Steve and Cathy's Blog

We are still at sea when our morning beverages/croissants arrive.  Cathy looks out the door of our veranda and says “It looks very Cliffy today,” meaning it is quite foggy.  I mean it’s in the high 80s, and the humidity is off the charts, so the fog is the only way this is like Cliff Island, Maine, but her comment is accurate.  As mentioned yesterday, the sea is very calm and has been for the past twenty-four hours.  We’ll take it while we can get it.

After the morning routine, we head down to the Grand Dining Room for breakfast around 7:40.  Normally the place doesn’t open until 8:00, but excursions are beginning at 9:00 today.  As we eat the meal, we see the Pilot boat arrive, and as we are completing our meal we see the breakwater for the harbor.  We’ve arrived at Lome’, so we head up to Deck 10 to get a good view of the docking procedure.  I look at my iPhone and notice that somehow it has found a way to reset itself to local time.  One mini-problem out of the way for now.

The first thing we see is a group of people dressed in very colorful costumes, several of whom are carrying drums.  In a very few minutes, they have begun to dance and play: 14 dancers and 5 men playing tall tribal drums.  A few minutes later, along come three guys on stilts that must be ten feet long.  It is quite a welcome.  We hear an announcement from Cruise Director Leslie about the band and dancers, and it occurs to Cathy that, hey, we’re on the port side of the ship and could get a better view from our veranda.  So we return to our stateroom.

It’s quite a scene.  Not too many cruise ships call on Lome’ Togo, so we are docked in part of the container terminal.  Empty containers have been laid end to end to form a makeshift area protected from all the activity in the container terminal, a dozen tour buses are lined up, and there must be twenty longshoremen in yellow vests and hard hats … taking photos with their cell phones.  Add to that some police and even six soldiers guarding us, and you can see that the place is a beehive of activity.  In about a half hour, the gangway is put into position.  Then we see two officers leading ten crew members carrying pails and cloths walk down the gangway and head for the buses.  They put on masks and gloves. They are there to wash down every handrail of every bus in preparation of loading the passengers for their excursions.  Now this is attention to detail!

The drummers and dancers have been putting on a great show now for what must be an hour – nonstop.  It really is a very fun welcome to our first stop in Africa and bodes well for the many places we will visit on this continent.  When we finally see some passengers getting off and heading for their buses, we head upstairs to Horizons in the bow of Deck 10.  We are the only ones in there, so it is a perfect time to write and do needlepoint.

Now about the container terminal (I mean, really, you just knew that Steve was going to have something to say about this).  When we are on Deck 10, we end up conversing with a fellow passenger, and both he (Bennett is his name) and I are puzzled at the size of this place and the hundreds of containers we see.  It is buzzing with activity, and Bennett tells me he counted eight ships out waiting to get in as well as a half dozen sizable container ships being loaded/unloaded.  We can’t match the size of the country with the size of this terminal, so the first thing Steve does is look up Togo Terminal to see if his unspoken hunch is correct, and it is.  This is a transshipment terminal where larger ships bring their loads of containers, and these containers are unloaded and reshipped on smaller ships that call on ports up and down West Africa.  It is the largest single private investment ever made in Togo, and directly employs 700 and indirectly several thousand.  The place is going nonstop, with trucks dragging chassis and containers around the yard, gantry cranes and other cranes all over the place, as well as bulk container ships loading and unloading.  I mean if Steve Knight is going to spend an entire day on a ship in port, this is the very best place.  We are opposite the Kota Lambang that is being simultaneously loaded and unloaded right before our very eyes.  If I have to come all the way to Lome’ Togo to see my first container port up close and personal, so be it.  It doesn’t get any better than this!

Okay, enough already, Steve.  Calm down.  Okay, the next bit of excitement at 10:15 is a General Crew Drill. that doesn’t involve us guests.  We just have to stay out of the way.  Loud announcements are made, watertight doors are closed and opened, and instructions blare over the ship intercom system for about forty-five minutes.  This is apparently required by SOLAS (International Convention for the Safety Of Life At Sea, a treaty outlining regulations setting minimum standards governing the construction, equipment and operation of merchant ships) as are Lifeboat drills every two weeks.  Following that, Leslie Jon makes an announcement that the ship is taking on fuel, so there will be No Smoking in the Deck 10 area where that is allowed as that is outdoors.  Another sensible precaution.  During the afternoon, we see the ship take on three full tanker trucks of fuel.  There is a refinery here in Togo, so I am guessing the price is right.

We spend a couple of hours relaxing in Horizons.  We are about to head for lunch in the Grand Dining Room.  It’s pretty quiet because so many people are on shore, and we are able to take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere to converse with the maitre’d Ivitca (pronounced Eeveetsa) from Serbia, who it seems to us puts in huge hours on this ship.  He is very friendly, very professional and of such constant good humor that we are able to kid with him and get to know him a bit.  Today we learn that he has been a maitre’d for about six years, was scheduled to be on board on November 10th but was called in a month early, and was scheduled to disembark in Hong Kong but is staying in until Bali, where he will spend fifteen days with a fellow crew member who lives there.  When he gets back home, he going to enroll in a sommelier course so that he can advance to that position on the ship.  It is also possible that he will work in a friend’s fish restaurant in his hometown as he has a 10-year old daughter (he and the mother are no longer married).  He epitomizes the kind of crew member that you find everywhere on this ship: conscientious to a fault, committed to the highest quality performance, yet down to earth friendly.

Okay, lunch is over.  Guess what’s next?  Naps, of course.  Plus reading, writing and watching the Kota Lambang being loaded with yet more containers.  Cathy heads to the Canyon Ranch Spa for another spa treatment, this time a “5 Point Star.” [Deep gentle massage with herb scented oil of both feet and hands, then slow drizzle of oil over my forehead and then scalp massage. It was wonderful. I feel like I have had a headache my whole life and it just went away. My feet and hands feel relaxed and soft. I am hooked on the spa.]  Steve writes this post.  The gantry cranes have been pulled back from the Kota Lambang, so she is due out.  I looked up info on her. She sailed from Singapore on January 2nd, stopped in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on the 20th and is now here.  Her next port of call is listed as TINCAN, which is tha name of the port in Lagos, Nigeria.  She was built in 2008, is 853 feet long and her gross tonnage is 40,000 tons.  (As Cathy reads this, her eyes roll and she thinks to herself: “Only Steve could care about this.”)

It’s time for dinner!! Yay!  Tonight we eat with Brian and Barbara O’Dell, the couple from Seattle that we met on the St. Lucia excursion and with whom we have become good friends.  They have taken one of the Togo excursions and we are anxious to hear about it, especially after lecturer Angela’s interesting preview yesterday.  Barbara said that she actually really enjoyed the day, which is great to hear.  Cathy asks her about the fetish market, and Barbara does say that it was really strange and the smell of the place meant that she could only stay there a few minutes.  In the meantime, Brian went over to a school (open for the tour even though it was Sunday) and got some absolutely fabulous photos of the kids.  They gave us a great hint about getting the kids interested in you and allowing you to take their picture: bring wrapped candy.  The kids love it and eat it the second it’s in their hands.

In addition to telling us about their day, they tell us about the wine tasting they attended the previous Sea Day.  They learned quite a bit about wine, of course, but also the best way to taste it (with food) and how to properly serve it.  Three people were supposed to be at their table but the two of them had it all to themselves.  So instead of a total of ten tasting glasses, they had fifteen.  Oh darn!  Brian did admit to taking a nap after it was over.

Over dinner, we talked about a whole range of subjects.  They are very delightful dinner companions and we look forward to spending much time with them during the voyage.

After dinner, of course we crash.  Steve sleeps fitfully, most likely because he has gotten in the habit of having a double espresso as dessert.  It hadn’t been a problem previously, but all the caffeine has caught up with him.  He’ll have to knock that off.  And we had to turn the clocks ahead again.