Only A Glimpse . . .

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Two weeks ago, when we had our charter cruise, the Liberty relocated our home port from Fort Lauderdale to Miami. Along with the relocation, the ship has made an itinerary change. We now rotate between two seven day runs - one in the Eastern Caribbean and one in the Western. With my contract extension, I get to have one cruise of each of the new itineraries, a nice little treat right at the end of my contract.

The new Eastern run takes us to St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Grand Turk and a new one for me: Half Moon Cay, Bahamas. Half Moon Cay (also known as Little San Salvador Island), is a private island owned by Holland America, one of Carnival Corporations' lines. It's southeast of Nassau and only partially developed. You have to tender ashore (take smaller boats from the ship to shore, because there isn't a pier for the ship to dock at). And absolutely everything for the passengers need to be brought ashore. All food services, all drinks, medical care, entertainment, it is all done by the ship crew, brought ashore in the morning and packed up again at sail time. This is obviously a massive undertaking for the ship crew. But any crew who had been there before only said how beautiful it is, how great the beaches are, how peaceful your day there can be.

So I was pretty excited.

But being our first time stopping there, and it being such a massive undertaking to stop there at all, the day was chaotic. Crew had been told we would only be able to get off the ship later in the day, around noon. No problem. I get a sleep-in and a day at the beach. Except when I woke up, I learned that unless you were working on the island, no crew were allowed off. Too busy. Too chaotic.

So that was disappointing.

I walked around the top deck of the ship to check out the island. Pretty small. But pretty. I took some photos. Thought about how a day at the beach would be nice. Definitely a pretty beach.

But you know, I've had a lot of pretty beaches. It's not time to complain. I'm still a really lucky kid. So I'm okay with just having a gimpse of Half Moon Cay. I still got to see it.

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