When I was a kid we took summer vacations on an island off the British coast. There was always some battered old boat on the beach with a battered old captain in a sailor’s cap offering a "Mystery Cruise." The boats smelt of dead fish, they always seemed on the point of sinking, and the mystery destination was always the same: a pub on the other side of the island. Since then cruising has become a much larger industry, but there’s no more mystery to it than there ever was.
My cousin phoned me the other day from the middle of the ocean. She was returning form a cruise to the Amazon and was being tossed around by giant waves in the Bay of Biscay, somewhere off the coast of Spain. What was the cruise like? I asked. It was awful, she said, although she used stronger language. There were storms all the way, her fellow passengers had done nothing but eat and drink from morning till night, and the Amazon had been hot, flat, and dull.
This was not a good advertisement for cruising. But nobody seems to care about negative reports – storms, food poisoning, legionnaire’s disease, fires, shipwrecks and even attacks by Somali Pirates barely make an impression on this buoyant industry. Who remembers Costa Concordia or Carnival Triumph, let alone the Titanic? The image of glamor, freedom and luxury is stronger than the reality. A cruise seems to offer a complete escape from the responsibilities and pressures of life on land. An extraordinary thirteen million vacationers from the USA took cruises last year alone. It is the fastest-growing sector of the travel industry, and about two hundred ships are sailing the ocean blue at any given moment.
Boredom is not a problem, even in the midst of an empty ocean. Every kind amusement and entertainment is included, and of course it is all right there on the ship. A few steps will bring you to a bar, a restaurant, a casino, a pool, a cabaret, or just about anything your heart desires. The cruise companies spare no effort to provide perpetual distraction as well as unlimited food. The mega-ship Anthem of the Seas, in addition to all the usual diversions, offer something called a bionic bar, a zero-gravity experience, a surfing simulator, a rock climbing wall, and eighty inch floor to ceiling televisions in some staterooms. Not much chance of getting bored there.
These giant ships are like small cities, and they cushion the anxiety of being far from dry land on an unstable element. They take you straight to the things you have to see. All you have to do is step off the ship in the Galapagos or Bora Bora or Venice,and explore the undiscovered treasures of place with five thousand other people from the same boat.
The sea used to be a harsher and more uncertain element. Columbus didn’t have a swimming pool or a rock climbing wall aboard the Santa Maria, nor did his voyages take him where he expected to go. Every landfall was a complete surprise. He didn’t even know which continent he was on or what souvenirs to buy.
River cruises seem to be popular this year. There’s no danger of rough seas or shipwrecks. You can’t be lost on a river, but then you can’t be surprised either because it goes where it goes. Even Captain Ahab couldn’t get into much trouble on a river. Perhaps that’s why my parents loved those mystery cruises round the island that always went to the same place, and returned to the same place. They were on vacation, and they wanted no thrills, and no surprises.
Copyright: David Bouchier
