While every day is a new adventure on this trip, the act of writing a new and (hopefully) interesting story every day about the trip certainly has its challenges. I generally draw from the activities of the day, but today I did another Arctic Cure scrub, and I already wrote about that interesting spa treatment. We are also going to eat in the onboard Italian restaurant, Manfredi’s tonight and I believe I’ve already discussed that. What I haven’t talked about before is the bridge tour that we just took. In all these years of cruises, it just never occurred to me to ask to do that, but Chris & Ann did that early on and it sounded interesting enough that the rest of us signed on for the same. They have also now done an engine room, navigation and galley tour, which I will have to ponder about before commenting on. There was nothing life-changing about the bridge tour, but it was a nice visit to the work-a-day part of the ship where the big decisions get made. The bridge was not as high-tech looking as it might have been, so this wasn’t the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. But it is amazingly uncluttered with pretty much everything happening on computer screens. We learned the other day that they don’t even bother keeping a chest of paper charts for an emergency, but defer to double and triple redundant GPS navigation systems to always be working one way or another. I’m not sure this digital dependency is so very different than at our nuclear reactors and FAA flight control systems, so it probably should not concern us. I think as people have trained to run modern ships, its probably more important that they be extremely systems proficient and not necessarily also good with old manual systems. It’s not like we’re likely to ever go back to people using sextants and star-gazing to find our way onboard a 47,000 ton vessel. That idea makes for fun dystopic novels and movies, but isn’t very likely. It is fun to see the small knobs and toggles rather than big wheels and engine-order-telegraphs that clang orders and maneuver this 47,000 ton beast, but the truth is, its most often on autopilot anyway unless we get close to port. The young midshipman that gave us the bridge tour was the most interesting part of it. He told us that if he plays his cards right and gets lucky, he could make captain in 8-10 years. It’s hard to know what drives a young man in today’s tech-oriented world to take to the sea for his career, but then again, I didn’t grow up in Bergen, Norway like he did.
As we left the bridge, we passed the two cabins closest to the bridge. One was for the captain and the other for the chief engineer. We didn’t see inside, but they looked to be exactly the same as our cabins only of the larger variety. I’m sure they are much nicer than the midshipmen’s quarters. Although, I recall hearing from that young spa service worker the other day that he had never lived in such nice quarters as he has been given on this ship. We also heard from a young client service officer from Zimbabwe that shipboard life is far better than she ever expected for her and that she is enjoying regaling her family back home about the wonders of worldwide cruise ship work and travel. One question I asked her was about the small swimming pool that can be seen on the ship model on deck 2. We have been puzzling over that feature since seeing the model and finding no access to that deck for passengers. It turns out that its a crew pool area, which my Zimbabwe friend tells me is available to all crew members during their time off. It seems that Viking is truly an employer of choice, providing their onboard staff with a pleasant home away from home for the six months they are on duty and before the two months that they are given for home leave.
Many people use cruises as a vehicle to gather their family for a captive vacation. Forced togetherness may or may not be your thing, but the same concept holds for traveling with friends by cruise ship. You naturally spend more time together whether you like it or not. We all have our daily patterns and while those may get set aside for a few days during short term travel excursions, the chances are that over a two plus week cruise like this one, we all revert to our normal preferences. Mike is still an avid gym rat every morning and then spends the rest of his day walking the decks, catching up on his favorite news feeds and cartoon strips and playing several hands of cards. If only there were olive, oak and corral trees to prune and mulch to spread, Mike would basically not know the difference between being onboard or at home. Perhaps the hardest transition for him has been getting the staff to provide him with the perfect combination of ingredients for his favored ice tea and his preferred mocha coffee blends. Watching Mike’s buffet scrounging techniques leads me to suspect that he will return home within a quarter pound of his starting weight where the rest of us are in danger of all sorts of surprises when getting on the scales back home. I think I had a good bead on Mike’s routine before this cruise, but I’ve gained an appreciation for the rest of the gang’s habits in new and interesting ways. I see little agenda in all that, but I can’t say it isn’t interesting just as an observer of life around me. In some ways, being on a cruise ship is good training in case any of us ever has the misfortune of being incarcerated. Getting to know a captive and random group of people better than you had planned is an interesting experience.
I just finished doing two laps around the promenade deck (½ mile) and enjoyed the pleasant sea air on this sunny 70 degree Argentine day. It really is quite idyllic out here today as we pass Mar del Plata on the distant port side, heading up into the wide and welcoming Rio de la Plata alluvial basin that has been widened through the ages by all the lower Amazonian silt that has washed down the Rio de la Plata. If you go up the river far enough, you get to the Parana River and to the Itaipu dam that is a shared project by Brazil and Paraguay. The Itaipu Dam is one of the world’s largest hydroelectric power plants, built from 1975-1991. At its peak, the construction employed about 40,000 workers. In 1982, the dam’s reservoir began filling, creating a massive artificial lake. The Itaipu Dam stands as both a marvel of engineering and a symbol of international cooperation between Brazil and Paraguay, despite occasional tensions over the economic terms of the partnership. Brazil used a ton of bank debt to fund the project (Paraguay was a dictatorial pariah state run by General Stroessner at the time and was not a candidate for international loans). Since I had the duty in 1986 to collect on $1 billion that Brazil owed us, I got to go to the dam construction site and do what only a few Americans can claim to have done…I walked on Paraguayan soil as part of the dam tour. I’m not sure my footsteps had any impact on either the project or the repayment of Brazil’s sovereign debts, but it does all come to mind as we start sailing into the Rio de la Plata. So there’s another benefit of cruising the world…activating old memories that have no other earthly purpose than a smile of familiarity and recollection.