The Boom Boom boat

“Seriously?” I exclaimed upon opening the envelope left on the desk by our cabin steward.

“What?” my friend and cabin-mate Ann asked.

“They are asking for our height, weight and shoe size for snorkeling in Corsica. There were no weight restrictions in the excursion description. Even better, they want it in centimeters, kilograms and European shoe size.”

“I’m sure they just need to have the correct equipment waiting for us,” Ann replied, unusually optimistic for her.

“What did we do before smart phones?” I chirped, doing a search on pound to kilogram conversion.

The port in Corsica was packed with people. Though we were the only large cruise ship in the port, there was excursion stands set up everywhere. We took the three-block walk into the town square to have lunch before our snorkeling trip. The town was filled with the most incredible farmer’s market I’ve ever been in. Spanish olives in every shape, size and hue packed brightly colored carts. Meats, cheeses and produce rounded out the cornucopia. I purchased a half-kilogram of my favorite olives and we sat down to enjoy a crusty sandwich and people watch.

Most of the excursion stands were gone or unoccupied when we returned back to the dock. It took much asking around in broken French to figure out which small piece of fence we needed to be lined up by.

A slight, very tanned women in her late-sixties wearing a wetsuit halfway pulled down to her waist approached us with a clipboard. When she was satisfied that everyone was accounted for, we took the long walk to the other side of the port.  Once there they commenced handing out wetsuits and flippers.

I looked at the black piece of neoprene in disbelief. I wasn’t going to squeeze into that if my life depended on it.  After several attempts, I finally called the attention of our tour guide, who was busy helping everyone, including my friend into their suits.

“This is not going to fit me,” I told her. This elicited a litany of French, none of which I understood.

“Voila,” a man exited the tiny shack with what looked like Andre the Giant’s wetsuit. It was a full suit, long sleeves and pants and at least 6’5” long.

I shook my head and tears filled my eyes.

“They knew my height and weight, if I was too fat to snorkel why didn’t they tell me instead of humiliating me like this?” I asked my friend, who had just finished squeezing into her suit.

The cute athletic girl next to me tried to comfort me, although sweet, just made me feel even worse.

The tour operator was at a loss. Between my broken French and her broken English I finally figured out that the wetsuits were not for the cold, but for buoyancy.

“Can’t I just wear a life preserver?” I asked.

“Ah, oui,” she sung and disappeared into the little shack and reemerged with this giant orange half circle, which I stuck around my waist making me look like a child at the pool with a big floatie around their waist.

As we approached the dock we pass nice power boat after power boat until we came to what I now know is called a hard bottom inflatable. Just like it sounds, it’s an inflatable boat with no seats, just a floor. You sit on the sides of the boat and hang on to a rope that runs along the top.

                       (I did not take this picture, found it on google for reference)

“Anyone who get sea sick stay in the back,” our tour guide instructed. This should have been my first clue. My friend, who is prone to seasickness sat at the back of the boat next to the pilot and held on to the metal stairs. I sat on the other side of the stairs, as close as I could get to them with this big orange piece of foam around my waist.

All was fine and dandy until we left the harbor and were out in open water. The boat would hit one of the five-foot swells, go airborne and then hit the water with an incredible force, bouncing us in the air, one rope the only thing stopping us from being tossed into the sea. The boat sped up and the waves came at us faster and faster until there was only a few second break between crashes. I gripped the rope as tight as possible, even though with every crash my knuckle scraped the rubber. Boom… Boom… Boom… Boom...

“How long is the ride?” one of the passengers asked.

“40 minutes,” our guide answered.

I looked around. Some faces registered fear, some annoyance, one poor girl in her early twenties was already green, sitting on the floor, a baseball cap pulled over her head, her younger sister trying to comfort her.  I was feeling something between fear and annoyance.

“There’s something wrong with the boat,” my friend half-whispered, half-yelled over the sounds of the engine and ocean.

Our pilot, who was probably in his seventies, was pushing buttons and pulling levers while our tour guide was on her cell phone, presumably trying to figure out what was wrong with the boat and when or if they could get a replacement out there. The engine cut out and we were bobbing up and down in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. My annoyance/fear ratio suddenly shifted all the way to the fear side. What if a storm came up? What if there was a rogue wave? What if they didn’t have another ship? We were almost a half hour from shore. And what about this poor girl who I was sure was going to be heaving over the side any moment.

After bobbing around for 20 or so minutes it was a discovered that the 9-year-old boy that had been crawling around the floor of the boat, actually messed with one of the switches on the engine and that was why we stopped. With great relief they put whatever switch it was back in its correct position, turned the key and the engine came back to life.

Another 15 minutes of BoomBoom and we made it to the spot and weighed anchor. When I jumped into the salt water the knuckle that had been rubbed raw scraping on the boat, stung so bad I never noticed how cold the water was. I tooled around, my GroPro pointed towards the cool reefs, rock formations and what few fish were out there.  Soon it was time to climb in the boom boom boat and head back.

The trip back, although hard on the finger and the nerves was uneventful. I loved the actual snorkeling part. If I would have known what I’d have to go through, not to mention the humiliation for no apparent reason, I’m not sure I would have done it. But it was an experience and I’m always grateful for new experiences.

The longest day

We knew we were in for a long day. I had never been to the French Rivera so we picked the excursion that covered the most ground. It was a cruise, it did say the activity level was strenuous, but how bad could it be? Famous last words.

Up at 6:00, although amazingly early for a vacation, it was worth it. Pulling into Nice during sunrise is a spectacular sight, the pink, orange, blue and purple backdrop to the lighthouse that juts out into the sea and the lights of the mansions built into the rock like fireflies dancing on the mountains mesmerized me. I had my camera out in a flash snapping pictures of the sky, water, skyline and yachts as far as the eye could see.

We were out of our room by 6:30 and up to the buffet, which we lovingly referred to as “the trough”. After downing some quick carbs we ran across the enormous ship to make it to the theater for our 7:00 designated meet-up time.  There were almost a hundred people there, all wearing round stickers of various colors with group numbers . Ours was red with 23 on it. It only took a short while for them to call our number and we were off to trek back across the ship to catch our tender into town.  When we reached shore we were again arranged in our groups and off on a ten-minute up hill trek to our bus.

My friend had run to the washroom so I was very concerned that she wouldn’t make it before the bus left. I kept trying to tell someone that she had been left behind but it was falling on deaf French ears. Bus after bus left and no sign of her. Finally, she came pushing up the hill moments before we left. Relief.

Okay, we were on the bus, no one left behind, it was time to relax.

“My name is Sylvie, I’ll be your tour guide.” She proceeded to give us a brief history of the area and an overview of the route we were going to take from Ville Frenche where we landed into Nice proper. If you’ve ever been to the area you would know that the amount of time it takes to get from one city to another is less then the time it took her to explain where we were going.

We arrived in Nice by 8:00. Everything was closed. This was the first round of a new game called “chase the tour guide”. By the time we stepped off the bus she was almost a block away. We chased her through a park. Every time we caught up she had just finished explaining something to the more spry of the group and with an “allez allez” was off again. We finally made it into the city center and I was unhappy to learn that we arrived on the one day of the month that the flower market was replaced by a flea market. After a brief dash around the flea market Silvie granted us a whole 20 minutes on our own informing us “If you’re not here, I gone”. We took a 3-minute walk to see the beach, but beside that there really isn’t anything to do that time of the morning in niece, so we walked back to the square where we were to meet Sylvie, grabbed a café and sat on the steps. As promised, she was there in precisely 19 minutes and 1 minute later we were off, “allez allez”.

Monaco was a short drive away, though the walk through the park to the palace was long, hot and a sprint from the moment we stepped off the bus. We were told for the third time in a thick French accent that Monaco was built “from land reclaimed from the sea.” .Brightly colored buildings with flower filled balconies flashed by in a blur. I held out my camera and snapped pictures as I ran though the cobblestoned streets.  The dash ended outside the royal palace. Again we had 20 minutes to explore on our own. With her right hand sweeping against her left, like a plane taking off, she said, “20 minutes, you not here, I go” and she disappeared into the crowd. This time 20 minutes was plenty. Monaco, though beautiful, is tiny. Some time with the souvenir vendors, pictures of the palace and a brief tour though the church where Princess Grace is buried and I had pretty much seen Monaco. 

Winding through the mountains to the medieval village of Eze we were regaled by the litany of celebrities that lived in those mountains and who’s house was whose. Elton John’s house must have been pointed out six times as was Bono’s house, guesthouse and guest’s, guesthouse. And again we were reminded that the land we saw below was “reclaimed from the sea”. By the time we parked at what I thought was Eze it was in the mid-nineties outside and not a cloud in the sky. This is where I understood the “strenuous” part of the description. The actual village of Eze was two and a half miles straight up and cobblestoned. Not only that, but we were supposed to follow the most fit 60-something woman I have ever met up this enormous hill at breakneck speed. I kept up for about three-quarters of the climb but then my friend became concerned that my face was the color of a ripe tomato and when she asked me if I was alright, I gasped for air and sputtered, “no”. Since she wasn’t doing that much better we had a little rest at the bottom of the final ninety-degree stone-stair push to the top. Of course, by this time Sylvie was quite out of site. I think I caught an “allez, allez” on the wind.

By the time we finally made it to the top the more fit of the group had had a bit of a rest and were heading into the village itself, which meant if we wanted to stay with the group, no rest for us. The Village is a series of stone steps going up and down in a snake like pattern, two stories down, one up, two down, three up, so on and so forth. Uneven ground with no handrails is not a good combination for someone whose nickname growing up was klutz. For safety’s sake I went as slow as I could keeping Sylvie’s “allez, allez” within earshot, even if I could no longer see her.

The hill was so steep that the walk down to the restaurant where we were having lunch was not that much easier, not to mention the midday Mediterranean sun. It was heaven to sit down and have a quite tasty lunch with a very fun couple from Canada. Our respite was short lived though.

Soon we were off again. Back through the hills where we learned yet again where Sir Elton John lived. I had barely gotten my stuff re-organized in my backpack when we arrived in Monte Carlo. The bus traveled the route of the grand Prix and then parked in a parking garage with seventy other busses. Sylvie informed us that the casino was another two miles uphill. I had read that you really couldn’t go in the casino unless you were dressed properly, which I wasn’t, and you certainly couldn’t gamble.

Sylvie told us that anyone that did not want to make the walk could hang out in the Japanese garden above the garage. My friend decided to make the trip to the casino, I opted for the garden. Surprise, if I was not at the bus in half-an-hour “she go”.

I took pictures of the Koi fish and relished in the bit of shade over the bench I was sitting on. I pulled out the completely squished almond croissant I had purchased in Nice seven hours ago. I was going in for my second delicious bite when a police officer approached me. He said something in French and when I showed no recognition, he pantomimed that I was not to eat in the park. No eating in public parks, what was that about? I put my croissant away and pulled my camera out again and looked at the day’s pictures.

We arrived back at the bus park at 4:30 after of course having Elton John’s house pointed out to me again and being told how everything was “reclaimed from the sea”. I have never not tipped a tour operator until that day. I almost limped down the hill and back to the tender port, “allez allez” still wringing in my head.