×
NewsDay

AMH is an independent media house free from political ties or outside influence. We have four newspapers: The Zimbabwe Independent, a business weekly published every Friday, The Standard, a weekly published every Sunday, and Southern and NewsDay, our daily newspapers. Each has an online edition.

A ‘Reunion’ with the Indian Ocean!

News
“WHAT on earth do you actually DO on a three-week cruise,” I’d been asked frequently by incredulous, possibly envious, friends.

“WHAT on earth do you actually DO on a three-week cruise,” I’d been asked frequently by incredulous, possibly envious, friends on mentioning a five-week absence from Ha-ha-ha-rare (Africa’s fun capital), 22 days of which would be sailing on the MV Melody from Durban to Italy. (Her last Indian Ocean voyage: she was attacked by Somali pirates.) Comment by Dusty Miller

I’m not such a workaholic that I can’t profitably and enjoyably do absolutely nothing, zilch, zero, zip for three weeks, whilst sailing some of the most beautiful seas of the world!

And if travel journalism didn’t come under my portfolio and one eye wasn’t on The Book successfully avoided crafting for the past half-century, maybe that’s precisely what I would do: next to nothing!

I’d chill out, vegetate, re-charge intellectual batteries, wallow in apparently endless hours of sun and sea, dip into the odd chapter of the latest monster airport novel, surrounded by new friends and tenaciously tanning toothsome, topless Teutonic maids.

Sun over the yardarm, blissfully idle days would be punctuated by the odd chilled article of a moderately intoxicating nature and gourmet meals in great company, studded with sparkling humour and wit.

Breakfasts could be: porridge, fruit; bacon and eggs (with every conceivable trimming); or real Scottish smoked kippers (“keepers” on the menu!) or Norwegian smoked salmon with scrambled eggs; followed by Danish pastries; or toast and honey, marmalade or jam; fruit juice or pints of coffee or a choice of nine tea infusions…or rich drinking chocolate, a speciality on cruise ships.

That first meal of the day is extremely welcome after vigorous partying to the wee hours and being on the bracing breeze-blasted upper-deck from five minutes before dawn to see another spectacular sunrise light up the ship, steaming steadily roughly north at 19 knots.

Perhaps the only possible improvement on a luxury liner’s languid breakfast (silver service 7.30-9:30; buffet 6.30-10) I’ve encountered was at the Sun ‘n’ Sand Resort, Mombasa, Kenya, where — in addition to the above vital components — chilled bottles of Italian sparkling wine and jugs of Bloody Mary and Buck’s Fizz also sat on the help-yourself buffet.

On a Western Caribbean cruise on the then world’s biggest liner, Independence of the Seas: 4 700 passengers and packed (the Melody could carry 1 600, but had just under 1 000) miso soup was on the menu. There were many Orientals on that trip and miso soup is to the Japanese breakfast what Rice Crispies are to Americans. I don’t know whether to admire or be appalled by a race which breaks its fast with broth!

The Melody (it’s no longer based in Durban for the northern hemisphere winter) had splendid lunches, high teas, superb eight course suppers and midnight feasts I just photographed, watching in wonder as people stuffed themselves soon after supper.  Suffice to say I never had a poor meal and rarely tried a course I didn’t thoroughly enjoy.

If attentive Indonesian waiters thought one charge hadn’t totally relished an option, they were almost distraught if the pampered passenger wouldn’t try something else.

We had three and a half idyllic days at sea before first landfall at Pointe des Galets, Reunion, 1 412 nautical miles from Durban; sufficient time for most of us to forget the total chaos of embarkation at the Kwa-Zulu Natal port. The only other time I fumed so furiously was on disembarkation in Genoa.

Clearly Mediterranean Shipping Company could profitably learn how to smooth these traumatic, blood-boiling events by sneaking a spy onto a Royal Caribbean International competition cruiser.

The one ran as smoothly as a Swiss chronometer, the other displayed all the planning, foresight and organisation of a Mongolian tug-of-war!

Reunion was breathtakingly beautiful; sparklingly clean and fresh. “It doesn’t seem like Africa to me,” a TWOG (Third World Groupie) middle-aged woman, who’d moved to RSA post-Apartheid, moaned. Well it isn’t really Africa!  The picturesque volcanic island is a prefecture of France with a seat in the European Union parliament and gets squillions in Euro-aid.

Public works were everywhere; the busy harbour was being tripled in size.

At every street corner and on each public building fly the French tricolour and EU flag.

Gendarmes in kepis patrol (well, stroll!) and we were obviously not really in Africa because there’s been none of the preposterous name-changing, statue-removing and futile attempts to alter history we see so much of on the mainland.

Despite the prominence of EU flags and France’s new found friendship with Germany, there are streets named after The Victory (against Berlin: twice); General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the anti-Nazi Free French; there’s a memorial to Free French forces, who liberated Reunion from the Vichy Regime’s collaboration with Hitler and war memorials of both global conflicts.

Streets, places and the airport are dedicated to Reunion-born Roland Garros, a French World War I flying ace, now better known as the name of a Parisian tennis stadium.

Almost every car is French-built and usually brand new. We had only a dawn-to-dusk fleeting visit to Reunion, with the ship’s rather expensive organised excursions to the capital, St Denis, the beach and snorkelling at St Gilles-les-Bains, or mountain trips through sugar-cane plantations or to the rugged Wild South coast.

We made our own way to St Denis at a fifth the cost of the excursion and arrived quicker. It has just 120 000 inhabitants and boasts some beautiful buildings. Seat of the prefecture was headquarters of the (French) East India Company and the place drips with history: from magnificent slave plantation mansions, to the Sainte-Suzanne cemetery, where British soldiers killed in Napoleonic Wars are buried.

Two sites at Sainte-Marie are sacred to Roman Catholics: the tomb of Brother Scubillion, who was canonised by Pope John-Paul II and that of the Black Virgin, protector of the oppressed.

Other than smart, efficient, reliable, regular public transport which was remarkably cheap (except drivers had no change for even a 5-euro note!) we found Reunion terribly dear compared to South Africa, where we had just left and Zimbabwe, apparently still trying to price itself out of the tourist market.

This was confirmed on our next two landfalls: Mauritius and The Seychelles.

[email protected]