Voodoo, Moonscape, and Table Top Mountain

 Throughout our trip down the west coast of Africa we have had trouble with inconsistent internet access. The cruise line claims each country has different laws regarding the internet. We believe the cruise line is telling us the truth but we additionally believe that the infrastructure in many of these countries in no way measures up to what we are use to back home. Combine this with your bloggers continuing to have "senior moments" when dealing with technology and you will understand why some of our postings have not been timely.

Saturday, November 23,  2024 found us in Lome, Togo. Our excursion had one stop, a Voodoo Ceremony.  We once again faced the unfortunate circumstance where there was only one guide for 4 bus loads of tourists. We were again at the back of the pack so we did not hear the description of the ceremony we were about to see. When we finally arrived at the site of the ceremony all of the seating had been taken. Fortunately, we found a seat for Lynda in another area which gave her an excellent view of the festivities. Tim found a place to stand that was close to the action for the taking of excellent pictures.  There were about a dozen dancers and the usual compliment of Africa drummers. The dancers would dance about and then suddenly one would start dancing so fast it appeared the dancer was having a seizure.  Several other dancers immediately surrounded the dancer and hold him or her until they had calmed down. This happened regularly during the ceremony. There was an older male dancer, obviously the "grand pooba", who slowly circulated trying to maintain calm. He even succumbed to a seizure and was calmed and led away. About two thirds into the ceremony a single male dancer ended up kneeling on the ground. Another dancer approached him and sprinkled a while powder in a circle around the kneeling man, eventually sprinkle the powder on his head. Then two dancers, holding sticks with gourds attached started dancing in  front of the kneeling man and would touch the man with the gourds on his head, chest, and legs. While this was occurring  a live chicken was placed on the kneeling man's head.  At this same time, a woman dancer had a seizure in front of where Tim was standing. She was tackled by three other women, all of whom fell into the spectator standing in front of Tim causing him to fall backwards into a cactus plant.  Without going into all the gory details, probably a hundred half inch needles were removed from Tim's arms, back and legs. One of the cruise lines Destination Consultants was on this excursion and talked briefly with Tim explaining that she would need to file an "incident report" when she returned to the ship. Back on board, a nurse from the medical staff visited Tim in our suite and removed about 20 more needles. Tim has recovered and, other then some residual embarrassment, has recovered nicely.  He looks forward to intense teasing from family and friends.

After several relaxing days at sea, we arrived on Thanksgiving Day in Walvis Bay, Namibia. Our excursion was an hour long drive in the desert to visit Moonscape Valley. Lynda has always complained that on our many cruises, we spend too much time in cities and not enough time seeing the countryside.  In a "be careful what you wish for " moment, Lynda enjoyed an hour of virually the same view of desert nothingness. The Moonscape Valley made up for this. We approached the Valleys from the top. The valleys were all stone, no sand and very stark and foreboding.  We drove down a road into one of the valley's and discovered they were equally impressive looking up as looking down.

We had heard from fellow passengers that the main restaurant on board our ship was going to having a Thanksgiving meal for us.  Thanksgiving  night, among the entre items on the menu, was Roasted Thanksgiving Turkey with Stuffing, Mashed Sweet Potatoes and Cranberry sauce. Dessert included Pumpkin Pie. All of our meals on the cruise have been excellent. Tonight's Thanksgiving meal was no exception.  But something was missing.  After much discussion we solved the problem. Thanksgiving is family coming together with love, to fix the meal using family recipes and then the family gathering together to enjoy the meal and being together. We knew we would miss this but didn't realize how much.

On Saturday the 30th we arrived at the terminus of our cruise, Cape Town, South Africa. From our ship's balcony we enjoyed a fantastic view of Cape Town against the backdrop of Table Top Mountain.  In January, 2020, just before the pandemic, we were in Cape Town. One of our excursions then was a trip to the top of Table Top Mountain.  Because of weather we were not able to make that trip. This time we did. Table Top Mountain gets its name bacause, wait for it, the top is flat, like a table top. We discovered that Table Top Mountain is one of the "new" 7 Natural Wonders of the World.  The top of the mountain is 3500 feet above sea level.  We rode a gondola that held 65 peoplemjnto the top.  It was a 7 minute trip, at the end was quite steep.  To add to the thrill,  the inside floor of the gondola slowly rotated. Waiting in line for the ride up, the temperature was in the mid to upper 70's with no wind. At the top the temperature was probably 20 degrees cooler with a high wind. But the views were breathtaking. It bares repeating. Check Tim's Facebook page for pictures.

As we compose this post we are sitting in the business lounge at Cape Town International Airport awaiting our arduous trip home. Some final thoughts.  This is the longest trip we have taken. The good news is we our still talking and snuggling regularly.  We have thoroughly enjoyed the trip and have added 9 new countries to our list of countries visited.  We now claim to have visited over half the countries in the world. While we enjoyed our cruise, West Africa has little to offer for the tourist. At the end of the trip most of the ports of call all seemed the same and we cannot, unfortunately,  remember each one seperately.  Most of the places we visited were ill prepared to handle a large number of tourists at the same time. On the other hand, every where we went the locals were very friendly.  Tim has a bit of a negative point of view because he had few preconceived ideas of what we would see. Meanwhile, Lynda, having thought more about the trip ahead of time, realized we were visiting third world countries and knew what to expect. Finally,  Tim still can't figure out how, in a predominantly black culture, all of the mannequins in the womens shops were white.

As always remember the words of Michael Palin of Monty Python fame. Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.

You do that Voodoo that you do so well. Lyrics from a great old song, "You do something to me"

 November 23, 2024

To begin today's blog, we need to apologize 

Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Tokoradi, Ghana

 November 20, 2024

We docked this morning in Abidjan, Ivory Coast and immediately noted that this was the dirtiest harbor we have ever seen.  We could not believe all of the waste floating around our ship.  By the time we returned from our excursion early afternoon, the temperature was in the mid-80's and all that trash was beginning to smell.    

As for our excursion.  We left the pier at 11:00 in a seven bus convoy escorted by six motorcycle police officers. The traffic was horrendous but our escorts expertly cleared the traffic so we cruised right along to our first stop which was the Abidjan Botanical Gardens. On the way to the Gardens, Tim asked our guide if the clearing of traffic for us created animosity on the part of the locals toward tourists. He admitted it did. Then one of our group asked how many ships docked in Abidjan.  The guide answered about three a month. When we arrived at the Gardens three of the buses had left us for a nearby site. That meant that our four buses, probably 130 of us were at the Gardens. If was at this point we realized it was going to be a long day; Ivory Coast tour people were rookies at the whole tour thing.  The Botanical Gardens were going to provide the guides for our tour of the gardens.  They provide one!  This solo guide had a bullhorn which he never used and when he stopped to explain something he never waited for everybody to catch up. Lynda quickly decided to sit at a picnic table near the buses while Tim took the tour.  By the time Tim got Lynda situated he was hopelessly behind the guide.  There were few flowers in bloom and the only other plants of interest were large groups of bamboo.  Tim soon gave up on the tour and returned to where Lynda was sitting. There seemed to be little enthusiasm among our returning passengers about the visit. Our next stop was an orphanage.  All of us were ushered into a room much too small for a group our size. The building we were in was a beautiful old building. The room we were in was a large rectangle with probably a twenty foot ceiling.  This meant poor accoustics which, combined with a poor sound system resulted in no one really understanding what was said during the 15 minute speech. They obviously weren't looking for donations because there was no collection bucket out. Kind of made us wonder what was the point.  From the Orphanage we went to the Museum of Civilization. What an overstatement.  In 1962 an artist by the last name of Combes opened a school of art and the applied arts. The "museum" was a display of wood carvings by Combes showing how women's hair style changed during the 60's.  Admittedly, these carvings were very well done. The museum also displayed art created by the students, also excelllent. Check Tim's Facebook  page for pictures. The next stop was the St. Paul Cathedral in Abidjan. The Cathedral was just completed in 2023 and is quite contempary. Not like La Sagrada Familia but still stunning.  Two interesting features; the Cathedral is not built in the shape of a cross and the back of the building is about 15 ft tall, floor to ceiling, and then sweeps up dramatically towards the alter.  Again, to understand what we are trying to explain, check Tim's Facebook page.  The last stop was the d'reguer stop at a market. Like all of the previous markets that our cruise has actually let us browse, this was a high end market.  Unfortunately, because of the general lack of organization in the tour, we were given ten minutes to spend in the Market! Really!  The Cote D'Ivoire will not be among our favorite stops.

If this is Thursday, November 21, 2024 this must be Takoradi, Ghana. As our loyal readers know,  Lynda invariably finds a day where she decides: "Not for me today. Have fun Tim". Today was the day.  The excursion started with drive-by's that Tim won't even begin to describe, they were that boring.  Monkey Hill anyone?  The first actual stop was a major fishing port in Sekondi, right next to Takoradi. They are considered the Twin Cities of Ghana.  While not exactly Minneapolis/St.Paul, we'll give them some slack.  There had to be at least a hundred fishing boats in this port. Today happened to be a day when they were not fishing. It turns out this "fishing village" has a conscience. They do not fish two days a week and take the whole month of August off from fishing in order to maintain the vitality of their fishing grounds. Today was one of the non-fishing days so there was a party like atmosphere around the docks. First we were shown how the large blocks of ice that each fishing boat needs to keep its catch fresh are made. It is an amzing process.  Tim can't explain it clearly enough (he's had two G and T's while writing this blog) the process but in a matter of minutes they took a large steel ice tray, for lack of a better description, and froze ten large blocks of ice.  Again check the Facebook page for pictures. From there we wonder around the docks where people were selling stuff including fresh caught fish. There were a number of women wondering among everone, balancing containers on their heads, selling fish, food products, etc.  Tim even saw one woman balancing a container that contained women's bras.  Tim never saw anyone trying on any of the bras. As we left the docks we stopped briefly for a photo op at the place where the fishing boats are built. The rest of the tour was the usual. A stop at a Market and a stop at a "Cultural Experience".  More African drums and dancers. It was a very hot and muggy day, temps and humidity in the mid-80's. None of us were disappointed to get back to the ship.

Tim was suprised to arrive back at the cabin on board ship to find Lynda dressed and ready to go to lunch, which we did. After lunch we went back off the ship to where many stalls had been set up on our pier, selling the usual souvenier clothing, art and crafts. We actully bought each other  a matching shirt, for Tim, and dress, for Lynda. Our children/grandchildren will be embarrassed. 

Dakar, Senegal and Banjul, The Gambia

 Saturday, November 16, 2024

We arrived Saturday morning in Dakar, Senegal, population 4 milllion, and crashed head first into a third world country.  The best word to describe our experience in Dakar is chaos. It was at times exilerating and other times maddening.  Our excursion was entitled "Highlights of Dakar" which was an apt description of what we saw.  Unfortunately, it appeared no one took the time to arrange the tour in a logic sequence.  We seemed to travel back and forth across the city, passing some of the "highlights" several times. Our guide told us we were lucky to be in Dakar on a Saturday as the traffic wasn't as bad as on a weekday. You could have fooled us.  Traffic lights seemed more a suggestion then a requirement. Several times our bus driver drove through red lights. Once our driver approached a busy cross street with the green light but the traffic from the cross street continued into the intersection. Tim noticed that the stop light for the cross street traffic was also green. Lane markings, when they existed, were also observed rather nonchalantly. At some point late in the tour the person sitting across the aisle from Tim said something to Tim about the driver constantly blowing the buses horn. Tim answered that he thought the driver figured by honking the buses horn he was releasing himself from any liability to what happened next. If there was an accident with a pedestrian or other vehicle it was that persons fault because our driver had honked the buses horn as a warning.  The traffic chaos was not helped by the many motorcyclists that fearlessly weaved through the traffic. Among the highlights were a visit to the Catholic Cathedral of Dakar which we were able to go inside.  It was of a contemporary design. Not as stunning nor as large as the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona but beautiful none the less. We did a drive by of the main Mosque of Dakar that was large and picturesque but no where on the scale of the Hassan II Mosque in Casablanca. Do you see a pattern here?  In all of the previous cities we have visited in Africa on this trip there was a main shopping street with the usual high end stores with several markets or suaks somewhere nearby.  In Dakar these markets were everywhere. They were the main economy of the city which seemed to work. We visited several of them.  We attended a short concert that consisted of six African drummers and a dance troup that numbered four men and four women. This was a different style of dancing then we had seen previously on our trip. Probably the most impressive site was an emmense sculpture called "The Renaissance."  It depicted a man and woman with the man holding a small child up above him.  This was to represent the rebirth of Africa on the worlds stage. The tour was exhausting and lasted five hours, an hour longer then advertised. It had an appropriate ending. As we turned into the one lane entrance to our pier, the entrance was blocked by a lone traffic cone. The driver honked his horn several times (!) with no response.  Our tour guide finally got out of the bus to locate the people in charge. When he returned to the bus we were informed that the guards for the entrance to the pier where having lunch and would remove the traffic cone when they finished eating. Meanwhile there were five or six large delivery trucks lined up behind us waiting to also enter the port. Finally a gentlemen who looked very important walked up and removed the traffic cone and motioned us to enter. Only then did any one come out of the lunch room.  The day came to a festive end as our ship hosted us at a large BBQ style dinner held outside on the pool deck. It was a beautiful evening to be outside and the food was excellent.  

Sunday we arrived in Banjul, The Gambia. If Ohio State can call themselves The Ohio State University, then we suppose that Gambia can call themselves The Gambia. The Gambia is a small country of just two million people. It is also a poor country that our guide assured us was also a happy country.  The guide also described The Gambia as a republic that changed Presidents when the people seemed to feel the need for change. We interpreted that to mean that there were coups that changed the government. Our excursion today was "A lazy cruise down the river" which is exactly what it was. We cruised on the Gambia River that was lined on both sides by Mangroves. We were told that oysters grew on all of these mangroves.  We saw some interesting birds.  We stopped once along the way for any one who wanted to swim.  We had a delightful lunch of several different types of salad, a cottage pie, which is like a shepherds pie only made with beef instead of lamb, and a fish dish.  We stopped again after lunch for anyone who wanted to fish. And that was it.  No Markets or churches or mosques. Just a quiet, relaxing boat ride with pleasant conversation with Australian and Canadian fellow passengers. 

We have another two days of "at sea" so you probably won't hear from us for another two days.

Mindelo, Cape Verde

 Thursday, November 14,  2014

Monday evening we sailed out of Arrecife in the Canary Islands, spent Tuesday and Wednesday at sea, arriving Thursday morning in Mindelo, Cape Verde. The two days at sea were a nice break from four straight days of excursions.  We slept in, read, napped, played cribbage, and drank when we wanted to.  The weather was great, the sea was reasonably calm; it was delightful. We were awake when the ship arrived in Mindelo and we were greeted by stunning scenery.  Cape Verde is made up of 10 islands.  We sailed between three of them as we arrived at the Mindelo port. As always, Tim will post pictures on his Facebook page. Our tour this morning was titled "Mindelo - the Cultural Capital".  The word, Cultural, was used rather loosely in this case.  Our first stop was an outdoor market of about a dozen stalls.  Each was selling the same products; cheap t-shirts, colorful womens clothing, and all sorts of carved wooden items. Some of the stallkeepers were more aggressive then others. Tim had a very difficult time extracting himself from one.  She spoke very little english but made it clear she would starve to death if Tim didn't buy a t-shirt. Next we stopped at the Old Square of Mindelo. At one end of the relative small square was a catholic church built in the 1860's. Eighty percent of Cape Verdeans are catholic. The church was very plain looking on the outside and we did not go inside so we were not sure of the point of the visit. At the other end of ths square was an indoor market. This market sold primary fruit and vegatables. After walking through the market we climbed to the second floor and had a great view looking down at the stalls. There was also a small store on the second floor selling higher class souvenirs and clothing including crocheted bikinis (!). From the "Old Square" it was only natural that we next stopped at the "New Square". This square was even smaller and featured statues of the Prime Minister who ended slavery in Cape Verde and a famous poet. Of more interest was the National Center for Art and Design at one end of the square. There were a few interesting art works and a display of guitars and drums. The drums were said to be made in 2019 but looked a century older.  They featured goat skin heads and used rope to provide the proper tension for the drum head. Very strange. The final stop of the day made up for the first three.  We were taken to a restaurant where we enjoyed typical Cape Verde snacks and Cape Verde rum while watching a young man and women present a thirty minute dance performance. They were accompanied by a guitar player and violin player who also provide vocals. The vocals were sung in one of the seven languages of Cape Verde so we did not understand the words, but we got the gist of the songs from watching the dancers. It was very entertaining.

Tomorrow we have another day at sea before arriving in Dakar, Senegal Saturday morning.

Agadir, Morocco

 Sunday, November 10, 2024

The pier at which our ship docked is on the outskirts of Agadir.  From the ship Agadir looked considerably more inviting then Casablanca, particularly considering that it is a city of 3 million people. Also from the ship Morocco looked more like we expected; lots of hilly, brown sand/dirt mixed with scrub brush.

The first stop of our excursion was the Kasbah. We learned that Kasbah means fortress in arabian.  The Kasbah had a commanding view from atop a large hill.  Stopping here was basically a photo op.  We must say the views were stunning.  Leaving the Kasbah, we drove into the city of Agadir.  Agadir was a cleaner, more modern and vibrant city then Casablanca. We made the required stop at the principal Mosque of Agadir.  It was not as large or impressive as the Hassan II Mosque. However, Tim conveniently forgot that he was not to enter the Mosque and slipped inside for a quick picture. Needless to say, Lynda was terribly proud.

In 1960 there was a powerful earthquake that destroyed a portion of the old town of Agadir. We passed through this area where we saw much empty property that had not been rebuilt on.  Our guide also pointed out a cinema where many people were watching a movie and survived the earthquake because the cinema was not destroyed. We then arrived at a Medina, which is a small walled city.  This particular Medina was abandoned and then purchased by an enterprising entrepreneur and now has many high end craft and clothing shops.  There is still an open Mosque in the Medinda. The archetecture was also very interesting.

Our final stop was the Suak Al Hab. It is one of the largest suaks in all of Africa with some 6000 shops in it. We had been looking forward to this stop as we have loved visiting previous suaks in this part of the world. We were very disappointed. One of our fellow travelers refered to  it as a large flea market, an apt description.  Like most suaks, each shop was selling only one particular product but in the Suak Al Had there was actually more of the product then could reasonably fit in the small area, thus most shops were uninviting. Another big difference was the big diversity in products.  We walked through areas of shops with brand name electronics, followed by lots of shops with high- end, attractive rugs. Another area was full of furniture of a reasonable quality. If the shopkeepers were not waiting on a customer they sat on a stool with a very bored expression. There was none of the loud hawking of shopkeepers.  Absolutely no energy at all in the suak. It was like a large K-Mart with poorly displayed merchandise. 

The excursion was not a total loss.  We did have the beautiful views from the Kasbah and our tour guide was the most entertaining we have had so far.

It is Monday, November 11 and we are docked at Arrecife in the Canary Islands.  We had booked a tour that took us to a shop where we would learn all about Aleo Vera.  We have decided to cancel this excursion.  Tim may  take a shuttle bus into Arrecife and wander about a bit.  The next two days we are at sea so there won't be anything to blog about. We will return in a couple of days.