Fletcher

16 - World Heritage Site with fridge magnets Today we took time off from this cruise and went to an Italian island in the Med. Maybe it was French. Or it could have been Croatian in the Adriatic. Actually it was the Ile de Gorée in Senegal, West Africa, and it was a complete surprise. This place, just off the mainland and Dakar, was one of the two main centres of the slave trade. The other was Elmina in Ghana. Industrial quantities of humans were exported from here to the Americas to provide a work force where otherwise there would be none. To feed us and cloth us with the things we wanted in the 17th and 18th centuries. I went to Elmina back in the 1990s when I was asked to write a piece about UNESCO World Heritages Sites for The Sunday Times. Elmina remains one of the most unforgettable places I have ever seen. Gorée, by comparison, is really tame, yet it is also a remarkably captivating place to visit. One goes expecting a sombre memorial to slavery and discovers a vibrant little island community, full of young kids playing soccer, cats everywhere, pots filled with flowers, cafes serving French food, hawkers selling fabrics and fridge magnets, tourists arriving by the ferry load, even a white sand beach. It is utterly gorgeous. And yes, up a flower bedecked back street, there is the House of the Slaves, where untold thousands were kept prisoner and fattened up before export, but UNESCO has restored it into a bijou mansion in salmon pink. You see the open door at the back and the Atlantic Ocean, the crashing waves and the choice of a watery grave or a life pickin’ cotton in the Carolinas, where nothin’ could be finer, and then you wander back to the real world and this Disneyfied version of history. That’s what UNESCO does. Back on board the Silver Wind, we had an issue with our cabin, namely a disturbing noise caused by a fender on the pier at Dakar. Inside our cabin it sounded like chains being shaken and tuetonic plates being rubbed together. To our intense pleasure they have moved us for the night. It’s a transit day tomorrow. Many are leaving, many more are joining, we are going on a full day’s excursion to see a pink lake which isn’t pink anymore.

15 - The Bellies of Bathurst The Silver Obesity is berthed in Banjul, formerly Bathurst, the capital of The Gambia, the country that looks like a nematode wiggling its way into the fat belly of Senegal. It’s fun to sit on the back of the Panorama Lounge gazing at the vista and the activity - the unloading of container ships, the ferries, the colourful pirogues and the beautiful birds. Hawks, egrets, pelicans and swallows swoop and soar and glide in an endless circus. It’s also fun to look along the glass windows of the lounge and watch how a stomach will emerge through the door, followed some time later by a person. This can take ten seconds, sometimes twenty and there are two extreme cases on board when it takes two minutes, especially after a buffet lunch in La Terrazza. We still have a sort of medical emergency, a few cases of gastrointestinal infections and quarantines which has meant the closure of the pool and jacuzzis and the introduction of strict hygiene measures in the feeding stations, otherwise known as restaurants. Last night most passengers went ashore for a dinner and culture show, something we avoid like the plague. It seems likely that the current stomach bug came from a buffet lunch in a dubious Sierra Leone restaurant and last night’s bash in Banjul might yet turn out to be a super-spreader event. Mrs Fletcher and I have a cast-iron rule of never, ever, eating at risky venues. This dates back to a visit to Dera’a in Syria many decades ago and it’s a rule that has saved our souls and also our bowels. That said, we have to endure the sometimes appalling food on the ship, like last night’s ‘Grilled Maine Lobster’ in the Restaurant. The luckless crustacean wasn’t grilled, merely simmered in some liquid to render it like cotton wool and tasting of the same. It was served with two tiny underdone globes of potato, some raw julienne of carrot, precisely two uncooked green beans and half a thimble of pink sauce. It was by far the worst thing I’ve been served on this ship and, believe me, there is quite a lot of competition. Our Gambian excursion today was a two-hour boat ride up the creek which was pleasant, overly protracted and not nearly as bird rich as we were expecting, though those avians which were around - like spoonbills, egrets and darters - put on a good show. Oysters grow naturally here on the mangrove stems and it was interesting to see how the Gambian women collect them from their canoes. Other than that, it was all a bit reminiscent of an afternoon spent on the Norfolk Broads. Most of us declined the appendage of an hour-long nature walk and headed back to the ship, past the unending chaos and squalor of Banjul where, it seems, all old Mercs come to die. We went straight for a G&T on the back deck where the bellies of old Bathurst belong.

I've snorkelled around the World Discoverer - every expedition ship owes its existence to that ship. It was the first of the breed. A small pedantic note @kej1 - it's Solomon Islands, not Soloman.

14 - Still in the Bijagos Yesterday and today everything I had read about and expected from the Bijagos came true. It has amazing towns, incredible mangroves and world-class beaches. Yesterday we landed on one of the most hands-down-lottery-winner-drop-dead-gorgeous tropical beaches we have ever seen. And we have seen quite a few. This was on Meio Island, uninhabited, just a string of beaches encircling jungle. Birds flew, fish jumped. People would pay thousands of dollars a night to stay in a place like this but probably no one ever will. Guinea-Bissau lacks any sort of infrastructure so we privileged few on the Silver Wind saw it, experienced it, photographed it, swam it, took it away as our secret. Don’t tell anyone. Guests went off on bird walks, nature walks, or just walks. Silversea set up a small bar on the beach and sent out waiters armed with martinis and beers and canapes and whatever you wanted. This was a scene of pure western decadence. Being here you could understand the Mullahs of Iran. Today we were moored off the island of Bubaque. Expedition leader Lea had devised a deviously complex day of action, combining visits to the township and a beach resort on the nearby island of Rubane. Our zodiacs linked the ship, the town, the resort. Lea kept insisting that her plan would work and was easy to understand. Lots of people appeared baffled. We are in zodiac group 3 but for today we were also in Group Two. People who wore shorts were in Group 2a and people in long trousers were in Group 2b which would leave before Groups 5 and 6 but only after 1215 when everyone would meet at the resort for lunch. Vegans were in Group 8. Then everyone would go on zodiac cruises in strict Group rotation and return to the ship. Got it? In sweltering heat, not helped by the Saharan dust which hangs over everything, we wandered around Bubaque’s rubbish strewn streets all the way down to the little fishing harbour. This is the Bijagos’s main community and while there were signs of business ventures, even a few little hotels, it’s basically a wreck with hardly any buildings worthy of the name. Vultures and crows competed for the garbage. There was an old Portuguese mansion which was an astonishing sight. They put on a great dance show and the kids were all over us. Despite all the poverty, this place had a lot of heart. Guinea-Bissau has been a country I’ve long hankered after. It didn’t disappoint me, even though I never met a saltwater hippo. It was also a challenging, tiring, exhilarating definition of expedition cruising. The team pulled out all the stops for us and somehow made it all happen. We are now sailing away from Guinea-Bissau to Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. We are also sailing away with an unwanted stowaway on board, namely the GI virus. Five passengers are under medical supervision, dining procedures have changed, hand sanitising is enforced and the pool and jacuzzis are being drained.

Nope, never did.

13 - In the Bijagos Archipelago Welcome back to the Silver Wind where the weather is warm and clammy and the air is hazy, filled with Saharan dust apparently. Yesterday we pulled in to the Bijagos Archipelago off the coast of Guinea-Bissau. Expedition leader Lea had told us this was an unpredictable place where the immigration officials could take hours to complete all the formalities. She also said we would have to have our passports on us at all times, even in zodiacs and when we went swimming in the sea. In the end the formalities took less than ten minutes and the passport idea was dropped. I think the officials were more interested in lunch. The Bijagos is weird, flat and featureless, culturally quite distinct from the mainland and probably a good deal less turbulent and stressful as a place to live. We went ashore at Bolama which was in fact the capital of the country during the Portuguese colonisation. The lack of fresh water convinced the Portuguese they had made a mistake so in 1941 they upped sticks for Bissau, abandoning Bolama which they had designed on a grid pattern, like a Roman colonia. The town fell into disrepair yet some 4000 humans plus goats, chickens and pigs still live here. I thought the ones we encountered were either unfriendly or just uninterested in us. Someone put their frostiness down to shyness. And that was just the goats. Nevertheless, this was a fabulous place to wander around, filled with buildings in various stages of collapse and decrepitude, most notably a huge Romanesque public building facing a square that could have been a Roman forum. In the late afternoon almost everyone went on a 90-minute zodiac tour of the surrounding mangroves. I love these zodiac trips if only to see who has had their knees replaced and who has not. To be honest the mangroves, which snaked for miles, were not exactly teeming with wildlife. In fact, with 15 or so zodiacs in the water, there were far more noisy people than birds. But it was fun and at the end the Hotel Director appeared in a zodiac laden with Prosecco and fruit skewers. Then, as everyone was exulting in the luxury of sipping a fizzy drink in a mangrove swamp, suddenly you could hear Lea on the walkie-talkies screaming “Leave now!” because the tides around these parts are treacherous, leaving mud flats in an instant. Everyone fled back to the ship except for ophiologist Greg whose was alone in a zodiac and he got stuck. I’m sure we’ll go back for him in a day or two.

@kej1 I'm pleased you have found my current Amazon/Africa blog. I must say I was rather shocked and disappointed to read your comments about third party and other excursions you need to pay extra for. That's totally unacceptable for an expedition cruise. Outside the polar regions, I don't think Seabourn fully understands or embraces the expedition ethic. Silversea and the ship we are on certainly have their faults but the expeditionary side of things is all-inclusive and often immersive.

I'm really enjoying this thread as the South Pacific is my favourite part of the world and the perfect expedition cruise location if the ship is small enough. I'm reading this aboard a Silversea expedition ship, the Wind, currently in the Bijagos Islands, Guinea-Bissau.

12 - Slavery etc Taking my lead from people like Greta Garbo, the Pope, Stanley Kubrick and the late HM The Queen, I don’t give many press interviews. But I made an exception today on Bunce Island, 20 miles up the creek from Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone. There was a young man standing in the middle of a photo I wanted to take so we came to an amicable arrangement. He would get out of my shot if I gave him an interview. The young man was a reporter from Freetown’s leading newspaper and they were covering the visit of the Silver Wind. Cruise ships - indeed any form of tourism - is a rare thing in Sierra Leone and this journalist wanted to know why I was here, how I got there, where I was going next, what the food was like on the ship, how many formal nights there were. He also wanted to know what I thought of Sierra Leone and if they are doing the right things to attract tourists. I answered every question and said I was not sure if tourism should be a priority for Sierra Leone’s government right now. They should worry about the Chinese buying up everything, about the catastrophic levels of rubbish, about abject poverty, about housing, about health, about religious indoctrination and radicalisation and about pot-holes before they start worrying about hotels equipped with Toto toilets and Gordon Ramsay restaurants. Silversea had arranged three excursions today - a city tour, a visit to a chimpanzee sanctuary and our trip to Bunce Island on which are the ruins of a British fort used in the slave trade. Apparently some 30,000 slaves were exported from here to the Americas between 1670 and 1807. This was a mere cottage industry compared to the slave castles of Ghana which exported industrial quantities and continued to be used after the slave trade was abolished and are thus in a great state of preservation. This fort on Bunce Island fell into rapid disrepair and today is hardly more than a few arthritic walls. And yet it was a splendid site to see, immensely atmospheric, vaguely reminiscent of Angkor because of the way the forest and the giant trees had smothered the ruins. We also had a wonderful guide. We loved our visit here. The trip to the island wasn’t exactly dull, either. The boat was small, battered and filthy, with two powerful outboard motors that roared and thundered us along. At one point a window flew out and we stopped every ten minutes or so to haul out bits of flotsam and plastic. We sped past Freetown’s world class shanty towns, the world’s biggest floating hospital, the Global Mercy, which seems to be permanently moored here, and also a Turkish-owned floating electric power station which goes on and off depending on Sierra Leone’s bank balance. This was an exciting trip, the best so far, and the waterway here proved to be so much more interesting than the Amazon. Right now, as I write this, we are sailing to our first stop in Guinea-Bissau which is the main reason I am on this cruise. As I eat my steak in The Grill we are sailing directly opposite Conakry, the capital city of Guinea. This is reputedly one of the most hellish, violent, poorest and corrupt countries on the face of the planet. It ranks high on my bucket list. If I had a bucket.

11 - A fishing village Today a strange spaceship called Silver Wind came out of nowhere and landed at an impoverished fishing village called Tokeh in Sierra Leone. Strange people landed on the beach in zodiacs - and I expect there was many a villager who was desperate to get into a zodiac himself in a place called Calais and head for a wet landing in a place called Dover. Our own zodiac crossing was enjoyably hairy with modest swells on either side of the operation. Silversea were based at a hotel called The Place which had laid out sun loungers, seats and proper dining tables on the vast sandy beach. There was an area for local handicrafts, a swimming pool and ten beach chalets available for Silversea guests. There was a cultural show, free-flowing drink and finger-food. As a logistical exercise it put the Moon landings to shame. On landing we were in different groups - nature, birding, cultural, bone idle. We signed up for the nature group but this village of some 4000 people didn’t have a lot of nature to show us. They did have a lot of abject, crushing poverty on a level that caught us by surprise. Our group of maybe 30 people started to wander around, led by the charismatic Greg who was being steered by various local people who were themselves monitored by armed police. We started by walking along the beach, then into the village, past the boat-building yard and on to Main Street. No one seemed to have a proper roof. It was all like a disaster zone. I find it incredible that in 2024 people are living like this. It looked like the catastrophic civil war ended only five years ago, not 25 years ago. There were chickens and cars and bikes and dust and rubbish everywhere. The heat bore down on us like a concrete roof. There were food stalls serving deep fried things and smoked fish. And there were groceries selling bread and tinned produce. One passenger asked, “Are there any more boutiques to see?” Greg said, “Boutiques? I think you’ve been on the ship too long.” Every so often we’d be adopted by a teenage boy or a young man who all had a sorry story to tell. They were orphaned, they needed to pay to go to school, they wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer, they wanted money from you. They all had that story committed to memory. Some of them were in their 20s. It was all rather sad. A few decades ago I used to breeze through these sort of places and regard it as rather exhilarating, one big photo opportunity. I started to change my mind about this sort of thing when I did a Cloud cruise to West Africa when we stopped at town on stilts called Ganvie in Benin. The hostility towards us was quite shocking. The women turned their backs on us and the men often said “GO AWAY.” The kids of course just fooled around with us because they didn’t know any better. Today wasn’t as upsetting as Ganvie but I must admit to feeling rather uncomfortable wandering around Tokeh with a camera that probably cost as much as anyone here would earn in a lifetime. Expedition Leader Lea made a point of explaining how Silversea contributes to this community by funding schools and things. That’s great and I never felt physically threatened - there was a big police presence - but I always felt queasy. Tourism should be a force for good but sometimes, despite everyone’s best intentions, I’m not sure that it is.

10 - We discover Africa It has been five whole days and a bit since we left Fortaleza and the continent of South America. Five whole days. That’s less than ten days which makes it seem a lot better than it could have been. It’s not been dull. It’s been samey. The same heat. The same overcast skies. The same routines. The same disgruntlement over the Amazon itinerary. I think Silversea can look forward to a ton of letters about that. Three days in to the voyage across the Atlantic the Captain came on the blower to tell us there had been a medical emergency involving a crew member and, as a result, the Wind would steam straight to Freetown in Sierra Leone and drop the unfortunate crew member off for medical treatment. This would not impact our itinerary at all. We’d still hit the beach at Tokeh tomorrow morning. I felt rather sorry for the expedition team who were often out on deck, chatting to each other, scanning the sea and the sky for something to engage their attention. They spent hours doing this, the miles rolled past, there was hardly anything to see except the sea. One or two birds maybe. Then yesterday there was a pod of more than 100 spinner dolphins on the port side. I was in my cabin on the starboard side and missed the excitement. Today there was a dead whale and a few freighters and container ships. This evening, at long long last, Africa came up on the horizon. There were hazy mountains, and the rather chaotic geography of Freetown, a former British colony. A woman passenger, dressed as if for a party at Mar Del Lago, looked ashore and said, “Oh my they have electricity.” I detected a note of surprise and also perhaps disappointment in her voice. The Wind sidled in and dropped anchor to await the launch which would transfer our ailing crew member to hospital. We observed all this from the back of La Terrazza. Dining on carpaccio and saltimbocca and gazing at all the twinkling lights in the bay, it was perfectly possible, with only the slightest stretch of the imagination, to think you were in Portofino. Buona notte.

9 - Never get out of the boat In Fortaleza we got ourselves a new expedition leader. Her name is Lea and she seems like a typically competent, forthright, down-to-earth Aussie. At a stretch she could morph into Lee Ermey, the drill instructor in Full Metal Jacket. Yesterday Lea gave a briefing about what we might expect from our two stops in Sierra Leone. Quite a few passengers on the Wind seem a little on the old side of elderly, a little uncertain on their pins. I’m sure some of them at the briefing wondered if we could simply turn left and head for Barbados instead of this terrifying place called Africa. Lea started off by saying the last time Silversea came to Tokeh Beach they couldn’t land. The surf was just too high. She had photos to prove it. In one picture the zodiac platform was about six feet above the water and in the next picture it was entirely submerged. The beach itself seems like a death trap. She has apparently hired some local lads to help out when the waves hit the arriving zodiacs and flip them over. She said we had to sit this way, swivel that way, and try not to drown when you are thrown into the foaming tumult. Oh, she said as an afterthought, you need to prevent your camera from getting wet. She recommended wearing swimmies. And that was only the beginning. If you survived the beach landing you were into Saving Private Ryan territory. Lea said we had to leave all valuables on the ship because the natives were lining up to rob and murder us. Someone asked if they took credit cards. There was a charming ambiguity to that question. If you were alive after all this you would enter a beach resort behind a security cordon. I had an urge to tell people there are apparently crocodiles at the far end of this beach. Lea didn’t have the nerve to mention that. Today, Wednesday, Lea gathered us for a briefing about Guinea-Bissau and the Bijagos Archipelago which is the main reason I am on this cruise. I have long wanted to go there. From Lea’s briefing, these rarely visited islands look like a total bliss-out. They do have one distinctive wildlife attraction - saltwater hippos which Lea failed to mention. They were, you might say, the elephants in the room. The skies have been disappointing in the mid-Atlantic. No sunsets. This is the best I could muster today.

8 - All At Sea There are some baffling behaviours on this cruise, mainly to do with eating patterns. I don’t mean some people are eating beef wellington and pinot noir for breakfast and Corn Flakes and tea for dinner. I mean which restaurants are busy and which restaurants are not. On all our previous Silversea cruises one of the most popular, fully-booked dining venues has been The Grill. On the Cloud last year it was often hard to get a table. We like to eat there every other day because I think the food is the best - or least worst - on the ship. We never use the hot rocks because I don’t like the smoke, the spitting fat or the wearing of bibs. We find that the chef can cook a fillet or a rib-eye to our liking and the prawns are also rather tasty. And messy - where are the finger bowls? We’ve now been on the ship for nine days and The Grill has never been remotely busy. The weather has always been tropical balmy without life-threatening insects or much rain. Last night there were only three tables taken, one of them by a woman on her own who finished her meal by 7.30pm. It was eerily empty, like a Blackpool cafe on a bleak February day. The maitre’d, from Belarus, looked a little depressed. Maybe if you are from Belarus that’s your natural look. Our favourite venue for dinner, ambience-wise, is the back deck of La Terrazza, though the food is chronically inconsistent. In various Terrazzas I have been served a mud bath called osso bucco or lasagne. La Terrazza, like The Grill, has been very busy on every Silversea ship we have been on. But not on this cruise. The other night we dined with a couple we have befriended and we were the only people there. It was like having our own private yacht. We told them we have emptied grand salons in our time. We enjoyed the privacy and the chef even managed a decent pasta dish. On stone cold plates of course. Downstairs in the Restaurant is where almost all the 150-odd passengers choose to have their dinner. No one is dressed up to the nines, merely sixes and sevens. It’s a pleasant enough room where the other night I had correctly cooked foie gras served with stewed tinned strawberries, followed by juicily pink lamb chops served with barely raw bits of broccoli, carrot and cauliflower, the unholy trinity of veg beloved of every chain pub in Britain. Have they never heard of pommes dauphinoise? And today we discovered this is perhaps the best place for lunch. Everything was unusually lovely. We bumped into the Equator at 3pm, going north. Some weird pagan ritual was held at the pool deck when ophiologist Greg smeared himself in chocolate sauce and invited passengers to lick it off. Sadly, a planned dip in 13,000 feet of water was abandoned because a giant squid was spotted roaming around, pursued by a sperm whale called Dick. Or maybe it was just too much of a swell. So the Captain turned the fire hoses on anyone who had signed up for the dip. As you can tell, on these sea days the team try desperately hard to keep us amused. So there is volleyball and ping-pong and a lot of dandy games. What ain’t we got?

7 - Fortaleza woes Fortaleza was our first time on dry land since we left Manaus last Monday. We didn’t want to go to Fortaleza which is just a huge Brazilian city with big beaches, high rise buildings, a lot of squalor and a reputation for street crime. But it was always on our itinerary as the ship needs to fill up with stuff and clear immigration formalities before we head across the Atlantic. We wanted to make the most of what little it has to offer. But before I tell you about our visit to Fortaleza here’s a little amuse bouche. We have another cruise booked, on the Dawn, later this year. Because we have been messed around quite a bit on this current cruise - not only the itinerary but our cabin as well - we thought we’d see how Silversea behaves and consider our options. At the moment I think we are about 70 percent on the side of bailing out. Anyway, we were chatting to this guy on the Future Cruise Booking desk. He wears a suit and tie and seems very keen to help. We said we already had this Dawn booking. He said he’d look it up, apply the discount, and see what else he could do. He could get us an upgrade, on board credit, all sorts of lovely stuff. And the next day we were presented with an offer which came in at about £3000 more than our existing booking. I said we’ll stick with that. He said, yes, that’s a good idea. He looked a bit crestfallen. Back to Fortaleza. That’s something I hope never to say again because we will not go back to Fortaleza. The tour today was the absolute pits. It was billed as a nature walk. So we drove for half an hour through some scruffy areas and came to a stop near a sand dune which rose up beside a four-lane highway. Some people climbed it. I asked our resident ophiologist, the charismatic Greg, why people were doing that. He said they were channelling their inner Sean Connerys. I loved that. We drove around a bit more, past many high-rise blocks which filled our local motormouth guide with pride, and came to the nature walk, a mangrove swamp right in the middle of the city. This was muddy and vaguely on the underside of whelming. We saw perhaps three birds. After half an hour we got back on the coaches and did another tour of the high-rise buildings. I should mention here that there is only one building in Fortaleza worthy of serious scrutiny and that is the theatre, as impressive in its way as the opera house in Manaus. Sadly, the theatre was not on the itinerary. Nor was a pretty beach area. Instead we were taken to a shopping mall and told to shop for 30 minutes. We declined the offer and waited until the others maxed out their credit cards on knick-nacks from China. We returned to the ship. What a waste of time this was. We knew Fortaleza would be rubbish. And it lived up to all the hype. We wouldn’t have minded so much had São Luis and Barra Grande remained on the itinerary. But Silversea nixed them. And having monitored a recent cruise with the Silver Nova, I believe that the people on that ship had a far better, far richer experience of this part of Brazil and the Amazon than we have had on this so-called expedition ship. We now have five sea days to get to Africa where I learn there is barely a 50-50 chance of making our first landfall at Tokeh Beach in Sierra Leone. Are we downhearted?

On the Wind right now. If you wear Jeans, T-shirts, flip-flops you will be overdressed.