La Boca - Tango Land

Overnight stays are infrequent on this South America itinerary. Generally this ship departs from a port no later than 8 PM, after visiting anywhere between 4 and 10 hours.

Buenos Aires is a notable exception. The so-called “Paris of South America” provides so much to do, and the ship obligingly provides many excursions. Among them are “Iguazu Falls-Natural Wonder of the World”, “A Gaucho’s Life- A Day on the Estancia”, “Palaces and Architecture of Buenos Aires”, “In Eva Peron’s Footprints”, “Panoramic Buenos Aires”.

One of the most popular excursions is “Tango - A Night of Passion and Desire”. Pretty hot stuff for the senior demographic of this ship. Passengers leave in the early evening for a nice nightclub, have a 3-course Argentine dinner, then watch a big floor show with live music and Tango performances, all this against the romantic backdrop of the Southern summer night.

All this off-ship activity makes for a quiet piano bar. Even if folks get back while I’m still playing, they’re pooped and ready to retire. In addition, the next day in Buenos Aires is their disembark day, so there’s last minute packing…..basically their cruise is over at this point.

I had IPM (“In port-manning” -- a maritime regulation that required me to stay on the ship) on the first BA day. But on day#2, while people were disembarking, I was taking a cab over to La Boca. This highly-touted section of town is old, colorful, artsy, bohemian, a tad dangerous at night, and most importantly, the Birthplace of the Tango.

Even more specifically -- one goes to a little street, one block long, called Caminito, named after a popular Tango song. No, I don’t know the tune, and I’d never heard of it before.

This “Caminito” Street is closed to car traffic. Where parked cars normally are, instead there are the tables and chairs of the many open-air cafes that line both sides of the street. The sidewalks serve as little stages for musicians and tango performances.

It was a pretty sweltering day, so I sat down with a liter of Quilmes, the ubiquitous beer of Buenos Aires. I ordered some beef dish, which was pretty lousy considering all the hype about Argentine beef.

But my goodness, those Tango dancers!! So sensual, so graceful, so complex. There seemed to be an infinity of stances, steps, turns. No way this could be done spontaneously, each routine seemed to be beautifully and uniquely choreographed.

It was light-years beyond the basic tango lessons they give over at the ship, like the difference between Rhapsody in Blue and Chopsticks. The Veendam Tango specialists are “Juan and Eileen”, a long-married couple, him very Hispanic, her very Irish, who have a long-term gig on the ship. They’ve been on the ship ever since it first reached Argentine waters, almost 3 months ago now. In addition to giving the Tango classes, they are occasionally the headliners in the Main Showroom in the evening, doing a 45-presentation of Argentine song and dance. They’ve got a pretty sweet situation, and they’re always smiling.

Eventually I’d absorbed as much Caminito Tango as I could take in. I had another liter of Quilmes, did a little wandering around the adjacent streets, took silly pictures…..

It takes two to tango, but one person alone can be a total dork

It's Quilmes Time

…..and got back to the ship in time for the 4PM General Emergency Drill. 1200 new passengers have to be herded out to the lifeboat deck and given instructions for Abandon Ship Procedures, and other unpleasant what-ifs.

Many employees have the Traffic Director job, positioned in stairwells and other key places, steering bewildered new passengers to their proper place. My piano job on the ship is fairly high-profile, so they put me in a highly trafficked stairway, acting important, telling people where to go, wearing my lifejacket and smock. The only thing missing is the whistle.

Eventually the drill is over, I return to my cabin to dump the life jacket in the closet. Around 5PM I feel the familiar rumble underneath my feet. I find a vantage point and see the ship’s first labored sideways movement from the dock. Up on the top deck a band is playing “sailaway” music, and people are sipping colorful-looking tropical drinks at discounted prices, and another party begins.

Antarctica Peninsula

A few more Antarctica photos, taken in a different area, under different lighting conditions.

There is a peninsula extending from the main Antarctica land mass, 800 miles long, pointing north toward the southern tip of South America. The Antarctic Peninsula is where the Veendam went, and it’s the only place where cruise ships go. 1000 miles separate the tip of South America from the tip of the peninsula, and almost all Antarctica tourists go across this relatively short stretch of water, starting out from the little Argentine town of Ushuaia.

The large and well-known emperor penguins live further south on the shores of the main Antarctic continent, so we never saw any of them. But they sure ran that wonderful "March of the Penguins" documentary on the cabin TVs over and over again, as if to compensate. Other smaller penguin species -- gentoo, rockhopper, Magellanic -- could be seen from the ship, but too distant for a decent photograph. I got a much better look at penguins at the Bronx Zoo. The ship never docked in Antarctica -- any ship with more than 500 people is prohibited from docking there.

On one night in particular, December 29, we had something pretty close to 24-hour daylight. Down in this area it was always light out at midnight. Temperatures were pretty tolerable - low 30s, warmest it ever gets down there, since this was the peak of summertime. The waters in these photos are completely frozen over at other times of the year

Sentimental Sandwich

Hi Everyone - Thought I would share with you some excerpts I took from emails from Steve:

2/4/10
Last night an elderly Turkish lady, with her Americanized daughter, sat immediately to my right in the piano bar. The elderly lady wanted me to do "Sentimental Journey"

However, this lady apparently hadn't eaten for a while, and "unconsciously" had food on her mind. In her thick Turkish accent she asked me to play "Sentimental Sandwich"

She didn't know she had said this...not for a few seconds anyway.......

I sat there with a quizzical look on my face for a moment. She seemed serious about her request, so I politely asked if she possibly meant Sentimental Journey rather than Sentimental Sandwich.

At this point it dawned on her what she had said, and she and her daughter, and the other six people sitting around the piano, had a very good laugh.

Trying to milk this as much as possible I proceeded to sing

Gonna make -- a Sentimental Sandwich

Gonna set my heart at ease

Gonna eat a Sentimental Sandwich

Lots of ham and lots of cheese

Got the bread, I got the salt 'n pepper

Got the ketchup, the mustard too

If you want a Sentimental Sandwich

I'll make another one for you

Lettuce --- lots 'n lots of leaves of

lettuce -- baby I believe in

lettuce -- countin' every.......

This is about as far as I got, at which point I broke down and stopped playing. The remaining hour of the night was chock-full of sandwich jokes from everybody. This lady took it all in stride, and I think she'll be back tonight. But that song will never be the same again to me.

Hoping to "renew old memories" with you all in the near future.

_____________________________________________________________________
From Steve's 2/10/10 email:

Tonight is the last night of the "Sentimental Sandwich" cruise, and I've printed up some singalong copies of a completed version -- to be sung to the sweet old Turkish lady who started all this -- pictured on the right in the attached photo)

Gonna make a Sentimental Sandwich

Loaded up with cheddar cheese

Gonna make a Sentimental Sandwich

To renew my calories

Got the ham, I got the salt and pepper

Got the mayo, the mustard too

If you want a Sentimental Sandwich

I'll make another one for you

Lettuce -- lots and lots of leaves of lettuce

Most important thing is lettuce

Spinach and some cabbage and

Romaine too -- scooby dooby doo

Gonna have Sentimental Sandwich

With a coke and a bowl of fries

Gonna make a Sentimental sandwich

Sentimental Paradise

Wonderful Wonderful

On July 7, 2007 ( 7-7-7) -- a Swiss-based organization called “New7Wonders ” made their long-awaited announcement of the SEVEN NEW WONDERS OF THE WORLD. This list was the result of popular global vote, and from what I’ve read so far, the vote was skewed by certain highly enthusiastic city and regional populations, most notably the Catholic citizens of Rio de Janeiro, who went on a manic religious campaign to collect as many votes as possible for the Christ the Redeemer statue.

Reading this story I was reminded of the problems of trying to select the “best” Major League Baseball players to participate in the annual All-Star game. At certain times in baseball history it was entirely by fan vote. In 1957 the baseball fans of Cincinnati “stuffed the ballot box” -- and elected their beloved (but mostly mediocre) Cincinnati Reds players to comprise almost the entire starting line-up of the National League All-Star team.

The Commissioner of Baseball was annoyed. Legendary great players like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron were relegated to being substitutes on the All Star team, and other great players were left off the team entirely. Clearly the fans could not be trusted to do the right thing. By Executive Order, the Commissioner of Baseball pushed aside the obviously faulty voting rules, and personally placed Mays and Aaron as starters in the 1957 game.

The fans were further punished in the following decade, reduced to minimal influence in the voting, as sportswriters, managers, coaches, and the players themselves got involved in the voting. Eventually the fans were let in again to a certain extent, and the present system is nicely tweaked and balanced, and everybody seems to be happy with it. And perhaps the New7Wonders people could have learned something from it. Officially naming the Seven New Wonders of the World is pretty epic stuff, you can’t change it next year.

The Egyptian pyramids are the only surviving thing from the Seven ANCIENT Wonders of the World, and happily they got enough votes to make the new list. Also making the new list were the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal, the Colosseum in Rome….

…and the Christ the Redeemer statue, the unquestioned icon of Rio, a 130-foot structure standing on top of 2300-foot Corcovado mountain in Rio de Janeiro harbor. Among the things that DIDN’T make the list (placed in the #8 to #20 category) were the Statue of Liberty, Stonehenge, the Acropolis in Greece, and the Eiffel Tower. The argument could go on all day, but there is a general uneasy feeling that the Christ Statue didn’t quite deserve to make the list.

No matter. One should see a big icon when one gets the chance, especially if it’s been declared one of the Seven New Wonders of the World. So I paid $48 to be part of a crew excursion to The Statue, and also a drive-by of Ipanema Beach, where that tall and tan and young and lovely girl drove Jobim nuts 50 years ago.

We piled into a chartered bus on the dock, and wound up an hour early for our 1PM train. The area was crowded with others waiting to ride the train, milling about, buying souvenirs -- little Christ Redeemer Statues in particular -- also posing for idiotic pictures with the Brazilian flag.
The 1PM train ride up the mountain ride took about a half-hour, and it provided a wonderful view of Rio de Janeiro. Arriving at the Statue area, another 70 or 80 steps up the pedestal finally puts one at the base of the statue, in a throng of camera-happy tourists. It was a gorgeous day, and the view of the harbor was exhilarating.
The Christ the Redeemer Statue was finished in 1931 after 9 years. It had to be an ordeal getting the materials up to the top of Corcovado mountain, so maybe it really is a Wonder. The outer covering is soapstone, an insulator which completely protected the statue from a direct lightning hit 2 years ago.

There was little time to hang around, and within an hour we were back down from the mountain, on the bus driving along Ipanema beach. Having been told that Brazil boasts the most beautiful women on the planet, I craned my neck, and saw the beautiful, the not-so-beautiful, and the downright ugly, the Best and Worst of Bikinis. As I see proven constantly on this ship, many people have no idea how bad they look in a skimpy bathing suit.

It’s been said that the great majority of New Yorkers have never bothered to visit the Statue of Liberty. It’s a tad difficult to do, involving a trip to lower Manhattan, a ferry ride and some cash. I went there once when I was ten years old, taken there by an adult. Forty years later was my second visit, as an adult, taking a ten-year old kid. Without the adult-kid dynamic, maybe I never would have gone there at all.

And perhaps it is the same in Rio, where residents maybe never take the train ride up that mountain. But tourists will always visit iconic things, egged on by books, TV, and hype machines like the New7Wonders. And for me there’s no escaping being a simple tourist, camera hanging from my neck, intrigued by foreign currency, foreign storefronts with signs in foreign languages, foreign license plates, and foreign statues on foreign mountains.

Back Under the Radar

This is my first entry since the “Censorship” incident, which now goes back 8 weeks to December 29. It was on that day that I’d gotten a call from the “Events Manager” - the person I directly answer to. This lady had received a call from the Hotel Director of the ship. The “HD” is a 4-stripe officer, of which there are only four on the ship, the others being the Chief Officer, the Chief Engineer, and the Captain himself. Spock, Scotty, and Kirk, for all you Trekkies.

No “Beam me up Scotty” however. It was “Vaporize that blog entry Steve”. The entry was apparently discovered through a regularly conducted search for recent internet articles using the word “Veendam”.

The entry, which I had posted only the day before, was pretty exuberant. Having been quarantined in my cabin on December 24-25 with gastrointestinal (“GI” as they say around here) symptoms, I was happy and free to roam on the afternoon of December 27 in the little Argentine town of Ushuaia, way down at the tip of South America.

The ill-fated blog entry described a mid-afternoon alcohol-fueled gathering of crew people at a Irish pub in Ushuaia. Yes, an IRISH pub, complete with Guinness stout and shepherd’s pie, seemingly in the most unlikely locale possible.

The blog entry also made reference to the ailment which had put me out of action for 60 hours, myself in addition to many other people, both passengers and crew. There was a numerical stat (“12%“ - referring to the amount of sick people on the ship) which I’d learned from an officer friend, supposedly “inside info“, and this is the key point that prompted the Hotel Director‘s action, and justified his intrusion….and very possibly put me on their radar for further intrusion.

To wit: shortly after deleting the offensive blog entry, I found some interesting material in my mailbox located in the Cruise Director’s office-- 3 pages of “Rules and Regulations on Blogs and Websites“ of Holland America Employees.

These Guidelines told me not to be disrespectful to Holland America employees, methods, management, guests, even competitors. Huge gray area -- really now, what do you mean by disrespectful? Furthermore, anything questionable should be discussed with some “manager” person before posting. Yeah right, as if that manager person would give me creative freedom.

All this angst over a blog with less than 15 readers. Holland America doesn’t know it’s only 15 readers, for all they know it’s 15,000 readers, thus their fear of blog criticism. There’s already many people out there - passengers - putting their comments on Cruise Critic.com and other such sites. That can’t be stopped -- all the more reason to squash criticism from employees.

So private it will be, with whatever crazy thing I feel like saying….. nice place to vent, play “journalist”, entertain, and be entertained.