Day 540 - Departure for Lisbon
Montevideo Departure - Transatlantic Crossing - Day 1
We waited by the dock in a tiny store 100 yards from the our transatlantic ship, and checked in with Annie, child #4 before heading out to sea. We had spoken to all of the other children to remind them that we would be off the grid for 21 days, though Cyndy did provide each with a ship-to-shore phone number so they could call in an emergency.
At 1 PM a security guard at the docks informed us that we could head to the ship. We expected inspections, routines for getting bags tagged, various cross country paperwork, before we boarded, but there were no lines on this voyage.
As we stepped onto Ponant's ship and off the gangplank we were greeted by Cedric, the smiling cruise director, and the amiable boss man himself - Captain Frederick Guilin. All the crew spoke English with French accents which had us stumbling from si to oui and from hola to bonjour after six months in Spanish speaking countries!
A quick check of our Covid vaccinations and we were swept to cabin 620, upgraded to the top floor. I couldn’t figure how the boarding could be so quick until we were asked to join all passengers in the theater on deck #4 for an official greeting. Twenty-one passengers showed up; that was the full contingent on the ship! Plus the 134 crew members.
We hadn’t expected the ship to be at capacity on a repositioning cruise like this one. Its only purpose was to get the big boat from Montevideo to Lisbon and then from there to begin the summer “money cruises” to France, England, Scotland and Ireland. But we weren’t complaining. The L’Austral (Ponant's ship) was not a Carnival style cruise ship. Its maximum capacity was 220 passengers, tiny compared with the behemoth cruisers that carried 4000 passengers and 2000 crew around the Caribbean and throughout the Mediterranean.
But 21 passengers! This was like having the our personal yacht, complete with chef, housekeeping staff, barista and bartenders. In addition there was a library, spa, steam room and cabin with all the goodies that you could ask for: coffee maker, tea, open stocked fridge with juice, beer, distilled and sparkling water, and Johnny Walker Red. We had both a capacious bed and cabin patio to ourselves for each sunset, and if you needed anything else, all you had to do was ask the ship’s butler and voila! problem solved.
After traveling five days on five buses swaying and bouncing across 2000 miles of Argentina, this was something we could get used to! For three weeks we wouldn’t have to pack or unpack a thing, yet we would somehow cover more than 5000 miles across one sea and two hemispheres. The water was hot, the shower pressure was strong, the food (being French) ubiquitous and excellent, and for three weeks we would have nothing but ourselves, the Atlantic Ocean, and our new shipmates to enjoy.
I might even catch up on a bit of my writing and the stacks of books I had on my list!
We watched Montevideo disappear as the ship took us north and gave Uruguay’s coast a sidelong look. Right before dinner, the ocean gave us a riotous sunset. Fondly and sadly we bid two magnificent continents good-bye. One quarter of the planet touched and tasted and explored. A tiny bit really, but something. Now onto Europe and, in time, the other of the world’s two poles.
