As I write this, I’m sitting in a lounge on the day cruise over to The Bahamas. It’s usually about $40 there and back, but because it’s Spring Break, they’ve hiked the price up to $120. But still, it’s cheaper than paying for your own boat.
It’s an old-ish boat. There’s dented plastic panelling on the ceiling and gourdy little golden lights set into it. There are mirrors everywhere that have bent and distorted with time and the seats are various shades of Opal Fruit. There’s a soul-destroying casino, not enough sun-loungers outside, the air-con is set to ‘Arctic Blast’ inside. There’s a television in the corner of the bar showing fuzzy basketball games. There’s a small pool, but it’s too cold for anyone to bother swimming. There’s that constant humming and vibration that makes me wonder why people willingly plonk themselves on cruises like this for weeks on end. All I can think is Hi-De-Hi Campers!
While the engine goes hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm all night long.
It’s really not for me.
The boat’s packed full of college kids (presumably taking advantage of the fact they can actually buy alcohol in The Bahamas), which gives the boat a bit of a youthful, party atmosphere that you don’t really get on the Caribbean Cruisers – which is good – although I wish they would stop whistling the Raiders theme at me.
Later…
Back on the boat now…had a good couple of hours in Grand Bahama, nice beach – shame about the soulless development surrounding it. Looks like an outlet village. But now the only countries left to visit in the Americas both begin with ‘C’, and end in ‘A’. But one is going to be MUCH easier to get to than the other. I’m totally bricking it for one of them, that I’m not going to be able to get there. Now…where did I put my beer?
So does this mean we can expect some toga party highlights and frathouse hijinks on the next thrilling installment of the Odyssey, then? Incidentally, what happened to the week 6 video? I demand an explantaion, Hughes!
So close to Cuba, yet so far.
I posted a while back on this blog but didn’t get a reply:
http://www.grahamdavidhughes.com/?p=1
I do believe it’s 6 continents you will be traveling to, not 5 as you stated in the introduction. Is this correct? I figure you thought Australia was part of Asia.
Leonard, you might be surprised to learn that there is no official, unanimous consensus on the number of continents in this world. So you are both right. Read all about it in this Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continents#Number_of_continents
(P.S. In this case, I assume the 5 continents to be N. America, S. America, Africa, Eurasia and Australia – You can argue ’til the cows come home about Eurasia vs. Europe + Asia)
Thanks Brendan, the Wikipedia link was very interesting.