Tag Archives: ferries

A not-that-slow boat to Cuba

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© Mike Nettleship | Dreamstime.com

Lifting the US trade embargo against Cuba would open up a whole new category of cruise travel for Americans — ocean-going ferries. The possibilities are mind-blowing.

You just know that Carnival and Royal Caribbean and all the other major cruise lines out there are poised and waiting for the US government to retire one of the last of its remaining policy relics of the Cold War, the US trade embargo against Cuba.

But the cruise lines aren’t the only ones waiting at the dock. There are some big-time entrepreneurs out there who want to run ocean-going ferries between Florida ports and Havana.

You can read an Orlando Sentinel report on this concept here.

Aside from giving the cruise ships a serious run for their money, this would open up a whole new type of cruise vacation to the American traveler.

If the idea of taking a ferry from Florida to Cuba sounds far-fetched to most Americans, it’s because we’re not familiar with the kinds of ocean-going ferries that have been plying the waters of northern European and elsewhere for decades.

I’m not talking about the little open through-deck putt-putts that shuttle cars and pedestrians across the Mississippi River from New Orleans to Algiers. These are legitimate sea-going vessels, many of which look like cruise ships built on a smaller scale, more than capable of holding their own on the open ocean.

In fact, the first Royal Caribbean cruise ship I ever saw dock in San Diego back in the day turned out to be a converted ocean-going ferry.

ferry loading heavy trucks in Greece

© Mike Nettleship | Dreamstime.com

We’re talking fully enclosed decks, safe from the weather — or in the case of the Caribbean, the blazing summer sun and humidity. Bars, restaurants, shops, casinos, swimming pools. Even cabins.

So what? you say. The cruise ships have all that already. But here’s what they don’t have — a deck to let you drive your own car on and off the ship.

This opens up all manner of possibilities for the traveler.

Imagine not only being able to cruise to Cuba, but to roll into Havana with your wheels, ready and able to explore the island nation at will in your own car or 4×4, maybe even your own RV.

Also, ferries tend to have shallower draft than full-sized cruise ships which means they can dock in smaller, shallower harbors that the big boys can’t use.

Here’s another option: A relaxed ferry ride from Miami, Tampa or Ft. Lauderdale to Havana on the ferry, then roll out on your bicycle for a leisurely bike tour of Cuba.

Prefer walking to rolling? Then make it a ferry-backpack trip.

However you chose to do it, it would be at rates cheaper, potentially substantially cheaper, than cruise ship fares.

Indeed, ferries would enable you to do Cuba as a day-trip out of Miami, which has hosted day cruises to the Bahamas for decades.

And that’s without resorting to a high-speed catamaran ferry, which could make the run from, say, Naples, FL to Havana in about five hours.

Don’t feel like going it alone? You wouldn’t have to; you just know that tour companies would be all over this.

Click on the pic of that blue-ad-white Greek ocean-going ferry with the cargo truck loading on board. Now replace the 18-wheeler with an air-conditioned tour bus. Imagine it:

Buy a Cuba tour package. Roll with the tour group on your US-based tour bus, straight onto the ferry. Chill out on the cruise, then roll into Havana on your own bus, with your own guide, everything pre-paid. Return home the same way, the same day.

Want to stay longer? buy a bigger package.

Apart from opening up major new opportunities for travelers, a ferry link between Florida and Cuba could create a cash infusion into Florida’s travel industry the likes of which it hasn’t seen since the debut of Disneyworld.

New jobs? Hundreds, potentially thousands.

All that’s required is for our policymakers in Washington to wake up, man up and kick our obsolete embargo to the curb.


ALSO CHECK OUT:
CUBA: the rules
Delta’s new connection: Charter flights to Cuba
RACISM: Cuba faces its demon
CUBA: Obama dips another toe
TRACY GROSS: Passing for Cuban
TRACY GROSS: To be black in Cuba “no es facil”
RANT — The Cuba embargo

The working man's cruise

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Ferries were created as basic transportation for water-bound communities, but they can offer a great experience — and great value — to the traveler.

When it comes to cruising, January is a hot month. Snowbound Americans start thinking about sunny holiday cruises, while the cruise industry touts the arrival of new, bigger and better ships.

According to the folks at CruiseCritic, no fewer than 15 new vessels are expected to hit the waves in 2010.

This time, though, I want to bring up one of the more overlooked aspects of water travel, but one that can offer a traveler some serious value.

I’m talking here about ferry travel.

When many of us think of ferries, we see something small, slow, ungainly-looking, a barge to get you and/or your car from one side of the river or bay to the other, and not much else. Strictly utilitarian. The working man’s (or woman’s) cruise. A floating city bus, with seats to match. And you’d be right.

You’d also be wrong.

Many of the world’s ferries — and at last count, there were more than 240 ferry lines around the world — ply sea routes covering hundreds of miles. Increasingly, they are state-of-the-art vessels, some of the fastest and most technologically advanced in the world.

The larger ones often come with cabins, restaurants and shopping arcades that surpass those found on cruise ships only one generation back. In fact, you may have a hard time distinguishing some of them from cruise ships — until their bow opens up and the cars, trucks and buses start pouring out.

In many parts of the world, ferries often take you to interesting, picturesque destinations that can only be reached by water. They also may take you deep into a country’s heartland without the need to resort to planes, trains and automobiles.

At the same time, even on some of the big seagoing ferries, fares can be comparable to or cheaper than what you’d pay on a cruise ship to visit the same places.

The fringe benefit — some of the most spectacular scenery on Earth.

I found that out in British Columbia, on a ferry crossing the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver to Victoria.

Prior to this, my ferry experience had been limited to crossing the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans to the suburb of Algiers, and later the old bay ferry between Oakland and San Francisco. Both those runs, lasting only minutes, were delightful to a child, but neither of them prepared me for that crossing in British Columbia.

Blue Pacific waters stretched to a horizon dotted with craggy islands of every size, virtually all of them mantled with thick pine forests that covered them almost to the water’s edge.

Back then, bald eagles were an endangered species in the United States. If you saw one at all, it was usually on a TV commercial, or a postage stamp. Now, up here off western Canada, you could see them perched on tree limbs in two’s, three’s and half-dozens. And when they stretched out their wings to soar overhead, your spirit soared with them. It was magical.

But it’s only the smallest taste of what you can see from a ferry.

Norwegian fjords. Whitewashed Italian and Aegean cliffside villages. Thousands of tropical islands. Go from a coastal desert of Baja California to coastal jungle on the Mexican mainland in one hop.

My friend, former colleague and fellow blogger Anna Cearley recently did just that, and you can read about her experience here.

Ferries can give you all of that, and without leaving you stuck on a cruise ship for a week or more. For some folks, a day or two on the water is enough.

So if you’re planning to spend some time on an overseas trip that’s going to take you to multiple destinations, consider the ferry as a more relaxing and scenic option for traveling between points.

And while you do, consider another of those fringe benefits: You can quietly gloat over the fact that most of your fellow passengers are commuting…while you’re vacationing.

Whoever thought a bus could be so much fun!

WARNING
Ocean-going ferries are generally quite safe, but seagoing ferries in the developing world demand extra precautions. Some ferry lines dangerously overload their vessels. Others have been known to sail in bad weather, usually packed with locals anxious to get home.

In recent years, the “capsized ferry tragedy in the Philippines” has become almost an annual event.

Being relatively high vessels with shallow draft, ferries are not the best boats to ride out turbulent seas. So if the forecast along your route looks ugly, consider delaying your sailing until the storm passes. And always try to schedule your passage when the ferry is less packed. You’ll embark and debark a lot quicker, and with fewer safety concerns.

See Venice — and shoot!

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See Venice and die? Maybe. See Venice and lose your mind? If you’re photographer, definitely.

dorsodurogondolas

Whether you’re a photographer, or just a wannabe like me, you can go nuts in Venice. The reason is simple: There is a good shot, or a great one, just about everywhere you look, in any direction, at any time of the day or night.

Some cities are just naturally photogenic — San Francisco, New Orleans, London, Paris, Rome, Hong Kong. But for a “shooter,” Venice may be better than all of them.

Nor are we talking about special events like Carnavale, which in its own way is as visually breathtaking as Mardi Gras in New Orleans or Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro. The majority of Venetian beauty is an every-day affair.

Once, this was a city-state. Now, its 118 islands form one of the world capitals of travel photography. Close up, medium or panoramic, wide-angle or telephoto, color or black & white, it JUST……..DOESN’T………MATTER! Whenever and wherever you stare through your viewfinder, odds are that something visually compelling will be staring back at you.

AGING BEAUTY
There are three main reasons for this, I think.

The first is age. No one even knows exactly how old Venice is. The best guess is that Roman refugees fleeing from Huns, Goths and other Germanic invasions built themselves a community on the marshy islands of this lagoon.

(What? Germans invading their neighbors? You’re kidding, right? Sure glad they got THAT out of their system early! Oh…wait. Never mind!)

IF YOU GO
Venice can be reached by car, bus, air, rail…and perhaps most fittingly, by water. You emerge from the Venice train station directly onto the Grand Canal, where private water taxis (swift and pricey) and public boats (not that slow and super-cheap) await. Ferries come and go from the mainland and cruise ships call here on a regular basis.

The centuries of building and rebuilding, wear and tear, have turned Venice into a palette of colors, gray stucco here, red brick there, all layered in varying shades by sun and water. Colors, textures, light, shadow, shapes, faces. It’s all built to the human scale of centuries past, before builders began catering to the automobile.

Venice may sprawl for thousands of acres across its lagoon, but from where you stand, you can’t see anything but the centuries-old apartment building or cathedral in front of you. You’re in your own very little world.

Water is the second element in Venice’s beauty. It’s everywhere, mainly in the Grand Canal and its scores of narrow tributaries, as well as the lagoon that surrounds — and now threatens to engulf — the entire city.

It’s under your feet — and several times a year during winter storms and high tides, over your knees and even up to your waist.

oldandnew

Venice is a warren of footpaths navigated by street signs stenciled onto the sides of buildings and a variety of landmarks, including massive graffiti. It also is home, you will be told, to 400 bridges. By your second day there, you will be convinced that you either have crossed each of them at least once, or four of them a hundred times each.

BRIDGES AND BOATS
There are other European cities with more bridges — Berlin, for one. While you’re Venice, however, you won’t believe that for a minute.

Public boats called vaporetto run the Grand Canal the way buses run grand boulevards in other cities, essentially one-deck ferries with banks of bench seats. Boarding is amidships from floating docks. If you’re willing to put up with crowds, they are by far the cheapest way to get around.

The rest of the boat traffic consists of overpriced water taxis, small private motorboats, police boats, even ambulance boats that run the canal at high speed with lights and sirens. Utility boats with cranes thread their way between the Coast Guard fire boats.

PHOTOGRAPHER TOURS
It’s wonderful to roam the narrow alleys and passageways alone, armed with your favorite camera and your eye for detail — but you don’t have to. There are organized photo tours of Venice for visitors whose focus is photography. If anything could be more fun than shooting one of the most beautiful cities on Earth, it just might be doing it with a gaggle of other photo enthusiasts who feel the same way you do.

You’ll find links to photo tours in Venice and other great cities on the Cool Travel Sites page.

Then, of course, there is that flotilla of gondolas, either the quintessential Venetian cliche or the ultimate floating symbol of a floating city. Either way, you ultimately will grab a few frames of gondolas and gondoliers. No use fighting it. Sooner or later, you will succumb.

It’s like a photographic equivalent of the Borg. Resistance is futile.

The third element involves something that’s not there. There are no cars in Venice. No trucks, no minivans, scarcely as much as a Vespa scooter. No traffic lights, no parking meters, no billboards.

No, you haven’t died and gone to Photographers’ Heaven. It just looks that way.

The “traffic” on Venetian streets is that of people walking by you. That makes for a much more serene urban landscape, one that gives you time to notice the small, appealing details around you — without the threat of being run over by a bus.

Dorsoduro, one of those 118 Venetian islands defined by all those canals, is a good area to stay in if you want to be more or less in the center of things in Venice.

It’s a lot quieter than some of the islands on the other side of the Grand Canal, the side that has St. Marks Square and the Mussolini-era train station and the cruise ship docks.

ventraffic


VENICE, VENICE…GOING DOWN
There are a lot fewer reasons for tourists to troop over to Dorsoduro — and for me, that proved to be one of its attractions. To find yourself more among the locals and less among the tourists is almost always a good thing.

Another advantage in Dorsoduro: Prices seem to be cheaper.

The Bible tells us that all things passeth away. Venice is sinking. It’s been sinking for a thousand years, but scientists say the process is accelerating thanks to rising sea levels.

The Italian government is looking for ways to save this treasure. It’s been looking for decades. There’s no guarantee of finding one. Many Venetians have already resigned the city to its apparent fate and moved away.

With that in mind, the best advice I can give you is:

See Venice…before Venice dies.