4x4 Desert Action, Chicken love and the Ca-caw incident

Life was good on the Sapphire and I was making the most of the shore excusrions before I was banished to Alaska for the rest of my contract in 3 weeks.

Another memorable tour was a 4x4 blast through the sandy landscape of Cabo, this was a little older group so not as much drinking and the tour guide would regulary stop and tell us about the local flora and fauna.

By this point I can't even remember where the guy got it from but suddenly on our drive back he produced a snake from somewhere and asked who wanted to hold it, I declined on the grounds that I was there to film the other people touchinng the snake and it was fine I had touched many a snake before (Phrasing! Archer reference).

As I mentioned onboard life was really good although many of the photogs were on their first contract and didn't seem to get on very well with the manager, I had no issues with her but that was probably because I'd helped get the sales up within 2 weeks of being there but I could definitely feel the tension sometimes and mostly the video team were able to stay away from any department drama. This contract was the example of work hard, play hard and I put in the hours doing most of the excursions every day and also covering a ton of events. My senior Rich was very good friends with the cruise director and he was trying to create an entertainment department videographer role that would be not be part of the photo department or revenue based. It was a great idea in theory but I'm sure head office politics played a part in the discussions going no further. There was an old old rule that the CD could ask for the videographers for up to 2 hours a day to film the ships morning show, which must have been thought up long before the comms department took over the shooting and editing of the morning show. Almost all the comms guys were Fillipino and there skill level varied from 'have they ever picked up a camera before' to 'why the hell are they working on a cruise ship' they were that good.

Most CD's left video alone and only requested us if they had a big idea they needed doing or if they had a poor comms team, so far I'd had very little to do with filming the morning show and appeared on it as a guest more than I'd had to film it.

As my roommate Scott was currently going out with the manager it meant I mostly had my own cabin which was amazing for a junior videog, however there was one night Scott scared the living piss out of me! It had been one of the photogs birthdays and we'd had quite the party in the crew bar, Scott was that hammered that he'd been kicked out of his partners cabin and there was a knock on my door around 3a.m and it was the other assistant manager Anthony 'He's your problem now' he joked as we pushed Scott onto the bottom bunk. Immeditaely I had to talk him out of calling his girlfriend while he was that drunk and after a while he seemed to ahve passed out! Victory! I was up for work in around 3 hours and got up to use the bathroom around 5a.m, I looked down to see if Scott was still alive and he had disappeared, I wrongly assumed he'd made his way back down to his girlfriends cabin.

As I walked into the bathroom Scott clad only in his pants was perched on the toilet and jumped out at me making bird noises 'Ca-caw, CA-CAW!!!' he bellowed, I managed to side step my paralytic roommate as he crashed onto the floor and promptly passed out again. Once again I shovelled him into his bunk looked at the clock and thought as I'm up I jumped in the shower and got ready for work, snuck into the buffet as it opened aroud 6a.m, got my kit together ready for another day ashore in Mexico.

On the next cruise diaries - A surprise party goes wrong!