I looked forward to and enjoyed seven sea days in a row—a time of relaxing before we go back to visiting ports with a sea day or two in between.  It will also be our last intensive bridge lessons and playing.

Tuesday was Africa night in the Ocean Café.  The crew and some passengers were dressed in African finery—for the passengers that meant a lot of beaded neck pieces from South Africa; for the crew mostly Namibian headdresses and dashikis.  I meant to wear one of the Indian tops I acquired in Durban, since, after all, there are many Indians in South Africa (thus, Indian tops for sale), but I forgot and didn’t feel like changing so I was in a Polynesian top.  They had kudu steaks, ostrich, and many other items.  I stuck to beef and soup—unadventurous me.

Wednesday I went to a crafts session to make potholders, but I’d missed the first of the three-day workshop and all the kits were gone.  I’d thought it might be something I could do with our granddaughters this summer, but it was, of course, all hand sewing and very fiddly.  I’m told the next project is glasses cases made from men’s ties so maybe I’ll see about doing that. 

A marvelous classical guitarist played for the Atrium concert in the late afternoon.

In the evening we dined at the Chef’s Table.  This restaurant serves set five-course meals, four of which are paired with wines.  The menus have themes and they change menu every few days, rotating among 5 or so themes.  Tonight was ostensibly California cuisine; it’s a menu we’ve had before but I like it.  The ‘amuse bouche’ was a sweet potato chip with various additions paired with a German Riesling (very nice).  It was followed by a crab cake paired with Donnafugata Anthilia from Sicily (both also very good).  The ‘palate cleanser’ was called a Moscow mule and based on the drink of the same name; all of the palate cleansers seem to be frozen slushes and I’ve liked all of them, but this is my favorite.  The main course was halibut paired with Nederburg Pinotage from South Africa, a red I didn’t care for at all; nor would I pair halibut with a red—but I prefer whites in general.  Desert was a delightful mandarin parfait paired with “Domaine de Montgilet, Coteaux de l’Aubance, Chinin Blanc, France” a very nice desert wine.  All in all, we enjoy eating here—it forces us to eat slowly and savor our food and it’s good food.

Thursday is Anzac Day (April 25) and we had a celebration service this morning.  It is the 104^th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli.  We have many Australians on board and some New Zealanders, but the service was intended to more broadly celebrate all who have, and continue to, serve “that the world may be a nobler place in which to live.”  Heather asked those who had been in any armed forces to stand, and a majority, I think, of the men stood.  It was an exceedingly moving service—complete with poppies for us to wear. 

Our shipboard pianist, Joram from the Philippines and our classical cellist, Oxana from Russia played in another wonderful Atrium afternoon concert.  We were told there will be Atrium concerts most every afternoon.

Friday’s highlights include reaching “Null Island” and crossing the equator.  They even have a silly Viking ceremony for crossing the equator that involves funny costumes and walking through the pool.  And we get a certificate saying we crossed the equator…

“Null Island” — A Conundrum. Today around 3 p.m. Viking Sun passed a “National Data Buoy Centre weather buoy Station” that is located off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, at 0^o latitude and 0^o E longitude. (Actually, the ship deviated significantly from the shortest distance route between Namibia and Senegal to bring us abreast of the buoy.)  The buoy is known as Null and is the geographical point where the Equator intersects the Prime Meridian, which passes through Greenwich, England.  There is no terrestrial “island” at this location, which functions as a reference point from which other navigational measurements are made.  Only a 1 square meter buoy.  No mystery here!

     The Viking Sun deliberately passed near this location in order for those passengers and crew who had not previously crossed the equator (so-called “pollywogs”) could be initiated in some sort of arcane nautical ritual.  No mystery there, either!  The conundrum, if one exists, is this: because the sea floor lies about 16,000 feet beneath the buoy, is the buoy or its very deep anchor located at true Null?  And either way, how was the anchor positioned so precisely?  Or is it? —Chris

Saturday

We have been doing well in bridge—coming in first or tied for first the past few days.  Since we’ve also been making mistakes, we haven’t quite figured out how it happens, but we’re enjoying the moment—we’ll go back down to the bottom again I’m sure.

We’ve both enjoyed doing a lot of reading this trip.  Chris reads fiction and non-fiction; I read mostly mysteries but have managed to branch out at least into historical fiction and a little non-fiction.  My favorite books (both sort of mysteries) thus far, besides The Library Book by Susan Orlean which I mentioned in an earlier post (and is non-fiction), are:

The Huntress by Kate Quinn (which takes place during and after WWII with a main character as a female Russian pilot which is very interesting in itself) and

Every Secret Thing by Susanna Kearsley (which takes place in the present but involves unraveling something that began in WWII)

Both are mysteries in their own way.  I’ve never read anything by either author before, but I certainly will find more now!  I’ve also recently enjoyed two novels by Chris Bohjalian: The Sandcastle girls (about Armenia going back and forth between today and WWI), and The Light in the Ruins (WWII in Italy and today).  There seem to be common themes of the world wars and going back and forth in time from then until now.

Sunday brought our second to last onboard church service, which makes me sad—I’d join Heather’s church any time! 

During lunch at the World Café, a large pod of dolphins appeared.  People gathered at the window and clapped and cheered.  Almost as if they heard us, the dolphins seemed to be putting on a performance for us, jumping high out of the water and doing acrobatics.  I think that means they were spinner dolphins.  I’m glad to finally see dolphins so close!

For a grand finale to the day, we had an Atrium concert by Heather Clancy, cruise director and singer extraordinaire (as well as preacher extraordinaire), and Adam Johnson, pianist extraordinaire (originally from Minneapolis, an award-winning pianist, conductor, and composer).  Though the ship brings many singers on board including those with us for the entire world cruise, I don’t think any can match Heather’s voice.  That woman, apparently, can do everything!  The program included some songs from Kiss me Kate but mostly from opera and was fabulous.

Monday is our last of our long sequence of days at sea.  I see things rapidly accelerating (I hope I can keep up with the blogging) as we approach the end.  We have passed the ‘bight’ (or the Gulf of Guinea as the map says) and are closer to land, passing Liberia, Sierra Leone, and the Guineas on our way to Senegal.  Of course, we’re much too far out to see any land, though I did see some fishing boats so we can’t be too far.

I never expected Namibia to be one of the coldest places we stopped, but it was a chilly, foggy day when we arrived.  They had just received a large shipment of coal from South Africa and everyone walking on the pier picked up black soot on their shoes.  The ship put out cardboard, towels, and shallow water containers to walk on before boarding, but, even so, the cleaning crew had much work to do when we departed.

Walvis Bay seems to be on a flat area surrounded on three sides by sand dunes.  It is a nice-looking town with masonry houses surrounded by masonry walls.  The picture I included is of a rather posh house because the only place I was able to take pictures of houses was along the lagoon, which is high-priced real estate.  Though most of the houses are smaller with higher walls, they are similar—including usually nice gardens.  Some houses have thatched roofs (like the one in the photo)–our South African guide explained that thatched roofs are wonderful for keeping you warm in the winter and cool in t summer, but are expensive to maintain and also significantly boost your insurance premiums (because of the fear of fire; so do wooden houses.)  All in all it was a nice-looking town.

Walvis Bay remained a South African possession even after Namibia received its independence in 1990, but in 1994 after the election of Nelson Mandela, South Africa decided to focus on domestic concerns and allowed Walvis Bay to join Namibia. 

The west coast of Namibia (and stretching north into Angola and south into South Africa) is the Namib Desert, the only coastal desert in the world.  It is an amazing sight—cliffs of sand along the coast and inland dunes that can be almost 1000 feet high.   Since the eastern part of Namibia is the Kalahari Desert, only the central section is not desert.  Amazingly, animals, plants, and people have adapted to living in such a barren, dry environment.  It’s not just what you think of as desert animals; there are even desert lions.

Our excursion took us to the lagoon to see flamingos and pelicans and out to the amazing sand dunes.  Ship personnel dressed in Namibian & other African costume greeted us at the dunes with drinks and snacks.  The excursion manager had mentioned that he had climbed a dune and slid down on a piece of cardboard (and spent the next week getting sand out of…everyplace) but still people, including our captain, climbed to the top of the dunes and slid down.  It was hard going because the dunes are steep and made of very fine sand; they can move several meters in a week. We managed to resist the temptation to climb.

As we left, the guides and port personnel waved to us.

Now we begin our week-long trek to Dakar, Senegal across the great African bight (they don’t seem to call it that, but it looks like the Australian Bight but much larger.)

At 7:30 the Captain and Heather announced over the loudspeaker (the Captain because he’s in charge; Heather repeating because we can understand her…) that the sea was too rough for us to attempt our tendering ashore operation and was expected to get worse over the day (so, if we actually succeeded in getting ashore, we might not get back—not appealing).  The officials who were to board at 7:30 to process all passengers and crew for immigration had been unable to get aboard.  So our time in Luderitz was cancelled.

So we moved, as Heather said, from plan A to plan B to plan Sea.  Therefore, we had bridge lessons, games, and lectures.  I am always amazed at the flexibility of the lecturers (and instructors) because they never know what they are doing the next day until the Viking Daily arrives in their rooms after dinner.  And today, they didn’t know until the ‘revised’ Daily arrived after breakfast!  So they really need to be prepared ahead of time.

Namibia was German West Africa, and Luderitz is reported to be a town with some lovely German architecture.  Founded in the late 1800s  as a trading post, the shallow rock-bottomed bay is, says Wikipedia, unsuitable for modern ships (Viking ships have very shallow drafts) on the least hospitable coast of Africa (known as the skeleton coast and populated with shipwrecks.)  When diamonds were discovered in 1909 the town’s population and prosperity expanded, but after World War I the administration of the country came under the auspices of first the British Commonwealth and then South Africa, and many were deported.

Easter came early on board ship.  We celebrated Saturday morning since we are scheduled to be in port in Namibia on Sunday.  Since we had a Maundy Thursday service on Thursday and a Good Friday service on Friday, we had church services three days in a row—a compressed Holy Week.

The ship has really come to seem like home and many of the passengers (and staff) as family.  The services create a church family as well.

In the evening our room stewards delivered chocolate bunnies to our rooms.

April 18-19 Cape Town, South Africa

We returned our included tour tickets for the first day because, when we came here in June (never been two South Africa before in our lives and then we come to Cape Town twice in 10 months), we visited the places it was taking us and it ended at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront complex of shops and restaurants which we could get to via ship shuttle.  So we just took the shuttle and wandered around the complex. 

Yes, I typed correctly, it is Victoria & Alfred.  Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria, visited at age 16 as a Navy midshipman, making him the first royal to visit. 

Chris bought a replacement watchband and found a lovely hand-painted fabric table runner.  We had some lunch at the Food Warehouse— full of various food sellers—and visited the Watershed, an even larger warehouse comprised of many, many stalls—most of them of crafts.  On our last trip, we purchased several animals made of discarded flipflops by an enterprising and imaginative artist.  Apparently flipflops left on beaches are becoming a problem in the world’s oceans so he’s helping to address that as well.  We visited the shop again, but didn’t buy more.

The second day we took a 9-hour excursion to the Franchhoek Valley to taste wines and travel between wineries on a tram or train.  The first prestigious Cape Town wine region is the Stellenbosch Valley begun in the 17^th century by the Dutch.  When French Huguenots arrived also in the 17^th century, the Dutch East India Company didn’t want them settled with the Dutch in order to preserve the purity of the language (somehow that sounds more like a French posture than a Dutch one) so they settled them across some mountains in the next valley.  Franchhoek means French Corner (or French Quarter).  The French brought much skill in wine making and created their own prestigious Cape Town wine region.

Outside of the oddity and difficulty of beginning imbibing wine at 10:30 am, we enjoyed the day very much.  I was concerned at the first vineyard (Holden Manz) where I didn’t like the wines, we were out in the sun, glasses were reused, no water was provided, and the hour the tram was allotting us there seemed about ½ hour too long.  Fortunately, the second vineyard (La Bougogne Farm; the wine labels say GML: Mayer Family Wines) was excellent and paired their wines with chocolate caramels infused with the type of wine to be tasted.  The third vineyard (La Couronne) was also good and paired the wines with chocolate; they also grew olives and you could do olive oil tasting paired with pizza and with nuts and such.  

Finally, at the fourth winery (Grande Provence), we had a wonderful French picnic lunch.  The lunch came in traditional wicker picnic baskets for two containing a full bottle of wine, baguettes, meats & cheeses, fruit, salad, nuts, olives, and brownies and was held at picnic tables in a lovely garden.  Idyllic—and then just as we were ready to leave the temperature dropped significantly, the wind picked up, and the rain threatened.  It’s hard to begrudge them the rain since they are still in drought (they hope this winter will provide the needed rain) but it seemed like South Africa was saying goodbye to us.

The day would have been better if lunch came between vineyards one and two rather than at the end, but it was a very good day.  Back in port we moved rapidly through passport control (required on our leaving the country as it was when we arrived in Durban), in queue to register the items we’d purchased for VAT refund, and on to Good Friday service, before dinner–a long, busy day.

I’d say ‘rounding the Cape of Good Hope’ but it turns out the Cape of Good Hope is not the southernmost point of Africa, Cape Agulhas miles to the southeast is.  Indeed, the Cape of Good Hope is not even the southernmost point of the Cape of Good Hope Peninsula; rather that is the nearby Cape Point .  Nonetheless this whole area is the southern end of Africa and where the warmer Indian Ocean meets the colder Atlantic Ocean, resulting in some turbulence which we are feeling today—though I’m told it is often much worse.

We heard an excellent lecture this afternoon by Edward Lynch, Professor of Political Science at Hollins University—where former Middlebury chemistry professor  Maggie O’Brien was President in the early 1990s—on the political history of South Africa since the iconic Nelson Mandela, and it was an excellent lecture.  I look forward to more lectures by him. 

Something Prof. Lynch said reminded me to include in this blog something one of our guides yesterday mentioned when questioned.  Southern South Africa has been under great drought for the past few years—Cape Town almost ran entirely out of water a year or so ago.  It is better now, Prof. Lynch said, partly because of rain farther north in Africa where the rivers begin and partly because of strict water use regulations.  Our guide said many now have cisterns to collect rain water.  The water she collects she uses to run her shower and washing machine; the water she retrieves from those uses is for flushing her toilet. –Cynthia

Convergence of Oceans, Atlantic and Indian.  We passed Cape Horn on the way to Cape Town, raising among some a  “concern” about exactly where the two oceans meet.  With a modern map in hand, they definitely do not meet at the Cape of Good Hope or even at Cape Point, an extension of the continent several miles SE of the Cape.  Rather, the southernmost land mass of the continent occurs at Cape Agulhas SE of the Cape of Good Hope.

     All of this may seem like geographical picking of nits. But the meeting of the warm Indian Ocean with the much colder Atlantic Ocean has both ecological and hydrological significance.  Extensive Atlantic cold water kelp beds extend eastwards from Cape Point and end abruptly at Cape Agulhas.  Moreover, the mixing of the colder and warmer waters often produces surface turbulence, which as Cynthia has indicated the Viking Sun did not experience. –Chris

Settled by the British, Port Elizabeth—known as ‘the windy city,’ ‘the friendly city,’ and ‘PE’ for short—is a much more attractive, well-kept city than East London or Durban.  We are told that many South Africans from the Johannesburg area have summer homes in or near Port Elizabeth and many then retire to this area (which fits with our tour guide in East London.) 

The backbone of the ‘PE’ economy is car production, and in the port area were hundreds, possibly thousands, of cars awaiting export.

Despite our predilection toward ‘PE,’ our tours were unsatisfying.  “A history of mohair in South Africa’ took us to Mohair South Africa, a non-profit representing workers and mohair industry workers.  Mohair is made from the fleece of angora goats who came to the region when a Turkish sultan made a present of several neutered males and one female, not realizing the female was pregnant.  The goats thrived in the environment and an industry was born.  South Africa produces 50% of the world’s mohair and processes about 80%–meaning other mohair producers send raw wool to South Africa for processing.  The organization we visited is active in assisting black farmers to enter the angora goat/mohair industry as well as working on the processing side.  Nonetheless, we didn’t really learn a lot we hadn’t learned in shipboard talks and they didn’t really have much of a retail presence. 

The included bus tour was lackluster as well; we went by early buildings, the university and adjacent preserve (where animals showed prudence in not appearing with all the busloads of tourists and students milling around), and the soccer stadium constructed for the 2010 World Cup.

However, it was another beautiful day and felt much warmer than the actual high 60s temperatures.  We missed lunch due to lack of time between tours so indulged in afternoon tea—a wonderful presentation of teas, tea sandwiches, small sweets, and wonderful scones—which we normally avoid since we really don’t need 5 meals a day.

East London and Port Elizabeth (where we will be tomorrow) are in the East Cape, south of Kwa-Zulu Natal where Durban is located.  While Durban has the largest population of Indians in the world outside of India, the East Cape has the highest percentage of blacks of any South African state because, unlike the West Cape (where Capetown is) the tribes were not pushed out; it is also the poorest state—and one of the most beautiful.  Though the Indian Ocean is warmer than the Atlantic, at least where we’ve seen it, the surf is pretty fierce for swimming. 

A large portion of the early white settlers were Germans, whom the British government recruited to settle and farm so many of the town names are German.  East London is a city of a million with a catchment region of about 5 million, but it seems small.  I think, as in Ethiopia, poor people live in such small spaces, the density is much greater than that of a western city.

Our included tour was led by a pleasant woman who worked for an international electrical engineering company in Johannesburg and decided, in retirement, to go back to school for her tour guide certification (she said she’d put together and guided tours for friends and the international visitors to her company) and move away from the city. 

We spent most of our time at the local museum of culture and natural history.  Not only is there the preserved body of a fish caught in 1939 and previously thought to have been extinct for 65,000 years (which Chris discusses in his section below), but also possibly the earliest human footprints which were found locally preserved in the shale, and a replica of a dodo and the very real dodo egg owned by the museum. The dodo is the national bird of Mauritius although it has been extinct for a few centuries because the large, flightless bird, unafraid since it was previously lacking predators, was easy dinner for the early European explorers.

As outlined by our speaker yesterday, new finds are happening all the time and a new theory suggests that the ‘cradle of humanity’ might actually have been around here rather than much farther north in Africa as previously supposed.  He said, in fact, that with the great ice age (either 100,000 or 200,000 years ago—I’ve forgotten) humans may have come close to being extinct, down to about 10,000 people and saved by those living on the southern coast of Africa where they were protected by a marine environment and the rich food source of the ocean.  Then from here they migrated out of Africa.  It was a very interesting museum and tour.

The weather continues to be lovely—low 70s, but it’s a warm low 70s, and we sat around on the outside deck reading long after lunch.

I should mention that various safari trips have been going out–some for 4 hours, some for several days.  We chose not to do any safaris since we were on a week-long safari north of Durban in June.  The single-day trips often involve long rides to the preserve and the multiple-day tours are, of course, expensive—and, on principle, I avoid paying additional money for nights when we’ve already paid for food and lodging on board ship.  But, those who have gone have reported excitedly on their experiences.

As of Maputo, I also realize our gaining an hour of sleep every few days is over.  We are now on European continental time—6 hours ahead of the US Eastern time.  We’ll gain an hour when we reach England but no more until we fly across the Atlantic—which certainly doesn’t give us extra hours of sleep.  Actually I suspect as we head toward Senegal in another week or so we will both gain and then lose a couple of hours.  Ah, well, it was nice while it lasted… –Cynthia

Coelacanths.  We usually take the bus tour the Viking Sun offers in each port-of-call, which inevitably includes stops at a museum, a scenic viewpoint or two, and possibly a local food and craft market.  In East London, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela grew up, we visited the East London Museum. a small jewel containing well-executed dioramas and artifact exhibits; and located out of the way, in a cul de sac adjacent to a a private boy’s college (high school} just off Oxford St.

 In addition to a recently discovered fossil foot-print attributed to a human pedestrian 120,000 years ago and a more recent, equally rare Dodo egg, the museum features a taxidermically preserved specimen of a coelacanth; in fact the first of its kind to be caught but unfortunately not preserved.  Until 1939 coelacanths were only known from their fossil remains and were thought to have been extinct for 70 million years. 

Since then several more specimens have been caught off the east coast of Africa and near Indonesia, preserved and dissected, and the results indicate the species gave birth to living, fully formed fry, possessed a curious semi-circular tail fin and a fluid-filled (non-bony, non-cartilaginous) notochord (similar to what all vertebrates exhibit transiently during their development).  Characterization of coelacanth genomics appeared in a recent Nature article (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature12027.pdf).–Chris    

Friday was at sea, docking in Durban about 4 pm, with an opportunity to go ashore, which we did not avail ourselves of, so a relaxed day.  On the other hand, Durban is the end of segment 4 and beginning of segment 5 so, for some, Friday was spent packing to depart Saturday while the rest of us mourned the departure of some of our friends and prepared ourselves for an onslaught of new guests.  Again, almost half the ship turned over.

Saturday morning we had a tour with an excellent guide originally from Germany showing us the city (mostly run-down) and stopping for a leisurely walk in the beautiful botanical gardens.  If you can’t read the sign in the photo of the picnic above, it says “Georgia’s Teddy Bear Picnic.”

After lunch we took the shuttle to uShaka Marine World, containing shops, restaurants, aquarium, water park, and access to the beach.  We mostly browsed a few shops focusing on a co-operative with 5 shops inside its walls including one with their own handmade clothing, where Chris bought a lovely embroidered pull-over linen shirt. 

Palm Sunday was celebrated with a 1 pm service—after many returned from morning tours–against the back drop of a very interesting Maputo church, but without palms.  We were told they ordered palms this year and last year, but they arrived so bug-laden they couldn’t be used. 

Our mandatory segment safety drill followed.  Then a port talk for East London and talks by two of the new lecturers (our entire cast of approximately 6 lecturers turned over in Durban) speaking on early mankind in southern Africa and about the East Cape (where we will be for the next two ports) background of Nelson Mandela.  The latter was better than the former.

After three days of beautiful, warm weather, we sailed out in the afternoon.  Our next several days are more likely to be in the high 60s than the current high 70s as we head south and round the southern end of Africa.  And, we discovered, we’re back on the rolling seas where we need to hold on to our balance (or nearby railings.)

 I am feeling sad and a little panicked that our cruise is ‘almost over’ though, in fact, many are boarding for just this segment and so are only beginning and we do have another 4 weeks.  Still, compared with the 18 weeks we embarked on, it is ‘almost over.’

As it is the 10^th poorest country in the world, Mozambique makes our third sequential stop in a truly third-world country (though I’m told we don’t use that term any more) and it is.  However, compared to Madagascar, our buses are newer and air-conditioned—though I realized the advantage of no air-conditioning is that the windows are open and you can actually take pictures from the bus.  The official (and common) language is Portuguese though there are many native languages well.  As of November 2018, Maputo is home to the longest suspension bridge in Africa to connect the sides of the bay and paid for largely by the Chinese in their ubiquitous investment in Africa.  Our guide mentioned that, though the bridge was useful, its tolls meant most people couldn’t afford to use it and he thought spending 18 million dollars on a bridge when there were no schools, etc. showed misplaced priorities.

On the brief bus tour, we passed the lovely train station, through some nice neighborhoods, to the botanical garden, and stopped at the Maputo Crafts Market, charmingly situated in a lovely garden.  Everywhere you stop (whether you get out of the bus or not), you are besieged by locals trying very hard to sell you things (and reducing their prices the longer they harangued you.)  I don’t do well in those circumstances, but we did manage to purchase some batiks in the market.  At dinner we talked with a waiter (Papillon from the Philipines) who’d gone to ‘the mall’ to purchase necessities and was equally bemused by the street sellers who followed them for blocks trying to sell them wooden drums (and also gave them wrong directions to the mall.)

Our guide taught Portuguese to foreigners and was at school to become an English teacher.  He was very funny with excellent English.  I realized later there was no mention of the cyclone devastation in the north (Maputo is in the south) and the resulting homeless people.  However, pierside were many pallets of goods from Viking destined for aid.