Marco Polo – our little ice-breaker boat
The Marco next to a block of flats on a raft
When I saw the advert for the cruise I was instantly taken with the itinery and the price. I am not a cruising type. The opportunity to visit seventeen places which I have never seen; to visit Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Falklands, Chile, Cape Verde, Canaries, Madeira, Lisbon and La Coruna – brilliant! To be able to do all that for two months, all food included, for £2500, seemed amazing.
Well I don’t like dressing up, formal events, shows or stuff like that.
I do like nature, walking, photography, reading, warmth, writing and travelling.
I figured I could occupy myself for 55 days.
So we signed up.
The boat was the Marco Polo. It started life as an East German two-hulled ice-breaker named after the great Russian poet Pushkin. I thought that was a good omen. I liked the idea of travelling in the company of a great poet. It was a small ship holding 780 passengers – no block of flats on a raft. It could go places where bigger ships could not.
It was upgraded into a small cruise ship called the Marco Polo.
The end result was brilliant. We managed to see plenty of fabulous places, spend winter in the heat, share a glass or two with new friends, see a lot of wild-life, write three new books, read a lot, and peer out at the night sky, the sea in its many moods, and gain an insight or two into the size of this planet and the insanity of mankind.
I’ll put out a run-through of our voyage – with some photos – when I get myself sorted!
Hope you’ll like them.
How magnificent was the Sky?
It was wonderful. To stand on the deck of the ship at midnight, in the warmth, as the boat crept forward towards the equator, in the middle of the ocean with no land for hundreds of miles and no ship in sight, with the Southern Cross in the sky and the Milky Way spreading out in a waft of smoke. It put everything in perspective.