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 Travel & Outdoors | January 2007 
Latitude Adjustment, Chapter 1
 Joe McDaniel - yourhub.com
| | Jan and Joe McDaniel enjoy their first sunset above the ms Oosterdam before checking out the ice cream bar. (Joe McDaniel) | 
| | The pointy end of the boat. Note: the crew had washed their flags and hung them out to dry on the clothes line. (Joe McDaniel) |
This is the first of a three part travel blog (Trog trilogy) in which our adventures on the high seas are recounted.
One way of dealing with the extended period of cold and snowy weather here in Colorado is to make a positive attitude adjustment. A better way is to make a latitude adjustment. Jan and I were lucky to have booked ourselves on a 7-day cruise to the Mexican Riviera some time ago. The day before the 2nd major snow storm hit on 4th January we drove south to Albuquerque on the first leg of our road trip to San Diego where we would board our ship. This is called "getting out of Dodge."
As everyone knows, Parker, Colorado is located at 39 deg. 31 min. north of the equator. A more desirable latitude is somewhere south of the Tropic of Cancer at 23 deg. 26 min 21 sec. N. where temperatures are cozy warm at this time of year. It was no coincidence that our ship the ms Oosterdam was headed in that general direction. In fact, our southernmost destination was to be Puerto Vallarta, on the pacific coast of Mexico at 20 deg. 40 min. N. Puerto Vallarta is sometimes called P.V. for short due to the difficulty some gringos have with pronouncing the double "L" in Vallarta. But more about P.V. later in this Trog. (i.e. Travel Blog)
In my youth I read many stories of the sea, sailing ships, and treasure quests: Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island among them. Since then I have held an interest in things nautical. Sea farers have a language all their own. Long John Silver often said things like, "Avast me hearties!" It was many years later that I understood what "avast" meant. Olden day ships also had cool features such as "poop decks," quarterdecks and afterdecks.
Nautical terms are confusing to many land-lubbers. The long running and popular television show "Loveboat" added to the confusion. A cruise ship, you see, is not a "boat." It is a "ship." The correct name should have been "Loveship." One does not "get on a boat." To utter these words shows great ignorance. The correct term is "board the ship." Knowledge of these little, seemingly trivial, points can earn one respect with the ship's crew and also with those who take frequent cruises. The front of the ship is not "the pointy end" for example.
These terms can be misleading at times, especially when the port is on the starboard side and not on the port side. You see, the starboard side is actually the right side when looking toward the pointy end of the boat. Long ago passengers would be accommodated in a cabin. Nowadays they are shown to their "stateroom." This gives one the sense of getting one's moneys worth. We can boast to our friends that we paid a little more to be upgraded from a sparse little "cabin" to a less sparse little "stateroom." Another confusing term is "setting sail." There are actually no sails on most modern cruise ships.
Jan and I boarded the ms Oosterdam at the port of San Diego on Saturday 6th January. This beautiful ship is named, in Dutch, for the eastern compass point. It is 950 feet long from the pointy end to the blunt end and 106 feet wide. It carries up to 1,848 guests and 800 crew. We had sailed on a Holland America ship several years ago and it was a great experience. The Oosterdam was officially christened in 2003 by Her Dutch Royal Highness, Princess Margriet of the Netherlands. We figured HDRH would not have christened this 'vessel' (another nautical term for 'ship') if she hadn't been pretty impressed with it, so we were confident in our selection.
After passing through a very efficient and friendly registration and immigration process we boarded the ship and were shown to our "stateroom" abaft on the starboard side, upper verandah deck. It was a pretty cool stateroom with a private veranda, indoor plumbing, and TV. We even had a telephone that we could use to call home at a mere $7.50 per minute. Being abaft on level 6 put us conveniently close to one of 14 elevators that could whisk us up to level 9, where the aft pool and Lido Restaurant were located. Or we could whisk ourselves down to either the 2nd or 3rd level restaurants or the promenade deck. Three circuits of the promenade deck is equivalent to a mile.
I should mention that the 24 hour ice cream bar was located amidships on level 9 in the Lido Restaurant. There was one on the starboard and one on the port side. We learned that the ice cream bar actually closed at midnight and opened at 6 a.m., so technically it was only an 18 hour facility. We managed to hide our disappointment at this discovery. When the soft serve frozen yogurt machine on the port side was not operating the long lines of passengers (or "guests") would form up on the starboard side, giving the ship a slight list to starboard.
As the sun began to set on our first evening aboard, we hung around the aft pool deck and enjoyed the beautiful scenery of the bay and the downtown San Diego skyline. The sky was clear and it was not snowing. Seagulls adorned the ships railings and one even took a dip in the pool. The orange colored sky reflected off of the tall city buildings as we embarked on our journey to the Mexican Riviera. San Diego's latitude is only 32 deg. 42 min. North of the equator, not enough adjustment.
Next: Chapter 2 describes El Arco and goes a little "Animal Planet." |
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