The Amazon Blog 5 - food, food, food and some genitals in caustic potash..

The cruise industry is obsessed with norovirus. At every turn you are encouraged to sanitise your hands: before eating, before touching a book in the library, as you enter any public area of the ship. When the captain makes his daily address at midday he ends, in a Norwegian accent with the mantra "And don't forget, vash, vash, vash."

Until the ship has managed 24 hours without a reported case of D and V additional precautions are in place hence the fact that the breakfast buffet was attended by waiters who handled the utensils and loaded the passengers plates. Loaded is the key word in that sentence. The waiting staff were almost exclusively slightly built Philippinos.
"You like egg, sir?"
"Yes please."
"Scrambled, fried, poached or boiled, sir?"
"Scrambled, please." At this point a mountain of scrambled egg was loaded onto the plate.
"A rasher of bacon, one sausage, tomato and mushrooms please."
What seemed to be a flitch of bacon was balanced atop the egg which was then impaled with three sausages. These porky flying buttresses supported the three tomatoes which in turn created a pool into which mushrooms were tipped. The waiter then went for a unilateral decision and created a small cromlech of hash browns that teetered unwanted and unloved on the top of this mound of breakfast. "There you are sir, enjoy." The waiter passed the imbalanced and rather hot plate. A slight lurch of the ship together with the tremor due to the weight and temperature and the top portion of breakfast set off towards the table a little before the lower part. For the first five accelerating paces it looked as if the egg might just keep up with the hash browns. But the final lunge for the table might have saved the egg, bacon, tomato, sausage and some of the mushroom but the hash browns and other mushrooms scooted across the table and fell to the floor. A glance around the room suggested that no one had seen. Having gone to fetch a glass of orange juice (poured by a sanitised waiter) there was dismay awaiting on returning to the table. The cheery hot plate waiter was there with a plate.
"You drop breakfast, sir. I bring new mushrooms and hash browns."
"Ah, five hash browns and a bucket of mushrooms - just what I wanted."

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It had seemed churlish to leave the hash browns so a token one was eaten but it made the need for a lengthy walk around the deck all the more pressing.
The Lido Deck has a complete external circuit around which the fitness freaks and guilty eaters promenade. At the forward end the deck is narrow, so narrow that the lady with the cup cakes might struggle to make a passage along 5 metres of the path. Due to this there is an advisory notice suggesting which direction the walkers should take - clock wise or anti-clockwise. This alternates each day. There are, of course, those who deliberately flout the suggestion and others who appoint themselves to police the whole business. The potential for trouble is ever present. Sadly, the troubled seas of the Bay of Biscay were breaking over the bow of the ship so the forward section of the promenade was closed shortly after a first circuit thus removing the flashpoint. Now the walkers had to turn and retrace their steps down the starboard side to the stern, along the port side to a point short of the bows and then about face until meeting the equivalent barrier on the starboard side. Some enterprising folk worked out that there were doors near the closed section that enabled a cut to be made across the interior of the ship but most people chose the U shaped walk with its two reverses. This, however, did not stop one enthusiastic 'policeman' from standing under the arrow with its accompanying notice that said "This way today". He stood pointing to the sign every time anyone walked in the "wrong" direction and coughed. Many were waiting for the tell tale splash that would forever cure his pettiness (and his cough). Many were disappointed but thankfully a rain filled squall drove him inside. No doubt he spent the rest of his morning standing near one of the dispensers of hand sanitizer pointing and coughing until someone forced him to wear it!

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On the starboard side, sitting at the edge of the promenade deck were Mr and Mrs Twitcher. Dressed in matching garb that consisted of thick combat style coats and trousers in green and drab NATO woodland camouflage pattern, industrial walking boots and, topping dull green balaclavas, camouflage baseball caps. Around their necks they had matching his and hers Nikon cameras with 500mm lenses, two pairs of binoculars - one large one small and those notebooks on a lanyard with attached pencils that have waterproof paper. Around his waist was a photographer’s belt with various pouches and attachments and under each chair was a thermos mug. They were perfectly camouflaged, somewhere else. Here, against the white hull of the ship their disguise made them as invisible as a giraffe at the South Pole. Some laps of the deck revealed that they were making notes but there was nothing to be seen but sea, more sea, clouds and the occasional shower or ray of sun. A slight bottle-neck of walkers spurred one game chap to ask Mr Twitcher if he had seen much.
"Showers - see over there, that's a shower," Mr. Twitcher offered authoritatively before making a note in his book - an act that was copied by Mrs Twitcher with a two second delay. She looked at him and asked, "Did you get that?"
"Oh yes," he replied, "shower starboard side, 10:28 hours."
"Good. That's what I've got."
Mr Twitcher looked up at the enquiring walker and offered an unrequested explanation. "We note everything, ev-er-ry-th-ing." The repeated word was enunciated deliciously as he savoured every syllable.
On the next lap, at the moment the Twitchers were passed, a group of fulmars and half a dozen gannets flew by. The Twitchers didn't move a muscle. Maybe they noted "everything" that wasn't interesting.

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Before lunch Professor Tony Dickens, noted oceanographer and professional cruise ship lecturer gave a 45 minute talk that described what might be expected in each of his 15 lectures that he was giving on this cruise. He was introduced by the cruise director, the ever smooth Alan Gallery who, sadly, was the fellow who refused to allow the author to give his talks last time. We shall see. Dickens was excellent - a skilled lecturer and gifted raconteur whose experience lecturing poorly motivated students in red brick universities had given him a very engaging and amusing style while being informative. In fact he was so good that it might be for the best if Alan Gallery chooses to snub once more!
At the beginning of his talk he offered an amusing take on his CV and invited guests to ask him questions if they saw him about the ship. He then went on.
"I am happy to talk about and answer questions in those fields that I have described but before I go on I would like to tell you what I am not."
"Are there any birders here?" About two dozen folk put up their hands. "Good, good, I am not a birder - I will be asking you for help with the bird questions. Now are there any anthropologists?" A couple put up their hands and the technician shone a spotlight to illuminate just how red their faces had become. "Good, good - tell us a little about your work."
"Wwwwwell, wwwwwe are bbbboth anthropologists," he stammered nervously, "that's how we met, on a study of tribesmen in Pppppapua New Gggguinea."
"Excellent - we know who to question about tribes in the Amazon then."
He went on to gardeners and many hands went up.
"Ah but how many of you are actually botanists?"
Two hands remained in the air and their owners were individually lit while being given responsibility for all plant questions.
"Lastly do we have any entomologists, especially lepidopterists or coleopterists?"
No hands went up but then, close by a voice that was vaguely recognisable announced, "yes, there is one of those, a colterist or whatever you called it."
"A coleopterist - someone who studies beetles?"
"Yes that's the one, I was talking to him in the bar last night - a beetle man and he was telling me about all the amazing chafers and jewel beetles that live in Amazonia."
"Maybe he hasn't come to this lecture. Shame because beetles are the most varied group of animals on the planet and especially in Amazonia. A famous vicar who collected insects once wrote that 'God had an inordinate fondness for beetles'. It's great shame he's not here - we could do with a coleopterist on the team."

A palpable sense of relief was washing over as it seemed the spotlight had been avoided.
"No look he's there, just in front of me."
The brilliant spotlight evaporated any relief.
"You were hiding your light under a bushel - welcome to the team beetle man. Tell us something about your field of knowledge - it is going to be pretty amazing to have someone to identify the thousands of types of beetle we might come across."
"Well some of the larger beetles are easy enough to identify to family and my expertise lies predominantly with Scarabaeidae - chafers and dung beetles of which there are hundreds of species in the Amazon basin. But folks must bear in mind that very many beetles can only be properly identified by examining their genitalia. You dissect them out, boil them in caustic potash to remove the fats and then clear them in alcohol before popping them under the microscope. After that we stick them to cards with the body of the beetle. If we could get some caustic potash I could demonstrate the technique." The thought of that often reduces the number of questions that a coleopterist is asked.

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Lunch. If God had an inordinate fondness for beetles then cruisers have an equally obsessive interest in food. It is everywhere. It seems that there is another meal every few minutes. Thankfully the ship has now been declared norovirus free so passengers may actually help themselves at the lunch buffets which include a good range of salads. With portion control in place it was possible to have a light snack. Lunches are "Open Table" so you might find yourself sharing a table with absolutely anyone. Sadly the couple on today's lunch table were notable only for the fact that there was nothing notable about them. They stood out as being less notable than anyone else until they went up for their second course. They had eaten large platefuls of crab salad and returned from the buffet, not with sweets but two large plates of pork chops, chips and the pasta dish as a vegetable. They were not unduly large but had appetites like an American who has been fed lettuce for three days. They consumed these plates of food before the light salad was half gone. Next they had sweets - several types heaped in each of their bowls. They were just heading for a cheese board when a post-prandial walk called before there could be any collateral weight gain from just watching these two.