Polytropia

MM 7 — Day 2: The Private Island Adventure

Musings from 05 November 2007 on MacMania 7

Our first port of call on this cruise is Half Moon Cay. Leased from the Bahamian government by Holland America Line, this private island has been turned into what the brochure calls “Holland America’s Private Island Paradise.”

Well, to be frank, the infrastructure on the island reminded me of good old Disneyland: the harbor entry a bit too “natural,” the Pirate’s Cove village (which consisted mainly of a bar, restrooms, and a few shops) a bit too “idyllic,” and the shops too commercial.

However, as soon as you look beyond this stage façade, what you’ll see is, indeed, a gorgeous tropical island with silky-smooth sand beaches, crystal-clear turquoise water, lush vegetation, and colorful birds singing their heart out. And all of this comes with a topping of balmy sunshine generously sprinkled with a cool breeze. Just the perfect surroundings to try out some water sports.

Let’s ignore banal swimming, and I can safely claim that, before heading out to Half Moon Cay, my experience with water sports was zero. Never sailed, never dived, never snorkeled, although I always wanted to. So I grabbed the opportunity that was offered by the “Eco Lagoon Kayak Adventure” shore excursion.

After a short ride on the bed of a truck — nothing says “eco adventure” like fresh Diesel fumes! –, we reached Bone Fish Lagoon, were greeted by our friendly guide, put on floatation vests, and got into our kayaks. With three twin kayaks and two singles manned by us vacationers, we headed out onto the lagoon at a relaxed pace. And, man, I loved every single frickin’ minute of it: I just could not get enough of the serenity on the water (once I stopped cussing and whining to myself about getting all wet inside the boat, that is…).

Having endured far too many excessively verbose and vocal tour guides on other trips, it was a welcome change that our guide on this tour just kept quietly paddling along, providing only a few choice morsels of information about the flora in the lake area. Luckily, all my fellow-kayakers seemed to be in the same mood, so there wasn’t any annoying chatter during the whole excursion, either, and even when we returned to shore after what seemed to be a far-too-short hour out on the lake, that silence and quiet among the group remained. It was awesome.

The only thing I did not like about this outing was that it was really way too short — I could have stayed out on that lagoon lake for hours –, but that’s probably a common criticism you can apply to all of the shore excursions offered on an average cruise, if not to any package holiday: it’s that “been there, done that, got the t-shirt” approach to traveling.

Instead of getting a chance of truly immersing yourself in the foreign surroundings, you (get) rush(ed) through a few “key areas of interested” as selected by whoever organizes the tour, take a few photos to prove you’ve actually been there, and still have that nagging feeling of not having actually experienced anything. If you want real immersion, you need to re-visit on your own and bring lots more time.¹

Then again, you’ll probably get the best out of such organized excursions if you take them exactly for what they are, i.e., appetizers, and not full meals. Use them to check out new things you haven’t done before or to visit places you’ve never been to, and if something, or some place, appeals to you, consider going back to it, bringing lots more time. In that sense, this kayak experience was such a great “appetizer” that I’ll add this type of sport to my list of activities I would like to do more of in the future, maybe even back at home.

Again, this excursion was great, but instead of repeating this fact over and over again, let me just cut over to the first of the MacMania seminars.

♦

Perl wizard Randal Schwartz has been InSight Cruises’s CEO Neil Baumann’s sidekick since the inception of the company, and as such, he has an amazing 39 cruises under his belt. It’s only fair that he is awarded the honor of giving the inaugural class of this MacMania 7 cruise.

In a class entitled “Amazingly Cool Utilities,” you can expect an alpha-geek like Randal to present tons of apps that are worth trying out, and, man, did he ever. Instead of actually demoing any software, though, he just went through an extensive list of software tools and utilities, sorted into categories like Audio, Network, System, and a few others.

Having been familiar with most of Randal’s suggestions already, I just jotted down a few that really sparked my interest. They are:

• the Audio Units plug-in generator “SonicBirth,”
• the software planetarium “OSXPlanet,”
• the, well, uuuhhh, “sleep helper”(?) “Pzizz,”
• the game “Lumen,”
• the space fly-through simulator “Celestia,”
• and screensavers “Skyrocket,” “HotelGadget,” and “LiquidMac.”

Sorry I haven’t included any links here, but that’s just because I haven’t yet checked these apps out myself, so Your Milage May Vary™. However, considering that we’re paying $100 for 250 minutes of Internet access (and, at 40 Cents a minute, that is the bargain deal of the bunch), I’d rather spend those precious drops of the Digital Ages’s life blood on more important things like checking email and keeping up with news feeds, and leave downloads for when I get back home (Yikes! I should remember not to remind myself of home while on this cruise).

Update: The slides for this presentation are now available on ourmedia.org. Thanks, Randal!

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