It takes 2 days at sea to get from Cozumel to our next port of call in Cartagena Colombia.

DAY ONE

Sea days are full of options for Viking passengers: enrichments lectures, food events, craft workshops, bridge classes, crew/passenger Baggo challenges, trivia, and tons of music.

For me, there’s always the added option of a “meclizine day”. Anyone who doesn’t suffer from motion sickness may think it’s an affectation. Let me assure you, from my alternately prone and hunched over in abdominal distress positions, that it’s very real.

(There’s a wonderful science article in the November 2023 edition of Popular Mechanics about this: What Causes Motion Sickness)

The interesting thing is that people suffer to different degrees, depending to some extent upon both heredity and how responsive their inner ear fluids are (think vertigo) and, like the rest of our physiology, the severity of our body’s reaction can change with age. There was a time I couldn’t bear to travel in the back seat of a car, or further back than the first set of wheel wells on a school bus – and every airplane ride involved a little white bag, unless I was rendered almost comatose by Gravol.

Most of those things improved after I hit 60; I no longer even take precautionary anti-nauseants on planes.

But the rolling sea is a whole different story.

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Captain Olaf on our previous world cruise explained that it’s not the visible choppy surface wave action that affects those of us prone to motion sickness, but the deeper “swells” created below the surface that make the ship roll. Even using stabilizers, there is still a gentle rocking motion that, while soothing to some, is devastating to me.

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Last night the ship rolled, but because I was able to eventually sleep (after identifying EVERY creak, bang, and tick in the stateroom) I thought I was past the danger zone. Sadly, about 15 minutes after getting up, while in the gently rocking shower, the clammy cold sweats and headache kicked in, followed rapidly by a cramping stomach. I grabbed a chewable meclizine, but all anti-nauseants work best if taken before you actually need them, so the next hour or sowas less than amazing.

Captain Markus talked about today’s swells in his noon report, and mentioned that he had both stabilizers out. We’re in the Caribbean in over 1000 metres of water, with no other ships visible to the naked eye. It’s 26°C/79°F, with 30 knot winds from the east. It’s actually a lovely sea day.

After a cup of tea and some bread and fruit for lunch (plus, daringly, a Southern fried chicken thigh), I headed to the jogging/walking track on deck 2 for some fresh air and exercise. There were several brown-footed boobies flying and diving in the increasingly grey and cloudy skies.

At 5:30 p.m. there was an Explorer Society reception in the atrium, intended for all passengers who have previously sailed with Viking.That’s almost everyone on board!!

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I cancelled our Chef’s Table reservations, because I didn’t think my stomach could handle 4 glasses of wine on rolling seas. Instead, we ate in the World Café, where the theme was Mexican.

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For dessert, we took advantage of the Mexican theme: tres leches cake, a gellied fruit dome, and caramel flan. Ted and I agreed that the tres leches cake – with its moist crumb so perfectly saturated with sweet milk that cutting it with a fork actually made it “weep”, and a whipped cream mousse outer layer – was the best we’ve ever eaten.

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The evening entertainment in the theatre was this cruise leg’s first production show with the Viking Band and Viking Vocalists, featuring iconic songs from the heyday of pop music: the Beach Boys, Neil Diamond, the Four Seasons, Aretha Franklin, and more.

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And then, to bed.

DAY TWO

A meclizine, a beautiful latte (thanks to world-class barista Tabeth) and chocolate brioche for breakfast, and off to cooking class! Offered only on sea days, at a cost of $69USD per person, these classes for a maximum of 12 people offer 2-3 hours of chef instruction, plus a wonderful meal enjoyed with wine. In 21/22 I was too seasick to complete the Italian cooking class beyond gnocchi, so today I was determined to be medicated and prepared to go the distance.

But, sometimes gremlins invade the system. I arrived at the Kitchen Table, with my ticket, only to find that I wasn’t enrolled. As with everything, Viking found me a solution and their staff got me booked into a January 3rd California cuisine class instead.

There was actually a bonus to the mix-up: while I was waiting for the ticket exchange to take place, I got to meet one of the only two Canadian crew members on board. Adrian originally hails from Richmond Hill (Toronto) Ontario, but like us is now from the Vancouver area in BC. He’s been with Viking for 13 years, and told me how proud he was to be able to bring his parents on board the expedition ship Octantis during its inaugural sailing of the Great Lakes, when it docked in Toronto.

Since I wasn’t cooking, I was able to attend the 11:00 a.m. lecture about the History of Colombia, given by Viking’s Resident Historian Dr. Robert Cribb.

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Colombia, where we dock tomorrow, is a much misunderstood country. Physically it is larger than Texas, and has a population 50% higher than California – a powerhouse of Central America. We’ll be in Cartagena, on the Caribbean side of the Andes.

Dr. Cribb’s talk ranged from ancient to modern history. We don’t know much about the indigenous communities that lived here, but the Spaniards who were focussed on searching for gold left no real records about the people. It seems, though, that these communities were not huge civilizations like the Aztec, Inca, or Maya. Nonetheless, about 25% of the country’s current population is indigenous.

Despite being named after Columbus, that explorer never set foot in the country. Instead, it was actually Alonso de Ojeda – with his reputation for picking fights and starting wars with the indigenous population – who “conquered” the area. Apparently he later repented his sins, joined the Monasterio de San Francisco, and asked to be buried under its entryway so that everyone could tread on him. I’m not sure those he killed would consider that sufficient penance, but…. whatever.

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Gold was always the Spaniards’ goal. In 1536 an expedition to find “El Dorado” – whether that was a king/person bedecked in gold or an entire golden city – was launched. We now know that neither existed, but the myth remains. Bogota’s airport is even named El Dorado.

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Piracy here in the 16th century holds a Canadian connection. Jean-Francois de Roberval, who was involved in the establishment of Quebec City, took time off from that to launch raids in Colombia.

The Europeans who settled here are called “Criollos”, which is not the same as what we know as “Creole” in that they were not a mix of cultures, but just the name by which the European inhabitants were called. Under Spanish rule, Colombia also had a large slave population, and branches of the Spanish Inquisition.

Eventually, Cartagena became marginalized as the centre of power moved to Bogota – further inland and less susceptible to malaria and yellow fever.

In 1741, the British unsuccessfully tried to take Colombia, so it remained Spanish. In the early 1800’s, while Napoleon occupied Spain, the time was right for the Colombians to rebel for self-rule. Led by Simon Bolivar, the rebellion succeeded in replacing Spanish rule and creating what became known as “Gran Colombia”, comprised at that time of what we now call Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, and Colombia. Concurrently, the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 articulated that the Americas and Europe should stay out of each other’s affairs – an early proponent of what we might call “isolationism”.

We think of Colombia as being a violent place. Indeed, in the 1950’s there was almost a decade of guerrilla warfare; and from 1964 until about 2016 there were almost continuous civil wars. While the battles seemed to be between armed gangs, the overriding issues were the change from the “old” agrarian Colombia and the “new” industrial economy, with the associated conflict between governing philosophies. The peace process and a move toward democracy lasted from 2012 – 2016.

Modern Cartagena is a modern, progressive city, and while there is still some evidence of that prior violent era, it is no longer the Colombian stereotype that we may have created from the news media.

I feel much more prepared for our tour tomorrow.

All that learning made me hungry, and the pasta station on the Aquavit Terrace beckoned.

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A couple of hours reading on the pool deck (Ghosts of Honolulu, by Leon Carroll and Mark Harmon) and it was time for the Port Talk. While these are always recorded so that we can listen to them at our leisure in our stateroom, like almost everything it’s more fun in person.

Pre-dinner there was communal carol singing in the atrium. Since my 2018 thyroid surgery I can no longer sing in tune, but I’m a first-rate lip-syncher, and I absolutely love Christmas carols.

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… and then it was off to the restaurant for dinner. The World Café tonight featured lobster, but Ted has a shellfish allergy, so we’re wary of cross-contamination – not in the kitchens, but potentially in the buffet itself. One of tonight’s main restaurant offerings was Lobster Thermidor, which is my preferred way of eating it anyway, so we were both happy.

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After a fun dinner with Don and Katherine, and a couple from New York celebrating 60 years of marriage (!), we were wowed by tenor Manny Rodrigues’ second stage show. Within a program full of incredible songs, my favourites were probably Stars (from Les Miserables) and Time to Say Goodbye, but honestly every single song raised goosebumps.

We have a panoramic tour of Cartagena tomorrow morning, so called it a night right after Manny’s show.

In addition to our tour, tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which historically is a truly special event on Viking ships. Like children expecting Santa, we can hardly wait!