After leaving the Canary Islands, the cruise continued south along the west coast of Africa.
This was the part of the itinerary that had intrigued us when we booked it. Cape Verde, Senegal, The Gambia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo and São Tomé & Príncipe were places we knew little about and probably never would have planned individual trips to visit.
Over the next eleven days, we saw places that were beautiful, difficult, fascinating and sometimes uncomfortable.
Cape Verde
Our first stop was Mindelo on São Vicente.
We initially got off the ship and walked for about an hour on our own, but didn't find much we wanted to explore, so we returned and later joined our scheduled excursion.
The drive across the island was memorable.
The roads weren't particularly good, many buildings appeared unfinished or distressed, and at one point our underpowered bus was climbing a mountain beside a steep drop-off.
My contemporaneous reaction was: "Why am I here?"
But the farther we traveled, the more apparent the island's natural beauty became.
At the top of Monte Verde we sampled some local rum. Our guide told us that the people there considered São Vicente the best place in the world.
At one of the beaches, we learned that some of its sand had been blown across the Atlantic from the African continent. I picked up a handful simply so I could say I'd held Saharan sand that had crossed the ocean.
The next morning, back at sea, I got up before sunrise. From the deck I could see the Southern Cross and later watched flying fish skimming across the water.
Africa was beginning to feel very far from home.
Dakar and Gorée Island
In Dakar, Senegal, we took the ferry to Gorée Island.
We visited the House of Slaves and walked through the cells where enslaved people had once been confined before being sent across the Atlantic.
It was difficult to process.
We touched the walls, looked into the cells and stood at the "Door of No Return," through which enslaved people were taken to the ships that would carry them away.
What struck me afterward was how recently this history had occurred.
At 60, a hundred years no longer seemed like ancient history. The abolition of slavery in the United States was only about a century before I was born.
That evening, Shirley and I talked about what we'd seen.
Neither of us had much to say that made it easier to comprehend.
The Gambia
The next day we arrived in Banjul and took a long drive to the Makasutu Palm Forest.
The drive showed us another side of West Africa.
There wasn't much visible wealth. The roads were rough, medical facilities looked limited, and much of what we saw was very different from the world we were accustomed to.
At the same time, the markets were full of food, people were dressed and going about their lives, and cell phones seemed ubiquitous.
We walked through the forest and then made the long drive back to the ship.
One of the unexpected benefits of these excursions was simply talking with other travelers. On the return trip I spoke with Dennis, an experienced traveler who enthusiastically told me about places we should go next—Australia, India and elsewhere.
We were already beginning to collect future journeys while still on this one.
New Year's at Sea
We spent New Year's Eve at sea.
During the day Shirley searched for future trips and found a solar-eclipse tour that still had availability. We booked it.
That evening we had dinner with another couple, joined the ship's New Year's Eve party around 11:30 and managed to "party" until shortly after midnight.
Then we went to bed.
On New Year's Day we were sailing off Liberia, moving in and out of rainstorms.
Ivory Coast
Our next port was Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
We took an excursion to Grand-Bassam, including the National Costume Museum and artisan centers.
This was one of the days when the nature of cruise tourism began making me uncomfortable.
Our bus had a police escort. Armed officers were visible around the port. We drove through neighborhoods where poverty was obvious, and at times it felt less like visiting a place than being driven through people's lives to look at them.
I wrote: "It's like we're here to see and drive through the poverty. How must the locals feel as we come through?"
That question stayed with me.
Ghana
In Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana, we decided not to take another organized excursion.
Instead, we took the ship's shuttle toward the market and decided we'd find somewhere to have lunch.
When we arrived, road construction prevented the shuttle from reaching the market. For a moment I considered simply staying aboard and returning to the ship.
Shirley convinced me otherwise.
We hired a taxi for $20 an hour and asked the driver to take us to a hotel restaurant.
The taxi was old, sputtered constantly and didn't inspire enormous confidence. During the drive, Shirley quietly found herself looking for places we could go if the car broke down.
At the hotel, the waiter recommended local dishes. I ordered fried rice with goat meat and plantains; Shirley had fried rice with chicken or seafood. We each had a beer.
The meal was good and enormous.
Then none of the restaurant's three credit-card machines would accept our cards.
We eventually paid in U.S. dollars, returned to our questionable taxi and made it safely back to the shuttle.
Two new travel rules made it into the journal: Don't go farther in a taxi than you're willing to walk back. And: Always have another way to pay.
Togo
The following day we arrived in Lomé, Togo.
We skipped the ship's Voodoo Ceremony excursion and decided to explore on our own.
The shuttle dropped us in what was described as the city center, although it didn't look much like one to us.
We walked to the Independence Monument and then to a modern hotel, thinking we'd have lunch. The restaurant wasn't open yet, so after cooling off for a while, we continued toward the Palais de Lomé.
There wasn't much pedestrian traffic, and the visible presence of armed police or military made us somewhat uncomfortable, although we never actually felt threatened.
The Palais was completely different.
The grounds were beautiful and meticulously maintained. A young man named Marcel offered to show us around, and we essentially received a private tour. Inside, other guides walked us through the exhibits and history of the building.
There were very few other visitors.
After about three hours out, we walked back to the shuttle hot, thirsty and happy we'd chosen to explore on our own.
São Tomé
Then came São Tomé.
We anchored offshore and took a tender into the city. Because of the conditions, the ship limited tender access to passengers without significant mobility problems—another small reminder of the importance of staying healthy enough to keep doing things like this.
When we reached shore, scores of taxi drivers were waiting.
We decided to walk.
We started at a small museum and then continued along Ana Chaves Bay, eventually walking almost to the other end.
It was hot and humid.
Motorcycles buzzed constantly around us. Children in school uniforms filled the streets. People were going about their ordinary day.
And for whatever reason, we felt comfortable.
We wandered into a local street market. We were often the only white people around. People smiled and greeted us with "bom dia."
Along the way we spotted an artisanal chocolate shop.
We went inside, bought five different chocolates and sat down to eat them. Shirley and I were both hot and sweaty from walking, and everything we tried was delicious.
We bought several chocolate bars to take with us and put them in my backpack.
Some melted.
We somehow neglected to take a photograph of the shop, which we regretted almost immediately.
Later we decided we wanted lunch.
Google Maps led us to a little restaurant called La Bistro. We initially couldn't even figure out how to get inside until someone opened the door for us.
There was a buffet.
We filled our plates with rice, roasted vegetables, fried fish and other local dishes, ordered a local beer and a bottle of water, and sat down.
At some point I looked across the table and noticed Shirley smiling.
The entire meal cost about $18.
We walked back toward the tender and high-fived each other.
We had been out for roughly three and a half hours, walking around an unfamiliar African city in the heat, buying chocolate, finding a restaurant and eating lunch.
Nothing we'd done was particularly extraordinary.
But I remember feeling almost giddy.
I told Shirley we were finally getting our traveler legs under us.
In my journal that afternoon I wrote: "I felt like this is what traveling is supposed to be like."
What We'll Remember
We'll remember the roads and mountains of Cape Verde and holding a handful of sand that had crossed the Atlantic from Africa.
We'll remember standing inside the House of Slaves on Gorée Island and struggling to comprehend what had happened there.
We'll remember seeing poverty that made us uncomfortable—not simply because it existed, but because of the strange position we occupied as affluent visitors passing through it.
We'll remember our sputtering taxi in Ghana and wondering whether we'd make it back.
We'll remember Marcel showing us around the nearly empty Palais de Lomé.
But most of all, we'll remember São Tomé.
The motorcycles. The schoolchildren. The heat. The market. The chocolate we forgot to photograph. The $18 lunch. Shirley smiling across the table.
And the high-five afterward.
Would We Return?
Probably not to most of these places specifically.
We're very glad we saw them.
The cruise allowed us to visit a stretch of the world we knew almost nothing about, and several of the experiences will stay with us for the rest of our lives.
But São Tomé was different.
Not necessarily because we'd want to spend a month there.
Because for one day we stopped feeling quite so much like cruise passengers being shown Africa.
We got off the tender and walked.
And it was one of the best days of the cruise.