Caribbean 2017

Jump to Ft. Lauderdale

Jump to The Ship

Jump to The Islands

This winter we did short cruise of the eastern Caribbean islands ( well some of them). It was a 12 day cruise and we started with three days in Florida and ended with a couple days in Barbados.

Our first ocean cruise was a Caribbean cruise approximately two years ago. On the Seabourn Legend. The Legend was a small ship with only 212 passengers. I think we became cruisers on that trip. It was just that much fun. We met people we are still in touch with today, we saw many small Caribbean islands - some pretty some not so pretty. Actually all the islands were pretty - it's the people and their living conditions that are not.

This cruise was with Seabourn again but on the Odyssey. This ship is identical to the Seabourn Quest which we've sailed on three times previously.

Here's what the weather looked like as we left Palm Springs. We had more rain here than previous years.

Breakfast on board the plane was the usual: a coffee for Terri, a Bloody Mary for me.

We flew into Orlando (rather than Ft. Lauderdale where the cruise was departing from) because we wanted to visit the Kennedy Space Center. The two shots below are as we're approaching Orlando.

So the first day we're going to the Kennedy Space Center. We leave our hotel early with plenty of time to get there but the highway is packed. It turns out there's going to be a launch by SpaceX this morning an 10 AM. We get there an hour later then planned because of the traffic but we do get there just in time to join what looks like a scene from the Walking Dead waiting for the launch.

Two minutes before the launch it's called off because of the weather. They reschedule it for the next morning but we'll be long gone by then.

Here's a YouTube video showing the launch from a distance of course. All credit to the person named on the video.

https://youtu.be/Wc1lvYnExUA

After the aborted launch we just wandered around looking at the rockets. It was impossible to see any of the inside exhibits due to the sheer number of people.

There's some seriously big rockets here.

This is the rocket that launched the space shuttles.

Here's a pic I got from the Kennedy web site showing a launch.

A Saturn V rocket. This puppy was used for the moon shots.

The back end where all the fire came out.

And this is a mock up of the module where the astronauts rode on top of the rocket. I wanted to go in there but the little bugger was not budging.

The huge engine. There are five of these in the tail of the Saturn V rocket.

Here's some additional info.

A real cool YouTube video of an actual Saturn V launch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKtVpvzUF1Y

This is the new module that will be used on future launches. Christ! it seems not much different than the original one. Hopefully it has a better toilet. Here's an interesting article on that exact topic: http://www.space.com/22597-space-poop-astronaut-toilet-explained.html

There was lot's of neat stuff to see and next time we visit it won't be on a Saturday and it won't be on a launch day.

Ft. Lauderdale

I'm sure Ft. Lauderdale is a wonderful place to visit but we didn't see much of it. We hung out on the beach for a couple days and that was pretty much it.

A shot from our room in the early morning. The beach is empty.

A few beach shots.

Terri eats a pizza

This gal has eaten many pizzas - all at one sitting!

The Ship

The Seabourn Odyssey is a great ship. Just like her sister ship the Quest which we've travelled on before and will be travelling on again this coming December and the Sojourn which we'll be travelling on in April 2018 (if we're not at war with the Russians or the Chinese by then).

Seabourn is not the cheapest way to go but it is certainly worth the money IMHO!..

This cruise we had a run-of-the-mill suite. Nothing fancy at all but sufficient. We find we don't spend much time in the room on these cruises.

Here's a shot of the room. The champagne bottle is always present when you first arrive at your room after checking in. I don't think we've opened it and had a drink yet although Terri seemed to be getting a taste for champagne on this trip. Luckily it's "all inclusive" and you can drink as much as you like.

The bathroom. Nothing special but a decent size and everything functional. I've read reviews of other ships and a common problem seems to be plugged toilets which can create back-ups. Yikes!

The other guests on the ship we're all we'll behaved. Most of them slept through the entire trip. A pretty lively bunch for sure!

In all reality it wasn't that bad - we met some real nice, fully awake people. The first two days of the cruise were "sea days" sailing from Ft. Lauderdale to Puerto Rico so there was lots of activity on the pool deck. The gal in the white bikini in the middle of the pic is Stephanie. An older gal with a set of store-bought boobs.

The Islands

One of the great things about cruising the Caribbean is that you get to see a lot of islands.

One of the bad things about Caribbean cruising is that you see a lot of islands.

What this means is you don't really get to see much of any particular island.

The ship usually arrives by 9 AM and then you have (usually) until 5 or 6 PM to do whatever you want.

The cruise ship offers "excursions" which are paid trips in a bus or in a smaller ship to do a variety of things: go snorkelling in a far away place aka pay money to see mostly sand and grass, go on a bus to visit a small village to see how they live aka pay money to be bored, go on a hike up the side of a mountain in the rain aka pay money to experience pain and discomfort. Choosing the right excursion is the tricky part - some are great and some are shite! The excursions are usually about four hours long and you can expect to be back at the ship for mid day meal. Some excursions leave after the mid day meal and you get back for happy hour which, considering that all the drinks are included, is all day long!

We've met some people who never go on excursions - they just walk around whatever town the ship is docked at or they take a taxi around the island. There are other people who never leave the ship - they just hang out by the pool. On this last trip we met a guy whose wife only left their room for a pre-dinner cocktail and then for dinner. Serious!

I guess everyone has their own way of cruising.

When we go on a cruise we want to see things so we go on excursions in just about every island we stop at. There were a couple islands where we just went on our own - with varying levels of satisfaction.

Here's a map showing all our stops.

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States. The US has four other unincorporated territories. They are Guam, Northern Mariana islands, U.S. Virgin Islands and American Samoa. I sure wish Canada would smarten up and get some unincorporated warm territories.

They got a pretty good looking license plate here compared to a lot of islands we stopped at.

Here's a typical island license plate. Zip. Nada. I asked a guy about it and he said there's no need to identify the island - it's not like you can drive from one island to another. So every car on that island with a totally black license plate is from that island. Probably saves them a lot of money.

The excursion in Puerto Rico was a walk through a rain forest. Sounds great right? But in order to get to the rain forest you need to go on a 1-1/2 hour bus ride. Then you have about one hour at the rain forest which turns into about 45 minutes when you consider some of these old buggers have to visit the bathroom at every available opportunity and the rest of us have to wait for them. Then you have another 1-1/2 hour bus ride back to the ship.

The rain forest was ok and we got rained on pretty good - so I guess it really was a rain forest.

It was plenty green.

Another bathroom break.

Back in town we get to see the statue of Christopher Columbus. CC discovered PR in 1493 only one year after discovering North America (ha! take that Vikings!).

Our ship (on the right) next to a huge ocean liner the Carnival Conquest. It was an entirely different group of tourists leaving that ship this morning.

There are some fantastic fortresses in San Juan

Terri in the guard house.

There's another fortress in the distance. We'll walk there.

Jost Van Dyke

Seriously..that's the name of the island. And the funny thing is...nobody knows why!

Here's a link to a Wikipedia page.

They have fairly nice looking license plates though.

So the excursion we took at this stop was a snorkelling trip. Bad decision! They took us about an hour away by boat to a nice beach. Everyone knows you don't snorkel off a beach! Anyway, it was a nice boat ride.

And the captain had this wee little puppy that she was looking after until a new home was found.

It slept when it wasn't eating. Woulda fit in on the cruise ship.

We saw some nice boats.

After the snorkelling trip, back on Jost Van Dyke, we went to a beach to get lunch thinking that we'd probably missed it on the ship.

It was called White Beach. I bet they had a contest and thousand of entries to pick that clever name.

A nice view looking east.

Not so great looking west.

And a little island called ... Little Jost Van Dyke...must have been named by the same imaginative characters who named the beach.

So the video below shows how shitty the snorkelling was.

And this one shows how nice the boat ride was.

Anguilla

Anguilla was one of the islands we didn't purchase an excursion. The only two offered were involving captive dolphins and Terri isn't big on that sort of thing. Instead we took a taxi tour around the island and then went to a secluded beach for a couple hours.

On the smaller islands (like Anguilla) there is no docking facility for the ship so everyone has to go to shore on little boats called Tenders.

Some beach shots.

This was at the most popular beach on the island. Shoal Bay Beach I think. The taxi driver said it would get very crowded and that there was a better beach on the other side of the island.

The other beach. Cap Jaluca Beach.

This yacht was parked off the beach. The Axioma. It can be rented for $525,000 per week. Next time.

https://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-22231/axioma.htm#charterRates

Antigua

We're going snorkelling again today.

Another island with a colourful license plate.

It seems like a reasonable request.

Thats our ship on the right. Finally we found a ship smaller than ours. The Silver Wind.

Another catamaran ride.

A so-so snorkel experience. Better than the last one but still disappointing.

So that was it for Antigua. We were in port until late in the evening but it was Sunday and everything was closed.

St. Kitts

One thing that Seabourn does on these Caribbean cruises is what they call "Champagne and Caviar in the Surf". They take everyone to a beach for a day of eating and drinking and soaking up sun. All the liquor, food, plates, cups, glasses, etc needs to go ashore too.

I imagine that other small ships might have something similar.

This is a shot I stole from the internet simply because there was such a feeding / drinking frenzy on our beach day that I couldn't get a good shot.

The beach was fantastic.

Guadeloupe

Today we visited the small island Terre-de-Haut which is part of the larger island group called Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe is what's referred to as an "insular region of France". Who the hell knows what that means. They all speak french here though so I guess they're French.

Anyway, not much going on. We went on a "glass bottomed kayak" excursion. What a waste of time and money. When you're in a glass bottomed boat and the sun is shining it creates a glare that prevents you from seeing anything through the glass. Total rip-off. Live and learn I guess. And then half ay through the trip the shies opened up and drenched us big time. Never again!

A pretty little town though.

Dominica

For some reason we didn't chose an excursion on this island. We decided to just go and investigate on foot. Bad decision.

Because our ship is small it sometime has to use secondary docking facilities when there are large ships docked at the main docks. That was the case here and we were docked at a freight facility. What that meant was we had to take a bus into the city. Not a big deal except the traffic was horrendous.

We got to the city and walked around for an hour or so and decided it wasn't worth any more time so we just went back to the boat and enjoyed the sun on the pool deck.

We shoulda picked an excursion!

Martinique

A shot of Fort-de-France from the ship.

We opted for another snorkelling trip on Martinique. The day was a bit windy and cloudy and I was worried that the snorkelling would be crappy but it turned out to be the best one so far.

Here's a video of a turtle that I saw.

Bequia

Bequia is a beautiful little island and part of St. Vincent and The Grenadines. We didn't do much here just wandered around for a bit and then went to a beach a short distance from town.

It's so easy to just do nothing on these islands.

The short walk to the beach.

An a view from a small restaurant on the beach where we had lunch and locally brewed beer. Our ship is on the distance - just to the left of centre.

A couple more beach shots.

Barbados

Our cruise ended at the island of Barbados and we stayed for a couple extra nights.

We had a walking tour of the main city, Bridgetown, on our arrival day with a guy from ToursByLocals.com. A lot of people shopping and congregating. Just normal people - all black of course. Barbados is populated, primarily, by the ancestors of people who were brought from Africa as slaves. There are a lot of rich people who live here but of course they are all behind guarded gates so you can't visit or get a picture.

We stayed at a fairly decent resort. The Bougainvillea Beach Resort. The room we had was in need of a little modernization but it was ok.

The maid stole my electric razor and that was a bit disappointing as I had to buy a new one. I guess I could just have quit shaving.

The beach.

A shot of the pool and beach from our deck.

On the second and final day we hired a taxi to drive us around the island. Pretty typical island.

This is a shot of where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Caribbean Sea. Very rough.

That's it