We, like so many people, used to say that we were not cruise people. It’s funny how that has changed over time and once you get a look at the people who do cruise you understand that unless you are going on Carnival, Celebrity or Disney (all of which tend to cater to families with kids), the adult cruise lines have an older demographic. Our choice of cruise lines is the one that gets consistently rated the best ocean cruise line these days, Viking Cruises. The average age of passengers on Viking Cruise Lines is typically between 65-70 years old. Viking specifically markets their cruises to an older, well-educated demographic and designs their itineraries and onboard experiences accordingly. They specifically state that they have no kids, no casinos and no fancy dress-up evenings. They even have an age minimum of 18 years on their ocean cruises, with most passengers being retired or near retirement age. They do have a younger set traveling on their river cruises and expedition voyages (sort of their version of adventure travel), though the core demographic remains predominantly retirement age. The older we get, the more we find ourselves liking cruises. The biggest reasons for that are not having to pack and unpack every day or having to haul luggage from here to there, as well as the overall convenience and comfort of someone chauffeuring us from this spot to the next with ease. So far we have done one Viking River cruise (Blue Danube), two Viking ocean cruises (Baltics and Australia/NZ), one Celebrity to Alaska and one Kensington on the Nile. We are currently booked on a Viking ocean cruise in March for three weeks around Cape Horn from Santiago to Buenos Aires.
We’ve gone on cruises by ourselves (the NZ and Blue Danube) and with various friends on the other cruises. There’s no doubt that we prefer to go with friends, but that brings with it certain complications.. Like any group travel, when there’s more than one person traveling there are inevitably conflicting goals and objectives. One person wants to get up early. Another wants to get up late. One person wants to eat late. Another person wants to eat early. I think if it is simply the cost of traveling with friends, so it is worth the trouble, but it does require both some compromise and a little bit of management, all of which is easier on a contained ship environment. On this upcoming cruise, we have further complicated things by bringing together friends from two different worlds. We always joke about worlds colliding, but generally speaking we tend to try and integrate our friend groups rather than keep them separate. It’s simply more fun to do that as we watch our one group of friends become friends with another group of friends. We are proud to be friends with all of our friend groups and despite their different origins and ways, we really do like sharing our pleasure in their friendship with other friends. In this case we’re traveling with two couples from our neighborhood Mike & Melisa and Faraj & Yasuko, who we have traveled with in the past year to Southeast Asia and, indeed, Kim and I went to Egypt and Jordan the year before with Mike & Melisa. The extra couple that we’ve added to this kluge are Ann & Chris who we met through our motorcycle group and have since become friendly with them beyond that. Mike & Melisa are native Californians who spent some time in places like Texas and Arizona. Faraj & Yasuko are initially from Iran and Japan respectively, and lived most of their lives in Oregon until recently retiring here in California. Ann is a native Bostonian and Chris is a native of Oklahoma and both have lived in New York City for as long as we have known them or longer. The range of professions in the group is quite varied. Mike was a hotelier, Melisa was a building supply professional. Faraj was an engineer with Intel and a contractor, while Yasuko is an artist. Ann is a CFO and corporate board member while Chris is an art director and production designer for films. Round that out with my money management and Kim’s musical theater backgrounds and you have an interesting array of backgrounds. So this is quite a blend of cultures and the only common element is the Kim and I know and like them all.
This trip starts in Santiago Chile (technically Valparaiso) and then goes down the southern coast of Chile until it turns the corner around Cape Horn, reaches out to the Falkland Islands and then comes back up the Argentine coast to Buenos Aires. It’s an 18 day cruise split approximately 50% in Chile and 50% in Argentina (for purposes of sympathy to the Argentine heritage, I will include the Falklands/Malvinas as part of our Argentine journey). Of the 18 days, eight of them are sea days dispersed over the entire span of the cruise. I call them sea days to differentiate them from the days when we are docked in some port of call, but they are a necessary component of making way towards our final destination.. Some of those sea days involve cruising into the Chilean fjords and seeing glaciers (the hemispheric flip side of the Alaska cruise) and beautiful Patagonia scenery. And some of them will probably involve trying to get a glimpse of parts of Antarctica as we cruise through the Drake Passage, watching for penguins at every turn. We have opted out of trying to set foot on the Seventh Continent for a combination of reasons. First there is the very high cost, then there is the ecological destruction of it (though I’m not sure cruising is all that eco-friendly to begin with), and finally there is the fact that our friends Barbara & Frank sort of spoiled the whole idea long ago when they went to Antarctica with the grandson of Ernest Shackleton of Endurance fame. That sort of put a fine point on the notion that we would not be doing something so very unique or special…better to just boycott the whole idea…Harumph!
Compared to some (including Barbara & Frank, who are friends with million-mile cruisers and go onboard regularly), Kim and I are not exactly cruise experts. We do know the Viking ship configuration (Viking Jupiter, 930 guests, 465 crew members, Length: 745 feet, Beam: 94 feet, Class: small ships, Year built: 2019) and it is almost identical to the ships we previously took ocean cruises on. One of the things we like about Viking is this consistent high quality and small ship approach. We have done this enough times that we feel we know the difference between a sea day and a day in port. We clearly prefer days in Port because there’s a bit more structure to the day where you go out and see the sites wherever you’re docked and then it’s always a welcome relief to get back to the ship and relax in your cabin. On a sea day you spend your time trying to figure out how to keep yourself busy going to the gym, walking around the promenade deck, playing cards or maybe attending a lecture or show. These cruise directors are forever coming up with ideas to keep you busy and make you feel stupid, like playing Simon Says or Trivial Pursuits like you were on a Catskills Borscht Belt weekend in 1952. You feel less that way of Viking because of that Scandinavian sense of being above the fray and, dare I say it, better than others.
Today, Viking put me in my place if ever I was to get to uppity about cruising with them. We were all set to call at the opening bell for reservations at the two specialty restaurants (Manfredi’s Italian and the Chef’s Table Haute Cuisine). We could not book a table for eight and were told via online chat to wait until embarkation. I’m too savvy for that, so I called a customer service supervisor and laid on her the irony of bringing six other passengers (call it an added $50k in revenue) only to be penalized for it. She accommodated me politely by booking two tables of four for each of the two restaurants, but when I added that I wanted a few extra nights at Manfredi’s, she was equally polite in reminding me that that was not available in advance for our grade of service. You see, out of 411 guest accommodations onboard, 15 are “high roller suites”, 30 are regular expensive suites, 84 qualify as penthouse staterooms and that leaves 240 deluxe veranda staterooms (which is what all of us have), leaving a mere 42 regular old veranda staterooms. That means that 39% of the people onboard are higher class than we are, where only 9% are in a lower class. That means we are among the 52% of the “middle class” on the ship. I really don’t know why, but that somehow makes me feel less elitist about all this and allows my self-righteous psyche to go back on cruise control.