And then came Waldo…..
It was a day like any other day, we awoke on a cruise ship headed for Mexico…..wait a minute, that’s not true. Waking up on a cruise ship is definitely not a day like any other day for these three friends from small town Saskatchewan….
Tammie, Heather and I, longtime friends from high school who prioritized fun and excitement before all else, planned the vacation of a lifetime. Cruising aboard the newly built and majestic “Tropical”, a ship from the Carnival cruise fleet
The Tropical would be our home on the water for 7 days leaving L.A on a Sunday, and making stops in Mazatlán, Puerto Vallarta and finally Cabo San Lucas before returning to L.A the following Sunday.
I paged through the Tropical brochure daily, each time anticipation of how great this experience would be, grew exponentially. There were numerous venues on board, a casino, a show lounge, a disco, several places to grab food and drinks, as well as the most beautiful and regal dining room I had ever seen! I knew this would be an adventure extraordinaire!
Now, I’ll admit I’m far from being a fish in water by any means…….but I can get by with a “mean” dog paddle when I must. So, the idea of living on a cruise ship for seven days had me obsessively asking anyone who had cruised, about the weather while on their ocean vacation. It didn’t matter to me where they had cruised to or what time of year, I only wanted to know if they were threatened by a tidal wave – the movie Poseidon Adventure was still fresh in my mind and Mexico City had experienced an earthquake three weeks before our departure. I was relieved to hear that no one had experienced rain let alone any type of rough weather.
It was a Sunday in early October 1985 when we boarded the “Tropical” cruise ship, She was magnificent – like a gigantic luxury hotel that floated.
Sunday, Monday and Tuesday would be spent entirely on the water, arriving at our first port, Mazatlán Wednesday morning. It gave us plenty of time to become familiarized with the ship, our cabin, as well as our breakfast and dinner seating in the formal dining room.
Tammie, Heather and I jumped into exploring this fine ocean liner and discovered how easily we could get lost! I was also intrigued by the fact that I could walk confidently despite the motion of this massive ship heading through water.
Up until that day my experiences in a boat had been sitting still as if tranquilized in my seat adorned with a life jacket securely fastened to me!
The first day was filled with deck activities and reviewing options for tours we could book once we arrived in port.
There were pools to take a dip in, skeet shooting and my personal favorite, watching Heather hit golf balls off the back of the ship….with nothing but open water behind us there was no need to yell “four”.
With 1,000 guests and 500 crew members onboard, every “nook and cranie” of the ship was filled with energized guests and crew members experienced at escalating that excitement in every way.
However, climbing up to the highest point, at the front of the ship, it felt inconceivable that this massive ship was moving as if on rollers practically without motion. Ahead of us the ocean looked like glass that merged with blue skies in the distance - the perfect backdrop! The moment felt serene – in that moment everything in my life that was challenging melted away as did all the other guests and crew members.
The second day was filled with more exploring more areas of this luxury liner – more and different entertainment as well as visiting the Disco for the first time.
We found out – by trial and error – that this spot on the ship was where we would find one of the most challenging activities of all – dancing! The “Disco” ….remember this was the 80’s…. was at the very back of the ship, where the most movement on the ship was felt. What we didn’t anticipate is that the motion would turn the dance floor into something that I would describe as trying to dance in a bouncy house – I’m sure we looked like drunken sailors….I had to be careful not to pick up a foot because the floor was never in the same place when I put it down a second later.
One of the main events of the week was that evening, the Captain’s night.
The captain’s night was the night everyone dressed in the most formal outfit brought on vacation. Our picture taken with the captain as we entered the dining room…..the introductions of the officers and captain was stately. The celebrations went well into the night with plenty of amazing food and drinks, lots of entertainment and laughter.
I fell into bed that night exhausted and could feel the effects of the copious amounts of food and drink.
The next morning, I awoke, showered and was preparing to go to the dining room for breakfast when a wave of feeling unwell came over me. Attributing the feeling to indulging the way my twenty something year old self did, I fell back into bed for what I thought would be a few minutes. Not realizing that I would barely be able to leave that position for the next 24 hours.
Heather came to the cabin a few minutes later to tell us not to hurry to get outside. It was solid grey outside and had started to rain. Tammie and I remained in the cabin and found it difficult to stand. Our cabin was located on an inside row and consequently we didn’t have a view to the outside. However, we could feel the motion of the ship had increased significantly from the day before.
I was quite happy to play it safe and stay secure in my top bunk. While the motion was uncomfortable, we remained in good humor talking about the day before and all the fun we had. All that changed at 11:00 AM when an announcement over the PA system calmly stated we were in a tropical storm named “Waldo”. They continued to say that guests in their cabins should move to a larger space like the show lounge as being in a confided area made seasickness worse.
The afternoon was spent trying to ride the waves while lying horizonal. Tammie and I were the only two in the cabin and by late afternoon the motion had gotten significantly worse which meant we were now in waves that were higher than when the tropical storm announcement was made.
We could feel the ship climbing up the wave and then peak and begin the descent down. However now more concerning was the shaking we felt on the other side of the wave accompanied by a noise so terrific we didn’t hear bottles of wine that fell off the counter and smashed on the floor.
It was Heather that found the glass when she checked in on us mid-afternoon and luckily noticed it before she stepped on it!
She said, “it is so grey outside you can’t tell where the sky stops and the water starts”. She described how the mood had shifted to a sense of urgency as crews roped up doors to deny access to the outside decks. And fear was setting in as passengers were becoming weary from the conditions, some wearing slings from slipping on the wet surface and injuring body parts.
During the next two hours, as the storm intensified, Tammie and I no longer cared to engage in conversation. My mind was occupied with several thoughts of how this could play out, and I knew she was probably in the same boat – ya that’s a fitting pun!
We would later admit that fear had set in for both of us and talking would only let the other one how scared we both were.
At 4:00 PM that now familiar calm voice announced over the PA system that the tropical storm had now turned into a hurricane. This was the point that I seriously thought we should pull over to the land I saw in the distance the day before! However, the voice reassured us that we would be out of hurricane in approximately two hours.
I was prepared to give them an extra 15 minutes to right the ship into calmer waters….but nope in two hours it was worse. The movement of the ship now felt radical and unpredictable. It was at this point that the only updates we received from calm PA system voice was to try and get out of small cabin spaces into larger spaces because we would feel better. I was good where I was….I wasn’t sick however if they made me go anywhere outside of my cabin I surely would be.
By 9:00 that night we reached the peak of what seemed like the worse. Crew members that knew us came by to check on us and offer reassure that while not comfortable they had been through worse hurricanes.
It was a relief to wake up during the night and feel the ship had returned to a much tolerable gentle additional motion.
It had been 36 hours since I had been outside of the cabin when we came out on deck to see the beautiful blue skies of Mazatlán. The ship was in disarray from the storm…..salt stuck thick to everything exposed to the waves the day before.
I could see guests with their luggage leaving the ship and I hoped that I would not regret my decision to stay and finish out the week.
Earlier that morning we talked about my strong desire to fly back to L.A. – I took comfort in the fact that no one else was entertaining leaving a ship where we had spent only 72 out of 168 hours on and decided to stay and enjoy the next five days.
The rest of the week did not disappoint and revealed itself to be an amazing trip! We continued to be treated like royalty! Our days on land and nights back on the ship were filled with excitement and adventure.
After leaving Mazatlán we moved on to Puerto Vallarta, then our last port Cabo San Lucas, before heading back on the water for two days. We would disembark in L.A. on Sunday.
Our final adventure came two hours after leaving Cabo San Lucas. We were back in the Disco trying to master dancing on the shifting dance floor when once again the ship seemed to be experiencing rough waters again. We left the windowless Disco to find out that we had stopped to send a rescue boat to haul back a yacht that had been stranded by the hurricane. They found one woman on board both of her male companions had been swept overboard during the hurricane. The woman, a French alien was found to have more weapons on board than a kamikaze pilot so ya, they turned her over to the authorities in L.A.
Sunday morning, as we disembarked from the Tropical for the last time, Waldo wasn’t all we were talking about. We laughed about the many amazing adventures and experiences that were outside of those 72 hours of jostled around in waves that started out as 12-foot swells and peaked to 30 feet at the highest intensity.
We knew we had experienced the trip of a lifetime just like we wanted it to be. The hurricane, although severe, would become a really really cool story to tell!
Forty years later, as I tell this story one more time, I remember how young we were and the magnitude of what we went through. We were three high school friends on a big adventure that unexpectedly ended up in a catastrophic event far far away from home, away from family.
While Waldo appeared to be a catastrophic event on the outside what he brought us personally was much more. We had no choice but to rely on each and other people we didn’t know. That reliance built connection and a deeper level of trust – trust in ourselves and trust in the people around us and most of all trust in my two besties!
I will forever be grateful for Tammie and Heather being the friends to weather that intense storm with. Navigating through intense fear, extreme excitement and a few hangovers with friends that always see the glass as half full was more than I could have asked for.
In the years to follow, every time we got together, we would once again travel through our favorite parts of the incredible vacation on the Tropical and laugh like hell at every story – even Waldo seemed funny!
It reminds me how things work out even in the seemingly most desperately hopeless situations and how uncertainty and guarantees are so far out of my control that it is a waste of my life force to be concerned with worst case scenarios.
In our final visit before Tammie passed away, through heavy hearts and tears we still smiled at our favorite memories from the Tropical. Me paying Tammie to answer the door in 25-foot waves to let in housekeeping so I didn’t have to stand up!
In those last moments together I told her how much I admired her flair for adventure and how inspiring she was and an amazing best friend to travel with. I recounted how she had orchestrated, first our interest and then our excitement in suggesting we go on a cruise.
Then, with her amazing laugh that always lit up a room she said, “Valerie, my friend while you perfectly remember all the details from the cruise, you have apparently forgot one pertinent detail…..vacationing on a cruise ship was all your idea, not mine!”
……And just like that, forty years collapsed into one perfect moment of laughter.
That is how I’ll always remember us – not as three people caught in a hurricane, but as three friends who learned that even when the waters are wild, the right people and community will always keep you afloat!