Steve and Cathy's Blog

Masked Booby following Insignia

After three straight days of touring islands, we welcome a quiet, tranquil, nothing-to-do Sea Day.  Except that Oceania offers many interesting things to fill the day, so real tranquility wasn’t to be had.

Of course, we started the day at the Waves Grill.  It has become a preferred way to begin the day for several reasons: 1) it’s virtually outside as it is located right next to the pool in the open air, 2) it is empty at 7-7:30 when we show up, and 3) there aren’t nearly as many tempting high calorie food options as in the Grand Dining Room or the Terrace Cafe.

There are a few special events to which we have been invited, and the first one is a Coffee gathering in Insignia Lounge for the Around The World guests.  We had the opportunity to be introduced to most of the managers of the various departments of the ship (the hotel part of the ship, not the operations part), which was useful and informative.  We also had the chance to meet up with Peter and Veronica, the couple from Brooks, Alberta whose company we enjoyed during the embarkation process.  For whatever reason, we had not seen them since we sailed, and it was nice to compare notes.  We do indeed have the opportunity to chat with them, and Steve meets a delightful person named Mary Gross who has made Veronica’s acquaintance.

There was another invitation at 11:00 that was supposedly exclusive to Oceania Club members, which is anyone who has points.  We have no points yet because we haven’t completed a voyage, but it’s obvious that it is a marketing opportunity for the cruise line.  For that reason, we pass.

We enjoy lunch in the main dining room, and it is Italian Day.  Coming from Connecticut, you can imagine that we have pretty high standards for Italian food, and the ship’s chefs do it justice.  Hopefully Cathy will discuss what we had because, two days later, I have already forgotten.

At 2:00pm, we both attend an Enrichment Lecture with Peter Coyle.  First he describes what we will see in St. Lucia and Barbados, and then continues his colonial history of the Caribbean.  There is so much to learn, and this post could be thousands of words long if I attempted to relate all that he spoke about, but I will just mention two things.

Peter is constantly referring to the Columbian Exchange, by which he means everything brought to the Caribbean by the Europeans (Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and English, more or less in that order) and, conversely, everything contributed by or adopted from the native populations.  Obviously, as has been made very evident over the past forty years, the Europeans brought the ravages of small pox, typhoid, and other diseases that virtually wiped out the native populations, making it far easier for the Europeans to take over the area.  But the Europeans also brought many fruits and vegetables to the Caribbean, such as bananas, which the British brought from India. Squash, green beans, corn (maize), tomatoes, peppers and potatoes were all indigenous to the Caribbean islands and were brought back to Europe. The Spanish brought horses which wandered north and became  very important to Native American Plains Indians. The Spanish also brought pigs, which went wild on several islands.

The other major historical development is the Mercantilist Era, practiced especially by the Dutch and English.  As mentioned in a previous post, these countries especially would license (or ‘charter’) a private company to exploit a particular region, even allowing them to go so far as to form a navy to effectively rule the area assigned.  The primary rule was that you could only trade with people in your own sphere.  In other words, the Dutch could only trade with islands over which they control, and could not trade with, say, the French for fear that it would strengthen their enemy.  This went on for quite some time in the 15th through the early 19th century, and I am not doing the practice justice.  The concept’s impact on this area of the world was tremendous.

Steve then went to a lecture on how to photograph people in your travels.  The lecturer is David Smith, a former executive living a second career as a professional photographer.  He is full of enthusiasm and expertise, and Steve really needs to learn how to approach and photograph the people in the areas in which he and Cathy are going to travel.  David is going to be a tremendous learning resource, as he and his wife Anna are on board until Capetown, and he will be lecturing during every Sea Day.

After the lectures, we pretty much just hang out in the room and on the veranda watching the sea birds that are following the ship, with Cathy reading and doing her needlework (hopefully she will tell you about this in a future post) and Steve trying in vain to catch up on the blog.

There are various species of birds to watch, all following the ship in order to take advantage of the way the ship stirs the water beside it, forcing fish close to the surface where the birds can dive-bomb into the water to catch them.  The largest is the Masked Booby, a bird with up to a four-foot wingspan.  I took a photo of one and it is the title photo for this post.  This remarkable creature not only uses its wings for flight, but also to swim when it dives for fish, going sometimes as deep as sixty feet.

The day ends with another phenomenal meal in the Grand Dining Room and then, as usual, reading in bed.

We certainly have a long way to go before we can say that we have explored everything this ship has to offer, but we’re making a start.