Iguanas in Diapers by Nancy Lyon
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Ecstasy. Fantasy. Sensation. Elation. They sound like names of porno queens or massage oils, not cruise liners. But what did I know of these $275 million Swizzle Ships that were Las Vegas, La Grande Bouffe, and the Starship Enterprise all rolled into one? I was a Fun Ship cruise virgin.
Until the Carnival Cruises Ecstasy, I'd never embarked on a humongous 855-foot, 10-deck, 70,367-ton, 2,600 passenger, 1000-person crew Mega Liner. My nautical experiences had been rather spartan. I'd thrashed across the Irish Sea from Cork to Roscoff for 14 hours on a Brittany Ferries craft with wine goblets flying. And I'd endured a soggy windjammer jaunt along the north shore of Quebec's gloomy St. Lawrence. I was so stoned on seasick pills as we sailed into Mutton Bay, I barely flinched when our "Capitaine" nearly fried us to a crisp. He was looking down at the water depth instead of up at the live electric cable strung across the tiny harbour, which,as a local screaming from the shore was trying to warn us, our metal mast was about to hit!
Surely the Carnival Cruise cuisine would surpass the stale baguettes and canned spaghetti aboard La Quebecoise? The M.S. Ecstasy offered eight daily repasts: early morning breakfast, breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, dinner, midnight buffet, late-night mini buffet, grand-gala buffet, late-night pasta buffet, 24-hour pizzeria and stateroom service. Aren't luxury cruisers really Binge Boats with sharks trailing the ship's wake? Or are those but apocryphal tales?
From the moment we left the Port of Miami for our four-day sail to Key West and the Yucatan's hot tamale isle of Cozumel, I was filled with questions about this floating indulgence with its own Chinatown, gambling joint and spa. But none matched the inanity of the ones trotted out by our witty Australian Cruise Director for the guest's talent show.
Questions actually asked of the Ecstasy crew during the cruise:
“Do these stairs go up -or down?”
“Will this elevator take me to the front of the ship?”
“If I go snorkeling, will I get wet?”
“Will this ship take me to the airport?”
“What time is the Midnight Buffet?”
“What do you do with the ice carvings, after they've melted?”
It takes all kinds to fill a Carnival Super Liner. The world's largest cruise company hauling 2.5 million passengers a year guarantees that everyone goes first class, whether you pay for an inside cabin in low season or a suite with private balcony in high season. I rather like this populist appeal. Like Noah's ark we had two of everything: Puerto Rican grannies trailing grand niños, Manhattan secretaries, Europeans feting golden anniversaries, families and single parents with toddlers to teens, athletes, entertainers, dentists and midnight cowboys from around the globe. Bodies of all ship-shapes: tattooed, hairy, paunchy, sleek, old, young --all grooving on sun and fun.
Early birds had step aerobics and morning bingo. There were scavenger hunts, golf lessons, art auctions, wet family fun at the Turtle Pool, chess tournaments, trivia quizzes, cigar parties, Eat More to Weigh Less seminars, Las Vegas style floor shows, midnight stand-up comedy, calypso, jazz, big band, rock and country. Or you could ignore it all and flake out with a trashy thriller.
I missed seeing the Men's Knobby Knees Contest, but was on the Lido Deck when they called for hairy-chested volunteers. The 30-ish to 70-ish males who came forth danced lasciviously across the deck (slipping on water melted from the ice carving demo) to a lineup of ladies waiting to stroke each hairy torso and choose the winner. Then came round two: Tarzan imitations! Yoh-de--oooooh-dah-wahhhhhh-meeeeee--laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
On a ship's galley tour, I got the low-down on Carnivore Cruise's food operations. The weekly inventory included 3,200 hotdogs, 5,500 hamburgers, 35,000 shrimp, 2,400 pounds of chicken, 41,600 eggs, 36,000 bacon slices, 9,400 link sausages, 315 pounds of coffee, 1,800 bagels, 40 pounds of grits, 60 pounds of octopus, 10,800 bananas (tarantulas not included), 1,200 pounds of dry pasta, 600 pounds of butter, 18,200 soft drinks, 24,450 domestic and imported beers, l,200 gallons of ice tea, l,200 bottles of champagne, 2,920 bottles of wine and 1,000 gallons of ice cream-- and this was only a fraction of the 1,500 items on the weekly grocery list!
I saw volcanoes of compacted garbage ready to bust in the three-deck high incinerator near the engine room, and 50-foot high stacks of smashed cardboard and aluminum cans to be recycled. I saw vegetable sculptors deftly shaping wastermelons into palm trees, and cucumbers, squash, red peppers and carrots into cockfights. No doubt a vestige of the sailors’ art of carving whalebone into scrimshaw.
The steward arranged for a different creature to haunt my dreams every night. The first night the towel on my bed was shaped into a crab with torn paper eyes. The second night it was a puppy dog, and the third, a baby elephant. But no swans. The first towel sculpture I'd ever seen was at an Acapulco resort. I chortled at the lurid shape on my pillow, wondering why a good Catholic chambermaid would twist a towel into a penis and testicles. (So ill-formed was the swan; so ill-informed was I.)
On the second morning we glide into crazy Key West, where pet iguanas, boa constrictors, parrots and apes outnumber the locals. The first time I drove into this garden of eccentric delights, it was behind a floozy on a moped whose long silk neck scarf was blowing in the wind. But as we stopped for a red light, I realized it was the glitter-dusted tail of a monkey!
With only four hours in Key West we have to hit the ground running. First it's a Conch Tour Train through quiet streets of white clapboard houses with gingerbread trim, rambling porches, white picket fences and widow's walks you'd love to write a best seller in.Key West has always lured scribes, whose names live on in streets like Truman and Capote. Tennessee Williams…John James Audubon…Alison Lurie, Joy Williams, Richard Wilbur, and Annie Dillard, et. al, Although the annual Papa Hemingway look-alike contest attracts Santa Claus clones to Sloppy Joe’s Bar every July, fact is the author lived here from 1931-40 with his second wife Pauline when he was only in his thirties.
At the Spanish Colonial style home on 907 Whitehead Street, you can pry into Hemingway’s writing studio, gape at the souvenirs of Hemingway's African safaris and hunting expeditions, see the first swimming pool built in Key West, and 60-odd descendants of Hemingway's six-toed tomcat, obtained as a gift from a sea captain.I have an allergy to cats, and maybe Hemingway as well, so I head over to Mallory Square for some fresh sea air.
Mallory Square is renowned for its daily Sunset Celebration of buskers -- brigades of musicians, fire-eaters, hatchet jugglers, sword-swallowers, and tightrope walkers. I actually busked here once myself, tooting a mean tin whistle with Gordon the piper from Scotland. We performed alongside a chained padlocked strait-jacketed escape artist hanging by his ankles, a barefoot flame swallower treading a pile of broken wine bottles, and a conch soup seller who blew his conch shell in the same key as Gordon's Scottish border pipes – A major.
Today under the harsh midday sun there are no jugglers, glass treaders or palm readers. Only a lonely long-haired hammer dulcimer player who calls himself Mellow Man. He's a retired dive boat hand, and a UFO contactee. He speaks to me of inner voices and the glowing unidentified orb which he captured on video, but which mysteriously vanished from the tape the day he took it to the local TV station.
With its seven-deck high Grand Atrium pulsing with colored lasers and saucer-shaped ceiling lights, the M.S. Ecstasy feels like a space station, especially at night with the stars above and black void below. I love the illusion of a self-contained world. You could dream away the night in your cabin or flaunt your jewels in the Blue Sapphire Lounge.
Formal Night required your fanciest duds. Ah the commercial coyness! If you hadn't packed a tux you could rent one. Formal Night was also a way of touting studio portraits, chocolates, flowers, facials, manicures and coifs at the Nautical Beauty Salon. I thought I'd become inured to Carnival’s commercial ruses, but when we dock in Cozumel I go haywire. Disembarking takes forever. There's a mile-long taxi line-up to get to town, but that isn't the problem. I look down from the upper deck and see it through my telephoto lens: as each person steps off the gangplank, a photo moll holds up an iguana (in diapers, in case of accidents) right next to his face, while the ship's shutterbug snaps the pic.
Tasteless. Totally tasteless. I'm so disgusted I almost stay on the ship. But then I would have missed five glorious hours in Meh-hee-ko! Snorkeling at the Reef Club Beach Resort, rattling through the dust to San Miguel, guzzling cervezas at Carlos 'n Charlie's, haggling for hammocks and onyx watermelons, strolling the festive zocalo with street artists painting under kerosene lanterns. And meeting Coco Lito, the cheery clown sculpting his balloons into Chihuahuas, horses, elephants, iguanas - and swans!