The cruise ship was Norwegian, registered in Nassau, managed by Americans for Americans. They must have also played a part in the ship’s design, they had to – everything’s big in the US. Our voyage seemed to attract the ones whom must always come up in those national surveys, which give America the label as having the biggest people in the world. For those that disembarked (marine talk for “got off the boat”) as we stopped along the Italian coast, seemed to spend most of their time at the shops, returning in the form of marionettes, using designer shopping bags as puppets. They all stopped in the arrival area and put on plays for each other before waddling off to their cabins where you could hear them all saying “does my bum look big in this”. Now we all know Italy’s sweet spot is clothing design, but they don’t earn it through master classes with David Copperfield! So as the next few days and nights unfolded women who previously wore track suits and 3-man tents had morphed into victims of inappropriate ill-fitting Italian designer clothing. A sight I simply cannot put into words. And while we’re on the dress code I was surprised to see a very old couple at the French restaurant - him wearing a tux, complete with bow tie and she had a frock, which was so heavily weighed down by sequins and other jewelry, she looked like she’d had a reverse face lift. After that I noticed all the other guests on the boat wore very formal clothing for dinner. So the next day Tracey unpacked all her gear that highlighted her curvy bits, the kids were booked into mini club for the duration of our dinners and all I could do was iron my good shirt every night and brush my teeth. We got knocked back one night (for wearing jeans) and eluded the security on another occasion. But this presented another problem, as I had refused to pay the outrageous prices for the drinks on the boat, which meant I had to return to our cabin to top up our bootleg spirits every 20 minutes. We were staying on level 4 and most of the fun was to be had on level 12, so this required extensive use of the elevator and as you can imagine after 2 nights you start to see the same people a fair bit, all dressed up like the main strip in Vegas. So returning from the cabin throughout these evenings with two full glasses wearing the same clothes caused me some image problems. I was sweating bullets every time I returned to the elevator, where pressing the button became a game of Russian roulette. By the third night I was running out of pathetic excuses and elevator jokes and no one understood my accent anyway – they all just looked at me and no doubt made me the centre of their discussions over dinner. The other problem was their obsession with personal hygiene, automatic alcohol based hand cleaners were placed all over the boat, perhaps 4 or 5 on one level alone. I refused after day one to use these machines and got strange stares from the other compliant Americans who could not understand why having dried up but clean hands was not the foundation of my existence (hence we are all suffering from colds now!) Being an international crowd attracted all sorts, which provided world championship people watching, the most memorable for me was a full tilt cowboy his missus must have convinced him to join us all by the pool as they only did this once, so in he came, complete with pasty white skin except where his t-shirt stopped halfway down his arm, huge black 10 gallon hat, which I assure you never came off and budgie smugglers – What more can I say. Tracey was mesmerized by the group of old, overly tanned, leathery English women, whom all traveled in groups like ducks, all squawking, but listening to each other at the same time, whilst consuming numerous multi-colored cocktails with names like sex on the beach and orgasm and sporting ill fitting bikinis, which presented more cellulite than a Greek Fetta cheese factory. They danced and sang to the band badly, ensuring they all had lounges next to each other by forcibly relocating other innocent voyagers.
Morocco was the polar opposite, where the only thing more persistent than the beggars, whom casually took handfuls of food off our plates as we ate, was the flies. And as the days wore on, the food traveled faster and faster though our bodies, it would have been more convenient for the restaurant to set up 2, 4 and 6 toilet tables to eat at. It’s like everything is back to front or each thing has an immediate exact opposite. The central part of town, where the market is and hygiene isn’t, has people sleeping on the ground in the mud; the stench is just overwhelming as are the people harassing you, and this is right where Club Med is located. Outside this area are suburban Moroccan housing (will explain that later) and the new area, where all the beautiful people live. So it is normal at the traffic lights to see a late model Benz next to a Donkey, all used to transport 5 people at once. At a pedestrian crossing you see a heavily dressed local man with one of his 5 ninja suited wives standing behind him next to a sexy scantily clad mid twenties babe. You could buy a dish of succulent chicken and beef with chips and salad for 5 bucks but a soft drink was 8. The garden at the hotel was simply stunning. It would present well on discovery channel, featuring resorts for the rich and famous, but the food was something equivalent to what may be dropped by the UN into grief stricken Somalia, the kicker was the Chef who stood by this smorgasbord of burnt goat and molasses with his proudest Gordon Ramsay grin and this all cost about 40 bucks a head! That was the last time we ate there. I would have swapped the Executive chef with the Executive gardener. I could discuss the food or masquerade off it for another 2000 words but remember these are the guys who are famous for tangine (hot roasted food) including dates, prunes cous-cous with goat! Which is their national example of how they seem to trying to mix oil and water in the form of a community, which is what makes it all so interesting?
We are in Mallorca now, a Spanish island in the med made famous in Australia by Christopher Skase. And I understand now why he choose Mallorca, as no one would consider looking for him here after his lofty ambitions of grandeur and lavish lifestyle. We got our current lodgings for $400 for 6 nights and when I got to the airport and we rented a car for $250 for 5 days including insurance with no excess, this was when I became suspicious.
Mallorca appears to be frequented by the budget conscious German and English holiday makers and my suspicions were confirmed because they consider a beach strewn with rubbish, low nutritional food and the most out of date environment, better than any other 2-3 hour flight from their home town in Western Europe. The whole place is more worn out than Cliff Young after his marathon run from Sydney to Melbourne. The restaurants all serve English or German food, and everyone speaks three languages. Tracey is now orally confused and still uses merci instead of thank you, gracias or danke! I have given up arguing with the Hotel management about the misrepresentations on their web site, the place was clearly built by the first and second pig - the internet doesn’t work, the TV is an old 12 inch Grundig one and each channel looks like a white cat in the snow or a black cat at night. The gym has its own room with mirrors but consists of one broken abb crunching machine; all the crayons in the kids club are broken and the paper looks like it’s made of dried up papaya stalks. The pool’s downright dangerous and the plumbing in the bathroom’s exposed and makes its way slowly through each of the other 300 rooms (ours included) before it’s pumped into the beach. It’s like Rosebud talking itself up as tantamount to the northern end of the Gold Coast, complete with the latest brands like No Fear, Hypercolor T-shirts and stretch jeans, the main radio station plays music by The Knack, David Essex and the Bay-city Rollers and all the others play continuous ABBA songs. All the blokes walk around in shorts with socks and brown sandals which require them to tuck their socks between their two largest toes. They even have an English beer garden complete with overgrown mini golf, 2 or 3 other broken rides from the 70’s and 2 dollar chicken and chips and they’re busier than the customer service manager at a Wall Street stock broker. If you’re not up for fish fingers with brown sauce you’ll have to settle for battered cod with Mushy peas – OK!! It is therefore void of vegetarians or anyone under a size 14. We have an early check out in 3 days before taking 5 flights and two days to return to our precious country – Australia, which bring us to the end.
