Why a non-cruiser like me loved this cruise

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This was published 7 years ago

Why a non-cruiser like me loved this cruise

By Ben Groundwater
Enjoying a day on a cruise ship.

Enjoying a day on a cruise ship.Credit: iStock

"The sailors have a message for everyone," said Rodrigo, keeping his voice conspiratorially low. "There's going to be a party tonight. Down on the sailors' deck after dinner. They have drinks and music."

This was kind of a surprise. Officially, the sailors' deck didn't exist for us passengers. It was the place where all of the dirty behind-the-scenes work was done, where the ship was maintained and the services were provided to keep everything on the passenger decks above it as perfect as possible.

The sailors weren't allowed on the passenger decks. And the passengers hadn't even been told what was below. But a message had been passed to one of the Spanish-speaking passengers, Rodrigo, and tonight we were invited to cross the threshold.

A bottle of rum – party time.

A bottle of rum – party time.Credit: Getty Images

This was day 10 of an 11-day journey, a trip from the southern Argentinian city of Ushuaia to Antarctica aboard an 80-passenger expedition vessel. Those passengers were a mixed bunch, from retiree couples to a fairly ragtag bunch of young backpackers taking advantage of one of the cheaper cruise lines doing a discounted final cruise for the season.

We'd all spent the past nine days acting in the way most visitors to Antarctica act: seriously. We'd attended lectures on biology and geology during the journey down to the continent. We'd watched breathlessly as thousands of penguins lived their funny, wobbly lives around us when we finally made landfall.

We'd even kept a lid on things when we visited a Ukrainian research station and were encouraged to drink the scientists' homemade vodka and attempt to beat them at pool.

But now we'd left Antarctica, and things had changed. There was an air of celebration, a feeling of achievement, a need to revert back to regular travelling behaviour, and the expedition crew were about to provide an outlet.

Down on the sailors' deck, after dinner. Word got around, from the Dutch couple to the German girls to the Spanish students to the group of Aussie mates. It was on.

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I was reminded of this night on the sailors' deck just a few weeks ago, by the sales director of one of the world's biggest cruise lines, the sort that conveys the world's well-to-do from popular port to popular port in style. In talking about the industry, he'd said to me: "There's a cruise line to suit everyone. You just have to find it."

Wrong, I thought. That might work for most people, but not for me. I'm not a cruiser. I don't do shuffleboard and floating casinos, or buffet lunches and shore excursions. Cruising is popular, but it's not my thing.

And then I thought about that trip to Antarctica. No one on board ever referred to it as a "cruise". It was always an "expedition", a moniker meant to make us feel like hardy explorers instead of mere passengers.

I loved every minute of that trip. I loved the feeling of casting out to sea, headed due south. I loved the lectures, the mess dinners, the penguin encounters, the research base visits, the infinite sunsets, and the party atmosphere on the way home. It matched me perfectly: part adventure, part education, part celebration.

And I realised then that that sales director was right: there really is a cruise line for everyone. Even people like me, who think they don't like cruising. I was just thinking about the wrong kind of cruises, about the narrow definition I have when the word comes to mind.

Cruising is not just city-sized "funships" filled with people who've applied for their first passport to get on board. It's not just luxury liners cloistering their passengers from the outside world. It's everything afloat.

It's expeditions to Antarctica, journeys around the Galapagos, and multi-day dive trips around PNG. It's as rough and real and exciting as you want it to be.

It's even a party on your ship's forbidden decks. I remember all of us on that Antarctica expedition finishing our dinner, giving each other little nods of conspiracy, and heading towards the back of the boat to get below decks.

Down there, the Argentinian crew had laid out a few bottles of booze, set up cheap disco lights, and cranked up the music. There was soon drinking, and dancing, and the fairly obvious realisation that the crew's intention in throwing this shindig was mainly to pick up the single female passengers – something they had some success in.

For the rest of us it was just a long, fun night in a part of the ship we weren't supposed to be in, letting off steam after 10 days of being good. If that counts as cruising, then I like it.

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