Our boat was called the "Aida Maria" and held sixteen passengers, although there were only twelve of us on it for this cruise. There were a scottish couple, an Israeli mother and daughter, a Swiss couple, an Austrian couple, and two young German girls. Since there were two tables in the dining cabin, our group divided into the English speakers (us, Scots, and the Israelis) and the German speakers. There was also a naturalist, Ruben, who was our main liaison with the crew. There were about five other crew members, but they kept to themselves, so it was kind of hard to tell exactly how many there were. Overall, the food was great - in fact, the cook seemed to be the hardest working man on the boat. Our "bartender" was by all accounts the most surly man every to be involved in the service industry anywhere in the world. Part of this may have been due to the fact that the boat had absolutely no alcohol on board. Usually, the ships make lots of money by selling booze to passengers (the only part not included in the price of the cruise). However, the crew had apparently partied really hard the night before leaving and forgot to stock the boat with booze. It seems that our crew had become the laughing stock of all of the other boats - as we we passed other boats, the crew members would yell out things, point to their refrigerators, make drinking motions with their hands, etc.
The only down side was the long haul between the islands. They did them at night, so we wouldn't waste precious time during the day. We did three of the islands (with small ones in between), but the distance between them was about a 7 hour boat ride. This time of the year, the sea are pretty rough. The first night, Allegra got pretty sick. We did, however, learn two things after this: 1) always take seasick medication BEFORE you eat and 2) try to stay away from strawberry jello on rough seas. After that night, though, things were not quite as bad.
We had a great time and wished we had more time to go to the other islands - especially the ones that had penguins and whales. Next time.
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