« Mesquite and Laughlin | Main | Spain is Lost »
The Rock and The Monkeys
By Milt Abel | November 15, 2011
| November 15, 2011The Rock and The Monkeys
Rain kept me from seeing the monkeys of Gibraltar. They’re also called Barbary apes, but ‘apes’ sound big and scary, while ‘monkeys’ sound like they could be leashed to an organ grinder; attached a gorilla to an organ grinder and it’ll be the chap with the handlebar mustache doing the tricks for tips. So I’ll use the term monkey.
I’m aboard the Holland America Maasdam, riding along on days 13 through 22 of a 45 day cruise. This “Atlantic Adventure Cruise” began in Ft. Lauderdale, October 28 and will end when the ship returns December 12. I joined November 9 in the port city of Tenerife on the Canary Islands and had quite a scare when I flew in.
I left my house at 4AM on November 8th and three flights and 36 hours later (only 28 hours if you subtract the time zone changes) the plane is banking into its approach to land in Tenerife and I can see a cruise ship steaming out of the harbor. I usually don’t sit by a window, but just for drama’s sake I was sat next to one, and almost as an effort to be mean, the plane tipped its wing so I could clearly make out the Holland America colors and logo on the ship that was leaving -as I was still in the plane.
It happens. Mistakes are made. Holland America has fifteen ships, two to four guest entertainers continually joining here and there, leaving here and there, while traipsing all over the world. It’s a lot of complicated logistics. One time I arrived at the airport in St Marteen only to find the airline’s ticket counter was closed, in the middle of the day, because they didn’t fly on Tuesdays, my return ticket was booked for a month later than the day I was there. (That was Princess, not Holland)
Would you believe there were two Holland America ships in Tenerife that day? Tenerife isn’t exactly Miami, where cruise ships are hanging around like day-laborers near a Home Depot. This is an exotic port in the Canary Islands. But there were two ships, which I didn’t believe until I actually saw it from my transport’s seat -which was late picking me up. I get out of the luggage area and there’s no one to pick me up (of course, because the ship has already left!) but you play it until the end, working and reworking your excuse of why you missed the ship. In this case it was pretty much “I just went to where to told me to go, when I was supposed to be there.” But the thought of more traveling after a day and a half… It turns out there was a ship’s contractor with the last name Martin, and that’s close enough to Milton for 90 percent of the taxi drivers in the Canary Islands, so off they went. You try and not be high-maintenance and stressed as a traveler, but sometimes its hard.
Our first stop after Tenerife was Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. There was a lovely seaside walk that went on for miles and I walked most of them. Here’s a photo looking back on the walk.
I spent a good part of that morning trying to find a wifi connection, which is pronounced ‘weefee’ in the Canary Islands and Spain. I’d walk into a cafe’ and ask a single word, ‘weefee?’ I felt like I was looking for a lost poodle.
We had another stop in the Canary Islands, which I missed exploring, on the whole, because I was resetting my Circadian clock. I’m still adjusting it, a week into my stay in Europe. The next day the ship was at sea, then we stopped at Casablanca, Morocco.
I know it sounds romantic and glamorous, Casablanca, but they’ve added a lot of shipping containers and poverty since Bogart and Bergman were stomping around the casbah. I performed that night and the general assessment from the audience about the day’s port was “bleh.” Even after adding color, the general impression of the city named after the beloved movie (or is it the other way around?) was that it was a washout.
The next stop was Gibraltar. I was anxious to try and approach a monkey. I was warned they would grab anything lose and throw it down The Rock; glasses, hats, cameras, anything they could grab. They hang out in the upper portions of the Rock of Gibraltar and it calls for a tram ride to get up there. I’m always on a budget, and I love to walk, so it was my plan to walk as far up The Rock as I could and hopefully encounter one of the monkey while I wrapped my arms around myself in an anti-theft embrace. But it rained heavily and I never got far. I strolled around the base, wading through the rain puddles and broken cameras and glasses.
TweetTopics: comedy, cruise ship, humor, travel | No Comments »