Liveaboard Scuba Adventure in Belize

This time, after I got off the cruise ship, in my brief vacation period, I was going to take a real vacation.

I was a bit nervous.

I had never bought a vacation package before.  I had never stepped on a plane for the exclusive purpose of going on vacation (as an adult, independently).  All of my travel has been adventurous, work-based, or multi-purpose.  My vacations have been road trips, backpacking stints or days off during intense touring of shows throughout the world.  I travel independently, with an adventurous spirit.  If I go somewhere, I'll just figure out what I want to do, bring a few good books, and wing it.

This time, I was buying an all-inclusive week aboard a yacht where diving is the sole focus.  Amazing. But I was going by myself, and I was going to relax.  I wouldn't know anyone (that doesn't bother me too much, but it might be awkward to sit alone at dinner.  Well, that's what reading is for), and I wouldn't have a job or a purpose.  No deadlines for walls to be built or paint to dry.  No daily schedule of tasks to accomplish.  Just me as a paying passenger.  Imagine that.

Time to investigate how the other half lives.

So I flew to Belize and joined the Sun Dancer II.  It's a 138-foot long, 4-deck yacht crewed by 7 people for 20 passengers.  A little different than our 857-foot cruise ship crewed by 850 people for 2200 passengers.

The schedule was diving all day, every day.  I figured this is ok, since 5 dives a day means 5 hours underwater, add a half hour to get ready to each dive, that's 7 and a half hours killed.  I could struggle through meals with some sort of conversation, with my limited social skills (another 2.5 hours), and I could keep to myself for any remainder (hey, 13 hours of sleep sounds pretty good, I'm on vacation!).  With that plan of social avoidance in the back of my mind, I felt confident about taking the vacation and making the best of it.

Starting from the airport the morning of joining the ship, my anticipated model of self-imposed exile was proved completely false.

I was cruising with a group of divers from Cleveland, on a trip organized through their local dive shop. Some of them had never met each other before, and many people were traveling on their own with the group.  So I walked into a group of quirky, dive-obsessed people looking to have a good time and be social.  Oh.  Cool.

So this group immediately adopted me, and I became one of the crowd.  I was not a solo traveler, but part of the Cleveland group (I think I've been to Cleveland...  Well I've driven through and I have a memory of a layover in Cleveland airport as a kid...  Close enough).  The days flew past, and time was spent getting to know everyone, sunbathing, raging about dives, comparing past experiences and generally having a good time.  Amazing.

So my first vacation, especially as a solo traveler, was a huge success.  No longer do I hold the impression that vacations are for couples, friends or groups.  Vacations are for me.  Even if I'm an introvert and would claim to prefer the company of a good book (yes, I read three throughout the week).

So here's a sampling of the 26 dives throughout the week, including the famous Blue Hole which drew me to Belize:

There and back again: An Expat's tale

As I alluded to in a previous post, talking about the Cruise Ship Life has become less interesting to me. It's been a few years now that I've been working on ships, and it's starting to become everyday.  Yes, still exotic and adventurous to most, but to me, mundane.  As a result, I write about it less.  There's the occasional day of visiting mosques and palaces in the Sultanate of Brunei, or of scuba diving with hammerhead sharks in Fiji, but the rest has started to become ordinary.  And this is an adventure blog.

So I have to keep finding adventures to go on, and ways to report on them.  And keep finding the inspiration to write about things.

My lack of posts is an indication to myself that I'm losing that sense of adventure in my job.  I work on cruise ships based out of Australia, visiting mainly New Zealand (renowned for playing the part of exotic and dramatic Middle Earth), but also paying calls to Fiji, New Caledonia, Vanuatu (where is Vanuatu anyway?!), Papeete, Bora Bora, Brunei, Malaysia, Hong Kong, etc.

But I've done all that before.  And when Brunei and the Great Barrier Reef and Hong Kong become commonplace, something's wrong.

So I'm off to remedy that boredom.  Time to change it up again.

Up next: coordinating logistics for hospitals in war zones.

Yep, you read that right folks.  Hospitals, logistics, war zones.  Check out Doctors Without Borders (MSF).

Who's got two thumbs and will be a field logistician for MSF this year?  This girl.

Stay tuned for the next chapter.  But in the meantime, a road trip up and down the East Coast of the USA, a scuba dive vacation in Belize and a jaunt through Sicily.  And I need to buy a futon.

Christchurch: A city in suspension

I visited Christchurch on this past call in Akaroa.  The city is open for business, as it proudly proclaims and as evidenced by its world-famous reStart mall comprised of shipping containers.  But it is still a city crippled by the devastating earthquakes.  There are whole sections of the city that are inaccessible.  Of course, tours have cropped up to get tourists 'behind the barriers' to glimpse the wreckage.

Or you can walk right up to the chain link fence stretching across the road and see for yourself.  The damage is too widespread to hide.

I went to observe, to take in the impact of a large-scale earthquake in a bustling city.  But I ended up pulling out my camera, like every other tourist.  I felt like a voyeur.  But the grass growing through the bricks was what hit home for me.

Grass doesn't grow through bricks in a living city.  It looked like the apocalypse had happened.  The simple act of walking over sidewalks keeps them plant-free.  One year along, and these streets are being reclaimed.

But right down the block is the thriving reStart container mall, with trendy stores, restaurants and architecture assembled from shipping containers.

After a tour through the town I ended up at the botanical gardens.

They seemed healthy and sound.

Except for the buildings, which couldn't be entered due to structural instability.

How cruising is different from land: Morning Off

Today I worked 8 hours.  That's a small amount for cruise ships management.  Usually, I work 11 hours on a sea day.  On port days, I can work as little as 4 hours a day.  That's extremely rare.  I rarely work less than 6 hours, even on a port day.  The cool thing is what I do with the other 8 hours that I'm not sleeping.

I get to go on adventures before work each port day.  Either I go scuba diving, or climbing a mountain, or I take a trip on a scenic railway, or tour through the capital city of a small country.  These are some of my options on my morning off.  Who needs weekends when you've got this at your fingertips?

The Taieri Gorge Scenic Railway Train

Diving in Savu Savu, Fiji, with the beloved Koru Sun Divers 

A view from near the top of Mount Manganui on a perfect day in Tauranga, New Zealand

A look back at home: the Sea Princess tied up alongside at Tauranga, New Zealand 

The largest water village in the world, housing over 30,000 people: Kampong Ayer in Brunei

The largest mosque in Brunei, the Jame'asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque

As a disclaimer, I usually work 70+ hour work weeks.  For six months (or more) without a single day off.

So you choose between your youtube videos, Skype and unlimited access to Wikipedia, with your weekends off and public holidays and consistent access to ATMs dispensing a single currency, or this life.  Choice is yours.

I've made mine, and it's the pirate's life for me.  Next, I want to join the circus.

How cruising is different from land: Christmas on ships

There's no such things as holidays in the service industry.  Especially on cruise ships, where there are no days off.  Christmas and New Years are times to groan, roll your eyes and buckle down and get through.  They're long, grueling days of extra work, special events, demanding schedules and the added pressure of presenting holiday cheer.  With the depressing aspect of not being able to celebrate with family and friends as your culture dictates.

Happy Holidays, all around.

We put together a Christmas show, and I think it ended up looking quite good.  The guys did an excellent job decorating the stage, and we put many interesting acts together to make quite a show.

Let it snow.

How cruising is different from land: House on fire

Every week, we pretend that our house is on fire.  All 850 residents then react accordingly.

Today's drill started with an engine fire, and the crew's response quickly elevated from checking it out to full-on fire fighting and passenger muster to full-on abandon ship drills.

We do this every 13 days.  No one batted an eye.

We packed crew members into a muster station, simulating passengers, and took them out to their life boats.  We went to our muster stations and then out to our life rafts.  We sent the containment party to their life rafts.  Everyone was accounted for, no one went down with the ship.

Then we all went for lunch.  Just another Wellington morning, nothing to see here.