Last port stop Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

Just like yesterday we arrived at a port that we haven’t been to but have been to the Island. We have gone to the Punta Cana many times, this is our first time doing touristy stuff, usually we spend the week in the pool, eating and drinking. We got up early as we had an early excursion and wanted to get some food on our stomachs since we missed dinner last night. There was a real nice sunrise as we were entering the harbor.

Yes, Lisa is fine and the seas are supposed to calm down this afternoon and even more tomorrow on our final sea day. This port is a lot like San Juan was where it is a real rough entry and they even were towed in by a tug boat, I haven’t seen that in many, many years. The Tug was pulling us into the harbor backwards, that way we can just sail our forward on the way out.

Well our excursion today is called Buggies and Beach off road, we really weren’t sure what to expect as we did one like this before and it was kind of lame. Well this one wasn’t lame, first they picked us up in a comfortable open air truck and we got to see a bit of the city on the way to the Buggy location. When we got there we could see the buggies and they were as expected, they gave us a safety and instructional talk and we put on our helmets and away we went.

They had a photographer along the way taking pictures and you could buy the whole package of shots for $40 and I figured that was a bargain so I wouldn’t worry about getting them myself. Of course that is if he delivers on the pictures as promised 😊 I will update this post if the pictures show up, they should be pretty good shots from where he was shooting them. Let’s just say for now at the half way point we stopped at a beach and it was a relief to get the mud off of us, even though it was for just a short time. The pictures did show up late Saturday night so I held off posting until I could get them arranged.

Here we are all nice and clean enjoying our Country Drive!

The roads got a bit more bumpy and had to avoid lots of animals and of course what the cows left behind, didn’t want cow pies hitting you in the face!

Now things got real and we knew at this point that it was time to just have some fun and give it the gas!

Well it was nice to get to the beach and take a dip to clean up a little bit

So much for the beach cleaning, now its time for our mud bath!

We returned to the ship around 12:30 and headed back onboard and we both showered to get rid of all the dirt, even though we used a shower at the Buggy location. We headed down to lunch and there was only one other couple there and 3 people working tables. We figured out where everybody was when we sat down, they were all out lined up with umbrellas welcoming guests back onto the ship. It was funny to see all the cabin stewards, dining room staff, cooks, even the executive chef and most of the Officers lined up welcoming back everybody.

Our final sail away was a beautiful day and a great sail out of the harbor, which is a very scenic location with Fortaleza de San Felipe at the entry to the harbor.

As you leave the harbor you can get a view of the King Neptune statue located on a large rock off the coast.

We had a great day in the Dominican Republic and to cap it off we were treated to a wonderful sunset!

I am carrying on this post into Sunday morning as we will be busy tonight and tomorrow catching our flight and getting back to reality on Monday. We got up early this morning and got our walk in and headed to breakfast. It was nice doing the walk early as nobody else was up there. We also got to see a nice sunrise off the back of the ship as we sail up the coast of Cuba.

Well I guess you know when your cruise is over when you get back from breakfast and the room is cleaned and you come back to this!

San Juan PR Culinary Tour

We have been to San Juan 3 or 4 times before so we didn’t want to do the Rum Factory or the Rain Forest, so what do you schedule after 22 days on a ship, a Food Tour! We arrived in San Juan on time and the US Government requires all passengers to present themselves to Immigration’s. So the people with early tours were called down to pass through the Border Patrol with their passports, so as we got off the ship our passports were returned to us as they were collected on the first day of the cruise. They called all of the early tours and then started calling by deck, so when we got out there there were 40-50 people waiting to either get back on the ship or to go on a tour. We were waiting to get back on because we had an hour before our tour was scheduled. We couldn’t get on until all the passengers had been cleared from the ship, there is always one but he finally made it down. So we waited for 30-45 minutes before we could get back on. They had started to clear the crew while we were down there waiting.

So we got down for the tour and met up with Christine the guide and we started the hike up the hill to our first stop for a Majorca pastry and then a chocolate Martini, made with Vodka, Baileys and a chocolate cocoa powder. We then headed to the next location and were served pork shoulder with beans and rice, a sauce and a fried plantain. The meat was really tender and juicy and went well with fruit rum punch. The next location had a watermelon  mojito and a ceviche Mahi-mahi with taro chips, we’re not big on ceviche but the mojito was delicious. The last place we stopped at was a popsicle store where they made out of a gelato, Lisa had fruity one and I had the Wedding Cake flavored one, they were pretty darn good!

This was a short stop so when we got back at 2:45 the ship was almost ready to leave. The Captain announced it was going to be a pretty rough ride tonight starting with our exit from the harbor. As I looked out the harbor I could see this departure was going to be a challenge. The Chanel leaving the harbor was just to the right of the wave breaks, we had a pilot on the ship to help get us out of here. The pilot boat stayed on the side of the ship until we were out of the harbor, that little boat was getting tossed around like  it was a tiny fishing boat. After we cleared the harbor it took the pilot boat some time to get positioned so the pilot could jump from our ship onto their boat. He was finally able to get back on board with a loud cheer from all the guest watching the process. 

We are on our way to the Dominican Republic and should arrive early tomorrow morning. We were going to do the waterfalls there and decided we didn’t want to risk it so we opted to do the dune buggies and beach break for our final excursion.

The cast and crew has a variety show tonight at 6 and we have our final reservation in Prime 7 Steakhouse and its the second formal optional night, I plan to wear optional. We got down to the show and Lisa was starting to have that look where she wasn’t going to make it. She headed back to the room and I stopped back after the show and she still wasn’t doing well. We had a reservation at Prime 7 the steakhouse and after I checked on Lisa at 7:30 I went up and cancelled the reservation. Well we made it an early night and will try to get up early and hopefully she will be better in the morning.

Our butler did call me and asked if he could bring up something light for Lisa or a dinner for me, I told him she just needed sleep and after 22 days, it won’t hurt me to skip a meal 😊 

Saint Maarten instead of Saint Barts

We arrived around 7 AM Thursday and there were already 3 other ships in port a huge Carnival ship the Celebration (~6,000 passengers), the other 2 were smaller ~2,000 passenger ships. There was also a big yacht named Artefact (owned by Mike Lazaridis, the founder of BlackBerry) waiting to dock and it did after all the cruise ships were in place.

We decided we didn’t want to do any tours and Saint Maarten is a great shopping port, so we did. I needed to restock T-Shirts as all my older ones need to be thrown away and Lisa got her annual Christmas ornament even though we won’t have a tree to put it on this year. Maybe we will get a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree and hang it on there. We took a small break from shopping to enjoy the scenery.

With all our new fortunes in hand we headed back to the ship as we entered the dock we realized how small our boat is when you compare it to the other ships in town.

So we got on board and Lisa did her normal afternoon nap and I sat on the balcony looking over that huge Carnival ship, they had a roller coaster on top. 

We were scheduled to leave at 6 and Carnival was scheduled at 5, something delayed Carnival’s departure so we were ready and took off. I was watching the sunset and trying to get a nice shot from the balcony. Just about when the sun was setting we had backed out and started turning, I got most of it but missed splashdown.

We had a nice dinner tonight and the comedian was back for his final performance and he didn’t disappoint, he had the entire theater laughing. Time to head to bed, we have an early day tomorrow arriving in San Juan, PR

Dominica Whales and Dolphin Tour

Arrived in Dominica and had an early morning tour, we were pretty much the first group off the ship, looked like the town was ready for a big shopping day.

We started walking to the boat and got on and more and more people got on, we were wondering where they were going to fit everybody. The had an upper deck but wouldn’t let anybody up there until they got out into the harbor and they did their safety briefing. It was quite crowded but we got seats and it was a pretty rough ride out as they were looking for the whales, they said it is unusual to see dolphin. We wandered around for about an hour and we started to wonder if there were really any whales out there. We started to head towards some smaller boats and found what we came out to see, whales. There were 2 or 3 smaller excursions out there and they were in the water and had a drone flying over them videoing their experience. 

We stayed out there for about an hour following the pods of whales, they said they stay on top for 15-20 minutes and then head under for at least 45 minutes. So with so many people on the boat at times it was hard to see them, the Captain said at the beginning he would move the boat around when we were there so everybody would get a view but that didn’t happen. Even though we did get some decent shots. 

After the whale trip we headed back to the ship and Lisa unstressed herself for an hour and then she was ready to get some lunch. We then headed out to the local market and didn’t find much to buy, I found a hat but that was pretty much it. We headed back and got ready for the evening activities, as we were getting ready for the evening the Captain came on and told us the weather wasn’t going to be acceptable in St. Barts. St. Barts doesn’t have a cruise dock so we would be tendering in and they didn’t feel they were going to be able to accomplish that safely. So they made the decision to change our destination to Saint Maarten, the crew was busy creating tours and updating the daily compass for the new port. We had been to Saint Maarten on the way down the Sunday before Thanksgiving, we were the only ship in town that day and several things were closed, even the water taxi wasn’t running, so it was nice to be going back. Glenn brought us some spring rolls (10 of them) we could barely eat dinner after that. We were meeting up with a couple that we met earlier in the cruise who were originally from the St. Louis area. We had a nice dinner with them and spent a lot of time discussing St. Louis stuff. We were going to go to the show but Lisa opted for the bed and I for the casino, wasn’t a great night at the casino so I came back and finished up yesterdays blog and went to bed. Got up this morning and fixed Tuesday’s blog, I knew there was some issues I was just too tired to fix them. So that was our day a very nice one and we are now off to Saint Maarten.

Barbados Day 20 of 25

Well we have finally made it back to the beautiful blue waters of the Atlantic/Caribbean. We arrived in Barbados at 6 AM, 4 hours early since we skipped our last Amazon stop even though we were stuck for 6 hours in the channel leaving the Amazon River. For the first time on this cruise there is another ship in port with us, Mein Schiff 2 and Celebrity Equinox was arriving at 7 AM, Mein Schiff was on an overnight. This will be the first time in 2 weeks that our ship is at a dock and we don’t have to tender in to port. We were scheduled for a beach break at noon for 3 1/2 hours, this was such a beautiful white sand beach we enjoyed our time there just staying in the water.

We didn’t take any still pictures just some videos of the beach and some underwater shots of the sparse amount of fish. We really enjoyed the quiet laid back time, headed back to the ship and showered had our canapés and headed to the bar to listen to the guitarist and then the dance band before heading to dinner. We were both not very hungry so we ordered appetizers and desert. Since we have got back to some normal ports the ship has been able to replenish the food and some new entertainment. Tonight they had a comedian out of Milwaukee he was great, he is the type that starts with asking for the house lights to be turned up and he starts picking on the audience. That is why we never sit in the front roll, I think at his next performance the front of the theatre will be empty.

Since we are back in the Caribbean they are able to re-provision the food and the entertainment, they brought on a new comedian from Milwaukee. This was the type of comedian that turns up the lights and scopes out his victims for his next joke, he was very funny and I doubt anybody will be sitting in the front row at his next performance. So now its time to head to bed and get ready for an early wake-up call for our whale and dolphin trip at Dominica.

This was a great view of the moon as we were preparing to leave Barbados.

Day 3 at Sea next stop Barbados

We had our last sea day coming from the Amazon and now we will start 5 days in ports, starting with Barbados. The third sea day was pretty quiet, Lisa went swimming, they did an ice sculpture by the pool, had a preview of their Christmas show at 6, we went around and had our pictures taken in front of all the Christmas Trees (where we could find somebody to do it) and ate dinner at Prime 7.

After the show we went up to the bar on 11 and listened to the dance band, our first tree was in this bar (Galileo) and we asked our favorite bar waiter Ivan to take the picture. This was the first picture he took😂😂

We asked people at each place to take the picture for us, it was fun sometime finding the right person. I decided to not fix the one in the upper right corner as it was taken by a patron in the Show Bar kind of felt it was well representing the person taking the picture.

Day 2 at Sea on the way to Barbados

We had a quiet restful day today, started with breakfast at Compass Rose and then at 10 they had a Carnival onboard where the different crew organizations setup a task for you to do to earn a raffle ticket. The task ranged from dumping ping pong balls strapped to your back side into a bucket, hillbilly golf put the ball on the top rung to throwing rings onto liquor bottles. This was done between 10-10:45, and the tickets were drawn for prizes at 11:00, of course we didn’t win anything. Did a little gambling, went to Trivia and then went to afternoon Tea for the first time, they do it every day, today they had eclairs.

We came back to the room after Tea and watched a bit of TV and then our Canapés arrived, 6 Jumbo shrimps, very tasty. We’re sitting here trying to determine what we want to do for dinner tonight, first option is a South American Buffet by the pool (casual dress), Sette Mari (Italian) Elegant Casual, Compass Rose (Main Dining Room) Elegant Casual or Room Service casual dining in our room. We need a break from the dining rooms and dressing up for dinner for a night, we really enjoy going to the Compass Rose but I can really use a Pizza and a salad sitting in my shorts in our room. So we ordered dinner from Room Service and enjoyed a nice meal in our cabin. To our surprise our Butler brought the meal in and set it up at the coffee table since we were being just like we are at home sitting on the couch watching TV and eating dinner. I have to say we are not use to having somebody wait on us like this and it is a bit weird but it was awesome to have somebody take care of us.