VACATIONS FROM HOME: SMALL SHIP SAILING

SELF QUARANTINING

With Covid19 causing such a panic throughout the world we here at Vacations From Home are happy to be home, safe and symptoms free. We certainly enjoy flitting about the world, but currently we are doing what we all need to be doing, which is keeping your distance from others, drinking lots of fluids, washing your hands frequently and lastly avoid touching your face.

CONVID19

Like modern day Decameron hostages awaiting the Black Plague we have been minimizing our visits to the outside world.

Well, that’s a bit extreme, but we here at VFH central command feel fortunate. Having just returned from a sailing adventure from Costa Rica to Panama, we feel good, not sick. We’re in pretty good shape, and that prognosis is nothing to sneeze at. But, imagine our horror with all the recent news about those massive cruise ships, which are effectively floating petri dishes being quarantined, with some getting sick and some dying. This is serious shit.

M/S Panorama

SERENDIPITY AND CHANCE

Considering all the grief going on in the world now, we were quite lucky. We traveled on another small ship along the Pacific coast of Central America and we largely had the ship to ourselves. The M/S Panorama is with Variety Cruises, a Greek company. The Panorama winters here off the coasts of these two beautiful countries before eventually heading home to Greece for the summer sailing season. With a passenger capacity of 49 and a crew of 18 we were able to book our trip when there were only 16 passengers. Yes, there were more crew than there were passengers! Although the week prior to our trip the Panorama carried 49 passengers and the week afterwards there was evidently a whole mess of birdwatchers coming in from Sweden, our week in paradise was empty.

We booked passage on the Panorama last minute, i.e. just two months in advance, and we did it through Unforgettable Cruises, whom we sailed with in Croatia last July. And, we got it at half price. Variety Cruises was running out of time and approached Unforgettable to find passengers. Remember, when a ship sails with empty berths it is money lost forever.

M/S Panorama dining room

SIZE MATTERS

Now, the best part of a small ship is the level of attention given to the ship and to her passengers. Obviously, our trip was a unique situation, but a small ship is still safer to maintain with smaller areas on board to apply enhanced sanitation and disinfection procedures. Smaller passenger lists mean a more precautionary measure of hygiene on tour groups. This is on top of the intimate feel of smaller ships getting into ports where those petri dish behemoths can never. It is a more relaxed and intimate journey.

Before we were allowed to board the Panorama, we were given a questionnaire about our travels and if we had been to China, etc. within a certain time frame. I don’t believe we would have been allowed on the ship if we were just flying in from Wuhan, and I understand that on top of that the Variety people are now giving all embarking crew and passengers non-touch temperature screenings before they can board. On a massive cruise ship this is a logistical nightmare, but for the Variety Cruise people it was just another step in their rigorous standards of safety and cleanliness.

COMPARING APPLES TO APPLES

Since we traveled on two different small cruise lines within a year, I want to take this time to show the differences between our experiences, each unique.

We were spoiled by the level of opulence on the M/V Infinity with Unforgettable Cruises. Marbled bathroom floors and a very spacious stateroom though it was on the lower floor. We had the same room on the Panorama, at the bow of the ship, and it was a bit cramped and not marbled, but this is after all a sailing ship not a yacht. The room was still comfortable even if Janet and I had to breathe in unison to fit.

TAPIR, CR

On the Infinity there was free internet and there were Edison electrical outlets. The Panorama only had 220-volt European style plugs and no internet was available. We bought a Foval International Travel adapter with appropriate plugs for our computers and iphones (which I begrudgingly began using recently as a very nice camera).

On board meals on both cruises were excellent. We had a lot of fish in both places. Lunches on the Infinity were sit down affairs, while the Panorama served a buffet lunch. Janet and I will continually go back and forth about which meals were the best, ALTHOUGH, in Croatia we were offered a beer or wine with our lunch and dinner. That wasn’t the case with the Panorama, but the crew didn’t mind if you made the meal a BYOB.

COFFEE IN CROATIA

In Croatia we would dock nightly on a new island early enough to explore it, and would often sail the next morning. This way we got to admire the rugged coasts and to take a daily swim off the back of the Infinity in the clearest water I have ever seen. There was a lot of lounging on the Infinity, while the Panorama traveled mostly at night and our shore excursions were all in a group tour, there were no running off to find a coffee or a grappa as was the case in Croatia.

But, the excursions in Costa Rica and Panama were without comparison. One day we had white-faced capuchin monkeys jumping on my shoulder, another we had to make way for a tapir and her offspring and another we tried looking for a 12-foot crocodile named Tito to no avail, but we did get to swim with massive whale sharks. The two destinations were so completely different and yet both equally enjoyable.

VARIETY CRUISES

UNFORGETTABLE CRUISES

THE SCIENCE OF SOAP
Getting back to this Convid19 virus. Let's be clear, don't panic, don't drink bleach. Wash your hands often using soap and water. You'll be fine, but you might ask why is soap so important?

Here is a great article about this very thing and I suggest you read it. It has to do with the fat in soap breaking down the fatty layer that binds the virus together. Without that fatty layer the virus falls apart. Yeah, it sounds boring, but it will save your life and heck you ain't going anywhere right now, so you might as well read it.

THE SCIENCE OF SOAP