Ricardo Mejia's trip to becoming a doctor on a cruise ship started by accident on the beach.
On his way back home to Colombia from Chicago, where he'd spent three years studying emergency care at Northwestern University, Dr. Mejia had a stopover in Miami so he visited a Colombia expat and his family. At that moment, he was heading back to his hometown, Pereira, in the heart of coffee country about halfway between Bogota and the Pacific Ocean, to resume his career in medicine.
The day after he arrived, a Sunday, the family was going to the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Ricardo went with them. The "accident" was meeting a man his friend 
knew, but they didn't know he was going to be at the beach that day. The man, coincidentally, was also a doctor.
On a cruise ship.
As they exchanged pleasantries, the doctor said the cruise line was looking for a doctor to fill in for him. Would Ricardo be interested?
"I'll do it," he said.
The next day he was interviewed by Celebrity Cruises in Miami. It was a success. He went home to arrange his visa and a week later was on a ship with a two-month contract. That was followed by another fill-in position and now, soon to be 20 years later, he is the doctor who sets up and opens medical centers on new ships for Royal Caribbean, which owns Celebrity.
"The first ship was the Britanis [an ocean liner operated by Chandris, which founded Celebrity]," he says. "I was onboard in March 1995 when she went to Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba to serve as a back-up floating hotel during the rafters crisis. We played hosts to U.S. military personnel unable to find space on the base, members of the press and other dignitaries mediating the situation on the large tents 'camp of refugees' full of Cubans caught at sea while trying to flee the island in rafts. It was quite an experience. After that, I went straight to the Meridian and then, after eight months, I got to go home."
Emergency medical care in Colombia wasn't a specialty in the years leading up to the turn of the century, so Dr. Media was something of a trail blazer. On cruise ships, he also became something of a trail blazer, too, climbing the corporate ladder quickly and by early in the new century opening medical facilities on Royal Caribbean ships, staying for a couple of months and then going back to Colombia.
To "open" a medical facility on a new-build is, basically, to be something of an interior medical designer. He starts with a blank space and makes sure all the medical equipment, from stretchers to electrical outlets, are in the right place. There's a lot of unpacking boxes and testing equipment. Once the ship officially becomes Royal Caribbean's, he becomes the chief doctor and stays on it to make sure the medical facility and the people in it work seamlessly at sea.
Ricardo Mejia is everything that you want to see in a doctor. He is warm, thorough, gentlemanly and gifted. Yet because he does what he does, few passengers have the experience of finding out what he's like when they are not well. Nobody really wants to find out, but when you're sick at sea, he's the kind of doctor you want taking care of you.
During his maiden voyage on a cruise ship, in 1995, he met Gwen.
She was a photography undergraduate from Dublin and was on his ship to complete a six-month photo study. She didn't become ill and see the doctor, although she may have become a little lovesick when they parted, because today they are the parents of two children and live in Pereira.
"My son [Connor, age 8] was basically raised on board," laughs Dr. Mejia, whose wife and children (daughter Catalina is five months old) have traveled with him on most of his assignments…or at least they did until Connor started school and Catalina arrived.
This week, they joined him on Allure of the Seas. He is one of three doctors on the ship, on a fill-in assignment before he heads to Europe in the fall to open the next Royal Caribbean new ship, Quantum of the Seas. The Allure is, of course, a far cry from the Britanis.
"We had 1,200 guests and 700 crew," he says.
On Allure of the Seas, the are 6,300 guests and 2,200 crew.
That day on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Ricardo Mejia could never have imagined this.
Today at Phil Reimer's portsandbows.com: Viking ocean ship floats out
Norwegian Jewel
7 nights
November 1, 2014
Houston (return): Cozumel, Belize, Trujillo
Inside: $429
Cost per day: $61
www.ncl.com