West Africa on the Cloud

PRE-CRUISE PREAMBLE

Here I am in Accra, Ghana, staying at the Labadi Beach Resort and waiting to embark the Silver Cloud, bound for Cape Town. While this is my very first trip with Silversea, it’s my fifteenth ocean cruise and the Cloud is the second biggest ship I’ve ever been on.

This trip eavesdrops on Togo, Benin, Sao Tome and Principe, Angola and Namibia before getting to South Africa. I went to Ghana 22 years ago to write a Sunday Times feature on World Heritage Sites. The rest are new countries for me, though in fact I should have visited them all (and a few more) three years ago when I booked my first West African cruise. That cruise, not with Silversea, was cancelled a month before sailing, and so was the next one I booked. This is third time lucky and the fact that I’m in Ghana means there is every chance of reaching Cape Town, one of the few major world cities I’ve not been to.

If you think you might want to follow this journal, please bear in mind that I use cruise ships as if they were taxis. They are simply conveyances between places I want to go to. While I am not particularly interested in cruising as a destination in its own right, I do want my ship to be fairly ship-shape, I like good food and I like good company. I am wholly destination driven. I plan to write a daily account of this interesting-looking trip from my own perspective - I’m probably not your typical Silversea customer.

Before I went on this trip one of the books I read was Paul Theroux’s fairly recent Last Train to Zona Verde which is an account of his overland journey from Cape Town to Luanda. Theroux had intended to continue northwards, to Ghana and beyond to Timbuktu, but Luanda depressed him so much he packed his bag and flew home, wondering why anyone should want to go to West Africa in the first place - the cities were uniformly decrepit and squalid, corruption is rampant, tourists are fleeced or worse as a matter of routine, villagers glare at you, the resentment is palpable. Yes, West Africa seems vibrant and colourful and has a great culture and history but it also seems daunting and is perhaps a hopeless case.

‘I imagined my onward journey to be no more than spirited slumming . . . ,” wrote Theroux, ‘a toxic tour through the bowels of West Africa, along the Cote d’Ordure.’

Perhaps I should have taken two weeks in Bora Bora instead. But I didn’t, I’m here on this amazing beach in Accra, the sun is shining, the heat is oppressive and the Cloud is just down the coast waiting for me, and sailing into Cape Town’s harbour at the end seems utterly irresistible. So let the cruise begin!

Have an awesome trip Fletcher! I will follow your travels and savour it through your thoughtful and entertaining posts!

....and so will I !

waiting to embark the Silver Cloud, bound for Cape Town. While this is my very first trip with Silversea, it’s my fifteenth ocean cruise and the Cloud is the second biggest ship I’ve ever been on. I went to Ghana 22 years ago to write a Sunday Times feature on World Heritage Sites. reaching Cape Town, one of the few major world cities I’ve not been to. please bear in mind that I use cruise ships as if they were taxis. They are simply conveyances between places I want to go to. I am wholly destination driven. I plan to write a daily account of this interesting-looking trip from my own perspective Yes, West Africa seems vibrant and colourful and has a great culture and history but it also seems daunting and is perhaps a hopeless case. the Cloud is just down the coast waiting for me, and sailing into Cape Town’s harbour at the end seems utterly irresistible.

Super love your opening "chapter" about your adventure sailing down the African coast to Cape Town. Above, I have highlighted a few of your comments/details that were especially important to me and our interests. YES, we are destination focused, like you. The cruise ship is not quite a "taxi" for us, but it's a nice bonus if things work well during the sailing. This will be our first visit to Africa and look forward to departing Jan. 26 for Doha and then Cape Town. Our Silver Cloud cruise will be Feb. 2-12 along the South Africa coast to Mozambique and back to CT.

Appreciate your fine efforts and look forward to learning more from you. Might have a few questions on the Silver Cloud and Cape Town as your summaries roll along to benefit us and others on these CC Boards. Great that you have had Sunday Times writing experiences.

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

Enjoyed a 14-day, Jan. 20-Feb. 3, 2014, Sydney to Auckland adventure, getting a big sampling for the wonders of "down under” before and after this cruise. Go to:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1974139

for more info and many pictures of these amazing sights in this great part of the world. Now at 128,202 views for this posting.

Have a great trip and will be interested to get your take on Togo, Benin and Angola. If you get a chance in Sao Tome go and visit Claudio Corallo and his chocolate factory. He makes some truely lovely chocolate.

It was a pity that Paul Theroux didn't continue his journey as we found that north of the Congo at the beginning of 2013 the villagers "glaring at you" wasn't true particularly in Togo and Sao Tome and Principe.Laughing with you was a better description.

We sailed on the Explorer from Capetown to Ghana.

Subscribed and following..

Theroux has a nice way with words...

So, who is a typical SS cruiser if you are not? Have a great trip. I am a big fan of Africa, it keeps you humble. Enjoy!

DAY 1: EMBARKATION DAY

There are probably worse ways of killing a morning than lazing by the pool at the Labadi Beach Resort in Accra. The hotel is bigger and more manicured since I stayed back in 1993. With us are about 60 Cloud passengers, mostly British pensioners, though we are told several people are already aboard, having got on in Malaga. That cruise was to have visited the Canaries, Morocco, Senegal, Gambia and the Ivory Coast before reaching Ghana. However, we learn later today that immediately after its refit the ship suffered engine failure and had to abandon Morocco to make up the lost time. I hope this isn’t an augury for us.

We bundle into a big bus and head east down the coast to the port. This gives us quite a taste of things to come. Although Ghana has for years been regarded as something of a showcase West African nation, with a flourishing democracy, the poverty of Accra’s endless outskirts is really appalling.

The Cloud looks impressive alongside at Tema, gleaming white in the sun. I always get a buzz from watching and taking part in the embarkation process - I like the luggage on the wharf, the temporary tents, the checks for visas and yellow fever certificates and the line of people walking up the steep gangplank to their floating home. It’s a scene full of anticipation and the romance of travel by packet steamer into the Dark Continent. Is Joseph Conrad aboard?

On the subject of visas I might add here that at London Heathrow we saw two Silversea couples turned away by BA for not having Ghanaian visas in their passports. Silversea’s paperwork had it in plain black-and-white that everyone needed to get their own visa for this country alone. But at least two couples didn’t get them and I expect they will have lost everything, even their marriages by the time you read this. There doesn’t seem to be an easy way of catching up with the ship.

We are on Deck 5 and at first glance we are pleased with our cabin. It’s nicely laid-out, we like the sitting area and the balcony and there is ample storage space for everything we have brought. It’s not really a luxury cabin, it’s a bit old, there are scuff and bumps, a nasty stain of something on the TV, and the electric points were installed in an era before laptops and battery chargers. The bathroom seems perfectly OK as long as the plumbing works. It’s a manageable space and I hope we can be happy here for two weeks.

We are used to expedition cruising with about 100 passengers, so the Cloud seems fairly big if not enormous. We like the small ships as they can get to seriously remote ports of call that even a ship like the Cloud would find difficult. A bigger ship has compensations - larger deck space and a choice of restaurants, for instance.

For dinner tonight we make a big mistake, choosing to dine in The Grill. The concept here seemed a bit dubious on reading the menu and turned out to be laughable - steaks are placed on red hot stones on your table which means all the smoke goes straight at you, like one of those awful Mongolian things that were all the rage 20 years ago. It also means you don’t have a chef timing your steaks for you and we also get a pathetic skewer of peppers and a jacket potato that wasn’t cooked. Four sauces were on offer and we asked for bearnaise. That was the one we didn’t get so we walked out, leaving our steaks still sizzling on our table, and went down to the Terrazza.

We ordered one of our favourite dishes, fegato alla Veneziana, and it arrived in less than five minutes which is a sure sign of prepared food and maybe a microwave culture. It was served on searingly hot plates which made the sauce bubble and reduce on our table. This first Silversea dining experience wasn’t at all encouraging. All the waiters seemed great and the Italian wine was soft and delicious.

Two other things really annoyed us. They had closed the outdoor area of the Terrazza because, we were told, someone had been bitten there by an insect. And did we really have to stay in this miserable, noisy polluted port until 11pm? A landscape dominated by Maersk containers made for the least romantic dining venue I can ever remember.

Tomorrow it’s Togo and shrunken chimpanzee heads.

DAY 2: LOME, TOGO

Our first full day and we took a ship’s tour of Lome, capital of Togo. The tour lasted five hours, of which an hour was quite interesting. I’d long fancied seeing the fetish market which was less hardcore than I was expecting - no shrunken monkey heads, for instance, and it didn’t stink and it was swarming with tourists, not flies. In fact, it was quite sanitised, though the displays of dead dogs, rats, snakes and hornbills was enough to dismay anyone accustomed to going to Africa to see things running around. It’s said these body parts cure everything from infertility to incontinence. Personally, I take paracetamol every time.

After the fetish market we drove through mile after mile of Lome’s grinding poverty until we went into the countryside and found a primary school where the neatly uniformed kids sang with incredible, ear-splitting enthusiasm. Then to a beach where fishermen played with their nets and scowled at our cameras, then a sad and dusty museum and finally a dreary artisan’s market.

On our bus was a driver, two guides who took it turns to bore us to death, and two security guards in snazzy jackets who were carrying strange-looking plastic shoulder bags. Some thought these contained automatic rifles, though I thought they could just be tennis rackets or ukeleles. There is really nothing at all to see here.

Back on the ship at 2pm, Terrazza was still offering an OK buffet though not a patch on the lavish lunch buffets offered by Seabourn last year. After lunch we thought we might sit by the pool and read our books. Sadly, the pool contained half a dozen people standing round, their skin getting redder, drinking cocktails and yelling at each other. At 6am the pool deck looks quite chic and elegant and it stays that way until the passengers start to use it. By lunchtime it looks like Margate.

It’s formal night tonight and the ship is still sitting in Lome’s container port. While it’s not quite as terrible as Tema, it’s still a dusty, polluted place with scowling port staff and men with guns, so passengers swanning around on deck dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns strikes me as somewhat weird, like a Luis Bunuel movie.

We opt out of formal night and dine at Terrazza where I need a jacket but not a tie. To my surprise and delight, it seems that several other passengers don’t fancy the tuxedo regime either and have opted for casual clothes, just a short-sleeved shirt and jeans for one American gentleman. Even I think that’s going a bit far.

I’m afraid dinner overlooking the Maersk containers was another disappointment. Lobster and linguini sounded so inviting yet what arrived was very crude - grilled lobster tail sitting on overcooked pasta smothered in a gloopy tomato sauce, not unlike those Heinz spaghetti hoops of my childhood. Back home I cook a nice crab or lobster linguini using just olive oil, garlic, chilli flakes, crabmeat and lots of parsley - it’s basically a River Cafe recipe. This Silversea dish was heavy and rather horrible. Seriously good espresso, though.

Tomorrow it’s Benin and a village on stilts.

Looking forward to following along your journey.

I do remember that your posts on Seabourn led to you "getting a bit of stick" but you took it on the chin. Interested to see how this cruise develops. ;)

Following your journey through West Africa it was once on our to do list.That was until we were told by a respected SS cruiser that it was "the best itinerary for going to the worst slums in the world all on the same cruise".It is no longer on our list but nevertheless we shall follow your excellent reports and hope you enjoy a pleasant cruising experience on the Silver Cloud.

Fascinating. Sorry to add a comment as my iPhone won't let me subscribe and hopefully this thread will show up on my "participated" list!

I am really enjoying your posts. I haven't considered this itinerary, and you seem to call it like it is (as do I), so I will be interested in what you think.

DAY 3 - COTONOU, BENIN

It’s widely known that there are more people alive today than have ever lived. And driving through the streets of Accra, Lome and, today, Cotonou, you sense the incredible crush of human life and human misery. We are at plague proportions. You just know that in your heart of hearts, things will not get better, they will only get worse. At least, in this part of the world.

Cotonou just goes on and on, an endless street of motor cycles, furniture, tyres, fridges, bundles of clothes, open drains and general squalor. There isn’t a single building worthy of a second look, or even worthy of the name ‘building.’ But the people do look healthy and many of them look purposeful. You don’t see the beggars and cripples that you see in India or parts of the Far East. And you don’t see the helpless beasts of burden, crushed by the weight of their loads, choking in the traffic, their eyes full of terror.

From the container port, we drive out to Ganvie, a famous floating village, inevitably known the Venice of Africa, except that it isn’t like Venice at all because there are no canals or palazzos. There is just randomness and stilted huts so flimsily built that they’d fall over if anyone sneezed. Ganvie is home to an amazing 30,000 people (probably 31,000 by the time you read this) and it’s one helluva photo opportunity, an incredible spectacle. It should have been the highlight of the cruise yet Ganvie was, for me, a depressing and disturbing place to visit.

I’d read reports of how hostile the people were, how the women in particular glare and cover themselves up. Just riding along in a boat you get looks of indifference and dislike, occasionally a rude gesture, and someone did shout ‘go away!’ Most people in their canoes merely turn the other way. Only the children seem to welcome strangers and do the things that innocent kids do - wave, giggle and smile at you - before they grow up and see how things really are.

There is only one major building here and it’s a mosque. Now forgive me for being gloomy and pessimistic and for not simply saying ‘Hi y’all Cruise Critic forumites, we’re all having a great time!’ But in the era of the unending refugee crisis, just days after the shootings in Paris and other daily terror outrages, I couldn’t help thinking that Silversea’s little excursion to Ganvie just might in a small way contribute to the global radicalisation process.

Here we were, with our heavily armed escort, wearing smart clothes, smart watches, with expensive cameras, invading these people, spreading the seeds of resentment. On couple from the ship chose to wear matching white outfits with gold chains and gold watches. They would have looked bling in Palm Beach. I felt seriously uncomfortable in Ganvie and wished I wasn’t there. Tourism can be a force for good. Today I didn’t think it was.

Tomorrow we are all at sea.

Fletcher,

I'm enjoying your blog as the voyage continues. It gives some of us an idea what issues the rest of the world faces on a daily basis. Your comments about resentment are spot on.

I though the OP was treating this as a live blog, but since the Cloud is currently sailing on its way up the east coast of Africa, see separate and current thread, that is obviously not the case.

Thanks for the posts, but if you will pardon my opinion, its a rather strange way to produce a post cruise review.

The pervasive theme here is bleak, dismal, despair and hopelessness...

I think I would get off.

Sounds dark even more dark and macabre, even voyeuristic.

I couldn’t help thinking that Silversea’s little excursion to Ganvie just might in a small way contribute to the global radicalisation process. Here we were, with our heavily armed escort, wearing smart clothes, smart watches, with expensive cameras, invading these people, spreading the seeds of resentment. One couple from the ship chose to wear matching white outfits with gold chains and gold watches. They would have looked bling in Palm Beach. I felt seriously uncomfortable in Ganvie and wished I wasn’t there. Tourism can be a force for good. Today I didn’t think it was.

duct tape: I am a big fan of Africa' date=' it [b']keeps you humble[/b].

Very interesting and wise comments/observations by both Fletcher and duct tape. As we prepare for our first visit to Africa, we are somewhat fortunate that both South Africa and Botswana, on average, are much better off economically than many other countries in that large continent. BUT, there are still serious challenges to "keep you humble" as summarized so well. For someone who does not wear a watch or rings (in gold or otherwise), my "Palm Beach/bling" look will not be a challenge. The points made, however, are a very important reminder for many about the vital factors to consider when traveling to locations such as exist in Africa.

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

For details and visuals, etc., from our July 1-16, 2010, Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle cruise experience from Copenhagen on the Silver Cloud, check out this posting. This posting is now at 190,016 views.

http://www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

Fletcher,

I am enjoying your blog, even though it is dated a bit.

I would like to mention, I was in Accra for 2 weeks several years ago and really enjoyed myself. I stayed at the same hotel in Accra but also had the chance to visit downtown for business and it is more modern than you would think. A few blocks north of the hotel, if I recall correctly, is an emormous slum. It is a crowded place, agreed, but everyone seems to hustling to make a cedi (Ghanian currency). But, if you talk to anyone there and also in Togo and Benin, they all want to come to the U.S. or UK.

This is a trip you waited for and wanted to do. I envy you for the opportunity.

Bill

I though the OP was treating this as a live blog, but since the Cloud is currently sailing on its way up the east coast of Africa, see separate and current thread, that is obviously not the case.

 

Thanks for the posts, but if you will pardon my opinion, its a rather strange way to produce a post cruise review.

I noticed this a couple of days ago, but you beat me to posting something. I was interested because I will be taking the cruise on the Cloud along the west coast of Africa in March.

What is this anyway? A review of some past cruise rather than one going on now? If so, when? And why is it posted like this rather than in cruise reviews?

That being said, the posts are interesting.

Yes, I also noted the locale discrepancy. I am not sure about this guy, but he has an agenda. As stated earlier, I am a huge fan of Africa, it will keep you humble. On the pool Grill in the evening, the cooks would happily cook your meat for you. Since the OP is so well traveled, I assume he did his homework and knew exactly where he was going. He booked it! Ports are full of containers all over the world. Oh well, I will just keep reading the rant. [emoji6] [emoji568]

This is a great read. Please keep it coming! :)

Let me tell you how you are reading this. The internet on the ship was pathetic. We thought about what programme we might purchase and eventually opted for pay-as-you-go. We thought five or ten minutes a day using our Macbook would be reasonable. But we tried every day and never even got our BBC homepage up, much less Cruise Critic. So it’s really slow-as-you-go and we abandoned it for good. These are not live reports. The first three will come from Cape Town and the rest from home in the UK. However, I am writing them ‘live’ and don’t expect to do much editing later.

DAY 4 - AT SEA

Today we are at sea all day, sailing south-east from Cotonou towards the island of Principe, which is half of the nation state of Sao Tome and Principe.

The Cloud has 240 passengers, 60 less than its maximum, so it doesn’t feel crowded at all, except by the pool. Settling in to a ship’s routine and rhythms always takes a day or two and we are happy just to let it take over our lives. The passengers are mainly British and European, I think, with perhaps a quarter American plus a few from Australia and New Zealand. About half a dozen are in their 20s, travelling with mums and grannies, but I guess the majority are like us, in their 60s and above with nothing better to do.

So far we are impressed by the organisation of the tours ashore. West Africa is not the easiest place in the world to deal with yet the immigration formalities and all the transport has gone like clockwork. We were 20 minutes late setting off from Cotonou but that’s as bad as it’s got so far.

Our cabin is pleasant and now that we have left the container ports behind we can enjoy our balcony, which is a bit of an echo chamber, amplifying the extremely loud voice of our neighbour which resembles a digital tone-mapping of Henry Kissinger and a speak-your-weight machine. My God this fellow booms. The wall between our cabin is also wafer-thin so we can hear every word, every cough, every flushing of the lavatory. And I suppose they can hear us, too.

Everything in our cabin works and it’s serviced brilliantly by Marivi, usually when we are at breakfast. Our butler is Marlon - easy to remember that - and I fear we are not yet fulfilling his potential. So far all we’ve asked him to do is explain where to plug in the hairdryer and fetch two cappuccinos. He cleaned my shoes without asking, he rearranges things, puts your reading glasses into silk wrappers, and has even put his personalised bookmark into my wife’s novel. He’s very nice, anxious to please - but isn’t all this just a bit creepy and ridiculous considering that the level of luxury isn’t especially high? I blame Downton Abbey.

The layout of the ship is rather good, though we think the decor needs livening up a bit. It’s all a bit bland and beige. We especially like the outside seats of the Panorama Lounge though we could do without the smoking zone. And we like the walk around the top deck on the astroturf. We don’t run, we don’t jog, we don’t even power walk. We just like going up there and walking round and round until we’ve had enough. Doing this exercise and looking out for whales, shipping and seabirds is a brilliant way of spending the day.

There are parts of the ship we will never use - the casino, the shows in the Venetian lounge, the spa, the gym . . . these things don’t interest us at all. Like I said before, the Cloud is just a taxi from one place to another. The pool deck is awful when everyone is sprawled out, so we are really are just using the restaurants.

In fact, we are using only one restaurant. We had a bad experience at the Grill and I haven’t told you yet about the disastrous dinner we had two nights ago in the main dining room. There was a scallop dish on the menu, served with fennel and mashed potato. We like fennel and asked for rice instead of the potato. Not difficult, surely? What arrived was quite the worst meal I have been served this year - three greasy rubbery scallops on a circle of dry rice which might have been meant for a curry. Not a piece of fennel or a trickle of sauce anywhere. No chef should ever have sent a dish like that beyond the pass. It was so shocking I could hear Monica Galetti grimace.

We are confining ourselves to the Terrazza where we have booked one of the outdoor tables for the duration of the trip. We have breakfast and lunch there and these meals are quite acceptable without being brilliant. And, lo and behold, they even served a nice dinner last night. The wines are more than quaffable and service levels are incredibly high.

Tomorrow it’s a beach day on Principe.

Am I correct in surmising that Fletcher has not visited the onboard cruise consultant to book another Silversea cruise?