Since our last blog post, we've visited St. Thomas, St.
Kitts, Barbados and, today, Dominica. We have had the odd sprinkle to deal with, but only
little squalls and no downpours. Of course, our standard response to that is,
"You don't have to shovel rain", and many of our Canadian and
American fellow cruisers have been agreeing. For once, we have a common
conversational topic in that almost everybody we've talked to has had some form
of bad weather to deal with since December.
But let's go back a few days and bring you up to speed. One
of the added entertainment features on some of the Solstice class ships is the
Glass Blowing Exhibition. Artisans from the Corning Glass Museum are on board to
demonstrate their craft make numerous gorgeous pieces for display at the
museum. Apparently they also will auction off a few of the items they made at
the end of each cruise with the money raised going to charity. Here are a
couple of photos of things that they've made.
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| A sea shell |
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| Ryanne working on a colourful fish |
On Monday morning, we arrived bright and early in Charlotte
Amalie, St. Thomas. Or, as Larry likes to call it "the Disneyland of
Shopping". Our catamaran tour was taking us to Buck Island, 3 miles off
St. Thomas, to go snorkeling with the sea turtles. The island is a nature
preserve so you can't set foot on it, but that doesn't mean you can't sail up
to it. There must have been another 5 tour boats there with groups doing the
same thing, but it seemed to be fairly well managed and we never got groups
mixed up with each other. And Monica did get up close to one of the turtles,
too.
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| That thing in the middle is a sea turtle just starting his 'flight' from the sea bed to the surface. |
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| Just under the surface at the coral reef. Those striped fish are called Sergeant Majors |
After our snorkeling, we motored over to Honeymoon Beach,
which is actually on one of the small islands that make up the harbour
protection for Charlotte Amalie. Here the captain took the boat as close to the
beach as he could - close enough that even Larry managed to get into the water.
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| What decadence! A warm sandy beach AND a fruit punch without having to get out of the water. |
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| The ultimate swim-up bar |
After the tour, the only thing we really had to do was take
Monica's sapphire watch back to H. Stern to get the battery replaced - at least
that's what they said 5 years ago when we bought it. Unfortunately, they don't
do battery replacement any more, so we have to find someone at home with the
'right quality' of battery for the watch. But if that's the ONLY problem we
have...
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| Charlotte Amalie |
On Tuesday we visited St. Kitts. We had been here before,
but had only gone to specific sites and hadn't seen much of the island. We
decided to remedy that this time, and took the "Rail and Sail" tour.
The first part of the tour was on a narrow-gauge railroad, and after that we
transferred to a catamaran for the trip back to Basseterre and the ship.
We discovered that St. Kitts, even though it is no more than
68 square miles in size, has a lot to offer in terms of things to see and do.
Tourism is now the major economic source for the island; they officially gave
up on sugar cane in 2005 because it is such an expensive crop to grow and
process that it was no longer bringing in enough revenue to support the
population and services. All of the people we met were great ambassadors for
their nation and, with what we saw during our tour, we decided it would be a
really nice place to come back to for a couple of weeks vacation. Clean,
friendly, diverse, and always warm and sunny - what else can you ask for?
The train itself is a narrow-gauge railroad that was built
originally to transport sugar cane to the processing plants on the coast. It
now hauls five two-deck passenger cars for the tour around the southern half of
the island. We actually sat on the open upper level, which made for a rather
noisy, and "rock-and-roll" ride as the narrow gauge of the tracks,
combined with height of the cars, makes the cars sway from side to side. Still,
a comfortable journey, made all the moreso by the fact the bar opened as soon
as we got onboard, at 9:15 AM, and stayed open until we got to the end of the
ride 90 minutes later! Pina Coladas for breakfast anyone??
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| On the train, looking toward the mountains and the longest rail bridge on the island |
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| A view of one of the 68 sugar mill ruins on the island with St. Eustacius in the background |
From the train, it was a short ride to the pier and the
catamaran for the one hour sail back to Basseterre and the ship. And the bar
opened there as soon as the ship left the pier! See a pattern developing here?
The good news is they also gave us lunch, and no one over-indulged. After
sailing through a brief shower, it was sunshine and warm weather back to the
pier, which was conveniently located right next to the shopping mall at the end
of the pier where the cruise ships dock. Such a coincidence!
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| The view from the catamaran |
On Wednesday we stopped in Barbados. We had been here before
as well, but a long time ago and we were looking for a good tour to see more of
the island. Well, we got it, but there weren't that many good opportunities to
get photos. Barbados is only 166 square miles, and we figure we probably saw
about 100 of them! Our driver, Ian, took us through 6 of the 11 parishes that
make up the island and gave us lots of information along the way. Here are a
few shots we could get:
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| One of the very old churches on the island. This one has structural problems and can no longer host services. There is active fundraising to get a company from England to try to repair it. |
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| Our jungle drive. One of the huge banyan trees. Although Green Monkeys are all over the island, we didn't see any |
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| At Bathsheba Beach on the Atlantic side |
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| One of the golf courses at the Sandy Lane Resort. Looks really nice! |
Part of the tour included a visit to Harrison's Cave, one of
the premier attractions of Barbados and one that can't be duplicated anywhere
else in the islands. This is because, unlike the Windward and Leeward Islands
that were formed by volcanic eruption, Barbados is a product of plate
tectonics. The Atlantic Ridge and the Caribbean Ridge pushed against each other
with the Atlantic Ridge moving underneath millions of years ago. Over time,
sediment and the calcified remains of gazillions of small sea creatures built
the area up, and ultimately a few tectonic heaves pushed the top of the mass
through the surface of the ocean. Now if you look closely at the rock faces you
can easily see fossilized shells and rudimentary types of coral. As a result of
this development, a large cave system was also created basically across about
2/3 of the island about half-way between the north and south ends. As the land
where the original entrance was found had been on land owned by one Thomas Harrison, it became known as
Harrison's Cave.
The ride through the cave is about 40 minutes long and is
done on very quiet electric-powered trams with a guide pointing out all sorts
of things along the way. Even Monica, whose claustrophobia is well-known,
managed to get through the tour without any problems - even when all the lights
were turned off to show us just how dark the inside of a cave really is.
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| Stalagmites growing from the cave floor |
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| Entering the 'Great Hall' over 60 ft high. The only thing you have to watch for is the cave rain that drips down on you |
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| Water flowing across the white 'flow stone' rich with calcium. Sometimes you think you're riding along an ice wall, or maybe an icing wall |
So that's been pretty much it for now. We've been making a
point of getting to the gym and have so far managed both Tuesday and Thursday (this)
mornings, thereby keeping to our regular routines to some degree. The gym is
quite well equipped so we're not having any trouble doing at least a few of our
regular exercises along with our cardio.
Dominica has been a stay-on-the-ship day since most of the
tours went to places we've already been, but we received an invitation this
morning for a heli-pad sailway party (on the bow) as we leave. So we'll have a
few more photos of the island coming up. We're having dinner tonight with Sue,
one of the other consultants who works with Larry, and her husband Lou. They
managed to get a last-minute booking and we've run into each other once or
twice already.
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