Day 2: At Sea.
I can’t believe how much I slept, the weird couple at the dinner table must have slipped something in my wine, or maybe there was something in the revolting orange and apple soup that they mistakenly served me.
Whatever the case, I woke up at 10:30, which was effectively 9:30 as we had moved our clocks forward an hour to take the time zone into account.
Food is served all day long here, and considering that, I’m surprised that there aren’t more of the overly obese Yanks that you tend to see so much of. Still, there’s plenty of time for that to happen. Maybe this is where fat Americans are created, on a floating Calorie farm in the Pacific Ocean.
It’s easy to get disoriented when you’re at sea and on such a huge ship, even for an experienced Mariner like myself (I once owned an inflatable Dinghy on holiday in Malta, when I was aged 4). I woke up, looked out of the cabin window and said to Amy, Wow, with the effect of the water turbulence, it feels like we’re going sideways. “No sweetie”, she replied, “we’re at the Butt of the boat”, and so we were...Doh!
We stepped out for breakfast as I was still waking up and joined the line of people spoiled for choice as to their brekky. I decided to have some scrambled eggs and bacon, and some fresh fruit. Amy thought the scrambled eggs were cheese potatoes, but then she’s not very bright.
We went downstairs and I logged on to the internet, only to find Dom being his usual facetious little self on the DD forum, but put it down to immense jealousy and carried on regardless. we checked out the cigarettes, which worked out at an unbelievable eight quid for 200. I haven’t made my mind up yet whether to bring any back, as I’ll get taxed on them if I get searched and it might not be worthwhile. Whatever, I don’t smoke anyway.
After a difficult bit of self motivation, we went to the gym. It seemed just like normal, as there was the same equipment that i use at home. The weirder thing, was that when i’m using the cross trainers in my local gym, the swimming pool is directly below and in front of me through the glass windows. The swimming pool was somewhat larger this time, and contained whales and dolphins. It didn’t seem quite right that I was moving in a forwards motion, but that the vessel was plowing along to the left. Very Odd.
We went to dinner again (this time it was formal night and time to dress like gangsters!), and sure enough, we were seated next to the dull couple again. We had already devised a cunning plan to amuse ourselves by pretending to be Alpaca farmers, and listing a host of disgusting facts about these camel/llama looking critters, including the fact that their hooves were used in the very desert that one or both of them might be eating. Tragically, they both came out of their shells and proved to be decent enough, if not scintillating characters. Therefore, the Alpaca story was put on hold.
We got a little toasted and had our pictures taken by a South African photographer who was a pretty cool guy, and seemed to know what he was doing..to the point of arranging us so that you couldn’t see where Amy had spilled salmon down her dress, the klutz.
We retired to the cabin to catch some zeds, but were awoken at around 1 am by what surely must have been the back of the boat disintegrating. We absolutely shat ourselves, but I have to say that I was out of bed so fast and ready to get into a life jacket, that my previously awful practice attempt at saving my own skin seemed like a distant memory. After half an hour or so, our heart rates slowed below 150 and we managed to get to sleep, after all, there were dolphins awaiting our arrival in Cabo San Lucas in a few hours time.