Cruising on the Ryndam with the Wilsons

On October 17th we leave for Miami by way of Vancouver-Toronto, to connect with our Holland America Eastern Caribbean Cruise. We have one hour to clear customs and change planes in Toronto. Why are we, who said we weren't cruise people, going on a cruise? Because last year we bought a double ticket deal with Air Canada when we went to Florida and now we have to use it up and there was this half-price ten-day cruise advertised out of Fort Lauderdale.

Shuttle to the Ryndam. Beautiful ship. We are escorted to our cabin by a steward and have to step carefully over a dozen or so immovable waiting crewmembers who are sprawled all over the steps. Bad Impression! Cabin 631 is a roomy stateroom with a large window. The brochure-promised basket of fruit is there. One orange, one pear and two apples. But the brochure lied about "Immaculate cleanliness". Old ex-hotelman Earl notices black finger marks all over the inside of the door. Rug needs cleaning badly, looks like 6 Motel. I won't walk on it barefoot.

George and Mary are from Florida. This is their nineteenth cruise and they are eagerly anticipating the highlight of this cruise, the formal ceremony at the Captain's Table to mark their thirteenth cruise with Holland America. They will receive a tri-color ribbon, with attached medallion, hung around their necks by the Captain himself and shake hands with the Ships Officers. They no longer ever go ashore. They did that once. They took a tour in Nassau. Mary tells us, "It was just a dirt road to the Straw Market and they took us through the streets where the poor people live. I sure don't want to go on a cruise where I have to see poor people." Mary knows Vancouver well she was in our airport once on her way to an Alaska cruise. "They were rebuilding your Airport. I don't understand why they don't have any organization up there in Canada, it was all under construction. I don't like Vancouver. I wouldn't go back." Mary is also worried because "Our Government has given so much money to other countries to build airports, (Ours? I don't ask) that we can't afford to build new ones for Americans. We should keep our money at home," she says accusingly.

Lennie and Anne are also from Florida. Anne greets us with "I lived in France as a child. I speak French, you know." And she proceeds to dazzle the waiter with her choices from the menu. The boy from the Philippines doesn't understand her. "That's because I was ordering in French, you knowParisian French." Anne's appetizer arrives. It is cooked wrong. She sends it back to the kitchen to have it cooked right.

Our First Morning. We go up to the Lido Deck for the buffet breakfast. Lots of food, but we wait in a long line to be served, while people in front of us debate how much fried potato they want and should they have one sausage or two. In Cuba and Indonesia there was a man who made omelets and fried eggs to your exact taste and laughed and teased you. The man on the Ryndam glowers as he slides me a generic half-runny egg from a tray, take it or leave it. I ask for plain yogurt. "Only cherry and blueberry, no plain," I am told. We take our trays and sit at a table overlooking the ocean. Lovely, this is enjoyable. We go to the coffee urns. No self-service here. We wait in line while a boy interrogates, "Decaf, regular, cream, sugar?" I realize this is the elegant personal service I am supposed to be enjoying. And like the brochure said, the cups are indeed "genuine Rosenthal china". And the cups are goddamn small and the coffee is cold by the time we get to our table and now so are our eggs. And if we want another dainty cup of coffee, we will have to get in that bloody lineup again, or hail the waiter who goes around with an even colder jug of coffee and no milk. We could go for breakfast in the dining room but Earl only owns one tie and he doesn't want to wear it out. And the coffee there isn't any warmer anyway

I go to the craft lesson. A bunch of eager ladies are being given small squares of mesh to embroider. I decline, so we decide to walk around the ship on the Verandah Deck. By now all the deck chairs are taken and we walk from bow to stern, past people lined up along the wall. Most of them are our age or older, many with their canes and walkers beside them. Most of them doze happily in the sunshine, their magazines falling off their laps, their eyes shut, their heads lolling, their mouths hanging open, some snoring. It comes as a shock to realize that if we joined them, we would fit right in. "My God", I say, "We've come on a Geriatric Theme Cruise." I feel sorry for the few young couples with children on this ship.

Another dinner with our odd couples. We learn that George and Mary spend their mornings in bed with room service and most of the rest of the day in the Casino at the slot machines. Mary lost $1,000 one day. Next day she won $350 but spent $600, "So I came out better than usual. They keep the slots tight here, you know." And then George won $2400, "Which helped pay what we lost last trip." Then they watch the movie and go to bed. They cruise twice a year.

Again Anne takes up the waiter's time with her problems, and Mary is beginning to detest her. "That damn woman there she goes again. Poor George hasn't ordered yet and she's taking up all the waiter's time." To keep the peace, I keep talking to Mary and patient Earl gets chummy with Anne. Lennie still doesn't talk. The coffee is still cold. The waiter offers to go back and warm up the empty cup ahead of time for me, which seems ridiculous, so I decline this touch of elegance. From now on I also plan to grab my napkin real quick before the waiter gets a chance to spread it over my lap. Do some people really enjoy this kind of menial servile attention? Do they tip extra for it? For my appetizer, I choose "Hazelnut Encrusted Brie with lingonberry compote and fried leek." Turns out to be exactly that a glob of molten Brie sprinkled with nuts, covered with a spoonful of fried leeks, drizzled with red jam and topped with one blueberry. All I can say is "Why?"

The Ryndam theater is beautiful and the small troupe of dancers is excellent. We go down to a lounge that has a wonderfully versatile band. We secure a table by buying beer at $4.00US, and after we turn down mixed drinks from $4.00 and up the waiter has our number and leaves us alone in our cheapness. We enjoy ourselves immensely and plan to come back and dance here every night after the show.

We go ashore today at St Maarten, half Dutch and half French. We enquire on the ship about finding local transportation and are firmly told everyone from the ship takes either taxis or tours."It's safer that way, the buses are crowded and dirty and you wouldn't like them and we don' t recommend it." We go ashore on our own and with directions from a stranger on the street, we get on a new air-conditioned local bus that takes us over to Marigot in French St.Maarten. The driver and the local people are enjoying the buses two TV monitors and singing along with the gospel program. We wander all over the quaint little town, peek through a window in a little school, walk through a very old cemetery, buy a soft drink, listen to the local people's gossip, even though we don't understand it, and use the spotless washroom. We get on a bus to go back. The driver alarms us at first by detouring through a back street neighborhood. He parks the bus in an alley in front of a yard with children playing on a swing and goes in the little house and has his lunch. On the way back to Phillipsburg he reaches overhead and selects some dusty calypso cassette tapes to play on the trip back. This little slice of life on St. Maarten cost us $3.00US each. The hour and a half ship's tour to Maginot cost our shipmates $45.00 Canadian each.

The morning of October 23rd is a happy morning. We go back to our cabin after breakfast to find a Fax message from Lillooet, BC on our bed. Our granddaughter Shari had her baby, little Grace Anna, just after midnight on her own birthday. Telephoning from the ship costs $15 a minute. We will wait till we get to St. Thomas with its US telephone connection.

We are getting ready to go ashore at St. Lucia. A lens pops out of my glasses. Earl takes it from me and drops the tiny screw on the floor. We get down on our knees and pat the whole cabin surface and pick up crumbs and dirt from under the bed. We find a quarter and a shoe. (Ryndam's idea of immaculate housekeeping? By now Earl is constantly saying, "What this ship needs is to get "Housekeeping" from the Richmond Inn to train these people.") But we don't find the screw. There must be Optometrists on St. Lucia. On the way off the ship we query the Shore Director, who stands among his pamphlets pushing Ryndam's recommended preferential places to buy your imported (from Hong Kong, France and Mexico) precious gems and perfumes and souvenirs. No, he doesn't know of an optometrist on St Lucia. In fact, he doesn't even recommend that we look for one there. He tells us to wait until we dock at St.Thomas where the Ryndam deals with a well-recommended Optical Company in a large mall. "Where do the people in St. Lucia get glasses?" I ask. He pointedly doesn't know. Since I don't wish to remain blind until we get to St. Thomas, I plan to ask the first person I see wearing glasses where he got them. I don't have to. There on the main street is a sign "Optometrist". An air-conditioned haven with girls in white uniforms surrounded by showcases of modern frames just like in Canada. An attractive young women reaches in a drawer, pulls out a tray of tiny screws and matches one up. Within ten minutes my glasses are fixed. The cost is one Caribbean dollar, about 60 cents. I wonder how much it would cost if we had wait for the Ryndam's buddies in the fancy mall in St. Thomas.

No matter which salad I choose, it always has too-large-for-your-mouth pieces and brown-spotted lettuce and I am getting petty. Today I order a salad that is supposed to have "Crisp mixed greens garnished with julienne of beet, celery and carrot". I get a bowl of dregs of mixed greens garnished with chunky stem ends of oxidized lettuce, the pieces people normally throw in the garbage disposal. The silly garnish is three tiny grated mounds, one of beets, one of stringy celery and one of carrots, which are also turning brown. Suddenly, my sense of humor evaporates. I tell the poor Philippine boy, who is already a nervous wreck over Anne and her egg, "You can take this wilted salad back. Just look at it!" He goes for help.

In Guadeloupe (now French, originally Dutch) we ask an older blonde woman in a supermarket, who we mistake for a tourist, to tell us which are the local buses that cross the Island. "Why would you want to do that? Take a taxi," she exclaims, not too friendly. We find she and her husband were born on this little island. "We have never been on a bus in our lives," she says distastefully, "The local (black) people use the buses. We go in our car or take a taxi." We give up this time. We buy some vodka and sneak it back on the ship. (Ship's rules say you can't bring liquor onboard, you're supposed to buy from them). Our fresh fruit is beginning to wither and we use the orange in our drink.

In Barbados we take a local bus to Oistins, to see the resort where our neighbor goes every year. On our trip back, the racetrack we passed on the way appears on the same side again. "I think we're on the wrong bus," says Earl. Our bus is taking us across the island instead of down town. I had visions of the Ryndam's tour director saying, "I told you so," when the ship goes without us and we have to catch up at our own expense. We ask the white girl sitting in front of us with her local boyfriend where to get off to find a bus to take us down town. When we get off we are followed by a professional looking Bajan woman carrying a briefcase who overheard our problem. She walks two blocks out of her way to make sure we get on the right bus. And then when she finds we haven't got the right change, she gives us the bus fare and refuses to take payment in US money.

Today, Mary tells me about her first happy marriage. She then had two children, a ten-year-old son and a young hastily married daughter with an abusive husband. One morning, she woke up to find herself in a hospital bed with a priest sitting beside her. He told her she must pull herself together and go home and arrange a funeral for her husband and little boy. There had been a gas leak in their house and she was the only one who survived. She nearly went out of her mind. Then her daughter came home with her baby. So they all moved to Florida and looked for work. A manager of a nursing home felt sorry for her and hired her as a nurses aid and she said the work, which she loved, helped her get over her grief. She stayed until she had to retire because of two hip replacements. It's funny how you change your opinion about people when you get to know more about them. Even Anne is tolerable by now. She is just a bit disarranged and we will never meet another person like her.

We are getting closer to the end of the cruise now. The bottle of water has vanished. The fruit bowl is becoming compost. Most days we swim, although sometimes the crowded little pool, filled with flailing arms and legs, reminds me of a frog pond. My nasty digs at Holland-America's slipping standard doesn't mean we don't overeat lots of very good food and indulge in rich desserts. We are still enjoying the Ryndam Orchestra and the other excellent house bands. The nightly entertainment has been great. We people-watch in the casino. It has only cost me $10 so far to assuage my gambling fever. I agree with Mary who says, "People who can't afford it shouldn't gamble." We meet a woman on her 39th cruise,
her first on Holland-America. She claims the food is the worst, but the ship is the most spacious she's been on with the best library. (They have a Library?) She says Norwegian is the best and she has already booked another cruise on it. Mary is getting bored now. George, who always orders three orders when it is lobster night, is bored with lobster and tired of steak. Anne is always bored. Anne says Lennie is bored. Why aren't we bored?

We like what little we see walking around Nassau, but we use most of our time ashore going on a glass bottom boat tour. Interesting, but not as colorful as we expected. On the way back we pass the long spit of beach formerly owned by Donald Trump and currently for sale by Merv Griffin. We pass another beach lined with homes of the Rich and Famous. The most interesting was a domestic property split the mansion where the wife lived and the boathouse where her evicted husband lived with his young girlfriend.

Our last day! We aren't anxious to leave the Ryndam. Over all we have had a good time. At breakfast I make my usual vain request for plain yogurt. Different waiter. "Certainly, I'll get you some," he smiles. Too bad we're leaving, things are shaping up! We pack our suitcases and leave the fruit bowl rotting in our cabin. We are charged for the water that vanished. We complain and point to the item and the girl says, "Oh, I suppose that was for the water." She crosses it out without an argument What was going on? How did she know?

Summing up, I realize we expected too much from tiny islands with no native culture left, only colonial history. There isn't much to see on any of them. I learned that even most of the palm trees and vegetation is not native to the Caribbean. Many no-name souvenirs, imported from Mexico and Guatemala were often implied to be local handicrafts. (Pictures of Indonesian farmers with water buffalo and palm trees, with Guadeloupe written across them, we recognized as coming from Indonesia.)

Disembarking from the ship at most island stops cost a minimum of $3.00 US, plus expected tip, each way on the shuttle bus, to be taken a short distance to the few blocks of identical tourist traps built specifically for the cruise ships. Surely the ships could afford a free shuttle to their captive stores that give them kickbacks. For Economy Class people like us, the local island tour prices seem high, but the guides we talked to claimed the ship, not them, gets most of the money.

We personally don't happen to enjoy ship stuff like room service and being fawned all over by waiters, or role-playing at dressing-up with a bunch of strangers. But nobody made us go on the cruise and to each his own. If any of the beautifully gowned women and tux-with-cummerbund men, who prearranged their wine service with the wine steward every day, had been given the Wilsons from Canada as table companions, it would have spoiled their entire cruise. Or else, like Mary told us she'd often seen happen, they would have requested to be moved. So it was lucky we drew Mary and George and Anne and Lennie.