Brisbane to Los Angeles - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 98

Phileas Fogg, in danger of exceeding his allotted eighty days and losing his bet, opted to tie up a ship
captain, seize the helm himself, and start burning structural parts of the ship as fuel to stoke the engine fires
higher. It would be difficult for us to replicate these tactics (and anyway this freighter is made out of metal).
So we'll just have to pray we get to Auckland in time to board our cruise ship. As it stands, we're due to
arrive almost precisely when the cruise ship is due to depart.
When Auckland's port finally comes into view, we're enormously relieved to see the giant white cruise
ship still at the pier, just a few berths away. We jog over as soon as we clear customs and disembark from
the Matisse . The cruise ship workers out in front of the gangway tell us the ship will be departing in about
two hours.
Luckily, the port is very near the city center. Unluckily, the entirety of our experience in New Zealand
involves running around downtown Auckland's toothbrush-clean streets, searching through clothing stores
for bits of attire presentable enough to wear on the cruise ship's scheduled formal nights. When we return
to the pier, the ship's porters can't quite bring themselves to believe that we're actually boarding with noth-
ing but our backpacks and a couple of small shopping bags. They politely inquire as to when the rest of
our things will be arriving. All around us, rolling dollies groan under the weight of elaborate, twelve-piece
matched leather luggage sets.
Our cabin, on one of the middle decks, gives an indication of why this cruise is so expensive. We're in
the cheapest tier possible, and yet the cabin is nicer than anywhere I've ever lived. A king-size mattress
with the approximate thickness of forty stacked phone books. A walk-in closet that looks completely empty
even after we've unpacked our tiny allotment of clothing. A large television with a DVD player and satel-
lite channels. Most thrillingly, we have a balcony with sliding glass doors. It now offers a close-up look
at a ship in an adjacent berth, but we anticipate expansive views of the South Pacific and a taste of clean,
salty air—enjoyed in the comfort of our lush, ship-provided terrycloth bathrobes. One more lovely touch:
On our small dining table is the first in an endless string of complimentary shrimp platters.
We are joining the cruise on the final leg of its Grand Asia Pacific tour, which went up the U.S. west
coast to Alaska, across the Bering Strait to Russia, and then down Asia's eastern coast—stopping at ports of
interest along the way. Passengers who've been on board for the whole megillah are referred to as GAPpers,
and have paid something like seventy thousand dollars each for the privilege (and much more if they're
residing in one of the ship's two-thousand-square-foot luxury suites). The only reason the cruise is remotely
affordable for Rebecca and me is that this last segment is a “repositioning.” It makes only a few stops and
its principal mission is simply to get the ship back to Los Angeles so a new loop can begin.
IN “A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again”—probably the funniest essay ever written in Eng-
lish—the late David Foster Wallace wrote about the week he spent on a giant white cruise ship puttering
around the Caribbean. Though he had all the food he could eat and all the sunshine he could absorb, Wal-
lace felt sharp pangs of despair. In part, this was a reaction to his tacky fellow passengers. But Wallace also
had the depressing realization that, no matter how pampered and spoiled he was on the ship, the grasping
infant inside him would remain unsatisfied, forever demanding greater degrees of luxury and ease.
I've done my time on one of those Caribbean cattle-car cruise ships. I grew disgusted at the sight of the
buffet line, which was peopled by an obese and sunburn-prone cross-section of middle America. The buffet
food itself was abundant, but boring. My room was cramped and had one undersized porthole that I could
barely see the ocean out of. The casino was packed to its bleep-blooping gills at all hours of day and night.
We made port in a series of soul-crushing tourist hellholes like Cancún and Cozumel.
After spending a few days aboard the Seven Seas Mariner , though, it occurs to me that perhaps I was
just on the wrong cruise. Once you get behind the cruise industry's velvet rope (in this case, staggering