Planet Trekker Cruise Blog

10th June 2007

Mornin’ all,

 

I’m starting this message with just a couple of days to go before the end of this particular cruise. Nothing much remarkable in that, each week is starting to pass in a bit of a blur and it’s hard to believe that I’ve been here for almost 7 weeks already and my trip to Walt Disney World is getting closer and closer. The thing that makes the end of this cruise a little different is that we are losing one of our cashiers. Her contract is up and she is going on leave before taking up a Head Cashiers position on another ship. Not too much of a problem but because of one thing or another we are not getting a replacement for at least a week (assuming the new one turns up)  and that means extra work, longer hours etc for the two cashiers left, namely me. I guess I can look at it as a bit of a challenge and a chance to excel and show just what I’m made of but it’s also a chance to show what I’m made of and that may not be such a good thing. The funny thing is that the last couple of weeks have been really quiet so hopefully that will continue. But enough of the woes of cashiering at sea, on to bigger and better things.

 

Yesterday (as I write this) was St Thomas, one of my favourite spots. It’s the one that seems to have the most history and, despite the museum being closed, offers the most interest to me at the moment. The only problem is the lack of any material detailing that history. I don’t think the average tourist there has much of an interest in the history so little is actually provided and those nuggets of information I’ve managed to find have been all the more interesting because of it. Blackbeard’s Castle, on my last visit, is an example of this need I have to touch history and feel that connection to the stories. This time I tried something new and was pleasantly surprised. At a little booth directly outside the gangway I’ve always noticed a sign saying “GPS Hire”. I’ve never bothered to go and investigate before but when I got a hold of the brochure listing all the St Thomas tours that were available I found an ad for this GPS service that made it sound exactly like the sort of thing I was looking for. For $19 I hired a GPS unit that came pre-loaded with a number of walking and driving tours on a variety of subjects. Everything from shopping and eating tours to beaches and historical landmarks. Anyone care to guess which tour I was interested in?

 

The way it worked was that I selected “historical walking tour” from the menu and it immediately came up with point number one and a map showing where that point was, where I was and how to get from one to the other. Being GPS it kept a track of where I was the whole time I was walking from the ship to downtown and even told me how much further I had to go. When I reached each of the points of interest it would then start a little audio/visual display on the screen telling me the history of what I was looking at. It took me all over town from the second oldest synagogue in the western hemisphere (complete with sand on the floor) to the Post Office (and details about the murals on the wall I would never have even noticed let alone appreciated) to the square where hundreds of thousands of slaves were auctioned off and then sent to work in the sugar cane plantations. It was extremely well done and I managed to flatten the battery before I got back to the ship. There was however one small hitch. All of the attractions were within easy walking distance of each other in the downtown area, except for one. “Old Warehouses” came up on the screen and the directions pointed me out of town and to such a degree that I had to widen the map quite a bit to see exactly where it was taking me. Not wanting to miss out on anything I started following the arrow and headed off into what rapidly became the real part of Charlotte Amalie and away from the duty free and other tourist stores. As I started walking the unit told me that I had about a mile to go and luckily I’m still a bit ignorant of exactly what that means so I wasn’t concerned about how hot it was getting, how far I had to go and how thirsty I was rapidly becoming. The map took me on and on and eventually I stopped at a service station for a drink and a rest. As I sat outside on the curb (notice the Americanism) a very large and muscular black guy came up to me, completely off his face, did the whole elaborate handshake routine, began to either talk in voices or use some language only others equally as out of their tree can understand, and then started beckoning me to go with him. I politely declined and eventually he went on his way as did I. I walked on, past an army base, a hospital, shops, service stations and houses with the obligatory car up on blocks in the front yard. Eventually I reached the point on the map that was marked as old warehouses only to found myself up a side road in an industrial area and nothing even remotely resembling old warehouses to be seen. Somehow I had been lead up the garden path by the device, presumably because the wrong coordinates had been fed into it, and now had to retrace my steps all the way back to the shopping area to find the next point of interest. I guess I did get to see a part of St Thomas that the average tourist wouldn’t and I also made a new friend at a service station so it wasn’t a complete loss. The other thing it gave me was a bit of a hunger so I stopped at a mobile food van that seemed to be drawing a lot of locals and got stew chicken (rather than chicken stew, which is an important point when ordering) with sides of green banana, sweet potato and rice. A really good meal for only $10 including a bottle of water and one that I was more than happy to sit on a bench and eat in the company of the real St Thomasians.

 

The only disappointment of the day was going to my favourite antique store after having made my mind up to buy a genuine galley spike only to find that they had sold them all the day before. I was promised that there was more in the warehouse and that they would make sure that they kept one for me for when I came back in two weeks time. Whether this means they have a number in storage at the warehouse or whether they are going to make a few more I can’t say but I intend displaying my galleon spike proudly as the genuine article when I get home and if anyone comes to look at it then that’s what it’s going to be. Just as a quick addendum…it turns out that Blackbeard’s Castle actually has nothing to do with Blackbeard and was simply a lookout tower built by the Danish when they had control of the town. My GPS unit told me that but did add that it was possible that Blackbeard had visited it at some point so there was at least a tenuous link there.

 

Well, it’s now today or tomorrow or the day after I wrote the part above, depending on how you want to look at it. Today is Princess Cays and I’m taking advantage of the lack of desire to go ashore to sleep in and then do a bit of writing before going to work this afternoon. Some bad news we got yesterday was that the replacement cashier we were due to get a week late because the original one wasn’t turning up is now not turning up herself. I’m beginning to think that everything I’ve been told about this particular cruise and how bad and unpopular it is is true. We certainly seem to be having a hard time attracting anyone to the ship and the only reason that they got me was because I didn’t know any better and just went where I was told. It all means that we now have at least an extra week of extra work and hours before they may be able to find a replacement. I don’t think I’d be too popular if I threw my resignation in sometime in the next couple of days. Bizarrely we are also losing a tech tomorrow who got a couple of days notice of a transfer to a ship on the Mediterranean. The tech that was supposed to be going there couldn’t get the right visa so he has to come here instead. You can’t wipe the grin off the face of the guy here because the itinerary he’s going to only has one sea day out of ten and he gets flown to Rome tomorrow to catch the ship. Lucky sod.

 

Given what’s happening in the cage I can’t see me being transferred anywhere as exciting for the duration but at least we’ve been exempted from doing embarkations while we are running short so I’ll be able to get off the ship tomorrow and get to the coffee shop that my roommate Jon found. It’s not far down the road from the port and offers good coffee and cakes and free WiFi so I’ll be able to sit there at my leisure on a Sunday morning and surf the net at decent speeds and without costing a fortune. I’ll probably send this email then no matter how long it is so it may turn out to be one of the shortest I’ve sent so far. Just as a point of interest I did a word count of what I’ve sent so far (the computer did it, I didn’t actually count every word myself) and I’m up to about 25,000 words. Given that the average novel is about 100,000 if I keep up this pace for the length of my contract I’ll have written a decent sized book. Add in even a small number of the photos I’ve taken and I can see a coffee table book coming out of this.

 

The reason I’m so keen to surf the net tomorrow, apart from the obvious withdrawal symptoms and need to see if Michael has been paying rent, is that I am changing my mind about some aspects of Walt Disney World. Not the going part because it is still a dream of mine to get there and I am so close I can taste it but just the manner of getting there. I was planning on staying in the park at one of the Disney resorts just because I figured it would be cool to actually stay at a Disney resort and get all the little added features like early entry and mouse shaped soap but now I’m thinking that I may be better off staying at a cheaper place outside the park. It would probably save me close to a grand and would mean that I could stay a couple of extra days and do Sea World and Cape Canaveral as well and also have all that extra money to spend on Disney merchandise. I plan to check out accommodation tomorrow and get a better idea of options. I guess ultimately it’s just a place to sleep and early entry weighed up against extra days may just tip the balance in favour of the potential flea trap.

 

But enough for the moment. I’ll hopefully be sending this tomorrow.

 

Greg

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 11:37 pm and is filed under Cruise. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.