many, including the ships lady doctor, were not! King Neptune and court were all lecturers in hand made costumes

Spectators and participants got into a quite strong vodka punch created by the bartender, livening up the proceedings even more

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

In the wee hours of Sunday morning the ship broke down again, this time because the generators blew out the fuses, which promptly stopped the engines. In getting them going again one of the outside waterproof doors was left unlatched, and it banged against the wall of our cabin until I finally got dressed and went out on deck to see what was going on. The fourth level deck has a door into reception right where the wall to our cabin begins. Once I figured out the problem I secured the door and went back to bed. The ship broke down and stopped once again at lunchtime the same day

Yesterday we were entertained by bird and animal specialist Bob Brown doing a great job of reading the entire Rime of the Ancient Mariner - the whole epic poem took about 40 minutes to go through

We left the ship at 12:30 PM. Again it was a 6 AM wake up call for breakfast, and a scheduled departure of 9 AM. The problem was that the scheduled pilot didn't show, then they couldn't get the gang plank down once at the dock, and deathly slow customs procedures I had arranged a 9 seat van for 6 of us to do a tour of the island and they had to wait 3 ½ hours for us

The Cape Verde Islands were discovered by the Portuguese in 1456 and the first white settlers arrived in 1462. It was a part of the slave trade until the 19th century when it went into decline. The number of ships calling for supplies were much reduced as well by the opening of the Suez Canal. In 1947 there was a famine during which 30% of the population died and a revolution against the colonial powers

In 1953 it became a province of Portugal, however after an armed rebellion it became independent in 1975, but didn't have the first elections until 1991. The capital is Praia. According to our guide it is a young country, with an average age of 23 and a life expectancy of 75 years. The population is about 500,000, 300,000 of which are on the main island of Santiago. Tourism is the number one employer, followed by fishing and farming. This was our first time on Santiago Island - when we were last here we were on Sao Vicente. There are 9 main islands in the group. From 2015 Creole became the official language

We first drove through the mountainous backbone of the island on good roads, stopping at a colourful botanical garden that is also an experimental farm to test new crops for the island. The tour included an amazing lunch of seafood or meat at a restaurant overlooking the golden sand beach at Tarrafal. Marilynn and I pigged out on the big grilled prawns and banana flame for desert. Our return trip was along the east coast, following the shoreline through small villages. The city of Praia was a pleasant surprise - very clean and well maintained. In the town squares there is free wifi

We then had to hang around the airport for several hours before our 11:55 PM flight to Lisbon, but this was made easier by drinking a lot of beer with the crew and lecturers from the ship. TAP business class was definitely a disappointment, but the beer worked and I got some sleep anyhow

SUMMARY OF MV ORTELIUS CRUISE

The Ship - Rides well in heavy seas, has comfortable cabins and beds, but the dining room, lecture room-theatre and bar are badly laid out. There is a sickening bilge smell on the outside of deck 4 where zodiacs are loaded. The captain is very conservative, not at all social and is not responsive to requests from passengers. The air conditioning was not reliable, so at times in the tropics is was very hot and at times in Antarctic waters very cold. Heavy waterproof doors were closed throughout the ship to try to keep hot air out of passenger areas, and that may have helped a little but the doors are so heavy that the more frail had a terrible time opening them

Internet was very expensive, slow and unreliable. I paid 60 euros for 100 megabytes of internet service, and was able to access my personal emails only twice for a very short time each. The rest of the time was used up trying to log in unsuccessfully. The email address provided by the ship at a cost of 50 euros for the cruise worked quite well, but it was only for text - no checking personal emails or attachments in and out

The cruise director, Jan Belgers, was disorganized, with little forward planning of lectures, documentaries or movies, and inclined to do little that was not directly in his job description. The on board selection of movies were generally very poor. He was not good at coming up with alternate plans when scheduled plans didn't work out. As all services ended when we disembarked in the morning at Praia in Cape Verde - nothing had been arranged on shore.

The hotel department under Robert & DJ was first class, with excellent food, great laundry service and good bar service when the bar was open. With all the sea days the bar should have been open from noon on, as there would have been more socializing, but I think this was a problem with limited staff as the bar tender was required to work as a waiter in the restaurant and so other things as well

In 5 weeks at sea we had less than 17 hours on land, so this itinerary would appeal to very few people

The lecturers, who are also the Zodiac drivers and cruise staff are:

Jan Belgers from Holland, who is the tour leader

Bob Brown from England, a specialist in birds and animals

Brent Houston from the US is an expert on bird and animal life in the Antarctic

Dmitri Bahin is a Russian marine biologist who has lived in the US for 20 years

Victoria Salem from England was the historian

Christian Savigney from Argentina is a bird expert

Adam Andras Garde from Denmark is a geologist