Sandy Dengler’s: Around The World In 80 Years
Let’s say you want to have a wildlife reserve, but you don’t have any wildlife. Barbados faced just that problem.
The only mammals here were rats brought by ships, so they imported mongooses from India to get rid of the rats. Mongooses are diurnal. Rats are nocturnal. System failure. The local snakes ate the rats, but the mongooses ate the snakes. Sometimes you can’t win for losing.
I come from Port Townsend, Washington, a small, laid-back, casual enclave of rather eccentric artists. There, “formal attire” means putting a fresh rubber band in your pony tail. Too, I am a paleontologist. Paleontologists fancy themselves well dressed if they’re wearing clean cargo shorts. So when I bought this cruise around South America on Cunard’s Queen Victoria, I was coming from seriously behind.
Foolishness persists when wisdom fails. It’s the same as back home: people ride the elevator up to the gym on the ninth deck, then get on the stairclimber to work out. Yesterday I explored around the vessel, finding where everything is. The gym facilities are on the ninth deck, with all the apparatus you find in a gym.
Somewhere many years ago, I think I read that Disney invented the turkey chute at Disneyland. They put it to good use boarding the QV passengers. We went through security similar to airports’ but it was faster and more sensible and they didn’t care if you carry a knife. Don’t get caught with a bottle of Pepsi, though. Then we snaked back and forth in the chute to reach a bank of folks who took our pictures and issued us cards. Through the tunnel and aboard.
Cunard sure doesn’t do things by halves. They booked my flight, the red-eye from SeaTac to Fort Lauderdale. First class. They booked me a hotel. Marriott on the beach. A modest limo took me from the airport to a comfortable bed. Tomorrow they will transport me to the Queen Victoria. All I have to do is stand there and it all happens. I could get used to this.
