Darkavich's Daily Ramblings

Day 1: San Diego to Ft Lauderdale

We flew to Ft Lauderdale. It was a very long flight and we had to sit separate from each other. Once we got off the plane, it took almost an hour long trip to get on the shuttle for the hotel. I spent most of the flight reading on the Kindle. I finished Jill Shure’s book “Night Jazz“. By the time we reached the hotel, it was too late to go and get some food so we had to order Italian food  at 11:00pm because everything else was closed. The food was just ok, sort of sub-par Filippi’s.

Day 2: Ft Lauderdale sailing away

We got up for breakfast. The hotel advertised they had free continental breakfast, instead, they charged $10 for it. We waited for the shuttle to take us to the to the cruise terminal.

We arrived at the port and dropped our luggage, and went into the terminal. The check in line was really quick, and we waited about 5 minutes to be called so that we could board and have our picture taken.

The room was not ready, so we went to the Lido deck for lunch. I met a gentleman who was a photographer, Stu Lang. His web site is: www.stulang.com We chatted about lenses and things to do for sightseeing in Aruba that would be good photographic spots.

After lunch we wandered around the ship to check out where everything was. We visited just about every deck and discovered where the spa and fitness center was.

Our cabin was ready and we headed over to check it out. We met our cabin steward and then headed out for our mandatory lifeboat drill. Boy was it was hot! One person appeared to have a panic attack and had to take off her life jacket and get some help. I am not sure what was wrong, as I only witnessed from a distance. After the drill our luggage arrived and we started unpacking.

As we unpacked the ship started sailing away from port. I noticed that the port had at least seven (7) ships in port (That I could see). Two carnival, One Holland, Two Royal Caribbean, One Princess and one other I didn’t recognize the logo. As we departed, two other ships headed out ahead of us.

Our captain for this trip s Captain Peter Harris. He is a native of Leicester, England. He spent most of his early childhood in East Africa where his father was a harbor master. He started as a cadet with P&O S.N. company. He worked on both cargo and passenger vessels before obtaining his first watch keeping certificate. He obtain a Bachelor of Science degree as well as a Master’s Certificate and then obtained a job with the Princess lines. He worked his way up through the ranks and ended up being in charge of a Gurkha brigade during the liberation of the Falkland Islands. His ship was commissioned as a troop transport. He returned home for a more quite life as a ferry boat captain where he sailed between Dover and France. He returned to cruising with Holland America where he became one of their first British Officers. He has circumnavigated the world and traveled from the Arctic to the Antarctic circles. He current has a home in a village on top of the famed White Cliffs of Dover.

I was lucky enough to catch the harbor master departing the ship. This is always a fun sight to see. I recommend everyone on a cruise watch how they get off the ships. I headed back inside the cabin to finish unpacking. A friend of Angie’s had sent us a going away present of champagne and chocolate covered strawberries.

After we unpacked, we headed back ot to check out the Caribbean Deck BBQ they were offering as the sail away feast. The food was good, but the whole steamed shrimp was a little freaky for Angie 😉 I had to peel them for her.

The drink of the day was the Mohito. This was the first time I had tried one. For some reason I thought it would have crushed sugar, but I was thinking of a mint julep.  We walked around the shopping areas and I found some cuff links to were with my shirt. We also got to taste some unique liqueurs. We will end up buying some, because they are quite inexpensive and you know what that means… Tasting at my house!

We sat in the lounge bar to wait on dinner. At 8pm we wandered over to the dinning room. We decided we wanted the late seating for dinner. This allows you to get some rest if you take a long shore excursion before dinner. It seemed a little unorganized as nobody was there to take us to our table. We had to wander for a few minutes before we could find it. We joined four other cruise mates at our table. Al, Fern, John, and Kathleen.

Our dinner took a while, so we had to rush to the after dinner show. We found a seat at the back of the theater. They did some audience participation games. One of them was a golfing game that include Stu, the guy we met at lunch earlier in the day. Small world/ship 🙂

After the show, both Angie and I were dead tired so we headed back to bed and quickly fell asleep. I was so tired I fell asleep while importing the photos for the day.

Day 3: Half Moon Cay

We woke up to the lovely sight of Half Moon Cay. This is a private owned island by Holland America, in the Bahamas. The original inhabitants of the Caribbean Islands were the Arawak Indians, and they lived the peaceful existence of farmers and crop growers until the Carib Indians came along in the early 15th century. The Caribs hailed from South America, and just prior to the age of discovery, they swept up through the Caribbean chain island by island in their dugout canoes. They had no problem with navigation, because their next destination was always clearly on the horizon or at least just over it. The Caribs were cannibals! They provided two new words to the white man’s language: Caribbean and buccaneer. The first one is obvious, but the second one needs some explaining. The Caribs sliced and smoker their meat over open fires with grills called boucans. When the freebooters and privateers saw this, they coped the idea and so became known as Buccaneers. No sooner were the Caribs settled in their new home when they had the discoverers to contend with, and soon after that the settlers. Half Moon Cay is one of about 700 island that make up the archipelago of the Bahamas. It is located roughly between Eleuthera Island and Cat Island. It is a private island, owned by Holland America Line, designed for use by cruise ship passengers. Holland America purchased the island in 1997, and has develoed only 45 acres of the 2,400-acre island, with the goal of maintaining as much habitat as possible for wildlife.

We showered and dressed, then headed to breakfast. It was not as crowded as I expected. Most of the people had already left the ship. After breakfast, we went back to the cabin to get our stuff for the day, then headed down to the tenders. There was a long line, but once they started loading it was quick. On the trip over we had to wait because there was a medical emergency that required another boat to go ahead of us to address the emergency. Once they docked we were on our way again.

We sailed into the channel and docked. We disembarked and wandered around the village. We wandered over to where they were serving lunch and got a cheeseburger and some pork ribs. The ribs were very tender and delicious. The cheeseburger was not bad either.

We went back to the information booth to start our shore excursion. When we arrived, they had canceled the excursion because the currents were too strong. 🙁 There is something about Kayaking that just doesn’t agree with us. We have a couple other stops we can try again, but I am not holding out any hope. I even brought my waterproof housing for my camera so we cold go underwater with it.

We had a seat at the local patio bar and had the drink special of the day, custom margarita’s (made with sprite, very strange). They definitely pour a strong drink though. After relaxing for an hour or so, we headed back to the ship. We went back to the cabin and promptly took a nap. We got up an hour or so later and wandered out for afternoon tea. The area that they were serving tea was all full, and we didn’t want to wait thirty minutes or so for a table to free up, so we headed up to the Lido deck for a late lunch. They had Asian and Italian food. The sushi was good, but nothing like Yoshi Sushi at home.

After lunch we split up and I went to play bingo and Angie went to a culinary presentation on Hors D’oeuvres. (kind of a switch, huh?). Angie joined up with me half way through the game. No winner today. After the game we headed back to the cabin to plan the next few shore excursions and dress for dinner.

We headed out for the pre-dinner show. The line up was Mikey Finn and Cathy Reilly a world famous Banjo player and former Miss Delaware. She is also the first female elected into the banjo hall of fame. I didn’t even know such a thing existed. After dinner, we strolled back to the room. We wanted to get to bed early because we have a full day at sea tomorrow.

When we got back to our room, they had made a towel animal and put it on our bed.

Note: I was hoping to get the entire newsletter done all at once, but I am having a hard time finishing it as a whole. I decided to take it a few days at a time. This way you will be able to at least get a few days at a time. I will try to finish a few days at a time. I am also very unhappy with how this has come out with the image layout and formating. I am going to be looking for a new vacaction bloging software.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 5:47 pm and is filed under Panama Canal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.