The Andersons' South American Misadventure

First day home. Last night I reset the time on my alarm clock. Daylight Savings time started while we were gone. I must have hit the alarm and it went off at 6:00. I just kept hitting buttons until it stopped. Not the best way to start the day. I went back to sleep and Rob got up at some point. We had been gone long enough he had forgotten the steps for his new coffee maker. Before we got home Douglas and Michelle did grocery shopping for us. We have milk, eggs, cottage cheese, lettuce and bread. Douglas also dumped the ice in our ice maker so that I had fresh and stocked our fridge with Coke Zero. OK, get up, there is a lot to do. We have four weeks of laundry to take care of and suitcases to unpack. I did a couple of interviews and answered part of my email. We start on the pile of mail. Amazing how much of it can be dumped without looking at it. I get a nice hot cup on chai and then eat my cottage cheese standing on the screened porch. It is about 50 degrees out but I do not care...

I wake up for some unknown reason and cannot get back to sleep. I am fretting again. I know that there is nothing that I can do about what is happening but I still cannot get back to sleep. I try all of my tricks and finally doze off. My cell phone rings at 5:35 am, it is a call from Berlin. Yeah, no, I am not talking to a reporter at this time and I still have my bite guard in. I hear Rob get up and go “Oh no.” This is not the way that anyone wants to start the day. I used to wake up to this and it usually meant that he had either lost a contact or had it off centered. Since his cataract surgery no more contacts and this is not the way that I get awakened. Our travel information has arrived. Victoria is correct about the bus and the flight to Atlanta. We do not have the 3:45 flight to Cincinnati, we have the 7:35 flight. Oh dear, how is Douglas going to get a car to us when we are going to land just before 9:00 pm? I look out the window. I can see the Rotterdam and two Coast Guard b...

I woke up this morning and moved the curtains, I could see the sun rising. Wait, rising? We have been on the west side of the ship why am I seeing the sun rise? The captain had said last night that we would be heading for Ft Lauderdale but had been asked to stay outside of the territorial waters. We put the map on TV. Sure enough, we are making a big oval in the ocean. I can see other cruise ships circling with us. We are told that the Volendam has joined the "parade" to act as support. There is a meeting that will be held at 10:00 am where they will be "crossing t's and dotting i's." Breakfast comes, what a nice surprise we have a cheese omelet. Yes, I also have what I hope will be my last cup of tap water chai. When I put the drink order out I see a packet waiting for us. Yes, the end really is in sight. We have luggage tags and a health form to fill out. Uh oh, it is the same one that kept us from going to the Rotterdam. Do we tell the truth and risk an...

I woke up this morning and I knew that the ship was holding still. We have been on the ship long enough that I know how it feels. I looked out of the window, yeah, the water was still. I told Rob that we were holding still. He asked if I was sure. I crawled up into the window to look down at the water. Yup, we are holding still. Rob turned on the TV to the cruise map channel. They list the speed of the ship, the wind, temperature and humidity. We were sitting still right off the Northwest coast of Cuba. Hmm, I wonder why. I called Victoria since she finds things out before we do. No, she did not know anything. Then I remembered, the captain had said the night before that we would be stopping briefly to transfer medical supplies from the Rotterdam to the Zaandam. Breakfast came and it was scrambled eggs again. OK, not that bad, ugh, they are cold, I mean, chilled cold. We split the plate and then we checked the other plate. There were two banana nut pancakes, Rob was excited and two s...

This is Day 10 of confinement and we are both still alive, even if we did not get our Coke Zero delivery. I woke up at 3:47 am with a killer headache. I realized that I was dehydrated. I have been trying very hard to keep drinking water but I like really cold water. This room temp stuff is, well, it is wet. I got up to pour some water for myself. Our last water delivery was a 6 liter jug. This thing is not light. I do not know how they expected some of the little old ladies on this cruise to heft this jug. Of course I am doing all of this in the dark. I did not want to wake up Rob. I put my water bottle on our little table and grab the jug. Umph this thing is heavy. I get the cap off and make sure to put it down where I could find it. Now start to pour water, in the dark and not spill. I did it by sound and get the water bottle close to filled but did not spill any water. Put the lid back on the jug and put the jug somewhere that will not be tripped on. It takes me a while to get back...

We spent a good portion of the night in our transit of the Panama Canal. They had really bright lights shining which I could see under our curtains. I would move the curtains because I wanted to see what was going on. The bright lights would hit Rob in the face, wake him up and he would yell at me. I could hear machinery going and people yelling and there were lights. So I would move the curtain again and Rob would yell again. It was a long night. Then I could feel the ship moving and I knew that we had cleared the canal. That was a big relief. When we hit the open water and the ship started to rock something started to make a knocking sound. Rob got up to figure it out. One of the bottles of wine that we got over a week ago was in the cabinet. Since Rob made me get rid of my water bottle raft supplies the wine bottle was banging around. See, he should have let me keep them. We had the alarm set to wake us up early so that we could do a live spot on Good Morning America. We got dresse...

OK, my media blitz continues. Good Morning America and CNN have run videos. Today I did an interview with Channel 12 in Milwaukee, Inside Edition and Fox 19 in Cincinnati. Please tune in and if you can contact anyone to make sure that we will be allowed to disembark in Florida that would be wonderful.

To all of my Florida friends. Please use this script to contact your elected officials. We need to be able to disembark. There are sick people on this ship, they need proper medical care. Script for phone calls or emails to elected officials in Florida: As a resident of (city/Florida/the USA), I am (writing/calling) you to voice my support for the docking of the Holland America MS Zaandam in Fort Lauderdale later this week. The ship has over 300 American Citizens on board, none of whom have been on land since March 14, and they need our support now more than ever. Four people have lost their lives because countries along their route turned them away and denied them the medical care they desperately needed. One of those people is an American citizen. Now that the ship has crossed the Panama Canal, we need your help more than ever. We appeal to you to let our ship dock in Port Everglades. The healthy can undergo the necessary screenings and begin self-quarantine. The sick can have acce...

This morning the captain started out by reading a statement from corporate. We have been granted permission to transit the Panama Canal. I already knew this because Victoria has been following anything that she can find on our ship. First the Panamanian Health ministry had to approve our transit, then the Panamanian government. Breakfast came at 7:50, not too bad. We take the lids off with a bit of trepidation. Wow, today there are two fried eggs, not scrambled! The other plate has French toast. For those who do not know I am a diabetic. I have learned what I can and cannot eat. White rice and corn in any form spikes my blood sugar. Wheat is not too bad, but I have to be careful how much I have. Potatoes do not seem to be a big problem. When I could select my food I would choose things accordingly. I would skip rice, risotto, polenta, pasta, etc. Now we get what they bring us. If you have food allergies they have that on record and you will receive meals without those allergens. I was...

As far as we know no one else passed away overnight and they are still at two cases of COVID-19. So I guess that this is a case of no news is good news. The ship rotated so that we could get a lovely view of the Rotterdam and the tenders heading there. I took a photo of the ship and got a fishing boat in the picture. I wanted to knock on my window to warn them that they were too close to the “Plague Ship.” They saw me take the picture and they moved. Makes me kind of wonder what they were up to. The captain made his morning announcement. He said that he did not want us to think about this as a healthy ship and a not healthy ship. They were splitting the passengers so that it would take the burden off of the crew of the Zaandam having to take care of people in their cabins. Yeah, they have to get our food to us three times a day but no one has been in our room to clean since last Sunday morning. I have been making the bed every day. We have to live in here and I need that to be neat. W...

Hey people waiting on Andrea Bergmann Anderson's latest cruise update (she posts daily to her page) - she lost wifi around 4 pm EDT yesterday. Hasn't come back on yet, but I did talk to her over the phone yesterday in the evening. They are continuing to stay healthy, and also very bored. The Panamanian Health Ministry and Panama Canal Authority have granted permission for the ship to pass through the Panama Canal sometime this week, so it seems they will be headed to Fort Lauderdale to dock in the next 3-7 days.

If you are hoping to read one of my typical funny posts this is not the day to read it. Sorry, it is just the way that things are. This morning we kept waiting for the announcement from the captain. He said that there was a statement to read to us and we were wondering what it had to do with the face masks. He finally came on and told us that one passenger had passed away overnight, two yesterday and one the night before. That was the medical emergency call that I heard the night before. Keep in mind that these people had been in the medical unit and no country would allow us to dock to get them to a properly equipped hospital. Would they have died anyway, I do not know, but they were not given a chance. Overnight they transferred medical equipment and personnel to our ship from the MS Rotterdam. The plan is to run wellness checks on all passengers not currently identified as being ill. They would transfer well patients to the Rotterdam giving priority to those with inside cabins an...

What should have been a quiet night was not and there was even more going on than we knew about. At some point during the night there was an emergency call for medical team to room 700. I am pretty sure that this is a crew room since the passenger rooms have four digits. Hopefully it was not too serious and everyone is OK. Before I got back to sleep I realized that my pillow had fallen off of the bed. Keep in mind I was not very awake at this point. I reached over the grab my pillow not thinking that I was reaching the wrong way and I was way too close to the edge of the bed. Sure enough I fall out of bed, banging my knee of the wall on the way down. I wonder what the people next door and below us were thinking because I am sure that was loud. Since our meals have been coming late we have kind of shifted our sleep schedule. I mean why get up at 7:00 when breakfast does not get here until 9:40? Also if you get dinner at 8:30 you really cannot go to bed early unless you want a very rou...

I have a cough that will not stop. This is common for me to get these after a respiratory infection. I was told that it is kind of like asthma and I have been given inhalers. Did I bring one with me? Nooo, of course not, that would have come in handy. Rob made me call the Medical Center today. They will come to your room and there is no charge for the visit. Silly us, we went last week when they charged us. Anyway the Medical Center did not answer so someone at the front desk took my call and they said that they would pass the message on. Yeah, well, no one called or showed up. I think that I will go with this is my usual cough and leave it at that. My temp is 97.7, yes, I did bring a thermometer with us, not an inhaler but a thermometer. I would say that we spent a quiet morning in the room but that is pretty much what we do everyday. Our meals get delivered and they knock on the door to let us know that our tray is there. Sometimes I think that they run off before we can open the d...

Anderson South America Misadventure Day 21 - Off the Coast of Peru - Day 3 of confinement We are surviving, a little bored but surviving. Rob decided that I needed to learn how to play cribbage. He actually had a captive audience. It went OK, not sure how much I remember. We have been watching a lot of TV when we can find something worth watching. We watch HGTV and Food Network. We are limiting how much we watch the news channels. It is all the same things about COVID-19 and what Andrew Cuomo has to say today. I tend to get upset when another idiot who shall remain unnamed talks. This is a serious topic, do not just say what pops into your head. Try using scientific facts for a change. We play trivia twice a day on TV. So far we have had the best score in our cabin, but no one has given us another Holland America pin. They do not know if we will be allowed out for fresh air. We meet up with the Rotterdam on the 26th and they are bringing more supplies. Maybe there will be enough mask...

We slept late this morning. I mean why would we get up early? We have nowhere to go. We got up and got ready for our day. We got a schedule of events for the day. Well, we got the schedule for the meals and for events that they would be showing on a channel of the TV. We get to play trivia twice a day. I have a shot that I need to take once a week. It is kept in the refrigerator in the Medical Center. On at sea days the Medical Center opens at 3:00. We were confined to our cabin at 2:15. I called the front desk to explain that I needed this shot, I take it every Sunday. No particular time but sometime on Sunday. By 10:00 I gave up on waiting for it. I called the front desk again at 9:00 this morning to ask for me shot. They transferred me to the Medical Center. The person who answered the phone had to ask what to do. They told him to just bring it to my door. He said that he would be here soon. OK, I am a day late but it is not a huge problem. I called Donna to find out when they got...

Anderson South America Misadventure Day 19 – On the Pacific Ocean “This is Your Captain Speaking” We woke up this morning and the ship was so still I thought that we were in a port or at a dock. I looked outside, no, we were moving, but the water was so still. It looked like the surface of a pond, you could see reflections in it. This is the calmest I have ever seen the Pacific Ocean. The captain usually comes on sometime between noon and 12:30 to let us know the weather, location, speed, etc. Today he came on at 2:15 and said “This is your captain speaking. I need everyone to listen and pay attention to what I am saying.” When you are on a cruise this brings a certain dread. Kind of like if your partner in a relationship says “We need to talk.” You know it is not good and your inner child wants to cover your ears and hide in your blanket fort. After brunch and trivia we came back to the room. I had considered stopping at the shops to see if I could find a watch that maybe had a buil...

We woke this morning to the ship not rocking. Yup, they are still loading food so we are still in the harbor off the coast of Valparaiso. I had a hard time getting to sleep last night because I had a migraine. I do have meds to take, but prefer to hold off. And no, I do not know what causes them. If I did know what caused them I would never ever do it again. This morning my headache was firmly entrenched. I left breakfast early to take some Ibuprofen and hide in the dark. Rob took his crossword puzzle elsewhere to give me quiet. By lunch it was not too bad but a Coke Zero helped. We sit in pretty much the same area of the Lido and always order Coke Zero. When the drink attendant comes around he just looks at me and asks "2 Coke Zeros?" Nice to be remembered. We played trivia, did not do well, and went back to our cabin to crash. Rob slept a little, I really slept. While we enjoy all of the activities on the ship until we both get these sinus infections under control we nee...