On the road again

Now this is by no way a story of unbridled sex in a setting of indescribable Caribbean beauty. The implied word "abandon" comes directly from the highly suggestive St. Maarten website, although I do not want people to believe, that at my age of 70, which by the way is the reason we are here to celebrate that milestone, that I don't love my wife with abandon.   We were met by a member of the rental property management company on a warm sunny breezy 80 F Friday afternoon at the "Prestige Car Rental" company where Sandee, who did organize the celebration all by her lonely self (and for people who do not know her well: she prefers delegation), rented a jeep wrangler with a soft top. We drove along winding roads to the other side of the island to Dawn Beach where, and I say this as a sign of advertisement, on 42 Trumpet Shell Road we found Villa Seastar, a place we would never have located on our own.     The place was shuttered all arou...

When we boarded the Polar Pioneer that Friday afternoon. She was dwarfed by the Hurtigruten vessel docked opposite to her. We were shown our cabin on the level just below the bridge with a nice square porthole, only to be reminded later, that the higher you are on any ship, the more you will feel the sway. Our little group on board consisted of 45 expeditioners (or us the paying people), accompanied by 22 Russian crew and 10 mostly Australian expedition staff. Our first exercise on board was to crawl into one of two life boats, one of those fully enclosed vessels that can roll 360 degrees around in stormy seas, during which the claustrophobic among us are dying a worse death than being thrown into the icy waters.                                                    Although , after "dying", they could later look back "alive" at the ...