Boil in the Bag Meal

Back in May, Karen & I made a token effort at vegetable gardening with the planting of seed potatos and carrot seeds in some grow-bags on the patio.

Today we hauled in our harvest and for tonight at least we shall be able to eat our own.

The crop was rather modest ! The carrots in particular suffered from chronic overcrowding:




However, they were at least recognisably potatos and carrots:

A Raft of Problems

Last stop on the cruise itinerary was Vigo in Spain. Vigo is in that bit of Spain on top of Portugal, and the border seems to be the Minho river.

Matt, Harry and I were booked on "Rafting in Vigo" as our last tour, and the Minho river was the destination. "in Vigo" was a bit of a stretch as our journey was over an hour and took us very nearly out of Spain entirely.

Before we got underway with the long bus trip, we had a long unexplained delay in our departure. After some time sitting on the dock, the tour supervisor advised that one of the rafts had broken. Six volunteers to take a different excursion were needed. A full refund was offered, which prompted one group to take this option.

This was the first glitch, and next there was the shambles when we arrived at the river. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the allocation of people to boats and we nearly did not find a boat at all.

Plenty of other people also struggled with the "organization" and by the time our boat was put in the water, we had to take some stray passengers who otherwise may not have launched at all.

This seemed to take the number of rafters from six (which I assumed) to eight (the number that our first boat guide was calling for ) to ten (this is what our second guide went for) then twelve that we set off with.

Our guides were insistent that the overcrowding was down to a significant overbooking by the cruiseline.

This heavy load did appear to cause us some difficulties, especially with many of the passengers being less than enthusiastic paddlers.

Still, the river was beautiful and the mixture of short whitewater sections and longer flat stretches seemed pretty ideal for this kind of excursion.

Some of the rafters complained it was not exciting enough - slightly at odds with their rather lame paddling efforts. Matt of course was among the "more whitewater" group.

As far as I could see, it was challenging enough considering almost all participants were first-timers and that we had undergone precisely zero minutes of tuition on rafting technique. Safety instructions were likewise almost non-existent.

The element of (mild) risk was obvious when (about 1 hour in), we approached a particularly vigorous section and our boat (quite possibly in part due to the overloading) flipped entirely on its side and we had little chance to stay aboard.

Harry & I were on the submerged side, on which no one survived a ducking. Matt was one of only two hangers-on. All the other 10 passengers and the guide were dunked in the river.

At this point, I lost my prescription sunglasses which I only recently replaced having lost the previous pair in the waves on Santa Monica beach last year at about this time. Harry miraculously managed to pick his out of the water before they disappeared.

My wallet of course was fully submerged, but by now I know that cards and banknotes can easily survive this kind of experience. Likewise I knew my phone would have no chance. Even momentary drowning seems to kill phones instantly.

I was not able to catch up with our raft. Another raft picked me up and I had to assume that Matt and Harry had likewise been rescued. Without my glasses I couldn't identify the occupants of other boats at the distances involved.

We were reunited 15minutes later when I was able to reboard the original raft in a calm section.

It was a long paddle to the end - nearly 3 hours of rafting (value for money anyway !) - but none of the subsequent rapids led to a repeat soaking.

The late start and slow passage (exacerbated by overloaded boats I feel) meant that by the time we unloaded, we were only 30minutes away from "all-aboard" time, with a 1 hour bus journey to come.

Our guide reasonably advised us to grab a drink / change / visit the facilities ASAP but unaccountably we waited over 30minutes after we had done all this and so by the time we arrived back in Vigo it was 90minutes past sailing time.

I speculated that Karen would probably have tried to contact me on my defunct phone but I did feel pretty confident that the boat would not leave without 120 rafters and I am sure Karen also was not too concerned despite our obvious delay.

We arrived back at the gangway to a loud and ironic cheer from hundreds of passengers watching and waiting on the dock-facing decks. The boat was sufficiently primed for departure that it was away from the dock in the it took us to ascend i the lift from deck 2 (gangway) to deck 11 (for a welcome cup of tea) !

Clueless in Cadiz

I have been very impressed with the standard of the tours on our Mediterranean cruise. On our cruising debut last year we did not participate in any of the organized tours and in fact we only left the boat once, for less than an hour.

I don’t think that getting off the boat is an essential ingredient for a successful cruise, but with two weeks at sea it made sense to make a few stops. Karen waded through the enormous brochure.

We visited Monaco/Monte Carlo, Pisa and Cagliari. The boys and I went to a water park at the Rome stop.

On all of those I was struck by the high level of organization and the precise timings. I thought the tour guides did an excellent job in all respects (exceeding my expectations significantly). You might say it’s not a difficult job, but in my opinion it’s not easy to do it really well.

Today’s trip to the Cadiz water park Aqualand fell far short. Since all the tour escort had to do was get us on the bus, give us our tickets and arrange to get us all back on time, you might say it was hard to go far wrong.

However, although he did meet the low bar of not losing anyone, it was a seriously unimpressive performance !

Even before we left port he managed to be off by 4 on the headcount and the supervisor had to sort it out. He didn’t really speak English and met all questions with no answer beyond a shrug of the shoulders.

Our trip was not billed as a guided tour but his total silence on the 40minute trip was a weak performance. Our escort to the Rome park took the opportunity to tell us something “for free” about our surroundings, and also explained very clearly where we were going, what would happen etc. This makes a good deal of difference to the feeling that everything is under control.

The contrast was total.

On arrival, our escort today made a good effort to lose people on the way to the gate. He did state the time and place for our rendezvous at the end of the day. However, when we came back later he was not there to greet us, and eventually he showed up late at a different location. After he made no apparent effort to consolidate those who had found him and those who had duly arrived at the meeting point, most of us made our own way to the bus.

It wasn’t that we felt there was a serious chance of us being left behind, but it was clearly badly organized and “clueless” was the unanimous verdict among those on the trip.

Now, the waterpark itself was a nice facility: in good condition and well laid out.

However, “clueless” applied very well to the business running the park.

For a start, I seriously question the wisdom of opening the park at 11am in high season. It’s already very warm at 9am (say).

The enormous queues for tickets and entrance tell me very clearly that they could and should have got people in much earlier. Thankfully we did escape the main queues with our “group” tickets but I would have been furious that it wasn’t possible to arrive early to get any kind of jump on the queues inside.

Once inside, it was a 45minute queue to get a key for a locker. Just 2 people serving the entire mass of people. I estimate the 45 minutes, as I gave up waiting. Instead, we went to find a seat and shade.

Now, there was a charge for the sunloungers. I’m not delighted about that but if the business decision is to have lowish entrance prices and charge for everything else, then they should at least collect the fees. We saw no one taking the money all day.

When I went back to rent a locker after waiting 30 minutes, the queues were as long as ever.

Crazy to have so few staff at that key bottleneck.

We abandoned the locker mission and just hoped for the best. We now discovered that queue management was not a strong suit. The over-riding impression of the slides was that no one was on them. This was not for lack of people queuing up to ride, but somehow they contrived to have a 3 minute gap between each actual rider. Even allowing for the fact they need to ensure absolute safety, the fact is that it was poor ride control that massively exacerbated the problem.

We managed to get one ride on a relatively fast-loading ride (6 lanes). But still the method of sequencing the queue must have added at least 50% to the gap between rides.

We decided it was time for a drink. Could we find a drink? We could not. There were no signs for bars or cafes, no bars or cafes in sight. Our seats were actually next to a pizzeria – shut. At 1pm with the park packed. The bar next to the locker queue was shut.

There were so many places where they could and should have had a drinks stall or a vending machine or a mobile drinks seller.

Eventually we found they did have one cafe open. Two people were attending to a queue that was already growing fast. Apparently one person fulfilling orders in the back.

The food was nice, in fact, but the queue got only worse from then and later it was inconceivable to try to buy another drink. This has to be a classic lose-lose.

Later they did open one of the closed bars – with one staff member doing everything.

Simply incredible. The good news was that the few staff on duty were friendly and relatively efficient, and the customers were fairly placid although obviously frustrated.

There were more people taking the inevitable photographs of visitors (does anyone ever buy them ?) than employed in the entire food & beverage business in the park.

One place where we can give full marks was for plenty of bins for depositing rubbish, but since the availability of food & drink was so strictly rationed, there wasn’t much call for rubbish bins !

Still, thankfully we had had a good dose of water rides in Rome so we had a splash around in the pools and amused ourselves marvelling at the spectacle of bad management. Perhaps the park was supposed to double as an exhibit of Spanish business efficiency. It reminded me very much of some experiences in Spain last year (see the fishing licence and banking fiasco blogs !)

Badminton Trials

The point of no return appears to have passed whereby I cannot beat the boys at anything (poker, hopefully, being a significant and possibly unique exception).

This is especially true of sports of all types, although video games of all genres are now also included. That’s rather concerning, although they do have tremendous opportunities to practice hand-eye co-ordination for video sports that I never had.

Their total superiority in video games was brought home on the cruise. The Independence of The Seas has an impressive arcade with many good quality games of all types. I was only able to beat Harry on one game of motorcycle racing (no idea why – he crushed me on the car racing games of various formats) and at Sinistar [on a very good multi-games console].

In the Sinistar, since I scored only 1/60th of my world record mark from the 1986-9 era, I wasn’t that impressed with my own efforts.

Back in real sports, it was not so long ago that I had to give considerable concessions to Matt and Harry at all racquet sports in order to make a game of it. Now, both can beat me and Matt is now capable of soft-playing to give me the appearance of having a chance (then powering over the line). Harry is not yet as strong, but soon will also leave me far behind.

Actually, Harry is probably just at the level where it’s a genuinely close game in some sports.

We played badminton just before we came away. We are both pretty bad in absolute terms, but I find badminton between somewhat-matched opponents is enjoyable at a poor standard in the way that tennis or squash is not.

The first set went close, with Harry eventually prevailing 15-13. In the second set, I got off to a flying start and held on to win 15-13 myself. Now in the 3rd set, I fell 12-2 behind before making a massive surge to actually have the first match point at 15-14 up following a prolonged “deuce” at 14-14.

Did I “let” Harry get so far ahead to begin with in the 3rd set ? Did Harry “let” me catch up?

Who knows but the battle at 14-14 and beyond was genuinely close. After I failed to close out several match points at 15-14 and 16-15, Harry eventually came through to steal the match 15-13, 13-15, 18-16 with just a minute or so to spare before we would have run out of court-time.

I will have to try hard to pull off any victories before it is too late.