I
have sometimes wondered why cruise companies choose certain ports.
Some are obvious as being major tourist spots with lots to offer like
Puerto Vallarta, Sydney, San Francisco, and so on.
But
sometimes, the stops make no sense. Such was the case in Esperance,
Australia. Esperance is perhaps most famous as being the place where in
1979, NASA's Skylab fell to earth (and, Esperance sent a $400 bill to
the United States for littering. The US refused to pay, but years
later, a
Southern
California disc jockey had his listeners contribute to pay the long
overdue fine). Well, in the 34 years since 1979, not a lot has happened
in Esperance. So when a cruise ship with 2850 passengers on board came
to town, it was a BIG deal. This is the first time the Solstice had
come to port, and it is the largest ship ever to come to Esperance. The
good people of Esperance were ready. Or so they thought.
Esperance
is too small to have a ship dock. In fact the only dock they do have
is really so small and in such shallow waters that it really couldn't
even fully support the tenders that had to ferry passengers from the
ship to the shore. So, instead of being able to have four or five
tenders carrying 150 people each to the dock, only one tender carrying
100 people could go at a time.
After
about a half hour delay (not that bad, but then we were early), we made
it to shore, and since there wasn't a lot to do there, and since I
needed to do some work online, I needed to find WiFi. That was problem
number two. Only four places in town had Internet ... McDonalds, the
Esperance Library, a place called Z-zone, and a cafe called Dome. We
first went to the library which wasn't scheduled to open for another
fifteen minutes. But a matronly woman came to the front door and asked
what we were waiting for. We told her we wanted to use the Internet.
She apologized and said it hadn't been working for a couple of days and
suggested we try Z-zone. A few blocks away, we found Z-zone, but they
only had a few old terminals in a back room where you could check email
and no WiFi. "Go to the library," the smiling tattooed man at the desk
suggested. Knowing the story at the library, it was next off to
McDonalds. But as we were walking there, we encountered some other
friends from the ship who said McDonalds wasn't working either. That
left Dome.
We
were among the first to arrive there, ordered two smoothies (for twice
the price you'd pay in the US, but hey, we were getting "free
Internet"). And it was free, and it was fast, and it was great ...
Until the other 2850 people from the ship eventually got to shore and
discovered that Dome was the only place that had working WiFi.
Actually, it was only a few hundred people who went to Dome, but in a
town where probably only two dozen people are online at the same time,
you can imagine the results. The system finally just locked up, and no
one could get online, and those who were online couldn't do anything.
We joked that in addition to Skylab, Esperance would now be known as
the place that broke the World Wide Web.
Enough
fun for one day, we made a call to a private company in Bali where next
week we've arranged to do a nighttime elephant safari. Trying to use a
pay phone in a foreign country calling another foreign country is a
story in itself, but I won't even get into that. We then headed back to
the tiny dock where we would catch the tender back to the ship anchored
offshore ... Among with 2850 others. The line stretched from the little
pier for about four city blocks. The ship's crew was handing out water
and cold towels to keep the passengers from passing out in the 85
degree weather. No problem for us, but I felt really bad for a lot of
the elderly people who were clearly distressed. After 90 minutes in
line, we finally got on the tender.
But
by then, the wind had come up, and the swells between the dock and the
ship were about ten feet. The little tender, which was sealed up water
tight, rolled and pitched and slammed into waves. At times, waves
washed over the entire boat. Women screamed, children cried (OK, there
weren't any crying children, but a few women did let out a few gasps as
the tender driver did all he could to maintain control). A 20 minute
ride took 35 minutes, but we made it, with all aboard giving a very loud
round of applause to the pilot.
The
next morning, Valentine's Day, we docked at Albany, only slightly
larger than Esperance, but with its own dock, and a cool colonial type
town right on the Indian Ocean. Here, lots of places had Internet, but
again, so many people tried to get online at the same time, the city's
entire WiFi grid just locked up.
We
were only in Albany from 7:00AM to noon, and 2848 passengers made it
back on board as we set sail. That left two unaccounted for. Over the
entire ship, several times before leaving the dock, the announcement was
repeated "Mr. and Mrs. Hobson from stateroom 7114, if you are somehow
on board, please contact guest relations immediately." Well, at 11:59AM,
they made the final announcement, just as I was getting into an
elevator to go to the gym. The elevator was packed, and one wise guy
asked, "Where are you all going, up to the top deck, to see the Hobsons
run onto the dock as the ship is pulling away?" We never saw the
Hobsons. The same thing happened last week, and the guests had to get a
flight to catch up with the ship at the next port.
Perth is next, where cruise #1 ends and cruise #2 begins. Eighteen days down, seventeen more to go.
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