MM 7 — Day 5: Exploring Curaçao’s African Heritage and Checking out a Virtual Big Cat
There is something special about the early morning light in the Caribbean, and I was glad to wake up early yet again, and well in time to observe our docking maneuver in Willemstad on the island of Curaçao.
And also in time to see another spectacular cloud formation in the sky.
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Today’s shore excursion started quite a bit earlier than I had planned: instead of 1:00pm, the “African Heritage” tour departed from the pier at 8:30am, as I was informed last night. The excursion brochure listed both times, and I am sure they were combined into one. We were barely enough people to fill every seat of our minibus — there don’t seem to be too many people eager to learn about the gloomy history of the slave trade while on a cruise in the Caribbean. And a gloomy topic it was, indeed, as witnessed by the exhibits at the Kura Hulanda museum.
Once a neglected and decaying neighborhood of the Otrabanda part of Willemstad, a Dutch entrepreneur started investing in, and rebuilding the area in 1995. Today, dozens of houses in this part of town have been restored to splendid condition, and the cheerful colors, gorgeous architectural details and numerous works of art make for an amazing site, deservedly earning it place Unesco World Heritage Site status.
The central hub of the Kura Hulanda neighborhood, which means “Dutch Courtyard”1, is a resort hotel and a museum. This museum not only tells the history of the Western Passage slave trade, but also puts into focus the diverse cultural heritage of peoples of the Western Africa, who were abducted to serve as “human resources” in the worst possible sense of that phrase.
The inner courtyard inside the museum grounds is graced by a sculpture of Mother Africa, showing her face when viewed head-on (no pun intended…), and the outline of the African continent when viewed from the side. Just a few steps away from this piece of art, the museum confronts its visitors with the barbaric cruelty that was at the core of the slave trade.
The exhibits encompass old etches, photographs, and documents, as well as original “tools of the trade” like chains, shackles, and whips. The part of the museum I found most disturbing — if you can actually sort such a place’s exhibits by “disturbingness” — was a recreation of the lower decks of a slave ship that you could climb down into, and which demonstrated how their “masters” viewed the black people they had kidnapped: as wares which would have to be stowed away in as little room as possible to maximize the profit of each ship’s load. Never mind that a not-so-small percentage of the product did not make it to the destination in usable condition…
After leaving this section of the museum we went over to some other buildings that housed innumerable art and crafts objects from the Western African nations, and the richness and variety of these objects is a great source of inspiration and admiration. I wish we would have had a bit more time to browse this collection, as you don’t often get a chance to see such a large collection of African artifacts in one place.
The second major destination on this tour was a former plantation-turned-special-education-school called Groot Santa Martha. On our way there, we stopped by a little slave hut, which looked rather idyllic, reminding me a bit of those cozy cottages found in English villages.
And yet, the thought that the former inhabitants were bereft of most every personal freedom we take for granted nowadays, made for an odd contrast between what one saw, and the image in front of one’s inner eye of what it must have been like for those who lived in it a few centuries ago. And yet, it was lightyears away from the miserable “lodgings” we had seen at the Kura Hulanda earlier.
After a quick stop, we continued on our way to Groot Santa Martha. Here’s an excerpt from their info brochure:
In 1696 the Groot Santa Martha Plantation was already famous for its cattle, sugar mill, indigo, distillery and fresh-water wells. Dividivi pods were also exported and in 1797 there was still one working sugar mill.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the sale of fruit and cattle for slaughter turned a handsome profit, while Santa Martha also produced 90% of the island’s salt which was then shipped to the United States and the Netherlands.
The heavy work in and around the landhouse and in the saltpans was done by slaves who lived in huts on the land. At that time, the plantation consisted of 554 hectares, now reduced to only 17 hectares.
Today there is still an orchard, nursery garden, vegetable and herbs garden, and a farm with cows, goats, sheep and horses. In all these departments handicapped people work under supervision.
The plantation’s gorgeous, serene location is embedded in lush green surroundings and close to a saltwater lake, nicely setting off the cheerfully bright-yellow main houses. In some of the buildings on the site, mentally handicapped people were being trained in arts and crafts, e.g., in a furniture restoration workshop, with the aim to prepare them for an independent life once they have completed their education here.
The way the place was presented to us, however, felt somehow awkward and inappropriate, as our group was led to some of the buildings and allowed to freely look around. Although the director of the place, who led us around and explained each building’s purpose and the overall concept behind the Santa Martha foundation, assured us that “meeting” other people this way was part of the training they provided to their students, I couldn’t help but compare the image of watching these people and taking photos of them, to images from circus freak shows from the early 20th century.
And I was glad to find out that I wasn’t the only one who had reservations about this, as I talked to another person from our group, who also shied away from entering every building and basically disrespecting the students’ privacy, and he shared the exact same feelings about this visit.
It’s not that I object to visiting places like Santa Martha per se — far from it. But, generally speaking, if the expression on another person’s face indicates to me that they feel uncomfortable when observed in tactless touron2 fashion, I respectfully retreat and leave them alone. Grabbing your camera and taking a close-up shot of that person instead, should not be an option in these situations.
During the drive back to the ship, our guide provided us with some insights into what life on Curaçao is like today, bringing our thoughts back into our modern times: how the housing market develops, what the school system is like, how the island is debating independence from the Netherlands, and many more interesting tidbits.
Before being taken back to the pier, we took a little detour to the Tula memorial. In 1795, a slave named Tula organized a revolt against a plantation owner, and even though the revolt was violently put to an end and Tula executed, he is still revered as a hero, and that reverence is also expressed in the monument which shows Tula breaking the chains of two other slaves with a hammer and chisel.
In a way, today’s excursion was the opposite of yesterday’s fun off-road ride: more serious, deeper, and thought-provoking, and I returned to my cabin tired, mellow, and even a bit emotional. But that’s exactly what makes an excursion worthwhile.
Being shown a close-up of such a disgraceful phenomenon in our “civilized” nations’ history is not a carefree ride, but it can, and should, give us pause to reflect on which values define us as human and humane beings — both through confronting us with events and actions that we don’t want to ever occur again, but also through inspiring and empowering stories like that of the slave Tula who was brave enough to put his own life at stake to stand up against his and his fellow-men’s oppressors.
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The Volendam left Curaçao at 6 in the evening, so there was only time for one class today: part one of David Pogue’s two-part mini-series “Inside Mac OS X ‘Leopard’” in the ship’s Wajang Theater, promising to cover all 300 of the new features found in this release of the OS. Well, that didn’t “quite” work out as promised, but, given David’s entertaining presentation style, it was well worth attending despite the “somewhat” less comprehensive coverage.
David’s first topic — after pointing out the “halucinogenic box” that Leopard ships in — was Time Machine. When asked who could rightfully claim to have a complete backup of all the files on their Mac “right now,” only three people in the room raised their hands (thanks to SuperDuper! and a bus-powered Iomega FireWire drive, I could rightfully claim membership in this exclusive club). Which, according to David, was in line with what Apple claimed, namely that only 4% of their user base have a system in place that creates automatic, regular, and complete backups.
To demonstrate the importance of backups, Pogue used the one example that I think is guaranteed to work every time: pictures of your family, especially of your kids. The very idea of losing any photos that document moments in peoples’ lives that they can never ever re-live or re-create usually gets even those to consider implementing a reliable backup system who never cared about backups before. Which makes it all the more surprising that David himself admitted to not backing up!
Despite having three kids, a massive supply of cool camera gear (and not just way-cool review loaners, either, I’m sure), and, thus, tons of media files portraying his children, he says he has not backed up by making backup copies on DVDs, or somesuch. Why not? Because he just does not have enough time to do so. Or, rather, did not have enough time, because, with Time Machine, backing up becomes a no-brainer.
Other topics covered in this session was slightly less important, yet useful faire, including Spaces, QuickLook, Cover Flow, etc. Watching David showing off these new-to-Leopard features was especially fun to me, because I have not yet installed my own copy of Leopard, which I had received just a few days before leaving for the cruise, and now my “Me Want!”-levels are at a new high.
To round off this session, David presented five of his ten “Dave’s Faves:” 1. The “Mosaic”-style photo screen saver; 2. Data detectors in Mail.app; 3. searching for menu commands via the search box in an application’s Help menu. With addressing data detectors for adding events to iCal and addresses to the Address Book, as well as using the Help menu search to also find bookmarks in Safari’s history, that does make five faves total.
The other five will be covered in the second part of “Inside Leopard” tomorrow night. For now, though, I’ll focus my thoughts away from the feature menu Apple has created for their latest Big Cat to the menu that lists what’s for dinner tonight. Aye!
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Curaçao is a former Dutch colony and, as one of the Netherlands Antilles islands, still part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. ↩
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touron = tourist moron ↩
MM 7 — Day 4: Serene Seas, Grand-Mastering Google, and Fabulous Four-Wheeling Fun
Being the total opposite of a morning person, waking up in the middle of the night — say, around 6am — usually annoys me to no end. Not so today: noticing that it was getting light outside, I chose to go see what there was to see of the sea (sorry…), and was rewarded with a stunning sight.
Sunrise was just a few minutes away, and a dramatic cloud constellation hovering above the vastness of the sea provided a gigantic canvas for the sun to paint on. Being this close to the equator, the sun rose quickly, and you could literally see it move up onto the sky, creating countless shades of purple and orange on the towering clouds.
As you might expect, I did take a number of photos, but — luckily — realized in time that trying to “can” this kind of vista into a digicam photo just doesn’t work: while it may be helpful to relive this moment in your mind after returning back home, a two-dimensional representation of a small excerpt of this majestic scene simply cannot replace experiencing that moment right then and there. There is nothing worse than going through your vacation photos back home and wonder “Umh, when was that? Did I really see this?!”
So, I put the camera away, just stood there on my verandah, and immersed myself in the moving beauty of the moment. Eventually, though, my True Self™ requested its due, and I got back into the cabin for a few more moments of sweet sleep.
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Thanks to that genius invention called Alarm Clock, the night did finally end at around 8am, because this was the first day featuring an early-morning class I did not want to miss: David Pogue’s talk on “Extreme Googling.”
To be totally frank, I daresay that this session was off to a rather dull start, and that’s not just due to the fact that David was a bit late(, because he thought that this class was scheduled for a different day). It was also because the class started out with some pretty average, i.e., definitely un-extreme, Google fare, like using the asterisk wildcard, enclosing your search term in quotation marks to find multi-word phrases, or removing hits from the search result by prepending a word, or more, in the search term with a minus character.
It got much more interesting — and fun — when David started presenting some lesser known features offered by the Google site. Here’s a rundown of those features, and what you need to type into Google’s search box to access ‘em:
- Look up a word’s definition and find related phrases: “define:[word]”
- See a concise weather forecast: “weather [place name or zip code]”
- Check out movie listings: “showtimes [place name or zip code]” (Click the top-most link in the search results)
- Type in a partial address, and the top-most result is the full address and a small map view of that address
- Type in an equation to calculate the result. Also works for converting units via “[unit 1] in [unit 2]”, e.g., “teaspoons in a gallon”
- See the product assigned to a bar code: type in the number found on the barcode label and click on “Look up UPC number” on the results page
- Get airline flight information: type in the airline name and flight number, e.g., “united 22″
- Find out more about a book by typing in the name of that book. Google Book Search shows the cover image, lists a table of contents, most popular pages, and much more.
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We’re on the beautiful island of Aruba today, one of the Netherlands Antilles. When I saw they were offering an off-road excursion for this port of call, I immediately put a checkmark next to it. However, when we — that is, fellow-cruisers Tara and Jonathan, and yours truly — arrived at the parking lot with the off-road vehicles, I was not so sure anymore whether that was such a good choice.
Those Jeep Wranglers looked pretty with their yellow paint job and decent off-road tires. But a closer look revealed a state of maintenance that would give the average German MOT official an instant heart attack: wheels were mounted to the Jeeps in mix-and-match fashion, some tire flanks showed “ghastly tire wounds,” engine warning lights came on, at least one vehicle lacked the lap belt for the passenger seat, etc.
Well, after a short briefing, and having signed an all-out waiver that would surely protect the operator from liability suits even if they actively blew one of the vehicles up during our excursion, we took off anyway, with four people sharing one vehicle.
Starting out on a few miles’ worth of pavement, and progressing gently via a two-track onto some more serious dirt roads with deep ruts and pleasantly steep inclines, we spent almost 4.5 hours chugging along.
Switching drivers every now and then, we could clearly confirm that, yes, female drivers are the maddest. Well, OK, that is, if their name begins with “T” and there’s a deep water hole right in front of the vehicle. Oh. My. Gosh. (Or is that “Gush”?).
During the tour, some sightseeing was thrown in, too, including the now-collapsed Natural Bridge, a little church just by the shore line, the California light house, and there was even a thirty-minute break at a gorgeous beach, which we reached just in time to catch the sunset.
Driving the last few miles back to the Jeep depot, enjoying the warm gentle evening breeze in our open-top Wrangler, we had that satisfying feeling of having spent a grand day out. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t just me who thought that Aruba is exactly the kind of island where you wish you’d miss the boat.
MM 7 — Day 3: All (Day) At Sea
Today is our first “sea day” on this cruise.
I love sea days: from wherever on the ship you look out, you see only water. Lots of it. Combine that with balmy warmth outside, a nice breeze, and the gentle noise of the waves from the ship’s cutting through the sea, and it’s the perfect atmosphere to really wind down.
Of course, it’s also during sea days that most of the MacMania seminars take place, so you have to make a conscious choice between relaxing idle time or learning cool new things about the Mac. Making that choice is surprisingly simple, though: if you’re already familiar with the topic, and the class expressly targets an entry-level audience, or if the topic just doesn’t interest you, you’ve got some more spare time on your hands.
Today’s classes pretty squarely fell into the former category, so I opted to scrap ‘em all, except for one.
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As a less formal kind of “class,” this cruise features “Ingenious Bar” sessions. Modeled after the “Genius Bars” found in Apple Stores, they’re an opportunity for us to ask the MacMania speaker luminaries for advice on all things Mac.
The one I joined today was manned by Apple’s Sal Soghoian and Macworld’s Jason Snell, and quickly turned into a pretty deep discussion about how technology could be used to teach Civics to young people, which topic was brought up by Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss, who is with us on this cruise.
Richard explained that he has since left showbiz to focus on just that: teaching civics to kids and teens, and raising awareness for its importance. He will present this project during “An evening with Richard Dreyfuss” next Saturday, and I am excited to find out more about this. Should make for an interesting blog post, too!
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Yeay for towel animals!
The cabin stewards sometimes craft animals from towels during turn-down service. On this cruise, they even use stick-on eyes!
MM 7 — Day 2: The Private Island Adventure
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.
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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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Our walk through Palermo is a great example for “re-visiting on your own.” ↩
MM 7 — Day 1: A Virgin No More
A cruise virgin, that is.
If you’ve read my coverage of last July’s MacMania 4.5, you may recall the story that fellow-cruiser Erik Pitti and me were asked if we were virgins. Let’s just sum this whole embarrassing incident up by saying that that was in reference to us both being on our very first-ever cruise.
As with every premier(e), there are a few things to learn before you can fully enjoy your cruise, and the embarkation process is part of it, as is the life boat safety drill. Sounds menacing at first, but after you’ve been through this once, it’s a minor item to check off on your cruise to-do list, so I’ll spare you any further first impressions, as I’ve written about those quite extensively already.
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Moved into the cabin, got more-than-was-necessary annoyed by the noisy airco, grabbed some food on the not-quite-as-spectacularly-posh-as-the-name-suggests Lido deck, greeted my cabin steward, unpacked, went through the safety drill, called home quickly to give ‘em the all-thumbs-up, and waited for cast off.
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5:00 pm. Let the voyage begin! Sail away, Cap’n!
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Apparently, this cruise is the biggest one for Geek Cruises/InSight Cruises, yet: each of the two seminar tracks — called “MacMania 7” and “Shakespeare at Sea“, respectively — has some 120 participants. That’s quite a crowd, and so the Bon Voyage parties have been split up, as well. While the Shakespeare’ians enjoyed theirs in the Crow’s Nest, us MacManiacs have congregated on the after Lido deck. Interesting crowd, this, and some of the luminary speakers like Macworld’s Jason Snell, the NY Times’s David Pogue, and Derrick Story have joined in the fun, as well.
Looks like this will be a fun cruise.