Day 14 - Carnival Miracle Cruise (Day # 6)

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A fine & sunny day greeted us as we approached our 3rd and final port on this beautiful ship. Kerry & I went to the Phantom Lounge to hear the shopping talk and to try and get some freebies as Michael hands out Jewellery but no luck there.

The ship arrived at Grand Turk at 1PM. It docks at a pier very close to the beach. There was another ship at the pier the Carnival Liberty which looked to be bigger than ours and had come from Miami. This is a private beach area developed by Carnival Cruise Lines and it has all the major Jewellery Shops, Swimming Pools, Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville, Souvenir Shops, and Duty Free.

The beach area is just breathtaking with such water clarity and the turquoise colour. When we went on board I checked to see if there were any shore excursions still available and I was in luck as they had availability for the 4PM ultimate snorkeling adventure so Luke & I booked this.

We then went to Jimmy Buffet’s for lunch and it was cool (except for the fact they allowed smoking in the restaurant). We then did some shopping and Kerry got a nice new Diamond Pendant with Necklace at the Milano Shop.

The kids were pretty surprised when we went to Diamonds International as some woman was going off her brain complaining about something and shouting how bad the company was and telling everyone not to buy anything at the shop. Embarrassing for her I reckon but she may have a real gripe ?

We then went to check in for snorkeling tour but they told us it was now going to start at 5PM as the previous tours were running late. They gave us a 50% refund and now we were only going to one dive site instead of two.

As we had some extra time we headed to the beach and Kerry jumped in first. Water temperature was beautiful probably around 30 degrees. It was so clear I was looking forward to the snorkeling.

Finally left to do the tour and after a 15 minute boat trip we jumped off. The local guides told us they were going to find a grey nurse shark which they did and they then started feeding it. They brought it up to the surface where it was only about two feet away from us, and then Luke started patting it ! He said it was very rough surface like sandpaper.

The water was so clear I think you could see underwater about 20 metres in front of you. The depth was around 5-10 metres and we did a little diving down but the pressure is really bad when you do down that far.

One of the tour guides then told Luke he spotted a Lobster so he went down to stir it up then Luke followed to get a look and said this was really cool.

As we travelled back to the ship we saw Kerry waving from her balcony high up on the Ship.

We were the last group back on the Ship as we left and set sail back to New York. There are some photos to show how close the Ship docked to the beach but when I asked how deep the water was they said it was in the drop off area which is 7000 feet deep. It is hard to imagine how the water level can fall so fast in just 100 metres or so from the beach but that is why the snorkelling & diving here is so famous I guess.

Back on the Ship and we had dinner a little later around 7.30PM and I was starting to realise the dinner service was a little below par. You expect on these Ships the service to be high class but little things like asking for butter for the bread rolls and then having to remind the waiter again as he forgot, and then not even apologising is pretty poor.

Overall the food quality is good though, and the serve sizes are good. We had an Italian red wine with our Seafood Penne dish which had lots of Scallops and Prawns and was delicious.

We went to the Phantom Show Theatre to see a show but it was not what we were expecting and was pretty lame. An early night, time to catch up on blog.

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