And so it ends...
Trip Start
Apr 03, 2004
1
4
Trip End
Apr 10, 2004
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Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Saturday, April 10, 2004
So here my breakfasted self finds me in the calm of my stateroom again, sitting on the little verandah with the laptop, back at port in Ft. Lauderdale where we arrived a couple hours ago. We're all waiting for the loudspeaker to start calling the disembarkation numbers, which will cue a three hour process of getting all of us off the boat. The morning rain here has left everything covered with a foggy cloak of humidity - we're rooting for the sun to win out, since we have nothing to do and no place to go today except the beach before our plane leaves late this evening.
The whole trip wrapped up with a bang yesterday when Rachael was officially crowned the very first Olivia Idol. After the full week of stiff karaoke competition, she performed with the other eight finalists in the big theater to an audience of about 1000 rowdy women. All the singers were fantastic - Tuaca kicked off the show with a bang and Rachael closed it with a helluva rendition of Irene Cara's "What A Feelin" from Flashdance (my suggestion, thank you very much) to which she scatted all the instrumental parts and was an absolutely wild success. She finished and the whole theater just erupted - the entire floor on its feet, the balcony folks beating on the wall and Suede, one of the entertainers on board this week and one of the "celebrity judges", said she was ready to sign Rachael to her label. It was all pretty surreal and Rachael hasn't paid for a drink since. Suddenly I'm dating a boat celebrity! Everywhere she goes people are coming up to her with hugs and compliments. It's been a sweet ending to a sweet week. (And, as she says, her head is now officially too large to pack up so it's being FedEx'd home later this week.)
That was obviously the highlight of yesterday, our final day at sea. It was a delightful day, the greater portion of which I spent on the pool deck with my nose in a book. The day before was Cozumel, where Tuaca, Rachael and I visited the Mayan Ruin site of San Gervasio - it was fantastic. (Chichen Itza is back on the Mexican mainland and was too far... next trip!) San Gervasio is a large site near the center of the island and at one point was the central Mayan community not only of the island, but was the "mecca" site for all Mayan women. It is (I think) the only Mayan site that had areas for women only. The site is remarkably unsupervised, in that we were able to just wander all over without a guide through the ruins and surrounding jungle with very few restrictions as to where we could and couldn't explore. Refreshingly un-American. Tooling around for a couple hours we enjoyed glimpses of what life here may have looked like 1000 years ago. (There were still little red handprints on some of the stucco from the 12th century!) Our tour guides this time were hundreds of birds and iguanas who had the run of the place. My words can't do it justice - we each had strong emotional reactions to the place.
The rest of the Cozumel we saw was pretty much the tourist-saturated Mexico I think of, but the water and weather were gorgeous. That night found me back on the boat with about 10 other women drinking too much, dancing into the wee hours of the morning, and at some point there was skinny-dipping involved. Suede passed through the pool area around four and much to her surprise found a bunch of naked women in the hot tub (lesbian soup!) and serenaded us with "No Regrets". Nope, this doesn't suck.
Well disembarkation is now well underway so I'm off. While I do look forward to getting home, it's bittersweet, and the time of course went too fast. I'm glad we'll get to enjoy one more lazy, sleepy afternoon before we hop on the plane. I think Tuaca, Rae and I will head back to the B&B where Tuaca's staying again tonight and try and get a nap in. (And here I was under the silly impression that I'd actually sleep on my vacation.) Thanks for reading my little ramblings - they've been a challenge to articulate (and even more to send (internet access on the boat has been frustratingly spotty and ridiculously expensive) but a great way to capture a little of the experience.
Looking forward to the next one!
