Sailing, Sailing, Over The Bounding Main

Our eleven day crossing of the Atlantic on Pullmantur's Sovereign was actually booked as two separate cruises: Malaga to Las Palmas and then Las Palmas to Salvador. The first cruise originated in Valencia and so when we boarded, many of the passengers had already been there for a couple of days. As it turns out, the ongoing run to Las Palmas was Sovereign's last Mediterranean cruise of the season.

The majority of the 400 or so passengers on this leg were older European couples and, for the most part Spanish. A great many of these people disembarked at Las Palmas and a bunch more boarded, bringing the ship's population to around 900 passengers.

The second leg of the voyage that brought us to Salvador, Brazil was a repositioning cruise. During summer in the Northern hemisphere, the Sovereign cruises the Mediterranean. As the temperatures drop in November, it heads south of the equator and sails up and down the Brazilian coast until March, when it returns to Spain. Although this was by no means a no frills cruise, there were no stops and we were at sea for a full eight days, catching only a glimpse of land on day six. The Sovereign has made the Atlantic crossings for a few years now, but this was her maiden repositioning trip with passengers. A full 30% of the passengers that boarded in Las Palmas were Germans who had taken advantage of the low fare through an Austrian travel agent that was promoting the crossing.

Another predominant group was comprised of young, bohemian nomadic hippie types who were following the sun at bargain basement prices. They made for an interesting dynamic on the ship, particularly when it came to the dining room dress code. I mean, I'm a hippie at heart, but I know better than to sit at a formal dinner wearing shorts and a tank top.

The Sovereign has a capacity of 2733 passengers and is manned by a crew and staff of 820. On this crossing, the passengers outnumbered the crew by only a handful.

Overall, the crossing was very smooth and there were no 'torms to wock da boat and turn us green, although we had some rain one afternoon as well as one cloudy day.

The food on board was good and plentiful, but the vegetarian options were limited. Fortunately, Jose, the assistant waiter in the dining room, put in a good word with the chef and we were treated to some very fine vegetarian Indian food for the last few nights we were on board.

The sun became unbelievably strong as we neared the equator and, even with a good base, my skin was reddening after only 20 minutes exposure. We ended up sitting more in the shade and reading our Kindles during the sun's peak UV hours.

We had a couple of spectacular sunsets on board, but never quite made it out of bed to see the sunrise.

It's too bad we've had to cancel our return sailing to Barcelona in March, but chances are we'll do this all over again at some point in the future.Read more