Scuba dive

Well, I don't really believe it myself but I did my first scuba dive today. I have never done anything of that sort before and in fact I am not even a confident swimmer. I had been very apprehensive about the whole thing, especially the idea of breathing under water, ever since my son Ken and his fiance Estelle suggested that I really should try it while I am here in the British Virgin Islands.  But it turned out to be much easier than I  had thought. I had an excellent and very patient instructor, which certainly helped. The experience of being suspended in another world of vivid colour and strange shaped creatures is all that they said it would be. I was also rather pleased that of the 6 beginners on the trip only me and one other young man managed to do the dive, even though the others were far younger than me. I guess my competitive spirit has not retired yet. Pictures....

Lynn on dive boat at Pelican Island, BVI

Triumph!

Merry Christmas--belated because of stolen laptop

Merry Christmas.

Sorry I didn't make this entry before Christmas but my laptop was stolen in San Juan airport. That was the crowning touch to a horrible journey (about which the less said the better) after leaving the lovely Crystal Serenity in Miami . However I am now in Tortola, British Virgin Islands,and have a new laptop.I have figured it out sufficiently to do this entry.

As has become my habit, the last few days have been spent eating and drinking (do they charge extra for overweight passengers, I wonder?)  Less usually, I have been doing quite a bit of that eating and drinking on the beach. Here are a few photos from Tortola, British Virgin Islands, but not much more news to report. I'm having my first scuba diving on Wednesday, and I am very apprehensive.  I'll report on that if I survive.

Christmas Eve beach barbeque, Brewer's Bay, Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Christmas dinner on the balcony

Ken (my son) and his fiance Estelle

View from the balcony over salt ponds and  Josiah's Bay, Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Best wishes to all.

St Martin, Abramovich, and food

This is the last day of our trans-Atlantic cruise and we dock in Miami tomorrow, from where I will fly to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands for Christmas with my son and his fiance.

We visited the Caribbean island of St Martin/St Maarten a couple of days ago. The island is only 37 square miles but is made up of two separate territories, one Dutch and the other French. They have peacefully co-existed since 1648--is there some sort of lesson in that?

The cruise terminal in St Martin holds up to 6 giant cruise ships at a time---our ship is dwarfed by these floating bee hives--ugh, not for me! However there were not only cruise ships in port that day but also Roman Abramovich's yacht, Eclipse,  the largest in the world (naturally!) at 536 feet with two helicopter pads, 70 crew, a mini-submarine and a missile defence system as well as your usual celebrity bullet proof glass and paparazzi repelling system.

Here are some pictures.

Our ship, the Crystal Serenity in St Martin

Maintenance never stops

Street scene in Marigot, St Martin--note the menu

Street Scene in Marigot, the main town of the French side of St Martin

The pool deck at sunset

Rush hour at the cruise terminal



Another day, another buffet



Roman Abramovich's yacht, Eclipse, in St Martin

Update on our rescue at sea

We now know a bit more about the two rowers we picked up in the middle of the night. They are two 23 year old young men who were participating in a rowing race across the Atlantic.  The cruise director has interviewed them and the interview has been shown on our onboard TV. Dressed in their new Ralph Lauren outfits supplied by the shipboard boutique they explained graphically the freak wave which capsized them and their struggle to free the tiny life raft which was caught underneath the overturned boat and then drifting for 10 hours in the dark with no way of knowing if their distress beacon was working. When asked if they thought they were going to die, both said no----ah, youth!

One is English and the other is Dutch born but both privately educated in England at an international outward bound school and then at Edinburgh University, both very good looking, articulate, and well-brought-up. They are being lionised by everyone on board. A PR god-send for Crystal Cruises--the story has gained international coverage and a movie is being talked about. you couldn't have made up a better script. Imagine, though, if they had been two 55-year-old Kazakh-speaking stevedores! Or if the first ship on the scene to rescue them had been a Venezuelan oil tanker!

Our days are passing in a haze of too much food and drink and too little exercise. Tomorrow after five days at sea we reach St Martin. 

Tenerife--and Rescue at Sea!!!

Tenerife

I have never wanted to visit Tenerife or the other Canary Islands, since I associated them with cheap English and German package holidays. I am sure there is that aspect to them but not where I went! It is hard to believe that Tenerife is only a few hundred miles off the African coast---it is a purely European island in aspect and population. It has benefited enormously from having shed-loads of EU money lavished on it. Our ship's tour took us up Mount Teide, the classically-shaped volcano which covers the centre of Tenerife,  on a butter-smooth, beautifully graded tarmac road which rises from sea level to over 2000 meters in an easy one and a half hour drive.

Here are a few things I didn't know about Tenerife--did you? It lies just south of one of the four cold water currents in the world. Not only does this cold water current keep the temperature a spring-like 22 degrees year-round despite the Canaries being in the tropics, but it also is the current which the explorers going to the Americas used to carry them across the Atlantic. Ships still follow this route.

Another interesting fact is that despite having almost no rainfall and no natural rivers or lakes, Tenerife (at least the northern half) is green and fertile. How? The lower slopes of Mount Teide are covered with a luxurious forest of long-needled pines. Because of the aforementioned cold water current passing through a tropical latitude, clouds form around the island frequently. Because Mount Teide is over 3700 meters high, its peak is above the clouds and the tree line. So the pine trees on its lower slopes are shrouded in clouds a lot of the time. The long needles cause the water in the clouds to condense and run down the trunks of the trees where it soaks into the porous volcanic soil and hey presto: underground reservoirs of abundant water to nourish the banana plantations and vineyards and tourist hotels! Magic!
The upper slopes of Mount Teide are a true moonscape of weird lava formations--true "badlands". This has not escaped the notice of film-makers over the years and many a movie has been shot here--remember the first Planet of the Apes? The terrain was also of interest to space agencies who have determined that it is the closest to a moon-like landscape on earth and so they have tested their moon-buggies and equipment there.

---and Rescue at Sea!

And so what about this rescue at sea, you ask? Well, it was pretty rough weather last night and even our big ship with its stabilisers was juddering and jerking during the night. When I awoke this morning and checked our route I saw that we had made a sharp turn to port and gone about 100 miles off our course. All was explained by the captain in his morning briefing. At about 10 last night the ship had received a message from the maritime authorities that two men who had been trying to row across the Atlantic (as one does,of course, in December!) had capsized and we were the nearest ship to them. So we changed course and went to their rescue. They were finally found at 4 am adrift in a tiny life raft and brought on board. I expect they thought they had died and gone to heaven--seeing a huge luxury cruise liner appear out of the darkness as they were saying their final prayers, and being gathered up into six star luxury to finish their journey to the Americas in style!

Next

I will not be doing any more posts for a few days--not much to tell you about being at sea : just eating lobster and caviar and drinking fine wines and watching first class shows and listening to excellent lecturers. Ho hum.

Casablanca




Casablanca. 

Who doesn't have an image of Casablanca either from the Marx brothers movie or
more likely from the Ingrid Bergman/Humphrey Bogart movie? Unsurprisingly the image is a
Hollywood one--both movies were shot on movie lots in California--although inevitably
someone has set up a Rick's Cafe in Casablanca. Casablanca is a really huge modern
commericial port. Although I was aware of the significance of the North African ports in the
Second World War, I had no idea that that signficance extended back over the centuries. You
have probably heard the US Marines song with the lines "From the halls of Montezuma to the
shores of Tripoli"? In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century the Barbary (Berber)
pirates sailing out of the north African ports wreaked havoc with the sea trade routes of
the new United States of America. At one point the US was paying 20% of its budget as
tribute and ransom to the pirates, until the infant US navy with "Old Ironsides" put a stop
to it. (When Will they do so with the latter day pirates of Somalia?). One couldn't say that
Casablanca is especially atmospheric. It seems to be basically a 1920's 1930's city--lots of
fine but decaying Art Deco 1930's buildings.It has all the usual decrepitude and grime of a
third world city, but I have certainly seen worse. I was actually rather pleasantly
surprised since I thought I might see signs of revolutionary tension or incipient Islamic
militancy, given the Arab spring uprisings of the past year. But it seemed quite relaxed
--you see more burkas in Harrods than in Casablanca, and I saw no military or police
presence. People seem relaxed and confident and there was no sign of real poverty where I
went (and I did wander by myself into the neighbourhoods and street markets and no one paid
me the slightest attention).The apartment buildings bristle with satellite dishes protruding
from every roof, window and balcony. Casablanca is inordinately proud of its Grand Mosque
Hassan II--and it is huge, built over 7 years from 1986 to 1993. All the statistics are
proudly trotted out--tallest minaret in the world, second largest mosque after Mecca etc
etc. I preferred the neighbourhoods-- and the food markets. Apparently the land around
Casablanca is very fertile and the markets are full of lovely fruits and flowers, fish and
meats. Of course one day is not enough to even begin to understand a place and Casablanca is
certainly not a city one would make a special trip to see,but I was pleasantly surprised by
it as a place where people seem to lead normal and relatively untroubled lives.

Port of Casablanca

Grand Mosque Hassan II,Casablanca

Interior of Grand Mosque

Local market, Casablanca

Lynn in front of Palace Harem door

Yes, "Rick's Cafe".

Street scenes, Casablanca

Note the satellite dishes!

And so what about the ship, the Crystal Serenity? It is really rather pleasant to be cocooned in cotton wool for a few days a chance to reflect and maybe relax (I'm not very good at that I am afraid. Must
try harder to relax!). The food is superb and the company quite civilised. A very pleasant
and cost effective way to cross the ocean if you have the time--like me :). Tomorrow is
Tenerife, another place I haven't been. I'm going to see the volcano, not to the beach!

London--Lisbon

I started my travels in East London ---appropriately enough since it was from East London that Britain's mercantile empire was run for hundreds of years with ships coming and going to the far corners of Empire. After its many years of decline and its destruction during the last world war its regeneration is beginning with the Olympic Games next year.
I went on one of the daily walks run by Blue Badge guides ( from Bromley by Bow station at 11 am every day if you are interested-- http://www.tourguides2012.co.uk/tours.php) which starts with a visit to one of the old mills which supplied grain to feed London and provide its beer and which dotted the whole area in the 1700 and 1800s.

mill built 1762. East London



 The walk then passes through the areas which have begun to recover, with the impetus given by the Olympic infrastructure money, and then visits the perimeter of the 250 acre Olympic site with the huge new Westfield shopping centre beyond. Apparently the Olympic bid was won not only on the strength of the promises to regenerate East London but also to observe the best environmentally friendly practices in building. And so there are new locks on the cleaned-up canals which crisscross the whole area (I didn't know there was so many in east London!) since the Olympic bid promised that 50% of all goods moving to the site would be transported by rail or water rather than road. And the various stadia on the site are heated and lit by a specially constructed biomass heating plant. Even the Olympic Stadium itself is constructed in part from used pipes from the north of England! Really very impressive even for a environment sceptic like me.

My first stop from London is Lisbon. I first visited a couple of times in the 1980s even before it joined the EU, but not since. Then, I was charmed by its tiny shops in the Baixa and Chiado each specialising in its own handiwork--buttons, gloves, lace tablecloths--and the black and white patterned cobbles of the squares and pavements, the colourful azulejos tiles on the walls of the houses, the Castelo Sao Jorge, the single carriage trams, the funiculars to take you up and down the hills, and the ancient Alfama district . But one of the benefits of revisiting places after a long time is that you can see it all again, but the times will have moved on and the place will be different and you will be different so you will see it all differently.

the 28 tram

Much in Lisbon is still the same but not everything and not all change is for the better. Many many more cars clogging the streets (although Smart cars abound). And mobile phones at every ear. You do not need to speak Portuguese to know that they are saying "Hello it's me. I'm on a train/bus/tram...".   But the trams are still there clanging through the narrow streets.

The Alfama is much the same--steep stairways winding right and left down the slope of the steep hillside between the humble crumbling houses and churches. Tiny alleys, tiny doorways opening into tiny bars, cafes, and greengrocers. Washing hanging from the little balconies, canaries singing in their cages, men smoking, women gossiping, lazy cats sunning themselves. Everyone ignoring the oggling tourists and their cameras.

It strikes me as remarkable that every continental European city has a similar --what shall I call it --aura whether it is in  Spain or Italy or Belgium or France, quite different from any UK city. Is it the grand boulevards, the self-important statues, the cobbled streets and pavements, the tiled roofs? or is it the pastel-washed crumbling plaster of the town-house walls, or the iron balconies? But you will find some or all of those in UK cities too. But somehow you can always tell that you are on the Continent.



the medieval Se



The Praca do Comercio--the main square

view over the Rossio with the Castelo on the hill

Times seem hard in Portugal--it shows all the signs of recession and financial crisis that I noticed in Dublin a few weeks ago. My old favourite restaurant Tavares, still beautiful but empty. The designer shops which line the Avenida da Liberdade see very little footfall. Plenty of beggars and homeless. Few tourists. But the ladies are still elegantly dressed, the sun shines, the Tagus is blue, the palm trees and tamarind trees are green and the medieval cathdral  and the Castelo Sao Jorge still preside with dignity over it all.

Tavares Restaurant--200 years in business

The Se presides over Lisbon

Monastery of Geronimus

Belem Tower



Lisbon from the Castelo ramparts



Leaving London and the practice of law

Hello. Glad you found your way here. This is the first of my posts as I prepare for my "retirement" (horrible word) from Dewey & LeBoeuf after 34 years practising corporate law in Canada and the UK.

I have always travelled widely--the Trans-Siberian railway by steam train in Soviet times, from Wadi Halfa to Khartoum in Sudan in a sandstorm, watching whales in both Antarctica and the Arctic, to name only a very few of my adventures to date.

I plan to travel for most of the next 2 years, and thereafter as long as I am able. I start off by ship from Lisbon to Miami, then the British Virgin Islands for Christmas, followed by two and a half weeks driving throughout Cuba, a week in Puerto Rico, a month in Buenos Aires. Then meandering across Argentina and Chile by land. Easter Island and the Atacama desert.

Back to London for the Olympics then back down to where I left off in South America, and so on for the rest of 2012. 2013 will begin with another trip to Antarctica this time from Tasmania or New Zealand, then the Kimberley Coast in Australia and Papua and New Guinea.....

I will include pictures of course and as a taster here are the photos shown at my retirement celebration on 1 December, showing some of my travels over the past 4 or 5 years.Follow the link (the colour is not as good as the original photos and some slides do not display in full and the movement is annoying, but you get the idea....)

http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4d6a67774e7a49344e4446384e6a4d784e5459774e7a493d0d0a&sb=1

I hope you enjoy the ride with me.

Lynn