Beautiful Barbados!!! May 20th, 2009

Barbados has always held a sort of exotic allure for me. I can remember wanting to visit there as early as 7th grade. I imagined it to be a place where people dressed in brilliant colors, ate tropical and spicy food, and where you could walk on a powder white sand beach. Let's just say that the island did not disappoint.


The port where our ship was docked could be misleading, as it looks rather ordinary. From our balcony we could not really make out much of the island, but I knew we were in for a good day when I spied a rainbow cresting over a ship out the window.
We had an excursion through the cruise line for noon, so I wanted to get out early to explore the island before we had to be back. Tony and I walked into town a ways, took a few pictures, and of course did a little shopping. There were some beautiful carved wood items, particularly these gorgeous mahogany turtles, but they were quite pricey, with one life sized one running over $400 US dollars, so we settled on an oddly curved spoon made by an older guy selling stuff out of his workshop. I tried to buy souvenir items on this trip that would have some decorative purpose in our new house, and not just be complete junk.

On the way back to the cruise ship, Tony stopped to look at some shirts that a street vendor was selling. He bought one, and the lady ended up talking him into having MY hair braided. The lady thought she was going to braid all of my hair, but after awhile I was kind of tired of sitting there, and we were getting short on time so we left.

Our excursion was on a Tiami catamaran painted yellow, white and blue and crewed by a friendly bunch who seemed to truly enjoy what they do. (Who wouldn't?) The ship moves at a leisurely pace along the coast, making it's first stop in waters where sea turtles are known to inhabit.



Every willing person off loads into the water, vying for space near the crew member holding the bait, since he seemed to give you the best chance to see the turtles. It didn't seem to take more than a minute or two before we had beautiful sea turtles swimming in and out amongst the thrilled tourists. I expected them to be skittish, but the turtles would come right up to you, weaving in and out of swimmers legs. It was amazing to be in turquoise water, with the sun shining and turtles making your acquaintance.

After swimming with the turtles, the crew took us to another location, where we were able to swim from the boat to the beach. It was an absolutely beautiful location. Turquoise and indigo blue water, fine powdery sand, flowers, and sailboats in the water. I could have stayed there for the rest of the trip. In fact I was the last person on the beach and one of the last people to board the catamaran. I was collecting sea glass and a few little shells from the water. (Sea glass, for those who don’t know is just regular bits of glass that have been polished down by the waves and sand. I love the turquoise glass, but it is the hardest to find. Green is a lot easier.) I really would have liked another hour, but we had a ship to catch. I would definitely go back to Barbados and spend a week.

That night were just too worn out to go to the main dining room and wait to be served our meal, so instead we had the buffet on the Lido deck. After eating and relaxing a bit in our room, we went to the theater and played a marriage game with our cruise director, “Wee Jimmy.” He’s a short, somewhat portly Scottish guy, who spent have the cruise in a kilt, and the other half putting up with people trying to correct his pronunciations of English words. He was pretty funny, and took everything in stride. We also watched a magic act and a comedian, rounding out a practically perfect day.

Dominica May 19th, 2009

Dominica appears to have ever square inch of mountain and hill covered in lush tropical greenery. It looks like something out of a Jurassic Park movie, where a dinosaur could come stomping out of the rainforest at any time. The city of Roseau is obviously poorer than most of the Caribbean islands, but part of that is just that much of the island has been left undisturbed. There aren’t the flashy resorts and designer stores that draw big money. Dominica is more of a nature lovers hideaway, a place where you could take a different hike or trail that is basically the same as it would have been two or three hundred years ago.

We took an excursion with Bumpiing Tours called Roseau Valley Treasures. Our driver’s name was Chris. He was very friendly and could answer the questions people asked of him. Plus he was a pretty good driver, which I would say is hard to do, considering that the roads are very narrow and rough here. I would not advise anyone to attempt driving them on their own. At one point we crossed a section of road that was washed out on the mountain side and cracking away on the cliff side. The van literally was only a few inches narrower than the road, and I actually braced myself thinking we for sure would shortly be tumbling down the hill.

Ti Tou Gorge was our first stop, where part of Pirates of the Caribbean II was filmed. Ti Tou gorge starts with a short cascading waterfall that pours into a rock area. Over time rushing water has carved out several rooms that funnel out into a small pond area before falling into another short waterfall.


There’s a brief hike to the pond, where the guide passes out swim belts, which will help keep you floating in the 10 foot deep water and swift currents. Then you have a choice to make- jump into the pond or walk in. Jumping in doesn’t look to scary at first since it’s not very far, but I did have a moment of hesitation. Mustering up my bravery I pushed off from the rock to hit the chilly water below. For the middle of a rainforest, the water was much colder than I expected however after swimming in it for a short time you got used to the temperature and it became quite soothing.

Swimming into the gorge against the currents took some work, but was rewarding. Roots dangle down from trees above, and plants sprout from the walls wherever sunlight seemed to hit.

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After Titou Gorge, the driver took us to another group of waterfalls called Trafalgar Falls.











At the bottom of Trafalgar Falls there are supposedly little hot springs that you can swim in, but they had a lot of rain recently so we were not able to swim there.

Briefly we visited a sulpher spring, which as you can imagine, had a strong oder, hence the briefness of the visit. Chris would also stop along the way to point out a tree or view that we might find interesting. I was surprised kind of, by the quantity of fruit growing all over the island, some wild, some planted. We saw banana, papaya, pineapple, mango, orange, avocado and many others. I remember thinking that you could live off the land here for quite a while if you had to.

We were shown signs of a hurricane that happened decades ago, and finally we were taken to a look out point called Morne Bruce. From there you could see the cruise ship, and the city, including a recently built Cricket field.

That night was our first formal night. No ball gowns or tuxedos for us, but alot of people really did dress up formally. Tony and I went semi formal. I wore a skirt outfit and he had a sport coat on. Hey it's Carnival. Dressing up is really optional.
After dinner we went to one of the production shows, which was pretty lame to me. Tony didn't think it was that bad, but I thought the costumes were garish, the singing like American Idol people voted out the first week and it was just so loud! I could have skipped the show and been just fine. I think that night we also went and watched some karoke, which was pretty entertaining. All in all, a pretty good day.

St Thomas May 18th, 2009

St Thomas was the first port that we stopped in. Pulling up to the dock and watching as the little blurbs of color dotting the hillside became homes was pretty exciting. Even though sleeping in might have been nice, I didn’t mind being up to see that for the first time. That morning we had ordered the continental room service breakfast, and ate it as we sat on our balcony absorbing the island surroundings.

After breakfast, we decided to do a little shopping. St Thomas is supposed to have some of the best shopping in the Caribbean as it is a duty free port, especially if you want to buy jewelry. We didn't ended up buying much, other than this Olympus Tough camera that I had been wanting to buy. It’s waterproof up to 10 feet, shock proof, freeze proof up to 14 degrees, and a number of other features that I had been eyeing. It was a little bit cheaper in St Thomas, plus it came with a carrying case, and a memory card that holds like 1200 pictures. I am a reformed believer in digital cameras. Up until about 3 years ago, I was pretty adamant that film cameras were far superior to digital, but that changed when Tony got his camera in Ireland. Now I love how convenient they are, and they do really take high quality photos.


Other than that we didn’t do much in St Thomas. We had plans to go to the beach, but were suffering still a bit from sleep deprivation, so we decided to just relax on the ship for the remainder of the day. I kind of wish we had gone to the beach anyway, because without that, my overall opinion of St Thomas is that it wasn’t that impressive. Nice island, just kind of plain.


Dinner that night was our first assigned seating dinner. We had a quieter table on the upper part of the Atlantic dining room. Two other couples sat at our table, and we were lucky enough to all get along very well.

One couple was from Texas and the other from New Orleans. I liked hearing about what they did at each port and then just chatting each day.
Later Tony and I went to the theater to play the Battle of the Sexes game. The room was split into men and women, with each side collectively trying to answer trivia questions that the other gender would know better. I hardly knew the answer to any of the questions, but it was still fun. Some of the girls got real huffy about the whole thing, but in a friendly competitive spirit.