Sunday, December 11, 2022

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!

Friday, December 9, 2022

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





Thursday, December 8, 2022

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.

Wednesday, December 7, 2022

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.



Tuesday, December 6, 2022

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.



Sunday, December 4, 2022

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.





Saturday, December 3, 2022

Day at Sea (On the way to Barbados)

Woke up this morning on our way out of the Amazon River, hopefully will be seeing that beautiful Blue ocean soon. The cruise notes said today was Saturday Mary’s in the La Veranda. They started at 7:30 AM so I figured I would head up to the Bloody Mary Bar and make myself a nice Bloody Mary and bring it back to the room. So this ship has a lot of great things but Bloody Mary’s is not one of them. They use Something like Mr and Mrs T’s mix which to me is a diluted down tomato juice. So I asked if I could make my own they said no and I asked if they had any horseradish to spice it up and they said no. I decided I didn’t need it and we just headed to the Compass Rose for breakfast. It’s a rainy day not doing the pool, the guest lecture was doing a talk about Teddy Roosevelt’s exploration of the Amazon. It was quite interesting as she had some footage from the trip that was restored, definitely a little more challenging of a trip than what we took.

So we came back up to the cabin to watch the World Cup match which started here at noon, Lisa decided to lay down for a quick nap instead. I was sitting at the Dining Room table and around 11:55 AM the ship came to an abrupt stop and didn’t budge an inch. It started leaning a bit on our side of the ship and then I saw the side thrusters on our side kick in and the ship started to straighten up but wasn’t moving an inch. Well the Captain always gives us an update every day at noon but today we didn’t hear a peep out of him. We headed down for lunch and while we were eating he finally came on and told us we were stuck and had made a soft landing into the shallow water outside the channel. He told us the pilot’s had given him the current channel location in order to get out of the Amazon river but it must have shifted. He just made another announcement at 2:45 saying it might be a couple more hours before we were free and could start back on our way. We are waiting on the tide to come in and the water to rise enough to free the ship from what we are calling a sand bar but it’s just the natural channel that is formed by the sediment from the Amazon.

Just in case we aren’t heard from again here is the location to start looking for us 😀


Well it’s 3:25 PM and we are starting to feel a little rocking so that may be a good sign, hopefully when we get free there isn’t any damage that needs to be fixed.

At 5:20 PM they lowered a boat to check out if there was any damage to the ship, hopefully there isn’t any damage and we are able to start back up. They are using the side thruster’s on our side of the ship hopefully they make progress.

It’s now 5:50PM and we are moving very slow and starting to speed up, the Captain just came on and let everybody know that everything seems to be OK. Since we were so far ahead of schedule due to the cancelled stop maybe we will make it to Barbados on time.

It’s now after dinner and all is well the ship seems to be sailing at the normal speed, ~18 knots so we believe all is well. So no need to worry, all is well on the Seven Seas Navigator.


Day 16 Alter Do Chao (Beach Day)

We arrived at Alter Do Chao on time and the tenders had already left the ship by the time we got up at 7 but the weather was cloudy and not looking like the best beach day. Well as we have found out over the past week this is not the place to see in the dry season. The tenders came back and reported it was too shallow to tender in from the ship so the Captain decided we would head out early and maybe give us some additional time in Barbados. So we didn’t get to go to the beach but at least got pictures before we left.

We headed down the Amazon towards Macapa where we have to drop off the pilots and clear Brazil customs. We were due to reach Macapa at 1 PM on Saturday but since we skipped the beach break our new arrival time was 4:30 AM. We enjoyed the day sailing down the Amazon some nice scenery on the way and it was a wonderful day to sit on the Veranda. 

The upper right picture was when we were leaving Alter Do Chao, another example of the meeting of the waters. We had a decent sunset and when I woke up last night and looked out I saw this wonderful view of the moon.


Parintins Brazil (Boi Bumba Folk Show)

We arrived at Parintins at 11:00 AM on Thursday and this was another Tender port, the only Excursion in this town was the folkloric show depicting the festivity after Carnaval. For 3 days they carry on a traditional street parade full of floats, music, drums, singing and a great deal of dancing. The show depicts a long-told folk tale, where a cowboy kills a prized bull for his pregnant wife, who craves ox tongue; facing death by the landowner, he is ultimately saved when a shaman brings the bull back to life.

We decided to head into town before the show to explore and see if there was anything worth while purchasing. After we went through the market area they had setup outside the center where the performance would be held we still had some time to kill so we went to the waterfront where they had some statues.


While we were over taking pictures of the statues we were approached by 4 young adults, 2 girls and 2 boys. We were a bit surprised and unsure what they wanted and then one of them explained they were students learning English and asked if they could practice with us. We of course said yes and a couple minutes later their teacher came over to see how their conversations were going. They started by asking basic questions like our names and if this was our first trip to Brazil. We talked to them for ~30 minutes and Kim and Lam some friends from the ship joined in for a couple of minutes. We asked them several questions like why did they feel it was important to learn English and they all had some excellent answers mostly in regards to potential careers. One of the students wanted to be a lawyer, another wanted to be a flight attendant. We took pictures and the boys of course were camera shy.

Well we made our way to the performance and got some seats in the back and getting pictures was a challenge but the show was amazing. The colors and the movement of these large characters by individuals was so hard to believe.
 

Friday, December 2, 2022

Manuals Day 2 (Highlights of Manaus)

So this was an early day since we got to bed after midnight but we made it through breakfast and to the tour on time. One of these days we will learn these type of tours our not our thing. The tour guides they use are always so proud of their cities and spend way too much time talking about stuff to the smallest detail. This was the same as some of our tour guides in Greece where they couldn’t walk and talk at the same time and you spent a large amount of time standing in front of a tree or something like that while they told you the story of rubber. This excursion began on a bus after the tender ride in from the ship, was nice to be on an air conditioned bus instead of a hot river boat. Our first stop was the Opera House, this was in the main square where it was fun to see all of the Christmas Decorations.

We now went into the Opera House and it was beautiful, makes you realize what a boom town this city was in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s when the rubber industry was at its peak. The Opera House was constructed in 1896, in the main concert hall if you look up at the dome it is the view as if you were under the Eiffel Tower in Paris. The curtain is the original one and was created in Paris and depicts the meeting of the waters, Rio Negro and the Solimoes to form the Amazon. The curtain was opened by hand and was never folded as it was lifted straight up into the dome.



We were fortunate that there was an orchestra practicing while we were touring and they let us observe them from the boxes. They were practicing for a Christmas performance and this was our first realization that Christmas was almost here.
Our next stop was an indigenous wildlife refuge, there really were not any pictures worth displaying from this place, it was in awful shape and I felt so bad for the animals that were being kept there. After that stop we were heading to the Military Zoo which is a wildlife refuge outside the city. This place was much nicer than the wildlife refuge, it is actually a Military training facility, Brazil has a 1 year compulsory military service at the age of 18. We were all a bit confused with why they have a training facility where military personnel are caring for the animals. I guess when you don’t fight too many wars it is good training for the youth on how to treat and respect native animals in the region. We didn’t get too many pictures in the zoo as we were a bit exhausted and hot and pretty much did a quick tour and got back on the Air Conditioned Bus.
This was our last stop and the bus returned us to the port where there was a tender waiting for us along with some cold wash cloths. So we said goodbye to Manuas and on to our next stop the small town of Parintins.



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, thi...