Southern Caribbean Cruise

December 1-12 2024

We will be fulfilling one of Peter’s bucket list items with this trip. Being an ardent history buff and scholar, the Caribbean islands hold a great deal of history to be explored.

We will be flying from Vancouver to Miami then boarding the “Norwegian Getaway”. With its guest capacity of 3903 and a crew of 1657, I will be exceeding my maximum tolerance dose of humanity on this trip, but armed with good books, a stateroom with outside balcony and my favourite travel partner I will be okay. Oh and there is a Starbucks on board so Peter will bring me my morning Latte!

November 30 Miami
We and our luggage landed in Miami after an uneventful flight, which these days uneventful is a bonus. Note to self, flying into the US on a holiday weekend makes for very long lineups through security and customs. People are so interesting, our third in our row of seats was a woman, I greeted her and she scowled at me saying nothing, not that I wanted a big conversation, just being polite to a fellow traveller. At some point I noticed the title of the book she was reading. “How to talk to strangers”, I nearly burst out laughing.

Christmas palms in Miami on our walk to find some dinner.

December 1,2 at sea

Getting on board went smoothly, they use facial recognition and as long as you look like the photo you submitted they waved you through. This was an at sea day we settled in and explored the ship. I don’t see us using the pool area, so hot, noisy and crowded, must be getting old :))

December 3 St Felipe, Dominican Republic, province of Puerto Plata

We explored Puerto Plata today. I’ll let the photos give an idea of the town of St Filipe, our tour guide was good, full of humour and knowledge.

Part of our tour was a Rum production factory, Amber jewelry workshop, cigar production, the fort that protected the harbour and an old city centre tour. The pink building was the first hotel, it was a converted house. The woman owner died of breast cancer thus the color pink. The alley with umbrellas was made even prettier with the pink bougainvillea. The city had areas of low, middle and high class housing, some of the houses more like shacks, lots of barbed wire around the courtyards.

December 4 San Juan Porta Rico

We learned a lot about Porta Rico from our tour guide today, old and current history. He talked about his personal experience after hurricane Maria hit in 2017. The government did not warn people well about things like getting prepared with cash, water, food. Where he lives there was no power for four months and no banking service for two months. He was lucky as he lived on cash tips and had cash hidden under his mattress so he could buy food for his family.
The tour of the San Christabal fort that protected the harbour, it was immense, built in 1634 – 1790. They used no animals such as horse or oxen, for fear of contamination of the water supply, so it was all built by men, many of which were Africans brought by the Spaniards as slaves. Peter was in his glory seeing what he had studied. There were charcoal drawings of ships on the dungeon walls drawn by soldiers locked in the dungeon. Early graffiti!

Scenes from our walk around parts of the city, that’s our ship you can see in the photo above. We had a fantastic lunch at a Caribbean restaurant. We may have to plan a Caribbean style dinner! We stopped in to a cathedral and I found this sweet statue tucked into an old stone wall. Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of animals.

December 5 St Thomas Virgin Islands

Our neighbours in harbour, this yacht belongs to the owner of Walmart, I wonder if employees of the month ever get to sail.

We took a very hot walk into town s for Peter to see the fort, unfortunately it was closed.

The shopping in St Thomas is great. There was one street completely filled with jewelry stores. Even a non shopper like me bought a few things, Peter bought this hat, I haven’t decided if he looks dapper or like a gangster, either way I like it :))

December 6 St John. Antigua

This island showed the extreme disparity between the wealthy and the poor. It is an independent island catering to the rich and famous and cruise ship people.

We were to do a kayak and snorkeling day on Antigua. Well, we arrived at the beach and the area that we were to be kayaking in, had excavators on the beach digging trenches with a long line of pipe above the water being pulled out by a work ship, the pipe then would be sunk and would pipe water from the ocean to a desalination plant for water for the rich houses up on the hill. Most of the work was done during the night but they didn’t get finished fast enough, it wasn’t legal, it’s a protected beach. All this being done amongst swimmers and beach goers. The locals working the excursions were upset by not only the unexpected disruption but by the damage to their beach. We chose to take a taxi back to the ship.

We did go into the beautiful Caribbean water but I was wondering if it would be staying that way after what we witnessed.

December 7. Basseterre, St Kitts

This independent island was a struggle to appreciate in a positive way. It is very poor, I could feel a sense of desperation in the people, even the tourist shopping area was only a step away from being an area not safe to be in without the ever present security and police.

We walked further away and it got worse, but we found in the middle of it all a small community park being cared for by the locals, there was a sense of peace in that small corner of nature.

December 8. Philipsburg, St. Maarten

This island is divided into two, one side owned by France and the other owned by the Dutch. We were on the Dutch side. What a difference, St Maarten is well taken care of and the local people were so much happier, lots of joking amongst themselves and the tourists.

The water taxi back to the ship was fun, those guys know how to get tips! Music was playing, they were singing, everyone was singing, loved it. I got video but can post here. This couple fascinated me, he had so much biker bling on, his wife didn’t look like a biker chick? :))