Cozumel

Gary

Cozumel today. Heard us docking around 7am, rolled over and went back to sleep after that :). Nothing real major planned for the agenda. Turns out, we were docked at the far southern pier in Cozumel, the Puerto Maya pier I think. Which means that you’re several miles out of the main areas of town, so you’re stuck with the shopping at the stores at the pier unless you take a cab downtown. I was looking for a particular brand of tequila, and the main duty free store at the pier didn’t have it, and interestingly, none of the other stores in the pier shopping area carried tequila at all. Somehow I’m guessing that the Dufry duty free store was the only one allowed to sell tequila in the port area. There was a small store across the street from the pier stores, but they didn’t have what I was looking for (and I question whether their prices were any good). Cathy did try a pomegranite flavored tequila that she said was pretty good, but at $35 a bottle, that puts it in the range of what a pretty good bottle of tequila should be around here, so was pretty pricey.

We did get some vanilla in the Los Cincos Soles store. We bought their vanilla a few years ago, and really liked the flavoring of it. It’s not the fake stuff that you have to watch out for, and at $10 for half a liter, isn’t badly priced at all.

Was interesting to note that the NCL Epic that was in Roatan yesterday (and did get to spend the day there), while their next stop apparently is indeed Cozumel, they don’t actually get here till tomorrow. Even if we’d made Roatan, we still stopped here today, but for some reason they take an extra sea day to get up here.

or maybe not Roatan

Gary

Well, apparently not Roatan today. Arrived off the port a little early today, and we sat there for a while. Captain came on and said that the swells and the wind were such that we couldn’t get in, and that we’d wait a while and see how things were. Probably 5+ foot swells, and supposedly a 30 knot wind, both of which were perpindicular to the path the ship had to take to get into port. After a while, the decision was made that we’d have to skip the port, and we headed out towards Cozumel.

Have to admit, I don’t know what the Carnival company was thinking when they decided to do this special made cruise port in Roatan. From our aft balcony, I could look at the path we’d have to take to get in. Basically, the ship has to back up, make a 90 degree turn, then back down this really narrow channel that barely looks big enough for the ship to make it through. Any combination of wind and waves in the wrong direction and you can’t get in. I know they’ve missed the port a small percent of the time (but big enough to be significant), and I know they’ve tendered in sometime when the problem was only wind, but today, well, I wouldn’t want to try to get into a tender that’s bouncing up and down 5 feet or more. Meanwhile, off in the distance we can see the NCL Epic docked in Coxen Hole, which doesn’t have this problem (but also can’t handle a second large ship).

So, basically turned into another day of sitting and relaxing. Italian dinner tonight, which isn’t really my favorite, but Cathy does like to get the limoncello. Finally a non-smoking night in the casino, although it wasn’t advertised in the patter. (They’ve redesigned the patters, and I’m not really a big fan of the new design, seems harder to find things to me.) Tomorrow Cozumel. Off in the distance right now I can see some other ship, lit up enough that it’s probably another cruise ship, but way to far off to tell what it might be. Could easily be the Epic again, no idea if they’re headed to Cozumel tomorrow also.

Grand Cayman

Gary

Grand Cayman today. Made for an early morning, but thankfully we gained an hour of sleep with the clocks being set back. We rented a Jeep for the day, and headed out down the road with the ultimate goal of visiting Rum Point. Followed the driving tour that Frommer’s has on their site, although we discovered last night that apparently when I printed it, I only managed to print the first page, so we had to scramble last night to scribble down some notes on it.

Grand Cayman drives on the left, which really turned out to be pretty easy to do. However, I did find it odd that I kept having traffic come zooming up behind me and want to pass. Turns out, while the car’s primary speed measurement and odometer were in kilometers per hour, the speed limits on Grand Cayman are really actually in miles per hour. (As I discovered when passing through a school zone and noticing that the sign said MPH.) We annoyed a lot fewer drivers after that.

Finding things on the driving tour were sometimes kinda interesting, because they just don’t seem to like to put a lot of signs along their roads. It was often hard to tell exactly what road we were on, and what road we should turn on. Still, other than that, driving really wasn’t hard at all. Stopped by a small bird sanctuary (after circling a little to find it), but really wasn’t any birds there (fairly dried up, they apparently have been having dry weather lately, and it’s at the very early part of the season for the birds there).

Finally made it to Rum Point. Pretty nice place, free chairs and hammocks, not very crowded at all (although it did get a little busier when some tour boats arrived a little later). Water you could walk a long ways out and still only be in waist deep water. Didn’t see a lot of fish, although I think the other side of the dock might have had some more, and there was a small sting ray swimming around over there. Food and drink were pretty pricey, and of course it’s all priced in Cayman Island Dollars, which makes it cost even more.

Retraced our route back to Georgetown, then headed up north past 7 mile beach. We were headed to the Tortuga Rum Cake factory, which is near the turtle farm. The Frommers tour calls it a factory, and says you can see them make the cakes, but it turned out to really just be another store, just like the ones they have in town, so was really a waste of time to head up there.

Day at Sea

Gary

Day at sea today. For me, that means doing just about nothing. Cathy had her usual collection of things she was going to, but for me, I spent a lot of time either on the Promenade deck or on our balcony just reading and watching the water go by.

The commedian that night was Cary Long, who we’ve seen before (heck, I think I’ve seen him on Leno before too, he’s done that a couple of times). Most of the act was the same material I’d seen before, but still a decent show.

Kinda depressing, that night they were already slipping disembarkation stuff under the door. One of the reasons that I think 7 day cruises are too short.

Off on another cruise

Gary

Headed down Friday night for our latest cruise. Fairly uneventfull, but it was reasonably bumpy. We were flying down along the edge of the storms that were crossing the country at the time. Stayed at the Hyatt Summerfield Suites in Dania for the night. Fairly nice hotel, probably wouldn’t be a bad place to stay for a somewhat extended period of time if you had to. The suite was kinda overkill for the one night we were there, but as I recall, there weren’t a lot of great options available when I was booking.

Next morning ate breakfast at the hotel, then caught their $8/person shuttle over to the port. Shuttle seemed a little disorganized, but ultimately worked, although I think I’d consider a cab next time. Passing the airport was kinda amused to see the Iron Maiden tour jet sitting parked near some hangers. Guess they must have been in town. Drove right by the front of the Oasis of the Seas as we were headed to our ship. That sucker looks real big when you’re sitting in a van passing near the bow.

Got to the port at about 11:30am, but ended up having to wait a little before we could get on board. They said something about having had to move the ship away from the dock briefly at some point in the morning and that put them behind.

The Oasis of the Seas sailed shortly before we did (it was the only other ship in port suprisingly), so watched them back up and head out to sea. We sailed just a little late, ended up watching us leave the port from our balcony on the back of the ship.

Nothing else real exciting for the night.

St Maarten

Gary

Pulled into St Maarten this morning, and things were definitely looking a bit iffy on whether we’d actually get docked or not. Pretty decent swells in the docking area, and they were having issues getting the lines tightened properly (although even when they were satisfied, they weren’t tight by any stretch of the imagination, the lines would sag and tighten as the ship moved). The end of the gangplank was moving probably 2 to 3 feet, so not exactly great.

After two ports in a row with swimming excursions, I was quite frankly beat, and didn’t really have any desire to do anything. Cathy ended up taking a ship’s tour of the island with some beach time. Me, I found a chair on deck 5 and watched people getting off the ships, read a little, and half napped. When Cathy got back from her excursion, we walked into town for a little while to do a little shopping.

Oh, and Oasis of the Seas was in port with us. So we got a chance to take a look at it a little while in port. Someone at the port must have had a real sense of humour too, because they docked the Seaborne Spirit right next to the Oasis. Really made the Spirit look tiny.

St. Lucia

Gary

St. Lucia actually marks the first port that we’ve ever repeated, on this our seventh cruise. Turned out there were 4 ships in port today. Us, the Oceania Regatta, the TUI cruises Mein Schiffe, and the Queen Mary 2. For those doing the math, there’s really only about 3 spots to dock ships in St. Lucia. The Mein Schiffe and Regatta were docked over at the newer cruise terminal that we docked at when we were here on the Crown Princess. We were docked across the harbor at an area that might have been an older cruise terminal, but largely seems to be used for cargo these days. That left the QM2 outside the harbor tendering in. (And from some comments by their crew, I don’t think they were real happy about that.) The only reason I can think of that the QM2 would get the short straw is that it’s a big ship, and I don’t think it could dock at the spot we were at, and if docked at the main cruise ship terminal, I think they’d only be able to dock one ship there (I know when we were there in the Crown Princess it didn’t look like they’d be able to fit another ship there at the same time.) So if the QM2 had docked, there would have been 2 ships tendering.

We hadn’t really had any plans here, so ended up taking a ship’s snorkeling tour. They took us down the coast a little to a bay that appears to be some sort of marine reserve. We spent a couple hours there snorkeling. I’d rate the snorkeling there as adequate. We’ve certainly had better snorkeling, but also have had worse. Not much coral around here, and a somewhat limited selection of fish. Visibility was better in some places than others.

On the way back to the ship we ducked into Marigot Bay to look around. Nice looking place, a couple of larger yachts in the harbor there.

We were the first ship leaving port today. There was quite a crowd along the rails to watch the QM2 as we sailed by.

Oh, and shortly before sailing we got the news that the weather had been rough in St Barts today, preventing tendering. Since the forecast for tomorrow is more of the same, they’ve cancelled our call in St Barts and substituted St Maarten instead. Weather could still be iffy to get into port, but since it wouldn’t be a tender port at least there’s a greater chance of making the port stop.

Trinidad

Gary

We hadn’t really come up with what we wanted to do here in Trinidad, and looked at a few choices through the ship, but the first couple we looked at turned out to be sold out. (Although in hindsight, after talking with people that were on those trips, they may not have been that great anyways). So we decided to go to Maracas Beach, which was billed as one of the great beaches of the world. Taxiing there on our own was supposedly fairly pricey, so we went with the ship tour, although from the description that was supposed to be via a taxi anyways. Got off the ship and discovered that rather than a taxi they had a small bus for us complete with guide. This did seem to really annoy one couple, but to me it seemed reasonable. It also meant that instead of the unguided trip we expected, we did get some highlights of the city as we drove through, including going by the seven magnificent mansions or whatever they call them. Maybe at one point they were magnificent, but these days most of them are really in bad repair and aren’t really anything worth seeing. Although they did show some signs of there being an effort to renovate them and bring them back to their former states.

Getting to Maracas Beach involves going over the northern mountain range in Trinidad, following some very narrow twisty roads. Not sure exactly how high we got, but wouldn’t surprise me if we cleared 1500-2000 feet, which isn’t really something I’d expect in a Caribbean island. Drop back to sea level and you get to the beach. At first glance it seemed like a decent beach, a little bit of waves. It was pretty deceiving, and to be honest, I’m not overly convinced that it’s a good swimming beach. The waves coming in were coupled with a pretty violent undertow. Standing in anything more than about mid-thigh deep you could really get bounced around by the surf. Cathy managed to get hit with a pretty good wave that took her glasses right off, which needless to say weren’t ever found. (Why she was wearing them at that point is beyond me.) I got hit with a wave that ended up coming in at about 2 feet higher than me and it completely knocked me over, under the water. Was not a real pleasant experience. If you were careful on how deep you got it wasn’t too bad, but even then, you had to expend a lot of energy to stay in place. We had 2 hours at the beach, but that was really more than was needed given the conditions. As for a top beach in the world, eh, I don’t think I’d really rate it there. Personally I think I’ve been to several that I think I’d rate higher.

After that it was back to town to get to the ship. Walked through the craft market outside the port, and we did decide to pick up a small steel drum. Trinidad is apparently where the whole steel drum thing started.

Leaving port involves going down what looks to be a pretty narrow channel. The buoys marking the channel didn’t look to be too far to either side of the ship, and there certainly wouldn’t be room for two way traffic through there. What also struck me is that there also seems to be a lot of wrecks in the area outside the channel. You could see quite a few, which also implies just how shallow the area was, but It really didn’t look like they were making any effort to clean these wrecks up. Surprising, since at least one that we passed was clearly leaking fuel or oil, we actually passed through the slick while transiting the channel and you could smell it from the top deck of the ship.

Devil’s Island

Gary

Well, sort of Devil’s Island. Really what we’re visiting is Isle Royale, which had far more in the way of prisoners held, while Devil’s Island proper really wasn’t used as much. Tendered ashore, and getting on the tenders from the ship was a little iffy. Apparently this stop is missed fairly regularly. (We’ve talked to people on the cruise that say that this is their 4th stop here and the first one that actually made it.) Headed off up the long slope to the prison area by heading left from the dock. And it was definitely a long slope, and it was pretty brutally hot. Passed several monkeys on the way up. Wandered around some of the ruins up top, but it was kind hard to get a real good feel for things, there’s very little in the way of any sort of maps for the area, and not much in the way of signage. Oh, and for the little there is, it’s not surprisingly in French.

There’s a hotel on the island, although for the life of me, I’m not entirely sure why someone would actually want to stay here. Just doesn’t seem like much to do. Rates seemed to vary from as little as 10 euros for a hammock, to something like 235 euros for an air conditioned room. That higher rate may have included meals, it was hard to figure out reading their listing, once again, in French. Cathy bought some exceedingly overpriced postcards in the hotel shop.

From the hotel, we then headed down the back side of the island. From what little we knew, we thought it was supposed to connect back around to the place we’d catch the tender. Heading down this way did really give us our best look at Devil’s Island proper, over a small channel of water. Saw several egrets and sea turtles along this section. Eventually worked our way around back to the tender area to head back to the ship.