MS Noordam
(Posted March 6, 2010)
Now that was a vacation! My wife, Rene’ and I spent the last ten days on the Holland America Lines’ cruise ship, MS Noordam, along with six other couples, visiting Martinique, St. Martin, St. Thomas, Barbados, and St. Lucia. The sun was well-received by my old bones, bones in need of brightness and warmth as winter wanes and spring teases. There were many laughs, a few strained moments, some ogling of women in scanty bikinis (including a few who were topless as well on St. Martin) and the like, but above all, it was the sun that made the trip. There is simply nothing like feeling the healing and restorative powers of Earth’s heat source on your bare skin in winter. Nothing.
Being the obsessive-compulsive type of guy that I am, I vowed to stay off computers located in the Noordam’s library during the voyage. Ten days without looking at emails. Tens away from updating this website. Ten days of utter bliss and relaxation untroubled by the world of publishing and marketing. I made good on this promise. Good thing, too, because when I read the email from Amazon.com advising me that my best work to date, Esther’s Race, wasn’t in the running for consideration as a breakthrough novel, I was disappointed. Reading that email on board the Noordam would have destroyed the trip. Thankfully, God gave me the strength to resist peeking at my Yahoo account until I was home.
There was one unexpected aspect to the trip. As we were waiting to disembark from the ship in Fort Lauderdale, I stood on the veranda adjacent to our stateroom and watched a fuel tender refill the diesel tanks of the Noordam for the next voyage. As I watched technicians pump fuel, others from our group joined me on their balconies (the ship had opened up the verandas to allow us to walk between rooms), I spotted what I thought was a large brown blob of trash floating in the water. Then the blob flipped its tail. It was a manatee, the first I’d ever seen. The docile mammal continued to slowly dive and surface as it made its way from bow to the stern. Fourteen Minnesotans stood in awe as our environmentally threatened visitor said goodbye to us as we made ready to come home.
Check out the new book reviews I’ve posted under the tab, “Mark’s Reviews”; books that I read while enjoying the bright white light of the Caribbean.
Peace.
Mark
