Day 17--Off Gibraltar

9 September (09-09-09). 36° 8”N, 05° 10”W.

I woke this morning after a very good sleep and went to the window to see that we were stopped, pointing east. My cabin is on the starboard (right) side of the ship, and I could see on the horizon several very large ships also stopped—a few cruise ships like ours, mostly container ships, and tankers. I showered, grabbed my camera, and walked up to the 6th-deck garden lounge for breakfast. As I walked out onto the aft deck, there off the stern, partially capped under a white fog, was the massive Rock of Gibraltar slowly coming into focus as the morning haze burned off. I was in a Prudential commercial!

At the moment, we’re circling in the Straits of Gibraltar, a few miles south of the port of Gibraltar, maneuvering back and forth between the Atlantic and Mediterranean as we wait our turn for fuel. I went outside to take a few pictures, and the air is ripe with the smell of natural gas. Hope no one’s lighting matches—or anything else—on the small portion of the 5th deck, outside, where they permit smoking.

The protectorate of Gibraltar, still a possession of the British, sits on the side of the rock looking a little like I imagine Victoria Island in Hong Kong looked 75 years ago: a small compound of white buildings with red tile roofs, a few buildings 8- to 10-stories tall, set into the side of the mountain facing across a bay to Spain, stubbornly defiant of the ongoing efforts of the Spanish to take back the rock. I didn’t have a chance to visit Gibraltar while we were in Spain, but those who took the drive—it’s actually about 75 miles southeast of Cadiz—say the colony is more British than Britain. Maybe some day I’ll make it back to find out for myself.

Today is Wednesday, “Morocco Day,” the day we take on fuel then resume the voyage, scheduled to arrive in Morocco tomorrow morning at 0800. Three days ago at this time—1130—we were arriving in Seville after a 90-minute bus ride from the Port of Cadiz. Bob Chapel was the tour leader, responsible for making sure the 33 students and 2 lifelong learners plus one faculty, me, were aboard when we left and would be back onboard after each stop on the 2-day trip to Seville and Cordoba. As it turned out, maybe not surprisingly, the students weren’t the headache for Bob, who, as he does for everything, took the job very seriously and with his usual sometimes-frenetic energy.

Seville is a beautiful city, with an old section looking very similar to old Cadiz: pastel and white buildings lining very narrow, cobble-stone streets. Modern Seville, outside the old section, looks like a typical European city, with very modern buildings alternating with older buildings that have been remodeled into factories and offices. In 1992, Seville hosted a world’s fair to celebrate the quincentennial of Columbus’s first sail to the New World. The court of Isabella and Ferdinand was in the Reales Alcazares—the Alcazar palace—and Columbus brought back the gold and silver from the second voyage to Seville, starting an era when Seville was the richest city in the world. Clearly, the Sevillians value the Columbus link to history, and part of him (no one is quite sure what part, though he is known as “the father of the New World”) is entombed in Seville Cathedral. As a result of the 1992 world’s fair, Spain went into deep debt that brought down a government. My theory is that it was Leif Ericsen’s revenge. “Father of the New World my ass!” Leif would be saying.

The Alcazar is a beautiful building, first built in the late 10th century and added onto for the next 400 years. As a result, it’s a wonderful mixture of Moorish (Islamic) and Catholic styles. As is the case for so much else of what we’re seeing, I can’t do it justice, but I took many pictures and will post them on Facebook as soon as I can get a strong web connection. On the ship, it comes and goes.

The other landmark we toured in Seville was the Cathedral, built in the early 15th Century on the site of a demolished mosque. It’s the 3rd-largest church in Christiandom—at least according to our tour guide—and it is, indeed, massive, probably twice, at least, the size of Notre Dame in Paris. Like all Gothic cathedrals, it’s supported by flying buttresses on the outside, and, inside, is lined with small, gated chapels housing the remains of bishops, cardinals, and other dignitaries who had the coin for a tomb.

The central feature of the cathedral, other than the floor-to-ceiling altar consisting of scenes depicting the entire New Testament—an altar plated entirely in gold leaf—is the tomb of Christopher Columbus. A few years ago, scientists opened the tomb to find a few pieces of bone that they subjected to DNA testing. Sure enough, it’s Christopher. They know that because they compared the DNA to the DNA from his son, also buried in the cathedral. No one is quite sure where the rest of Columbus is, but it’s suspected that he’s scattered in several places between Italy and Spain. He was, after all, a wanderer.

We rode to Cordoba late Sunday afternoon and stayed in a very comfortable hotel a few blocks from the old section. I was assigned to a room with Bob. Maria was on a separate trip, though her group, too, stayed at the same hotel. We had a fairly good buffet meal at the hotel—paella, some pasta, salad, and local wine—and, while the students went out to enjoy the music and cerveza of Cordoba, we two old fellows went to the room and almost immediately fell asleep.

Monday morning, after breakfast, we met our guide, Africa, a petit lady from the Andalucian region, very fluent in English, and much more animated than our male guide in Seville, Hillaria, who might just as well have been the voice in one of those telephone-like contraptions you can rent in museums. On those, you press a button corresponding to the number posted next to notable displays, and the voice starts talking, reciting details, statistics, dates, and names in endless detail. Hillaria was like that. When we stopped to view a notable object, he’d turn on his switch, look slightly above our heads, and in very rapid, accented English recite details, statistics, dates, and names in endless detail. He certainly didn’t invite questions.

Africa, on the other hand, invited questions, and they came at her often from all of us. She first led us on a tour of the Juderia, the Jewish quarter of Cordoba before the Jews were driven out in the late 15th Century. They never returned in any significant numbers, but their homes remain, refurbished on, again, narrow streets lined with buildings that are a mixture of Moorish and Renaissance styles. The Juderia surrounds the local palace, as the Jewish Quarters did in most early capitals including when the Romans occupied these cities, because the princes wanted the wisdom of the Jews close at hand. I guess when the princes thought they had soaked up as much wisdom as they could hold, they drove the people away. Of course, that cycle continued.

From the Juderia, we entered what was, for me, the highlight of the 2-day tour: La Mezquita, the grand mosque of Cordoba that, for almost 900 years, has served as a cathedral. But it is, without doubt, of Islam. It’s a massive, low, rectangular building that, before the Church moved in, could house 12,000 worshippers in prayer. Most of the inside is what looks like an endless series of arches supported on stone columns. The arches are distinguished by alternating sections of red brick and white stucco starting from one column and framing the opening in a 180-degree curve to the other supporting column. These arched columns surround someone standing in one of the Moorish sections, and, in any direction, disappear off into the dark sections of the mosque as if one were standing in a mirrored chamber where the reflecting images seem never to end. It’s an emotional experience, especially powerful because of its elegance and simplicity.

In the middle of the mystical simplicity of the mosque, King Carlos V, following the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492, decided to build a church. He had a large rectangular section in the middle of the mosque torn down and replaced by a Gothic-style cathedral, complete with interior buttresses, plaster casts of angels affixed to the 8-story-high ceiling, a floor-to-ceiling organ, solid mahogany chairs for nobles of the city and church, multi-colored frescos, and tons—literally—of gold and silver altar pieces and other decorations. The conflict between the simple red-and-white-striped arches of the old mosque and the massive church erupting out of its center is a powerful visual reminder of the conflict—the violent conflict—between the two cultures. The story is that when Carlos saw the finished church, even he cried at what he had done.

It is interesting, though, that at a few points where the church borders the mosque, the two styles almost complement each other, with the arches of the Gothic ceiling blending gracefully into the arches of the mosque. Symbolism galore in those few spots.

One of the students on the tour, Karim, is Muslim and had just been saying how he wanted to find a place to pray, especially given that we’re in the middle of Ramadan. I told him, “Karim, if I were Muslim, I’d feel I had to pray here.” He agreed and went off to a section of the mosque where a simple altar-like area remained in the wall closest to Mecca. Several of his friends were there with him, and, while he was in prayer—he said it would take only a few minutes—a security guard came up and told him he’d have to stop. It is, after all, a cathedral, and the Church apparently feels an Islamic prayer might taint the holiness of the place. Karim’s friends surrounded him, making it clear that if he were to be removed, they’d all have to be removed. The guard backed down long enough for Karim to finish praying, he stood and, still surrounded by his friends, all rejoined our group. During the Inquisition, he probably would have been burned at the stake. Based on that, I guess we’ve come a long way.

Tuesday evening we rode back to the ship, arriving around 1900 (7pm), in time for dinner on board. But Bob and I decided we needed to take advantage of being in a country known for its excellent food, so, at 2030, we walked into the old city and found a restaurant that had just opened. The Spanish eat dinner very late by U.S. standards. Eight thirty is the earliest one can reserve a table other than at a café, and the restaurants don’t fill much before 10pm. The Spanish workday starts a little later than ours: 9:30 or 10am. Then everything except cafes closes at 2pm and doesn’t reopen before 5:30. The stores then stay open to 8:30 or 9:00pm. After that, Spaniards eat.

On the way out to dinner, my principal responsibility was to find transportation to and from the golf course—Montecastillo—where Jim Cooper had made a 10:50am Tuesday tee time for the 4 golfers: Bob, Charlie Morris, Jim, and me. Bob and I walked up to a taxi parked across the street from the security entrance to the port. I asked the driver if he spoke English (“Habla Inglis?”), and he said “no.” Then he asked, “Francaise?” and I, loaded with self-confidence, replied “Oui, un petit peu.” For the next few minutes, I tried to communicate to the driver the complicated transportation needs we had: travel first with 3 passengers + clubs to the Jerez train station to pick up Jim Cooper, who was coming back from Seville by train. Then, with a 4th passenger, we travel to Montecastillo in time for our 1050 tee off. At the end of the day, we needed a pickup in time to get us back to the ship by “ship time”—the hour (6pm in the case of Cadiz) when everybody must be onboard prior to sailing.

As I tried desperately to search my very wrinkled memory for a few key French words (la gare, huit heure et demi, retournez (?), trois heure, combine d’argent), Bob was getting more and more impatient, jumping in with English (“We need you to pick us up by 3:30!” “No, no, we have to go to the train station first!”) and doing what we all do when trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak our own language: speaking louder and louder because, after all, if he doesn’t understand it the first time, speaking louder will get the message through the second time . . . and third, and fourth, etc. Meanwhile, an older Spanish man walked up to the taxi to watch the show, standing there amused as the 3 of us—driver, Bob, and I—played verbal round-robin, hands flying, voices getting louder, fractured French, Spanish, and English cascading round and round the circle.

Miraculously, in the end, we communicated. The next morning, our driver was there at 8:30. We had a fast trip to the Jerez station to pick up Jim, then faster still to Montecastillo, arriving there by 9:30. Even better, they were able to let us tee off early, so at around 10am, we stuck tees in the ground on the first hole and launched off on a wonderful round of golf. The weather was perfect—hot but dry—and the forecast winds didn’t materialize. For most of the next 4 hours, the wind was still. My golf was ok. Except for my usual blowup hole—at Montecastillo it came on #14, the prettiest hole on the course—I played respectably. Jim, Charlie, and Bob had similar rounds, and we all agreed it had been a terrific day. We got back to the ship by 4:00pm, well before the witching hour of 1800, leaving enough time for me to revisit my favorite wine store to spend my few remaining Euro.

We sailed at 2000 last night in gale-force winds. In fact, it was so windy the ship had to redock after starting to push away from the pier because we were on what looked like a collision course with a container ship tied up just off our bow. But once we got underway, it was a fairly quiet cruise to Gibraltar.

We’re still off Gibraltar, it’s now 1430 (2:30pm), and we just started refueling. The process is a controlled collision between the offloading ship—called a “bunker ship”—and the onloading ship. Once the bunker ship lashes along the side, the process begins: like two huge fish in a mating ritual, with the bunker ship inserting its fuel hose into the tanks of the Explorer and transferring hundreds of thousands of tons of number-something diesel—“bunker diesel”—into us. I heard today that the world’s ships burning this rather dirty fuel pumps more pollution into the atmosphere in a day than all the world’s aircraft.

We’re facing east, directly toward Gibraltar. And off the starboard side, I can make out the faint shadows of the mountains of Spanish Morocco. Tomorrow Casablanca.