That sinking feeling

A cruise round the Caribbean is paradise, right? Not for Jeremy Atiyah. Too much tea, fruit cake and octogenarian disco-dancing can easily shatter a man's expectations

I'm off on holiday with expensive, ironed shirts, new shoes, a crumple-free suit and a classy woman called Sophie. She has several elegant frocks in her suitcase. God knows where we are going: somewhere in the Caribbean. What matters though is not where we are going, but how. Because this is a top-class ocean cruise. And here to prove it is the definitive guidebook to cruising, written by a man who has spent 5,000 days of his life at sea.

But hang on a minute. I now find that my book classifies the Braemar only as an average sort of ship. She is relatively small, it seems, with teak chairs on deck and a good "hospitality factor". On the other hand, "some crowding" is to be expected for the self-serve buffets. In my cabin the hairdryers will be "awkward to retract from their wall-mounted holders". There may be "scuffed panelling" in the hallways. I don't like the sound of any of this.

On the plane, my anxieties grow, this time in relation to the other passengers. Sophie and I are cruising virgins, but this lot look as though they have been at it for, well, a long time. "I've just spotted two people under 80," whispers Sophie in my ear, pointing at a jaunty man with dyed brown hair and a very suntanned wife. Catching my eye, these people then spend the flight assuring me that they have already cruised Alaska, the Amazon and the Panama Canal.

Eight hours later, I am still telling myself to relax, when we suddenly land in Barbados, and are whisked to the port by waiting buses. "Welcome to Baar-bados," drawls our driver, beaming at the sunny sky and the blooming hedgerows. But I can't concentrate. I am worrying about retractable hairdryers and crumples in my suit.

Our first minutes on board the Braemar are spent in a smoke-filled lounge jostling for tea and cake. Then it's time to look for our cabin, down a corridor lined by a patterned carpet that disappears out of sight in the distance. We both feel as though we have experienced a very long and intense movie by the time we reach cabin 3050, which is tiny and smells of exhaust fumes. When I ask if I can open the porthole windows, the attendant laughs in my face. Later, after our luggage has arrived, Sophie discovers that our suitcase has mysteriously absorbed a quantity of water and sand en route. "My suit!" I gasp.

Calm down, says Sophie. We're in the Caribbean. Let's go for a walk round. But on deck, the first thing we see is a vast white ship called The World, tied up alongside. "That's the ship," explains one amiable bystander in golfing shoes, "whose passengers have the extraordinary fortune to own their rooms!" Looking at The World from the deck of the Braemar, I feel small and cheap.

We head for dinner. On the way, we pass a cavernous lounge containing lots of dispirited couples staring at martini glasses. But then in the dining hall I am astounded to find hundreds of friendly, healthy and zippy young people running around and addressing us by our names. These are our dining companions?

"No, these are the staff," whispers Sophie. Oh yes. In the event, we dine with a woman who looks like a cross between the Queen and Mrs Thatcher and who insists on regaling us with stories from the last time she went cruising. "I was supposed to be chaperoning my aunt," she croons. "We were in first class... and her boyfriend was in second. Well, that was 1912, you know..."

Maybe I've misremembered the date. But during her story I am assailed by a crisis of purpose. At the back of the ship, a loud party is now cascading down the decks, with couples in white hair and trainers dancing to the Braemar Orchestra, in a style that can only be described as very retro. The lights of Bridgetown twinkle. This food on my plate is edible if you like industrial quantities of poached salmon, chicken and potato salad with dill followed by cold puddings such as green jelly and trifle. But somehow I feel depressed.

"This cruise was your idea, darling," Sophie reminds me, languidly, over breakfast the next morning, as I tell her to hurry up with her kippers. "Yes, and we have four hours to tour Bridgetown," I snap. During these four hours, in fact, we will manage to squeeze in a cricket field, a couple of churches and a shop. By the time we reach the rum house, I begin to relax. Road works rattle outside, dust billows, men loiter. This strikes me as an authentic Caribbean experience. An aged woman sits behind a barred window handing out glasses of rum. "My place ain't too lovely these days," she sighs, pointing at dust-laden bottles. "Come on," I tell her. "You just need to chill out."

Then we re-embark. The ship sets sail, with 500 bodies grimly absorbing rays on the pool deck. Among them, I count three or four couples below the age of 40, and perhaps 10 children, who seem to be here by mistake.

So why is everyone looking so pleased with themselves? At 4pm sharp I find myself in a queue for tea and biscuits with a bejewelled woman from Eastbourne who informs me that the Braemar is the cosiest ship she has ever been on, and a former civil servant in a Hawaiian shirt who declares that the Braemar is friendlier than any of the Cunard ships. "Yes," I say, gloomily. "And I suppose the free tea is a nice touch."

The next morning we dock at the Venezuelan island of Margarita under black clouds and rain. While everyone else is boarding an air-conditioned bus, I insist on hailing a taxi driven by a man called Sergio who looks like, and in fact is, an idiot.

"This place is paradise," he keeps shouting hoarsely above the roar of his knackered engine. "In what sense?" I shout back, looking from the window at dead dogs, puddles and abandoned litter-strewn building lots. "Because we have no problems here! We have great beaches, great women, great weather! And the only thing we don't have," he roars, "is money!"

The drive is a deafening experience. Only in the colonial capital Asuncion do we get a breather: the chance to step inside a 16th-century church, leaving Sergio outside. The silence that follows feels fairly sacred.

"Ten minutes to take pictures! Watch your step please! Ten minutes!" Oh God. There's a bus-load of passengers from the Braemar on our tail. We run back to the car, where Sergio welcomes us by revving his engine. "Get us out of here," I order, so imperiously, that he obliges by driving us up the nearest dirt track into the jungle to find an old cowboy drinking cold beers under a papaya tree with a machete and a cockerel: a kind of solitude.

It doesn't last. That evening, back on board ship, we have the captain's welcome cocktail party to attend. It's time for my crumple-free suit and for Sophie's best frock to get their airing. I, and most of the passengers, turn out looking a lot better than we did in our swimming costumes.

The Danish Captain, Anders Dancker, on the other hand, is a big disappointment. Instead of looking venerable and authoritative, he looks irresponsible and waggish. He introduces his staff to us as though they are turns in a cabaret. Over my free martinis, I do not find it reassuring that the crew, even in their white uniforms, look like tragic clowns, all except Gary, the cruise director, whose job is to act comic or official as the situation requires.

But life goes on. Every morning at breakfast time the quaint voice of our captain will greet us in his nautical address to passengers. "Today the weather is, erm..." (craning to study the sky) "sunny, with some clouds, and we seem to be, erm..." (craning to catch a glimpse of land), "at sea."

So far on this trip I have met lots of people from Manchester, Wakefield and the Wirral, but very few from the Caribbean. This is getting me down. In advance of our arriving on any given island, the Braemar's onboard lecturer, one Barbara Taylor, tries to pump us with ideas: "You ladies, you buy your fabrics here," she'll tell us, touching the map with her cane, "while you gentlemen visit the military fort there." Questions will be strictly forbidden.

One big problem seems to lie in our ports of call. Sailing into Willemstad on Curaçao, we see funny little pastel-coloured buildings with red roofs and stepped gables. "I think I am going to like this place," says one optimist on deck, hallucinating, perhaps, that he has arrived in Amsterdam. But if Curaçao turns out boring, Aruba, the next day, turns out ridiculous. The national identity of this whole island is based on hoodwinking cruise ship passengers into believing that there are reasons for visiting it.

I would rather spend the day at sea. At least the onboard entertainments have some point to them. Take this morning's show, for example, in which a Filipino kitchen hand is being dragged up from the cold, subterranean depths of the ship to do a performance in speed ice-carving before the massed ranks on the pool deck.

Well, it's better than Aruba, anyway. The man appears, blinking in disbelief at the sight of all these people in swimming costumes. Weirdly, Gary the cruise director is commentating, through a loud hailer. "This is not an easy job," he is exclaiming. "It really is not." I think we can all see this, and the Filipino is indeed sweating in his overalls. Will he create a sculpture before his ice block has melted to a puddle? He will! "This is absolutely absolutely," cries Gary, as a life-like swan, after 16 minutes, suddenly emerges – only for its left wing to break off seconds later. The applause falters. The Filipino looks as though he will have to commit ritual suicide.

Not that Gary seems deterred. Later in the day, I find him conducting an odd public interview with the Norwegian chief engineer of the Braemar, Leif Dalholt, in one of the entertainment lounges. Both men are sitting in armchairs, in their white uniforms, white socks and white shoes. They resemble world leaders, meeting the press. "Was you always, like, interested in engines?" grins Gary. "Yes I wanted to go to the engine room since I was a wery young boy," answers Leif. "But first I had to work for 17 months as a cleaner. Then I worked for another 17 months as a wiper. Then I trained for 17 years." Gary does not ask the obvious question: what is the significance of the number 17?

Seventeen snacks and light meals later, it is time for dinner, again. As always, the waiters flit about at lightning speed, deftly delivering quips, food and happy birthday salutations to those who desire them. We roll, slightly. Roars of laughter resound from the communal tables, while couples sit silent and glum. Unexpected salads arrive between dishes. Then it's off to the show lounge, where we arrive during a flute performance, just in time to witness a nonagenarian storming out on her Zimmer frame. "Too lively," she scoffs, swiping us out of the way.

My nerves are on the up, but Sophie keeps telling me to be patient. She's right. The next morning, we peer out of our porthole to see a jungle, a hill, a village, people, rusty cranes and bicycles. "Look, a proper country," she announces. Ah yes. Jamaica: the island where the punishment for leaving the safety of your cruise tour or your all-inclusive resort is usually reckoned to be a machete in the head.

But the only thing I am really scared of right now is my identity as a cruise passenger. So off we go in a taxi, south through beautiful blue hills, past old rastas selling coconuts. We drive past the crumbling Georgian façades of Spanish Town. "I'm not a rasta myself," declares our driver, as we screech into downtown Kingston. "I'm just rasta-minded." "Right, man," I say, knowingly. It can't get better than this, I tell Sophie, as we arrive back at the Braemar, alive, that evening.

Too right it can't. We are about to spend a whole day sailing between the two most interesting places in the western hemisphere, Cuba and Haiti, heading straight for the dullest: Grand Turk.

As far as I can see, the Braemar is only slightly smaller than this whole island. Sophie and I walk down a single sand-blown road, looking for civilisation. Some of our fellow passengers are already heading back to the ship. "There's two banks down there, no shops and one hotel what's closed," exclaims one. "That place is absolute cock," adds another who specialises in odd expletives.

By way of partial antidote to Grand Turk, we do then get to spend a day on the Samana Peninsula of the Dominican Republic; perhaps this slipped into the itinerary by mistake. But by now Sophie and I feel incapable of striking out on our own. Instead we join the ship's own excursion, and go careering through remote coffee-growing villages in a giant convoy of noisy Jeeps, like officers of the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Beyond this, the last islands blur into a run of saints – St Barts, St Kitts, St Lucia. We give up: the ship is better than the shore. Why go outside and risk sunstroke, jellyfish or machetes in the head, when we can safely participate in the sports of bridge, darts, pot-pourri cushion-making or napkin-folding up here instead? Which is more fun, deck quoits or the Dominican Republic? Shuffleboard or St Lucia? Anyway, don't ask me to move now. I've eaten too much.