Vasco Da Gama’s Maiden Voyage
I thought I’d found a bargain cruise! A ship that had started life as the HAL Statendam, then became the P&O Pacific Eden, had now been refurbished and rebadged as the Vasco Da Gama, part of the Cruise and Maritime Voyages fleet. To celebrate her inaugural voyage, it was offered as a two for one deal! And the itinerary from Singapore to London (Tilbury) was fantastic, all 44 days!
But this could have been too good to be true.
The first day of the voyage was actually an overnight docked in Singapore. This gave us extra time for sightseeing, so we made sure to visit the Gardens By the Bay. But unfortunately it rained heavily the next day, being April and a tropical city, so we didn’t bother to leave the ship.
The rain also caused issues on the ship, with leaks appearing in many places due to the monsoonal downpour. For the remainder of the voyage it was not uncommon to find industrial sized fans blowing on areas of carpet, in hallways as well as large public spaces. Apparently the six weeks in drydock in Singapore had not been sufficient for the large amount of maintenance required to bring the ship up to a good standard. Throughout the cruise we often saw repairs being made to various parts of the vessel. And the issues on board did not end there – newly hired staff were poorly trained – but we survived, and made many friends over the 44 days, even if we all did do a fair amount of grumbling. The ship became variously referred to as “The Vasco de Drama” or “The Fiasco de Gama” !
Regardless of the issues we had on board, we thoroughly enjoyed our port visits. After a sea day we called into Penang, Malaysia, where we followed a walking tour map to explore the city of Georgetown.
The next day we arrived in Phuket, Thailand. While Hubby went golfing, I wandered for several hours around Phuket city.
Following three more sea days we were due to arrive in Colombo, Sri Lanka. But terrorist bombings took place in several places on the island during those sea days and so our cruise was diverted back to Langkawi, Malaysia.
Next we cruised up the west coast of India. This was a new experience for us and we found it at times confronting as well as fascinating. We took various tours by taxi or a small tour bus, including a cruise on the Kerala waterways near Kochi.
It was significant we were visiting the area that the explorer Vasco Da Gama had been so involved in. His remains had originally been buried in Kochi and the capital of the Goa province is named after him. In Goa we visited a spice farm and watched an elephant being bathed, before touring the city.
Mumbai was totally different to the other smaller cities. Our taxi took us to see quite a variety of attractions, some old, some modern. The India Gate was most impressive.
From there, after a couple of sea days we arrived in Salalah, Oman. This country is quite arid for much of the year, such a contrast to the tropical jungles of India. Again, it was quite an eye-opener for us.
More sea days and we sailed up the Red Sea to Safaga, Egypt, which was our jumping off point for our tour of Luxor, Karnak and the Valley of the Kings. As former teacher of Ancient History I was thrilled to be seeing first hand the wonders of the Age of the Pharaohs. Luckily our coach was airconditioned as the heat was extreme.
Then it was on to Aqaba, Jordan, for a trip to Petra and its ancient Nabatean settlement boasting the magnificent “Treasury”, carved into the red rock face. The heat that day was again over 40 degrees celsius, which made the walk from the coach park quite onerous. The shaded areas in the narrow chasm walkways were very welcome.
Another bucket list experience followed – cruising through the Suez Canal. The volume of vessels traversing this waterway was surprising. Many cruisers spent the whole day out on the decks spellbound by the vast areas of open, sandy terrain and occasional settlements.
Onwards into the Mediterranean, our next port was Ashdod, Israel. We joined a day trip into Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, where we tested out the flotation effect.
From there we were off to the Greek islands of Santorini and Mykonos, but only for a half day each. Luckily we had stayed on both before for several days, as half a day is hardly enough.
Next stop was Athens, which we had also visited before. This time we took a Hop On Hop Off bus tour which picked us up right in Piraeus, and then did some exploration of “new” areas of Athens on foot.
Another previously visited port was Valletta, and we were very happy to be there again. And we took a different HOHO bus tour this time to see the pretty fishing village of Marsaxlokk and other areas not seen before.
Messina in Sicily was our next port. After walking around the town we joined a tour to see places inland where the Godfather trilogy had been filmed.
A rainy day in Naples was not so enjoyable. We had been through Naples on other holidays but never made the time to explore it before. We took another HOHO bus tour but it was so cold and wet we couldn’t wait to get back on the ship.
Civitavecchia, the port for Rome, afforded us a chance to join a tour into the Tuscan countryside, since we had spent some time in Rome before. Cute villages, like Pitigliano, and a couple of wineries were the order of the day.
Then it was across to Barcelona, another of our favourite destinations. So this time we took a fast train up to Girona to do some sightseeing, before returning to Barcelona for an obligatory pintxos (tapas) crawl.
Gibraltar was another place we had visited twice before so we were looking for something different. We arranged a tour with other cruisers to go into Spain to visit Castellar de la Frontera, a town with an old castle that was now an artisanal community.
From there we sailed out into the Atlantic and down the coast of Morocco to Casablanca. Now this was also a place we had been to before on a land tour but there was still much to see, so this time we simply wandered around the city on our own.
Our final port before heading to London was Lisbon. Again looking for something new to see, we took a tour to the Pena Palace, in Sintra, just north of the city. This was a most unusually decorated castle/palace, but extremely interesting to explore.
Our cruise concluded at Tilbury, the port for London, on the Thames River. We were anxious to disembark as we has a flight booked out of Stanstead to La Rochelle in France, and time was of the essence since it was the only flight that day. However as luck would have it, a yachtsman had fallen overboard in the Thames and our ship was duty bound to go to the rescue. He was taken aboard and we waited while a helicopter took him off. It was a frantic race from that point to disembark, find our hire car and speed north to the airport, where we managed to board our plane with only moments to spare!
POST SCRIPT: During COVID the CMV line went into administration and the Vasco da Gama was sold off to German cruise line, Nicko. I believe they have thoroughly refurbished the ship this time!
