We are in Ensenada, and I can’t wait to get back on the ship. Xingolati is AWESOME. We are having such a blast… fellow OBcian Ed Decker is on the ship, and so are some other people from OB. It’s pretty weird seeing all these familiar faces in such a bizarre environment.

The party at the hotel Thursday night was kind of lame but boy did they make it up to us yesterday. Everybody pretty much boarded and started drinking, and the vibe (one of total fun and complete abandon) intensified as the night went on. Very early on I found the Champagne Cart. Just after, I learned that while a glass of Moet & Chandon costs $15 a glass, while an entire bottle of Nicolas Feuillatte champagne costs only $35 a bottle! So this has become my drink of choice so far, besides all the red wine I brought of course. You can buy a bottle and pretty much walk wherever on the ship, check some music out, then go to the next place. I tried to explain to some dude when I was buying my second bottle, as he was getting the shaft for the glass of Moet. “You had to go and spring numbers on me” he said. Oh well.

There is music all over the ship. The best band last night was Mutaytor. FOUR drummers! Fantastic looking people doing crazy things with burning hula hoops and shit. Tonight they are playing again, but at the same time as the Flaming Lips. Still, I might have to go check it out again.

There are four guys staying next door and yesterday while we were unpacking they were all out in the hall making a ruckus. One of them is this guy Chris who was already completely hammered by 4:30 or whenever that was. I kept seeing him all night, and so it has become my mission to photograph that guy all over the boat in whatever state he is in. I got a lot of shots – he was EVERYWHERE, with his silver glitter fedora. Then this morning I went out into the hall at 8:00 AM to go find some coffee. The hall of our floor was totally trashed – plates and glasses strewn about, towels in heaps – and who is walking toward me but Chris, doing the walk of shame right in front of my eyes. “Keep walking” I told him. “I’m gonna get your picture.” Little does he know he just gave me the best shot of the trip so far.

Also I am photographing everything we eat and the best one was last night’s 1:00 AM snack of chili, french fries, tator tots and spinach quiche. Yum!

Seriously, so far this has been a really great time and everyone on the ship is totally into it, even the crew who I think have never worked a cruise like this one. Our steward, Yusef, has already come out and told me he played guitar in a Metallicaesque band back home in Indonesia. Everyone who works on the boat is incredibly nice. All the officers are Italian and man is it hard to resist a guy in a white uniform. They were all out groovin’ to Mutaytor last night.

Two more days of this? AWESOME.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2005 at 3:04 pm and is filed under Adventures in Rock and Roll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.