Fletcher

I think if wildlife is a real priority then you might need to find a lodge in the Pantanal for things like jaguars and anteaters.  Also, a cruise on something like the Delfin in the upper Amazon or a lodge in Peru or Ecuador.  I found this friendly anaconda in the grounds of Sasha Lodge a few years ago.

I've started to put up photos from this trip on my Flickr photostream.  The Manaus section is here:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/up70mm/albums/72177720317525203/

If anyone is thinking of doing an Amazon cruise it's worth staying in Manaus for a day or three as there is much to see. 

December is in the wet season, though I once started a Christmas cruise from Mahe and sailed across to Zanzibar and never saw a drop of rain and landed twice on Aldabra which is prone to rough seas.  This was on a 100 pax expedition ship and I strongly believe the Silver Spirit, which we sailed on last year in the Med, is far too big to get the best out of the Seychelles.  It will be reliant on those tenders which need flat seas.

7 hours ago, Tothesunset said:

There have been cases aboard of GI illness and today each suite received a letter from the captain that explains the actions being taken to limit the risk of spread. Quarantine in suite for affected passengers, self-service discontinued, increased hand sanitation and so forth.

 

The GI bug was with us on the Wind from Manaus to Lisbon, as noted on my blog, and we had the pool and hot tubs drained as a hygiene measure.  Learned later it was aboard on the BA-Manaus cruise as well.  It's on the ship.  Stay firm. 

8 hours ago, Tothesunset said:

Just a quickie. 

 

We must have had 30 or more dinners in terraza and each time been disappointed. Yet still we go back. However, tonight's dinner was superb. Really. And, best of all, the pappardeli with duch ragu was outstanding. It really was. 

 

 

On the Wind for the past five weeks and we found the duck ragu to be pretty good and consistent.  We always decline the platter thing they bring at the start - horrible ultra-processed fat - and the bread is dire.  The carpaccio is often a good starter and they also do a fishy soup that is quite aromatic and tasty.  Sometimes we did just two starters and a pud.  If you risk the osso buco try asking for wet polenta with it rather than the dried-up hash brown thing.  The nicest venue on the ship by far, especially the outer deck.  

23 - Recap and Briefing

A few blog posts ago Forum regular @Daveywavey70 said he hoped that one day I might find a holiday that I might enjoy.   How nice of him to have my well-being in mind but Dave, rest assured, I am never happier than when I am miserable.   It was his use of the word ‘holiday’ that has been preying on my mind lately.

You see, I have now returned from this Wind cruise which took me from Manaus in Brazil to Lisbon via the Amazon river followed by four countries in West Africa, then Cabo Verde and Morocco.  While the Amazon sector was seriously compromised by Silversea meddling with the itinerary and by giving us the wrong ship, this was a great trip, one of the best in fact, but was it a holiday?

We were in West Africa for ten days and every day we’d climb, jump or fall into a zodiac and land in some picturesque hellhole where the abject poverty of the people, the mountains of rubbish, the housing which had fallen well below the level of dereliction and the lack of hope made us stand out like gawping Martians.  I felt a growing appreciation of why these people wanted to get in a zodiac of their own and make a wet landing in Europe and the UK.  Every day on this trip was a physical and an emotional challenge. Stressful, too,  as we never knew quite what to expect in terms of our welcome or what the threat level might be.  There was torrid heat to contend with and general squalor though insects, requiring malarial prevention, were noticeably absent.  It was often thrilling, exciting, an assault on the senses, life-affirming.  And exhausting.  Was it a holiday?  I’m not sure many people would think so.

The highlights were incredible - that kaleidoscopic fishing village in Senegal, the unexpected charm of the slave island of Ile de Goree, the decaying Portuguese towns and the blinding beaches of Bijagos, the evocative ruins of the slave castle in Sierra Leone, the epic  landscapes of Cabo Verde.  And the people we encountered.  Yes many of the men scowled more often than smiled, a few were clearly resentful, but the women dressed in Technicolor and the kids, in their innocence, were funny and inquisitive.  Only a few had learned to beg for money.  And I hope that we from the Wind were sensitive and responsible tourists.

And what of the Wind?  Well, it’s getting rather old and is showing it.  I can’t imagine Silversea hanging on to it - along with the Cloud - for much longer. There are far better ships out there nowadays. I think the reason people like the Wind is certainly not the terrible bathrooms, the dated decor or the decidedly average (and often inedible) food.  The reason people like the Wind - and other ships of the line - is the staff.  Now some of them might lack training and there might be some language issues but the staff are just lovely.  I normally don’t single people out but over the five weeks we were on board we came to really appreciate Alex from Belarus who ran the restaurants and three waiters - Allan, Carmen and of course tiny Salome from Georgia who captured everyone’s hearts.  Farth from Kenya serviced our room beautifully each day and sometimes seemed rather mournful.

The expedition team, led (of course) by Lea (of course) from West Africa onwards  (of course),  comprised a lot of rather similar swarthy Latino men whom we never got to know.  A lot of them seemed like excess baggage to me.  But we loved the gorgeous cetologist Dani from Brazil, whom I introduced to the divine Astrud Gilberto, and Alexandra Hansen who certainly knows how to pitch a lecture.  And birdman Malcolm Turner and, of course the multi-talented Greg with whom I traded daily bon mots from the movie Lawrence of Arabia.  The passengers on board were also a great part of this cruise.  It was a collegiate, highly sociable occasion.  Good heavens, I even took part in trivia.   Good job!

Thanks once again for reading this blog of mine.  It’s fun to write and, I hope, fun to read.  Next stop: Christmas aboard the Silver Dawn.

My regular 'workplace' London haunt was Joe Allen in Exeter Street and near my flat in St John's Wood was a fab Italian place called Rossetti.  

2 - Expeditious expedition to Essaouira

Yesterday we were berthed at a place called Safi in Morocco.  This was possibly the ugliest vista from a cruise ship I have ever seen, a smallish container port which hemmed us in on all sides and looked more like a scrap metal yard.  Added to which there were coal tips which blew coal dust all over us.  And the weather was surprisingly cool.  But all that did not deter a few intrepid souls from stripping off and spending the day by the pool and the jacuzzis.  Which were empty by the way . . .

Many people took the 12-hour tour to Marrakech which reportedly went exceedingly well.  We took the 8-hour tour to the coastal town of Essaouira which I can report went exceedingly well as well.  This was a two-hour drive south, through a few small towns and villages and a lot of open rural countryside.  It was a pretty clean landscape with a lot of agriculture going on.  I never saw a proper poly-tunnel.  And for someone who lives in the heavily mechanised world of Norfolk farmland, it was startling to see how the crops here were being cut by hand, with men and women sitting cross-legged on the ground, and loaded on to carts pulled by horses and mules.  It was traditional and it was a century behind the times.

Essaouira is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the only really touristy place we visited on the entire cruise which started five weeks ago in Brazil.  Once a fortified Portuguese town, Essaouira was a lovely vista, with battlements, a vast beach, frothing waves, seagulls, a fishing fleet, a fish market on the wharf and a classic Arab medina full of shops selling the usual array of ceramics, leather, paintings and silver that you don’t really need.

We got back to the coal pit - sorry, the Silver Wind - at 5pm, had a nicely cooked steak and chips at The Grill, washed it down with a $100 bottle of Cǒte-Rotie, and won Trivia for the third time in a row.  Good job! This was the last proper day of the cruise, folks.  I am suffering a little from sensory overload.  I’ll do a recap and briefing when we get home on Monday, having spent one more day at sea and then a night in Lisbon.

21 - Moroccan motorcade

If you wanted to know what driving in a Presidential motorcade might be like then today was your chance.  We sailed in to Agadir, Morocco, where 24 Toyota Landcruisers were lined up on the dock, in front of the Maersk containers, waiting to whisk us to somewhere, something, called Paradise Valley.

We happened to share our Toyota with an elegant young woman who had perhaps the greatest job in the world - planning Silversea’s expedition cruises and travelling to all the places to check out if there are lavatories available in Djibouti and what to do with 150 passengers when you dump them in Tuvalu.  I think she wanted to travel incognito but Mrs Fletcher sussed her out pretty quickly.  We had a lovely chat though I think she might have called it a debrief.

Our motorcade set off through the northern suburbs of Agadir and we must have looked highly official as everyone stopped and stood and stared.  Police waved us through.  This was the world as seen through Harry and Meghan’s eyes, Putin’s too, and it was hard not to get a little delusional.  Here was Morocco unbound, quite prosperous yet clinging to tradition so that weird bits of sheep and goats hung outside on the road without any hint of the squalor we saw in West Africa.  This was clean, orderly, appealing.  There were new cars, traffic lights, speed cameras, new resort hotels springing up everywhere.  And as we left Agadir behind the scenery became rather grand.  The Paradise Valley itself was lovely, though it was not as its best because that is in the autumn when the valley floor becomes a river.

It had been a blessed relief to arrive in Agadir as the previous two days had seen some treacherous weather and chilly temperatures.  Tough luck on the riff-raff who had joined in Las Palmas who had never left the ship.   The first night hit us hard as our cabin, hitherto silent, developed every bang, rock and rattle ever invented.  Our butler got that fixed by getting someone to bash in a wooden wedge between our fancy wainscotting.  We called him Josiah. The second night, for us, was pretty quiet though everyone else was bemoaning their sleepless night as their cabins were creaking and banging as at a Hans Werner Henze concert.  As we sail away from Agadir the seas are swelling again.

Tomorrow we are at Safi, Morocco.  Some people are going to Marrakech.  We are going to Essaouira.

20 - Breaking news, breaking wind

The temperature outside has plummeted and inside the tone has plummeted as well.  Yesterday we were in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria, and I wish we had packed our cases and headed for the airport.  About 60 new passengers boarded and I resent the presence of every one of them.  Before this, the Wind was a spacious expedition ship with 150 passengers to match - a serious, slightly scruffy lot who knew their terns from their toucans.  This new lot are exiles from cancelled classic cruises with refunds and discounts.  Some even say they are Cunard regulars as if that’s going to impress anyone.

Two single women now plonk their bags down on the seats at the back deck of the Panorama Lounge when they go to lunch.  They are not even German.   Another woman commands the smoking zone on the same deck and parks her pudgy naked feet on the table, bringing a whiff of Costa Cruises to Silversea.   It’s not a pretty sight.

Not that Silversea is the bee’s knees in luxury.  I might have added the word ‘anymore’ to that statement but I’m not so sure it ever was.   But last week, when we were zipping around West Africa and Cabo Verde in zodiacs, it was a thrilling ride.  Now it looks like a booze cruise.

Today we were supposed to be in La Gomera, one of the smaller Canaries.  The overnight ride over from Gran Canaria was bumpy and when we got to La Gomera the Captain came on the blower at 0730 and said we were cancelling our visit because even if we made it through the narrow entrance to the harbour we would never make it out again.  So we have spent the day idling off the coast of Tenerife, affording us terrific and ever-changing views of the enormous volcano which, geologists assert, might one day explode and inundate the USA, causing the end of civilisation as we know it.   What’s annoying is that instead of just one day spent at sea reaching Agadir in Morocco we now have two days at sea.

I think the onboard GI virus is abating a little.  One of the expedition team was laid low for a few days but yesterday he told me that he could now “fart with confidence.”  Needless to say, he is Australian.

40 minutes ago, vistaman said:

one of the 3 "better " sommeliers   on board  told me that when starting the cruise the stock of some better wines was very low 

they had 3 bottles of Tignanello  left   -  a family from a particular Asian country did order all of those the first night at La Terrazza ... 

imho  at an attractive price and sailing in the Medit  , demand for that wine can be "serious" 

it is a very decent good wine and not too expensive !

They had three bottles of that Tignanello on the Wind.  I burned up $135 of onboard credit on one bottle and another couple bought a second bottle on my recommendation.  So only one bottle left now.  We had a steak and chips with ours.  A nice little slurper.  

19 - Cabo Verde

Last night we pulled away from our fourth and last island in Cabo Verde, formerly known as the Cape Verde Islands.  Unless you stayed on the ship, this has been an exciting and a rather exhausting section of this cruise.  Every day we have gone ashore in the zodiacs in rather choppy conditions to land at a pier or jetty.  People have got wet on these dry landings.  And when, at last night’s briefing, expedition leader Lea announced there would be no further zodiac outings a few people applauded.  Some aboard are refugees from cancelled classic cruises and have not encountered zodiacs before or, for that matter, birdmen like Malcolm and ophiologists like Greg.

Silversea usually offered a choice of four tours on each of the islands we visited - bus trips and hikes.  The tours have always overrun and there has been a bit too much hanging around in the heat. Some of the hikes have, apparently, been rather more strenuous than advertised.  One man was defeated by one of these hikes and they considered bringing him down by mule.  I’m sometimes shocked by how physically old and incapacitated some people are going out on these trips - it puts a lot of pressure on expedition team members and also inconveniences their fellow hikers.  I’m not sure about the official policy here - at what point is a passenger told, no, you are not fit enough to do this, go the pool bar instead.

On Sao Nicolau we learned about a local singer called Cesaria Evora and a style of music called Morne.   We visited her home, now a museum, in a hill village called Praia Blanca.  On the drive back I asked our guide if he could put some of her music on the minivan’s system.  This took about ten minutes to achieve - he used his phone to search the internet, then the driver’s phone, finally a memory stick thingie was found and that had to plugged into someone’s phone and on it went until we had the music up and running and very pleasant it was too, a bit like Vila Lobos.  But oh for the days when you just shoved a cassette into a slot.

The scenery throughout has been exceptional.  On Sao Nicolau we went to the windy western tip to examine some marvellously sculpted cliffs which involved scrambling down a long slope and then a vertigo-inducing staircase.  On Santo Antao yesterday the cross-island road was made from more than a billion cobblestones and led to some epic canyon scenery, comparable to the Na Pali coast of Kauai.  There are very few beaches here and the local guides ask us why there are not more tourists.

On the domestic front, the seat covers on the back deck of the Panorama Lounge have now been cleaned - a job lasting five days - meaning that another set has been removed, leaving seats for only eight passengers, four of them reserved for smokers.  Not that there are many smokers on board.  The sliding doors to the pool deck have been roped off since we got on board.  The cabin next to ours had been unoccupied since Manaus but some people got on at Dakar,  bringing the GI virus with them, including our new neighbours. They have been moved into an isolation cabin.  Little things.  Little niggles.

Two days of rolling ocean lie ahead.  The temperature has plummeted.  We saw clouds yesterday for the first time in weeks.  Then the Canaries, when more passengers come aboard, and two stops in Morocco.  Frankly, this cruise has now run out of steam for me. All I want from the last leg of this trip is a shop in Morocco that can sell me Iranian saffron.  And all I want from the ship is a decent dinner.  My energy supplies built up by that goose are running low.

18 - Smuts, soggy bottom with goose

I’m sorry.  I have been neglecting you.  Last Sunday we pulled out of Dakar, having lost many passengers and having gained a few more than we lost.  We now have something less than 170 souls aboard.  The Wind doesn’t feel crowded at all.  It does feel as old as many of us who sail in her.

Our favourite perch is the open back deck, behind the Panorama Lounge. Dakar was a dusty place, that’s for sure, but the Wind started to throw out sooty smutty things from its chimneys which covered the blue seating.  It was largely invisible and you don’t expect it from a ‘five star luxury line’ but when we got up we noticed our shorts and shirts had these black marks.  Our butler got them laundered and we got them dirty all over again.  Mrs Fletcher pointed this out to the Hotel Director and now, after some nudging, the upholstery is being properly cleaned.  Leaving fewer places to sit.

And this isn’t all.  They power-jet everything at the moment so if you are not alert when you arrive at the outside terrace for breakfast you sit down in your smutty shorts and get them soaking wet.  No one wants a soggy bottom.  Mrs Fletcher suggested that they move the chairs before doing the power-jet thing.  They looked amazed that anyone could think of that.

I would be the first to slag off the food on this ship.  The other night the Restaurant equalled their earlier lobster disaster with a turbot disaster.  You sort of give up the will to live, or at least the will to eat, and then a minor miracle happens.  Yesterday we showed up at La Terrazza for lunch and they offered us a white wine from Austria.   The special of the day was roast goose.  Roast goose!  No one had yet asked for any so I was the first.  Now, goose is a tricky thing to cook and also a tricky thing to carve correctly.  I had to show them how to do it.  So I got a complete leg and a slice of breast.  It was utterly superb, crispy skinned, richly goosey in flavour.  I said to a waiter that the classic accompaniment was apple sauce and, blow me, he went and fetched some for me.  I might have said I wanted red cabbage and dumplings too, but I didn’t push my luck.  The Austrian wine washed it down a treat.

Oh yes, I nearly forgot, we are in the Cape Verde Islands, now officially known as Cabo Verde.  Yesterday was Fogo Island and today we are at Boa Vista.  Everyone is off dune bashing, wine tasting and so on.  I am in the Panorama Lounge writing this blog.  Indoors of course.  Cabo Verde seems awfully tame compared to our time in Africa.     

16 minutes ago, kej1 said:

Since I last posted we have had two days of “ expedition” cruising.   Yesterday we went to Garove Island which is in a volcanic caldera.  The village had only been visited once by a cruise ship and it was pre Covid.   

We were on that ship, Caledonian Sky.  A wonderful visit, with extraordinary butterflies and a sort of Raiders of the Lost Ark stone staircase up to the village.  One of our cameras took a dip in the sea.  

Many years ago we went to a very fancy restaurant in New York called Lutece.  We were staying at a hotel called the Mayfair Regent and the night we went to Lutece the restaurant in our hotel fed Woody Allen and Mia Farrow.  Pity we missed them.  

17 - Something fishy

Senegal’s capital Dakar is a real city, with tall buildings, a huge port, proper roads, traffic police, banks, shops, hotels, a railway station.  Senegal is clearly several notches above our previous stops in economic prosperity.  Not that Senegal looks like the UAE or Oman.  And the further you drive away from Dakar the scruffiness and borderline Saharan poverty kicks in.  It becomes one long building site, with houses in various stages of construction but never completed.  The shops are just shacks.  Goats and cattle are herded through.  Rubbish is everywhere. Horses and carts fight for space on the roads.  But there are also modern cars and at the hotel where we had lunch, about 40 miles from Dakar, someone arrived wearing a Maserati Levante.  You don’t drive Maseratis.  You wear them.

I wanted to say that the best thing I saw today was that dust-cloaked Maserati.  But in fact it was a fishing village called Kayar.  This is not a fishing village like Padstow in Cornwall or Staithes in Yorkshire.  Or anything we have seen in the Solomon Islands or Sri Lanka.  This fishing village was the Taj Mahal or the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower of fishing villages.  It was absolutely, unarguably gobsmackingly amazing.  It might have been the greatest ship’s excursion I have ever been on.  Talk about immersive.  Our group from the Wind drowned in the cultural and fishy overload.  Thousands of boats, thousands of people, horses, and millions of dead fish on a vast sandy beach, stretching for miles.  Words rather fail me on this occasion so I’m going to show you a few photos instead.

16 - World Heritage Site with fridge magnets

Today we took time off from this cruise and went to an Italian island in the Med.  Maybe it was French.  Or it could have been Croatian in the Adriatic.  Actually it was the Ile de Gorée in Senegal, West Africa, and it was a complete surprise.

This place, just off the mainland and Dakar, was one of the two main centres of the slave trade.  The other was Elmina in Ghana.  Industrial quantities of humans were exported from here to the Americas to provide a work force where otherwise there would be none.  To feed us and cloth us with the things we wanted in the 17th and 18th centuries.

I went to Elmina back in the 1990s when I was asked to write a piece about UNESCO World Heritages Sites for The Sunday Times.   Elmina remains one of the most unforgettable places I have ever seen.  Gorée, by comparison, is really tame, yet it is also a remarkably captivating place to visit.  One goes expecting a sombre memorial to slavery and discovers a vibrant little island community, full of young kids playing soccer, cats everywhere, pots filled with flowers, cafes serving French food, hawkers selling fabrics and fridge magnets, tourists arriving by the ferry load, even a white sand beach.  It is utterly gorgeous.

And yes, up a flower bedecked back street, there is the House of the Slaves, where untold thousands were kept prisoner and fattened up before export, but UNESCO has restored it into a bijou mansion in salmon pink.  You see the open door at the back and the Atlantic Ocean, the crashing waves and the choice of a watery grave or a life pickin’ cotton in the Carolinas, where nothin’ could be finer, and then you wander back to the real world and this Disneyfied version of history.  That’s what UNESCO does.

Back on board the Silver Wind, we had an issue with our cabin, namely a disturbing noise caused by a fender on the pier at Dakar.  Inside our cabin it sounded like chains being shaken and tuetonic plates being rubbed together.   To our intense pleasure they have moved us for the night.

It’s a transit day tomorrow.  Many are leaving, many more are joining, we are going on a full day’s excursion to see a pink lake which isn’t pink anymore.

15 - The Bellies of Bathurst

The Silver Obesity is berthed in Banjul, formerly Bathurst, the capital of The Gambia, the country that looks like a nematode wiggling its way into the fat belly of Senegal.

It’s fun to sit on the back of the Panorama Lounge gazing at the vista and the activity - the unloading of container ships, the ferries, the colourful pirogues and the beautiful birds.  Hawks, egrets, pelicans and swallows swoop and soar and glide in an endless circus.

It’s also fun to look along the glass windows of the lounge and watch how a stomach will emerge through the door, followed some time later by a person.  This can take ten seconds, sometimes twenty and there are two extreme cases on board when it takes two minutes, especially after a buffet lunch in La Terrazza.

We still have a sort of medical emergency, a few cases of gastrointestinal infections and quarantines which has meant the closure of the pool and jacuzzis and the introduction of strict hygiene measures in the feeding stations, otherwise known as restaurants.

Last night most passengers went ashore for a dinner and culture show, something we avoid like the plague.  It seems likely that the current stomach bug came from a buffet lunch in a dubious Sierra Leone restaurant and last night’s bash in Banjul might yet turn out to be a super-spreader event.  Mrs Fletcher and I have a cast-iron rule of never, ever, eating at risky venues.  This dates back to a visit to Dera’a in Syria many decades ago and it’s a rule that has saved our souls and also our bowels.

That said, we have to endure the sometimes appalling food on the ship, like last night’s ‘Grilled Maine Lobster’ in the Restaurant.   The luckless crustacean wasn’t grilled, merely simmered in some liquid to render it like cotton wool and tasting of the same.  It was served with two tiny underdone globes of potato, some raw julienne of carrot, precisely two uncooked green beans and half a thimble of pink sauce.  It was by far the worst thing I’ve been served on this ship and, believe me,  there is quite a lot of competition.

Our Gambian excursion today was a two-hour boat ride up the creek which was pleasant, overly protracted and not nearly as bird rich as we were expecting, though those avians which were around - like spoonbills, egrets and darters - put on a good show.  Oysters grow naturally here on the mangrove stems and it was interesting to see how the Gambian women collect them from their canoes.  Other than that, it was all a bit reminiscent of an afternoon spent on the Norfolk Broads.  Most of us declined the appendage of an hour-long nature walk and headed back to the ship, past the unending chaos and squalor of Banjul where, it seems, all old Mercs come to die. We went straight for a G&T on the back deck where the bellies of old Bathurst belong.

6 hours ago, texanaust said:

Today our altered itinerary has us snorkelling on the wreck of the World Discoverer.  For us, this is an excellent alternative to touring Honiara so we’re happy.

I've snorkelled around the World Discoverer - every expedition ship owes its existence to that ship.  It was the first of the breed.  A small pedantic note @kej1 - it's Solomon Islands, not Soloman.  

14 - Still in the Bijagos

Yesterday and today everything I had read about and expected from the Bijagos came true.  It has amazing towns, incredible mangroves and world-class beaches.  Yesterday we landed on one of the most hands-down-lottery-winner-drop-dead-gorgeous tropical beaches we have ever seen.  And we have seen quite a few.  This was on Meio Island, uninhabited, just a string of beaches encircling jungle.  Birds flew, fish jumped. People would pay thousands of dollars a night to stay in a place like this but probably no one ever will.  Guinea-Bissau lacks any sort of infrastructure so we privileged few on the Silver Wind saw it, experienced it,  photographed it, swam it, took it away as our secret.  Don’t tell anyone.

Guests went off on bird walks, nature walks, or just walks.  Silversea set up a small bar on the beach and sent out waiters armed with  martinis and beers and canapes and whatever you wanted.  This was a scene of pure western decadence.  Being here you could understand the Mullahs of Iran.

Today we were moored off the island of Bubaque.  Expedition leader Lea had devised a deviously complex day of action, combining visits to the township and a beach resort on the  nearby island of Rubane.  Our zodiacs linked the ship, the town, the resort. Lea kept insisting that her plan would work and was easy to understand.   Lots of people appeared baffled.   We are in zodiac group 3 but for today we were also in Group Two.   People who wore shorts were  in Group 2a and people in long trousers were in Group 2b which would leave before Groups 5 and 6 but only after 1215 when everyone would meet at the resort for lunch.  Vegans were in Group 8. Then everyone would go on zodiac cruises in strict Group rotation and return to the ship.  Got it?

In sweltering heat, not helped by the Saharan dust which hangs over everything, we wandered around Bubaque’s rubbish strewn streets all the way down to the little fishing harbour.  This is the Bijagos’s main community and while there were signs of business ventures, even a few little hotels, it’s basically a wreck with hardly any buildings worthy of the name.  Vultures and crows competed for the garbage.   There was an old Portuguese mansion which was an astonishing sight.  They put on a great dance show and the kids were all over us.  Despite all the poverty, this place had a lot of heart.

Guinea-Bissau has been a country I’ve long hankered after. It didn’t disappoint me, even though I never met a saltwater hippo.   It was also a challenging, tiring, exhilarating  definition of expedition cruising.  The team pulled out all the stops for us and somehow made it all happen.  We are now sailing away from Guinea-Bissau to Banjul, the capital of The Gambia.

We are also sailing away with an unwanted stowaway on board, namely the GI virus.  Five passengers are under medical supervision, dining procedures have changed, hand sanitising is enforced and the pool and jacuzzis are being drained.

7 hours ago, highplanesdrifters said:

 

 

@Fletcher. Off topic, did you ever take that trip on Aranui 5? Asking for a friend.

Nope, never did. 

13 - In the Bijagos Archipelago

Welcome back to the Silver Wind where the weather is warm and clammy and the air is hazy, filled with Saharan dust apparently.

Yesterday we pulled in to the Bijagos Archipelago off the coast of  Guinea-Bissau.  Expedition leader Lea had told us this was an unpredictable place where the immigration officials could take hours to complete all the formalities.  She also said we would have to have our passports on us at all times, even in zodiacs and when we went swimming in the sea.  In the end the formalities took less than ten minutes and the passport idea was dropped.  I think the officials were more interested in lunch.

The Bijagos is weird, flat and featureless, culturally quite distinct from the mainland and probably a good deal less turbulent and stressful as a place to live.  We went ashore at Bolama which was in fact the capital of the country during the Portuguese colonisation.  The lack of fresh water convinced the Portuguese they had made a mistake so in 1941 they upped sticks for Bissau, abandoning Bolama which they had designed on a grid pattern, like a Roman colonia.  The town fell into disrepair yet some 4000 humans plus goats, chickens and pigs still live here.  I thought the ones we encountered were either unfriendly or just uninterested in us. Someone put their frostiness down to shyness.  And that was just the goats. Nevertheless, this was a fabulous place to wander around, filled with buildings in various stages of collapse and decrepitude, most notably a huge Romanesque public building facing a square that could have been a Roman forum.  

In the late afternoon almost everyone went on a 90-minute zodiac tour of the surrounding mangroves.  I love these zodiac trips if only to see who has had their knees replaced and who has not.  To be honest the mangroves, which snaked for miles, were not exactly teeming with wildlife.  In fact, with 15 or so zodiacs in the water, there were far more noisy people than birds.  But it was fun and at the end the Hotel Director appeared in a zodiac laden with Prosecco and fruit skewers.  Then, as everyone was exulting in the luxury of sipping a fizzy drink in a mangrove swamp,  suddenly you could hear Lea on the walkie-talkies screaming “Leave now!” because the tides around these parts are treacherous, leaving mud flats in an instant.  Everyone fled back to the ship except for ophiologist Greg whose was alone in a zodiac and he got stuck.  I’m sure we’ll go back for him in a day or two.

@kej1 I'm pleased you have found my current Amazon/Africa blog.  I must say I was rather shocked and disappointed to read your comments about third party and other excursions you need to pay extra for.  That's totally unacceptable for an expedition cruise.  Outside the polar regions, I don't think Seabourn fully understands or embraces the expedition ethic.  Silversea and the ship we are on certainly have their faults but the expeditionary side of things is all-inclusive and often immersive.  

I'm really enjoying this thread as the South Pacific is my favourite part of the world and the perfect expedition cruise location if the ship is small enough.  I'm reading this aboard a Silversea expedition ship, the Wind, currently in the Bijagos Islands, Guinea-Bissau.  

12 - Slavery etc

Taking my lead from people like Greta Garbo, the Pope, Stanley Kubrick and the late HM The Queen, I don’t give many press interviews.  But I made an exception today on Bunce Island, 20 miles up the creek from Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone.  There was a young man standing in the middle of a photo I wanted to take so we came to an amicable arrangement.  He would get out of my shot if I gave him an interview.

The young man was a reporter from Freetown’s leading newspaper and they were covering the visit of the Silver Wind.  Cruise ships - indeed any form of tourism - is a rare thing in Sierra Leone and this journalist wanted to know why I was here, how I got there, where I was going next, what the food was like on the ship, how many formal nights there were.  He also wanted to know what I thought of Sierra Leone and if they are doing the right things to attract tourists.  I answered every question and said I was not sure if tourism should be a priority for Sierra Leone’s government right now.  They should worry about the Chinese buying up everything, about the catastrophic levels of rubbish, about abject poverty, about housing, about health, about religious indoctrination and radicalisation and about pot-holes before they start worrying about hotels equipped with Toto toilets and Gordon Ramsay restaurants.

Silversea had arranged three excursions today - a city tour, a visit to a chimpanzee sanctuary and our trip to Bunce Island on which are the ruins of a British fort used in the slave trade.  Apparently some 30,000 slaves were exported from here to the Americas  between 1670 and 1807.  This was a mere cottage industry compared to the slave castles of Ghana which exported industrial quantities and continued to be used after the slave trade was abolished and are thus in a great state of preservation. This fort on Bunce Island fell into rapid disrepair and today is hardly more than a few arthritic walls.  And yet it was a splendid site to see, immensely atmospheric, vaguely reminiscent of Angkor because of the way the forest and the giant trees had smothered the ruins.  We also had a wonderful guide.  We loved our visit here.

The trip to the island wasn’t exactly dull, either.  The boat was small, battered and filthy, with two powerful outboard motors that roared and thundered us along.  At one point a window flew out and we stopped every ten minutes or so to haul out bits of flotsam and plastic. We sped past Freetown’s world class shanty towns, the world’s biggest floating hospital, the Global Mercy, which seems to be permanently moored here, and also a Turkish-owned floating electric power station which goes on and off depending on Sierra Leone’s bank balance.  This was an exciting trip, the best so far, and the waterway here proved to be so much more interesting than the Amazon.

Right now, as I write this, we are sailing to our first stop in Guinea-Bissau which is the main reason I am on this cruise.  As I eat my steak in The Grill we are sailing directly opposite Conakry, the capital city of Guinea.  This is reputedly one of the most hellish, violent, poorest and corrupt countries on the face of the planet.  It ranks high on my bucket list.  If I had a bucket.