the Laughing Boomer

 

 

Hi Everyone:

Merry Christmas from Buenos Aires

I’m writing this from our rental apartment in Buenos Aires, the city we are thrilled to return to for a few months.  We spent a month here last year as well and after all our travels, B.A. ranks near the top as a lovely place to live. After nearly eighteen months we want to stay in one place for a bit before we explore the rest of South America in the spring. In the meantime we can roam this city of 14 million people and just live a “normal” non-nomadic lifestyle for a bit.  We will probably have a quiet Christmas as we haven’t met a lot of people yet, but that will come, and we will enjoy ourselves no matter what. 

 Another reason we need to stop is that I am finishing my book here, The Laughing Boomer: Retire from Life, Gear up for Living and hope to have it published next year. 

The story below is a short tale of one of our recent cruises.  We hope everyone has a great Christmas and holiday season.  As usual, please write us at mahara@laughingboomer.com or kenandmahara@gmail.com

Cheers,

Mahara and Ken

 

Caribbean Cruising

Our now seventeen month round-the-world adventure found us on third cruise on a Holland American Westerdam ship, for a short seven-day trip out of Fort Lauderdale. Our first port of call was Half-Moon Cay, a small, flat limestone Bahamian island, mainly covered in low scrub bush and a few Causarina Pines.  Apparently all the cruise ships own an island and while, for me it represents how the islands once were.  With nothing more than a long white, incredibly soft fine sandy beach, turquoise waters and soup-temperatured water, what could be better?  Besides maybe a dozen small stalls selling Bahamian souvenirs there’s no commercial development. The cruise company has a barbecue and eating area and offer water sports such as snorkeling, kayaking, paragliding and horseback riding, but everything is low-key and laid back. Perfect, in my opinion.   The afternoon rain-shower while we sat in the ship’s hot tub was fun too.

Our next stop, Grand Turk, has a newly-developed cruise port, quite lovely, although I didn’t see many people buying souvenirs.  We took a taxi to Cockburn Town, saw a few banks and the Turks and Caicos Treasury, but the town is only a few blocks-long with nothing much there.  The town is rebuilding after a massive hurricane last year. We took a photo of the Scotia Bank with its roof blown off.  We saw some birds on a small lake on the island flamingos, stilts, egrets and herons and apparently osprey/ fish hawks abound. Evidently there are more resorts on the other islands in the Turks and Caicos chain.

Grand Cayman Island was our next stop, and it is one of three islands in this British Colony. With around 62,000 people, it’s the biggest and most developed island but its still only 22 miles long and 8 miles wide.  The highest point is 60 feet above sea level. Apparently our friend Chris Columbus “discovered” it in 1503. Our one-hour tour around  the area didn’t reveal much; a trip to Hell and back, which has one   “hell” theme-based store, a rum shop,  tortoise and dolphin tours, as well as lots of duty-free shopping round out the attractions.  There are lots of high-end resorts along the famous seven-mile beach and I’m sure a week of pampering would be great. The water was pure turquoise by the ship and closer to shore a lovely shimmering jade green. A living coral reef surrounds all three islands. We spent the afternoon at the hospital, where Ken had his back x-rayed and confirmed that he did have a T-12 fracture from our Ecuador whale-watching expedition and I had a nagging problem resolved. We met a Brit who moved there for two years, thirty years ago and never left.  Their daughter had just finished a law degree from the University of Liverpool’s extension campus on the island.

Our last stop was at Costa Maya, on the Yucatan Peninsula, at a purpose-built cruise port along the Mexican coast. This is Mexico’s newest Caribbean resort region. Costa Maya is part of the mainland and we could see the flat luscious green jungle for miles from the ship. Much of the area is marshland and is now a protected wetland.  Apparently five ancient Mayan cities and ruins have been discovered in the region but besides that the area is fairly undeveloped. There’s also an offshore barrier reef. We strolled through the port shops and enjoyed some excellent jumbo shrimp. It was hot that day- my new thermometer registered 124 degrees F. on the ship’s deck.

One comment I have about the Caribbean though, is that it’s not terribly interesting, although our opinion may be jaded after our many countries.  However, the 7,000 Caribbean islands offer pretty much the same thing: sun, sand, surf, turquoise waters and duty-free shopping, which we don’t do. That being said, the cruise fulfilled our expectations.  We were quite tired after our marathon Vancouver trip and so slept for long hours and relaxed. We could have spent six or seven hours on four different and gorgeous beaches. I’ve snorkeled in both the Bahamas and the Mexican coast in the past and these are amazing waters.  Others went horse-back riding, scuba diving, or the new to me snuba diving. The word apparently is a combination of the words scuba and snorkeling. Snuba divers use the same gear as scuba diving, except for air tanks.  Air instead comes from a long hose.  It’s sort of like introductory diving.

Many people just choose to do nothing, and we pretty well fell into that category. Compared to the Mediterranean cruise, for example, where we visited major Italian and Greek cities such as Rome, Naples, Venice and Athens, this cruise was positively slow.  I loved it. One thing I did was visit the gym, for five of the seven days.  Ken won an Alpha Pod experience, which he gave to me and I used the elliptical machine, stretching and weights.  It’s definitely easy on a ship because it’s right there.  The fitness instructor told me that on the last three-week cruise one man lost eighteen pounds. It is quite possible to eat healthfully on the cruise, and looking at hundreds of people who were hugely overweight can be motivating.

We went on another cruise in November, this one from Lisbon to Sao Paulo, which I’ll write about later. I’m looking forward to the eight days at sea as a time to truly relax.  Internet connections are ridiculously expensive so we don’t use it very much at all.  The other reality is that cruises are truly the most economical way to travel these days.

We left our cruise feeling relaxed, brown and happy; as usual we met some interesting people and enjoyed the music and shows.  I especially love cruising and we hope to do more of it soon!