Cruising the Caribbean

Dec 11 Sun.  As Butter is off at boarding there is no dog jumping on the bed trying to get us up to feed her.  So we just leisurely rise and start putting together our luggage and papers for the cruise.  We got an email saying what terminal the ship was assigned to and we have made all the last minute runs to get insect repellent and sunscreen.  We are suppose to board at 130 and the taxi company I called said to give them an hour.  Humm, I called the cab and they said the driver would be here in 10 minutes, okay.  We grab our luggage and make our way to the gate, and the driver is there in 5 minutes.  I tell the driver terminal 2 and we are off.  When we arrive at the terminal I see the ship at terminal 2 isn't ours so we get directed to terminal 21.  Its a busy day at Ft Lauderdale, there are 6 big ships in port today with the ensuing chaos, it takes a little longer then expected, but we arrive, drop our bags with the porters and go to the end of the boarding line.  As with all cruises I've been on, the lines move along at a good clip and before we know it we are getting that boarding picture taken and head up the gangway to our ship.

It takes very little to find our cabin on deck 10 Carib, midships.  Our luggage isn't there and I think it's time to find our way to the Horizon court for lunch, as I know dinner will be awhile.  The ship is moderately familiar but it takes until I get back home to find that it is a sister ship to the Star Princess which I sailed on last time out with all my siblings to Alaska.  Funny.  Danny is a little overwhelmed trying to orient himself to where we are and where we are trying to go.  But we make it up to the buffet, fill our plates and find a couple ready to share a table at the window as we watch the rain fall in Ft Lauderdale.  We head on back to our cabin, grab our life jackets and report to the casino, as that is our assigned muster station and at least we don't have to stand out on the deck as the rain continues to fall.  About 5 the ship casts off and we are swinging out into the channel and headed for open ocean.  With tea in hand and watching from inside, as the rain hasn't let up yet we catch a glimpse of the pilot boat heading off to guide another of the ships out of port.

Like I said it was a busy day in port.  We head on back to the cabin as rain is falling and the party has been moved inside.  We meet our Steward Erwin, and find our luggage has arrived.  After we get unpacked and changed for dinner, we find the dinning room and as we are willing to share a table we are taken right in past a rather long line and are guided to a table for 8.  Its a jovial dinner and we find that a nice stroll around the promenade is just perfect, except they have closed off the front of the promenade due to winds and rain. Oh well we have a full day at sea tomorrow to explore the ship.  We find we are gently rocked to sleep as the Caribbean Princess heads for Roatan. 

Dec 12 Mon.  Sea Day, and time to explore the ship.  We find the Coffee bar and turn in our chit for a coffee card.  The 2 specials we took advantage of was to buy water bottles and a coffee card, so we would be able to have Chai or special coffee during the cruise.  What I found later was their version of Chai tea is really Chai flavored Milk....Oh well.  We spend the day taking time to wander the ship and try to get our bearings.  You know it really doesn't matter we will spend all 6 days turning to go the wrong direction.  But we continue to discover.  And one of the best discoveries was the margaritas.  Really good margaritas and it goes so well with Pizza on the deck.  That takes care of lunch, and the rest of the afternoon is a bit of a blur, except we saw a sign for "Crab Shack" night.  On Wednesday night they will turn the bake part of the horizon court into a specialty dining room and we made reservations!  King Crab legs.  Another lovely dinner in the dining room and another great group of fellow cruisers.  One couple, we meet, Dave and Judy share their chosen shore excursions and we find we will share our snorkel adventure on Wednesday with Dave.  On Tuesday they are going off to zip line.  It all sounds like such fun we wish we could take 3 or 4 excursions at each port and I am sure the cruise lines would like that to entice us back for another round.  We catch a show after dinner and enjoy the cast of the ship in a nice medley of song and dance numbers.  Then its off to bed for our first stop is tomorrow.  

Dec 13 Tues.  Roatan Honduras, and the skies are still overcast, the rain is still falling although it is intermittent.  

Our shore excursion is a case of barely controlled chaos.  We report to the theater at the requested time and find lines everywhere, with almost no direction as to what is what.    So we wait and everything starts to move, we aren't sure where we are going, so into the theater, straight down the aisle and out the lower side door, down some stairs and wrap back around to more crowds, wrap again, and down another flight, down a hallway and we are checking out with our cruise cards and onto a pier.  People tell us to go to the shopping area and we will find our excurions....Okay we find a guy with a sign and gather around him.  Eventually it seems the numbers add up and we are off to board a bus.  And we hear that we are going to Fantasy Island Resort, the first all inclusive resort on Roatan.  I can't say it is very scenic here as the streets are narrow, the buildings look old, although I hear that after 3 hurricanes in the last 20 years not much is old.  We arrive at the resort and we are split up by bus, we are in the first group to go out snorkeling.  We are suppose to snorkel over a ship wreck.  They explain that the plan is to drop us up-current from the wreck and let us explore the reef as we drift toward the wreck.  Sounds like a plan.   The sun hasn't come out yet but the reef and the fish are beautiful.  We drift and our guides keep coaxing us along, soon they tell us the wreck is directly below us and we can just make out the outline of a ship, but with the cloudiness in the water from the rain and no direct sunlight that is as good as it gets, so we load up into the boat and head back to Fantasy Island Resort.  The other group is heading out to snorkel and we get our time on the beach.  Dan and I order a Margarita and park ourselves in a couple of lounges and just relax.  Before long it is time to head back to the ship and our day in Honduras draws to a close.  We decide dinner will be in the Horizon court as it is Italian night and we have a bottle of Italian wine we want to uncork.  The Italian cuisine leaves a lot to be desired, but the wine we brought was as good as we expected.

Dec 14 Wed.  We arrive at Belize.  As our shore tour isn't until this afternoon we decide to go ashore and see what we can see in Belize City.  First we had a 30 minute tender ride to shore.  Turns out there was very little to see, as we walk down the street and arrive at the bridge a gentleman comes over and suggests that we probably don't want to proceed any further as there is little to see and plenty to be aware of, so as we cross the bridge, we look around and we seem to be the only cruisers that have come this far.  We turn back, and start back through the street vendors.  There is a young woman promoting hair braiding, she really wants to braid my hair, I laugh at the suggestion, but it does look like a nice way to keep my hair out of my face while swimming, so we negotiate a price and I sit down.  She is fast and, well, I'll let you judge.

We return home to get some lunch and then report to the designated area for our shore excursion and this time we are taken directly from the ship to our excursion.  The boat that picked us up had a rather large crew and it became apparent very quickly that this was much more organized and ready for us then yesterdays excursion.  We arrived  at our snorkeling site and they broke us up into three self defined groups, beginners, intermediate and advanced.  Each group had 3 swimmers and a chase kayak with them.  We had hooked back up with Dave from dinner Monday and had a great time.  The reef wasn't as pretty and the fish not as plentiful, but the overall experience was head and shoulders above yesterday.  We even had Rum punch on the return to our ship....Great.

Dinner tonight was Crab Shack!  so off to deck 15 aft and we were seated at a nice little table for two.  This dinner was excellent!  Manhattan clam chowder, and that was a first for Danny.  We ordered a bottle of Chardonnay and just relaxed for a nice dinner.  The KingCrab legs were perfect, at least for me they were perfect, Danny wanted more, but when it comes to King Crab he always wants more.  It was served with peel and eat shrimp and I love those, so he did get part of my crab.  We sent the unfinished bottle to stores to be finished another night.

Dec 15 Thurs.  This is our long day.  We received a letter from the ship shore excursion office explaining that due to the distance to Chichen Itza we would only have about 1 hour at the park but we really want to see this and decide it is worth it.  We are one of the first groups ashore and first we have to go to the ferry for transfer to Playa del Carmen, then board our bus and head off for the archeological park.   We are given bag lunches and it would make us appreciate all the food on the ship.  The guide was informative and entertaining and the drive was long.  Once we arrived and got our entry tickets we were encouraged to stay together, as our guide would cover the highlights of the grounds and then give us 30 minutes to explore on our own.  It was not disappointing.  The first sight of the pyramid and we both commented, We have to come back here.

We quick stepped around with our guide and learned what they actually know, and what they don't know, seems more of the later.  The winner of the ball game may have been sacrificed, or maybe not, maybe the loser, and maybe a captive who had less value then a ball player.  They may have cut off the head, and they may not have, seems there is lots more to learn.  The man who cracked the code to the Mayan alphabet however is known, and he was a young man who traveled with his father and was exposed to the sites and sounds of Mayan ruins from a very young age.  We would love to be here on the equinox and see the serpent image undulate down the stairs.

After the guide turned us loose we headed down to the well.  It was a gauntlet of vendors.  The whole path was lined with vendors wanting to sell us something for 'only a dollar, only a dollar'  insistently.  In about 1 minute it was tiresome.  We checked out the well and contemplated why the Mayans would throw so many people into the well.  On the way back up the path all the vendors sang a new song '2 for a dollar, just 2 for a dollar'.  Too soon we had to rejoin our guide, and make our way back to the bus.  Seems while we were gone another driver had parked our bus in so while the drivers discussed how best to extricate us our guide was on the phone to Princess and arranging to hold the last ferry for us.  Soon we were enroute and told there would be no time to shop for anything back at Playa del Carmen.  The ferry ride was nice, we got a great seat at a table with some fellow cruisers who had been in Playa that afternoon, it was time for Corona.  Back at Cozumel were were hustled straight out the pier to the boat, I have to say I was surprised they closed the duty free shop that we had to go through on the way in and routed us around the edge of the pier to keep from having to delay any longer for shoppers.  There was some grumbling about that as it was the last chance to buy liquor before we returned to the states.  As soon as we were all aboard the announcement came out that we were ready to depart from Cozumel.  Really it was a great day.

Dinner tonight was rather quiet, we learned it was Lobster night in the dining room and that was enough to get Danny back into long pants and shoes.  We shared a small table with one other couple and unfortunately we were served under cooked lobster.  Danny asked the waiter for another one and it was just as wiggly as the first.  The shrimp was very well cooked and that may have been the problem, if they were cooked the same amount of time you know that isn't good.  This was truly a disappointment.  We did call for our bottle of wine from last night and they managed to find it.  

After dinner we headed to the theater for a show 'The human iPod'  he was very entertaining and really sounded more like an old Radio, but he did have an amazing store of songs and sound effects.

Dec 16 Fri.  Our last day and a full day at sea.  We must have been worn out yesterday as I forgot to reset my clock and while we thought we were up in time to have breakfast in the dining room, we wren't.  We were barely in time for the buffet.  Then we took time to find seats on the promenade deck and took our readers out there and just watched the ocean.  The weather had finally cleared up yesterday and we had blue skies all day today.  It was very nice to just sit, I only wish the promenade deck was wide enough for lounges, because I could to get comfortable in the chairs, so while Danny meditated I went in and wandered the sales, but found nothing to tempt me.  We had run into Dave and Judy and arranged to get together for dinner tonight.  The sad part of the last day on board is that you have to pack.  While we peeped for dinner and packed the big suitcase we talked about when we might take another cruise, yep, another cruise is in the future.  We caught up with Dave and Judy in the elevator and made it to the dining room.  It didn't take long to be seated and even though we said we would share they seated us at a table for 4.  We had brought our last bottle of Amarone and had the waiter uncork it to celebrate a wonderful cruise and new friends.  We exchanged emails and phone numbers and plan to touch bases with them when we pass through North Carolina.

Too soon it was time to return to our cabin, pack up the shoe suitcase and set it out.  We would have no rush in the morning and would be able to have a leisurely breakfast before reporting to our departure lounge.

Dec 17 Sat.  One last breakfast buffet, one last table of strangers who soon become sharers of cruise stories and lots of laughter.  Too soon we have to report to the lounge and after about 5 minutes there we are called to debark.  The process is easy, one last scan of our cruise card and down the ramp to the warehouse of luggage.  Ours was pretty easy to spot as at this time the ship was pretty empty.  A porter appeared to take the weight and we let him.  Out to the taxi stand and we were loaded and on our way back to the Lake House with a suitcase full of laundry and minds full of good memories.

We had one more chore to do and we knew there was a dog who would be very excited to see us.  And she was, running and jumping and circling the legs.  Funny how we always have to get her steps down to get her in the truck these days, but not today, she flew up into the back seat and plopped awn on her truck bed ready to head out.  We made a quick stop at Walmart to pick up an order, those waterproof plastic bins we lost a few weeks back have now been replaced.  Then we remembered her bed, the one we took to Arfington, and we headed back to retrieve that.  Thy had it in the laundry, really!, they washed her bed.  It looked brand new and she will have to work at getting it refurred to her taste.

Dinner?  what to have?  we haven'y gone grocery shopping, so we head out aimlessly looking for something to strike our fancy.....Chicken, KFC, so we stop, go in,  the counter person who helped the customer in front of us has walked away so we wait, and wait, and wait, a customer that just came in gets helped.  Seems we are invisible people at the counter, so we leave!  Head up the street to Popeyes, and get served straight away, so off to home with good Chicken and a bad taste of discrimination.  

Dec 18th Sun.  Laundry day. and I do mean laundry, I need 5 washers to sort this pile out and I don't even have sheets with me.  That takes up the bulk of the afternoon. Then we head off to the grocery store and stock up on fruits and veggies for another round of juicing.