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Azamara Journey
By Milt Abel | January 5, 2011
| January 5, 2011Azamara Journey and the Mexican Rivera
“Ultimately we are responsible for our own joy or sorrow on this planet. Other planets… I don’t know about. I hope its easier elsewhere. But not way easier. That would make this place a little sadder.”
I wrote that joke this morning and I wonder if I will ever tell it onstage. It’s funny to me, but you never know how something like that will go over. It’s January 4th and I’m on the Azamara Journey as it sails between our ports-of-call Acapulco on January 3 and Cabo San Lucas January 5.
I boarded the Journey in Puntarenas, Costa Rica for a nine day cruise up the Pacific coastline to San Diego, December 30 through January 8. I performed the night after I got on board, New Year’s Eve night, December 31, and the show went poorly. I just didn’t connect, we got some laughs here and there, but the show was a unanimous failure and there has been no escape from the passengers on this very small ship since that show.
I’m not sure who is avoiding the eye contact, them or me, but only one person has paid me a compliment since the show four nights ago, and I wonder if someone dared her to do it. “Go on, give him a compliment. See if he believes you. You used to do some acting in high school, here’s your chance to do some again.”
I don’t want to beat myself up over this, but I will share that I feel like a house guest who knocked over a priceless Ming vase the second he walked in and threw off his overcoat. Everyone is nice, but there is seems to be an unspoken wish among all I pass that we all would have been better off if I had never shown up. Sort of a perverted version of Jimmy Stewart’s ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ where in my story the ship, without me ever being here, is a little happier and there is no single Mr. Potter character -that laugh-less unhappy senior, there’s a few hundred of them. Only four more days.
I can’t say enough nice things about the ship itself. Azamara has two ships; the Journey and the Quest, and this is my second booking on the Journey. A year and a half ago I went through parts of Scandinavia, Northern Europe, and Russia on this ship, and I don’t remember it being this nice. Exceptional food and service. And excellent house wine and bottled water flow without charge and the entertainment… well, that’s not consistent. I would recommend cruising Azamara quickly and sincerely should anyone ask…
Yesterday, as I walked around Acapulco looking for a cafe to do my internet, I mistakenly engaged in conversation a local man who may have been my age, or several years younger -it really depended on how hard his life had been. He approached, waving a laminated card suspended from his neck that made him look semi-official; a public service for the confused tourist. He asked if I needed any help and I replied that I was looking for an internet cafe and without another syllable between us he started briskly walking and waving for me to follow.
After a minute or so of trying to cross the heavy traffic, and a rapid exchange of simple and haltingly translated questions and answers, I realized that anybody can laminate a card and hang it from their neck. I wasn’t going to stop in my tracks and say, “Let me see that card again,” because that would have caused more problems than it solved. But they guy wasn’t being any real help and I knew the only way to shake his barnacle- like attachment would be give him a tip and thank him for his ‘help.’
I fished out a Mexican coin I pocketed during the Journey’s stop in Hualtalco and began squinting at it, without my reading classes I couldn’t recognize its value. “About eighty cents,” he volunteered. To remove him without surgery, the coin would be a bargain. I gave it to him, thanked him, and though I was nowhere near an internet cafe, I still figured I accomplished something. Commerce in Mexico.
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