Cruise to Africa and Asia leads to encounters, adventures and more

Grand voyage aboard Oceania’s smaller Nautica offers virtually one-to-one travelers-to-staff ratio

A young tiger responds with feline glee to tummy scratches from Sascha at a tiger encounter in Phuket. (Janet Podolak)

Petite as today’s ships go, Oceania Cruises’ Nautica proved ideal for a 32-day voyage from Africa into Asia with 19 ports of call among nine seas, oceans, bays, gulfs and channels between Capetown, South Africa and Bangkok, Thailand. Its 600 passengers are served by a like number of ship staff with a nearly one-to-one ratio, assuring fine meals, pristine cleanliness and interesting programs.

The ship’s smaller size with elevator banks forward and aft made it easy to find our way between its five restaurants, four bars and Baristas, an extraordinary coffee shop where lattes quickly became a tradition. Eggs Benedict at the Terrace Cafe and filet and lobster sandwiches at Waves Grill near the pool also contributed to my three pounds gained despite lots of daily exercise.

Dancers and musicians welcome the arrival of Oceania’s Nautica and its passengers to Mumbai, India. (Janet Podolak)

Shore excursions ranging from game drives to snorkeling and scuba, outdoors markets to Buddhist and Hindu temples and Muslim mosques gave context to the port stops with intelligent interpretation. I’d purchased some excursions in advance, but when an old knee injury resurfaced, plans to sail alone were revised as my daughter joined me and shore visits were changed.

Descriptions of shore excursions included the terrain and amount of walking to be expected. The ship’s Destination Services were told of my limitations and gave good specific advice learned only by firsthand experience. We often were joined on excursions by members of the Destination staff updating their personal knowledge and assisting guides with head counts and rounding up straying passengers.

An outrigger loaded with bananas approaches the starboard side of our ship where our stateroom was six decks up. (Janet Podolak)

But excursions could be pricey and often kept us from meeting the people in ports, confining us to the company of our fellow passengers. My savvy and gregarious daughter researched every port online and found many adventures arranged by negotiating with drivers who met the ship’s disembarking passengers. We would assess the driver’s skills in English, ask about licensing as a guide, and check the vehicle and its air conditioning because many days were in the 90s. After converting the rupees, baht, rand and other currencies, we were able to hire an informative driver for six or so hours, including waiting time, paying upon return to the ship. In many cases, the cost would be about $10 per hour, much less than a ship’s excursion for the two of us.

Shopping in Kochi, India can be a mind-boggling experience, but shopkeepers will mail purchases to the United States. (Janet Podolak)

Our first stop would always be an ATM machine for local money, as the ship had no exchange services. Both of our debit cards were blocked in Mumbai, India, where many scams originate. Tours among banks ate up our first 90 minutes ashore until my daughter resolved issues by phone with customer service so we could get rupees. Luckily, she’d had the foresight to arrange a 30-day international calling plan for her cell phone. Given the 12-hour time difference, I was surprised it worked.

Amazing times ashore included being blessed by a saffron-robed Buddhist monk; visiting a Zulu village in Africa; swimming in the clear, blue waters of the Maldives; watching trained monkeys harvest coconuts; buying luscious, multi-hued silks; experiencing reflexology, Bali and Thai massages; seeing a vast flower market and riding in a three-wheeled tuk-tuk through the streets of Bangkok and everything Singapore. You’ll read about some of these in the coming months, but to update readers back home, my daughter and I each chose a most memorable among our do-it-yourself shore excursions by taxi.

A Buddhist monk blesses people visiting the Burmese Buddhist Temple in Phuket, Thailand. (Janet Podolak)

For Sascha, her favorite day ashore was in Phuket, Thailand, where a visit to Tiger Kingdom gave her up-close snuggles with a young tiger, a huge adult tiger and a cheetah.

A cheetah’s purr sounds like the cooing of doves as it responds to head kisses. (Janet Podolak)

The animals are raised in captivity and have relationships with trainers who remain in the enclosures with visitors. Only those who can easily squat and then get up and move quickly are permitted on the 10-minute encounters with the big cats, so it was not for me. Those who know domestic cats quickly discover similarities with their wild cousins.

he animals are enclosed along walkways in large, clean areas shaded by tall, tropical trees and cooled by fans. Although I remained outside the cages, I was close enough to the big cats to hear them purr contentedly while being scratched and spoken to. The cheetah’s purr sounds like the cooing of doves. Visitors are thoroughly briefed about their own behavior with the cats; the instructions are to approach from behind, avoid loud noises and not touch the tiger’s head or front paws. Protocols are somewhat different for cheetahs.

”They’re softer than you’d think,” Sascha observed.

Meanwhile, I fell in love with the Seychelles, a 111-island archipelago in the Indian Ocean off Africa that’s 1,000 miles from the nearest land. We visited Mahé, the island group’s 95,000-person capital with more than 65 beaches along its shores. It was the only rainy day ashore, with a light mist cooling the otherwise sultry weather.

A beach at Beau Vallon in the Seychelles is deserted on a rainy day. (Janet Podolak)

Not much was open on this Sunday, so many of our fellow passengers had remained aboard the Nautica. Three previous days had been spent at sea dodging a cyclone, the Southern Hemisphere’s version of a hurricane, when 15-foot waves splashed our Deck 6 balcony and made it difficult to walk on board. We spent much of one Mozambique Channel sea day ordering room service and watching films on our in-room TV.

So it was good to go ashore once we reached the Seychelles, where house-size boulders flanked the road and framed hidden beaches as our driver, Alan, circled the lush north part of the two-traffic light island. Alan introduced us to Victoria — the capital, where our ship had docked — and then took us to a beach at Beau Vallon on the other side of the granite mountains along the island’s spine. The multi-ethnic islanders speak English, French and Creole.

He told us that fish is the diet mainstay for islanders because chicken is expensive. Meat must be imported because the only flat land has been created by being reclaimed from the sea and has been developed to house elders, the disabled and those who may otherwise be homeless.