Nancy Miller-Paul tells tales of her cruise around the world.
By: Al Wicklund
MONROE Two years ago, in the space of four months, Nancy Miller-Paul of School House Road celebrated Christmas in the Antarctic, welcomed a new year in Chile and cut her toe on coral while walking the beaches of the island of Bora Bora in the South Pacific Ocean.
In that same period, she saw the Nile River, the Pyramids and the Sphinx, rode horseback in the Andes mountains and shopped in places such as Morocco, Tunisia and Bali.
She also found that some of her favorite places are the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, Easter Island in the South Pacific, the aforementioned Chile and Australia.
Ms. Miller-Paul, a retired elementary school teacher who worked in the Monroe Township school district for 33 years, told a Senior Center audience Monday about the places she saw during her 127-day round-the-world cruise, "the best experience of my life."
Ironically, she started her globe-spanning trip November 1999 with traffic jams in Greece, because of a visit by then-President Bill Clinton, and finished the trip four months later in traffic tie-ups in Israel caused by a visit by the pope.
She said the cruise touched on the seven continents as she and her shipmates sailed the Mediterranean Sea from Greece west along North Africa through the Straits of Gibraltar into and across the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil, then south along the coast of South America to the Falkland Islands and beyond to Antarctica, then north along the west coast of South America, across the South Pacific to Easter Island, Australia and Indonesia and on to the east coast of Africa, north through the Red Sea to Egypt, Jordan and Israel.
Ms. Miller-Paul said the ship’s passengers were a microcosm of society.
"During the cruise, we had two marriages, two deaths (one a suicide), quarrels and friendships," she said.
She said the trip (during our winter months) was in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer. Consequently, the weather, was basically warm and pleasant. There were some occasional heavy seas.
"Even the Antarctic had 34-degree temperatures," Ms. Miller-Paul said.
Among some of her chief memories were: The many different types of penguins and the variety of birds in the Antarctic, being awakened by the noises of baboons and hippopotamuses while sleeping in a tent in Kenya, the dignity and serenity of the Masai people in the highlands of East Africa, the character of the "very British" Falkland Islands and the beautiful gardens there and Easter Island, which belongs to Chile, and its wonderfully friendly and helpful people.
Ms. Miller-Paul said she was thankful for her doctor’s recommending that she take the antibiotic Cipro on her trip.
"Without it, my trip could have ended when I cut my toe on coral on Bora Bora," she said.
Her strongest and most reassuring memory, however, is of the people she met.
"You have to appreciate all the wonderful people there are in the world. They made the trip worthwhile and the experience memorable," Ms. Miller-Paul said.