Eastern Caribbean Cruise

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On April 2, 2005, I went on the Celebrity Cruise Line ship Century for a weeklong cruise. The ship was small, subdued elegant. Our cabin was mid-ship, Panorama deck 8, a pleasant and typical ocean view cabin. I was amazed at the storage space and had to check everywhere before we left to be sure nothing was left in the many hidden shelves when we packed to leave. We felt a lot of movement and I noticed several people were seasick. Seas were somewhat calm and I felt fine. My roommate however, didn't.

Cruise ships wait on their own, and if you book your flight through the cruise line, they will delay departure if your flight is late. Because of this, we left port two hours late. I met the family that we waited for, and they never made the ship in Ft. Lauderdale, but were flown on to our first port of call, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Because of the delay in our Florida departure, combined with headwinds, our ship arrived in PR at 6PM instead of 2:30 as expected. Hmmmm.... We were scheduled to depart this port at midnight, but we were advised to return to the ship at 9PM for an unscheduled early departure. Not much time to explore and the sun was setting by the time we got off the ship. My friend and I took a taxi tour of the island, where we learned that the minimum wage is US$5.15/hr and college graduates are lucky to get US$7/hr. Most people work two jobs. (And Puerto Rico is supposed to have the most content people on earth!!) We learned too, that the courthouse is made of marble, inside and out.


Before we returned to the ship, we visited Senior Frog's nightclub and restaurant, where I met the manager. He was pleased to learn that I know the managers of the Nassau Bahamas Sr. Frogs and also the Cozumel one, and happily supplied my friend and me with snacks and a drink. We left with notes to deliver on my next visit to the Sr. Frog locations I frequent on my travels. Email is good, but there’s an excitement to send an actual letter through a personal courier.

We arrived St. Thomas, USVI, at 8AM and we were there with seven other cruise ships. A lot of tourists for one small island! We took a hurried $57 excursion to St. John’s Island, where Trunk Bay has a U.S. National Park. We took a ferry to St. John’s, and then sped up winding mountain roads in an open taxi tram to the park. It’s a wonderful beach, with underwater snorkeling path marked with plaques designating certain corals or fish that live near. What a surprise to learn that we’d have less than an hour to enjoy it all! My friend and I missed our bus by only minutes and had to tramp our way back to the ferry dock on our own. We hitched a ride on another bus and arrived at the ferries to learn that we missed our ferry and would have to take the public transportation, a $7 per person ferry to St. Thomas, that wouldn’t leave for a couple of hours. Oh how nice! We enjoyed peeking in all the little shops in town and bought sandwiches to eat later.

Once back in St. Thomas, we found a quiet stairwell to enjoy our lunch, then looked around town. Lots of shops, lots of people hoping to sell you souveniers. We visited a few, then time was up and we headed back to our ship before the 5PM departure. We each paid the $3.50 taxi fare to the ship, as it was not docked in downtown St. Thomas, but in a place called Sub Bay, the location that ships are sent when there are too many in port.

St. Maarten, the tiny Dutch and French island, was our next stop. Seven cruise ships were waiting when we pulled into the harbor at 8AM, and because there was no room at the dock, we had to be transported to land by a tender boat. An hour later, we were ready to take our $48 tour of the island and beach visit. The island tour was in a nice big air conditioned coach. There was a person talking into the microphone, but nobody could understand any of the muffled speech. hmmmmm..... We stopped to shop at Marigol, a French city. It had a few places to buy food and drink, nothing fancy, and hundreds of souvenier venders selling cheap jewelry, handmade crafts, and island clothing. An hour here, then off we went to Orient Beach. It was a nice beach with lounge chairs, an open air barbeque restaurant, and some naked people walking up and down the beach. Why don't they light? My guess is getting sand in places would be somewhere uncomfortable, but moreso I think they want to parade naked to say, Hey, look at me! No clothes!! My personal opinion of most I saw (I looked too!) was that they needed clothing badly. My friend and I joked as we left by hiding (bathing suits on!) behind a towel for a picture.

Our final stop was in Nassau, Bahamas. There is a straw market, and there are some wonderful shops to buy nice jewelry, perfumes, and cosmetics. I forgot to bring my note from Sr. Frog's. We went to the grocer nearby and I bought my 18-year old son (special request) a 6-pack of coca-cola made with cane sugar, not the American style with corn syrup. Oh, the taste is wonderful.

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