Cruising the Western Caribbean

Saturday morning and our long awaited and planned vacation to the Western Caribbean was about to become reality. Our group of eight met at the organizer's home to begin our journey south on a really frigid morning. Unfortunately, the man who had originally suggested the cruise as a great way to celebrate the retirement of three of the men from Arkema, all with over 35 years of service , was unable to go with us due to the death of his brother on the day before we were to leave. His family made did make the trip with us though so we still had a good sized group to accompany us.Here we are at the Philadelphia airport waiting and waiting for our flight to take us to the warmer weather. Our plan was to get to Miami on Saturday and spend the night there before boarding the Carnival cruise ship, Liberty, on Sunday. I had picked out a few local driveby letterboxes in the area of the airport and the port but was not able to get to any of them due to timing issues. Guess I will have to make another trip to Florida to be able to add it to my list of states with boxes.

Here is the ship which we called home for a week.

And here we are with Miami behind us, ready to set sail.

Monday night was the first dress up night. Here we are at the Captain's cocktail party and later we attended the Captain's dinner.

Tuesday was our first stop at Costa Maya Mexico. We had decided to bypass the excursions in Mexico in favor of visiting the town and getting a feel for Mexico. However, what we were not prepared for was that this town was only a shopping center used by cruise ships. The only way to visit anything else was to get a bus. At least we got some exercise walking from the ship into the town.

The town was very colorful and the merchants were definitely into bartering. It was hard to know when to accept a price as being rock bottom. Personally, the bartering became a pain in the neck pretty quickly for me since I am not much of a shopper. Laura had asked for a Mexican blanket so we bought that and a few t shirts and baseball caps and headed back to the ship.

Definitely in contrast to Costa Maya was the well developed Grand Cayman island which we visited on Thursday. A friend who is a frequent cruiser had warned us that the prices here were very high and he was right. In fact, the American dollar was worth a whole lot less here than anywhere else we went. When we made purchases, the prices on our receipts were very different from the prices marked on menus and price tags so it was hard to guess how much we were spending ahead of time.We did get to visit Margaritaville - and it was definitely five o'clock there all the time! There are actually two letterboxes in Grand Cayman but again, time restrictions prevented us from looking for them, much to Bill's relief.

This was the formal dining room where we had dinner each night and the service was absolutely unbelievable. We had the same waiters each night. They had asked our names on the first night and after that, they addressed us by name every time they spoke to us. Our table was at the bottom of the steps on the left side, directly beside the little serving table. Each night the waiters performed a little show for us, usually on the steps so we had a wonderful view. Everything that you have ever heard about the food on a cruise is absolutely true - the food was excellent. I had made up my mind to try something new each time it was offered and I did get a wide variety of new foods. My favorite was gazpacho. Escargot was offered one evening and that was the only new food which I couldn't bring myself to order.

In addition to the formal dining rooms, there were a group of counters outside, around the pools offering different foods. There was a pizza counter, a buffet for each meal, a deli, a counter which offered a food of a different nationality each day, an Asian counter and of course, a hot dog and burger counter. I only had a few foods which I didn't like - the scrambled eggs were a little gross and one of my new foods - eggs benedict - truly disgusted me. Other than those, I have to say that one of the best parts of the cruise was definitely the food.

This was the view in the interior center of the ship. It was very dark but I think you can see the different levels. There were two shops, one a general store type of place with sundries and souvenirs and the other a jewelry shop. We quickly found out that jewelry is one of the most available items to purchase on the ship and at all of the ports. In fact, there were even classes held which told you how to buy the jewelry and which shops were trustworthy and which offered guarantees. Since I am not a jewelry type of girl, these were pretty useless to me, especially once we visited a jewelry store in Grand Cayman which had armed guards and doberman pinchers walking around. We were rather amused to have a sales person give us prices on Hamilton watches from Lancaster, PA, at over $1200. His justification was that they were very comparable to a Rolex which sells for $6000! Yeah, right.

One of the other levels in this picture was dedicated almost entirely to the pictures which the ship takes all day long and then tries to sell. We must have had our picture taken 50 times while we were attending various functions and we ended up buying none of them.

Bill was delighted to find the karaoke bar the first night out to sea and he visited it often. Each night featured a search for a karaoke singer for a particular artist. The winners of the contest performed in a show in the big theatre on the final night at sea. Bill tried out on the Frank Sinatra night but came in second place. After he went to the final show, which I didn't make because it began at 10:30 at night, he admitted that he was relieved that he didn't win because the show was before a very large audience. The crew had told us that this Legends Karaoke show is normally the biggest draw of the entire week.

The third best part of the cruise after the food was the shows which were given in the big theatre - the Caribbean Lounge. They ranged from comedians to singers to Las Vegas type shows and were all wonderful. I managed to attend many of these since they were offered at two different times and I was able to stay awake for the early one.

This is a view of one of the pool areas and in the background is my favorite part of the whole trip - Ocho Rios, Jamaica. When you look at the pictures of Costa Maya and Grand Cayman, you can see how flat the land is. Jamaica was absolutely gorgeous from this first site of it to the last one. The mountains there were green and covered with tropical trees and I fell in love with the area even before I set foot on it.

Then when we got on the land and met the people, who all seemed to be tall, thin and beautiful, I was even more entranced. Here a group of island women performed for us on the beach prior to our visit to Dunns Falls River. There were little dances and songs going on all day on the beach. The people were soft spoken and always had a smile on their faces.

Here is a view of the top part of the Dunns Falls River. We had booked an excursion to walk up the falls and were prepared to walk along a trail beside the falls, much like you do at Bushkill Falls. Boy, were we in for a surprise as we found out that you actually go to the bottom of the falls and climb up them - IN the water. It was so much fun! We had a guide who graciously obliged us by carrying my camera and taking pictures at every stop along the way.

Hey, Mary, recognize the bathing suit!

This was our view most of the way up the falls, there was series after series of little falls to traverse. It took us about an hour and a half to climb and I was almost appreciating the climb that Sheba and I had taken on Haycock Mountain a few weeks ago as a precursor to this trip. I felt even better about the condition I was in as most of the other members of our group retired early that night because they hadn't had that much exercise in years and I was feeling pretty good.

We went up the falls in groups, usually in a human chain. Here is a picture of Bill as he is attempting to climb up and catch up with the group.

My parting view of Ocho Rios - and hopefully, not my last view of it. I am already planning a week long visit to the island in 2008.

This was us at our second formal night on Saturday - Mary, recognize the dress!?

We got back to Miami on Sunday morning but our plane wasn't scheduled to leave until late Sunday afternoon so we booked a tour of the Everglades. We got to ride in an airboat through the glades and the alligators and the crocodiles and it was really neat.

This guy was actually named - he is Monster, one of the largest alligators in this particular area of the Everglades. When we first spotted him, he was gliding through the water carrying a piece of wood. We were told that they actually build homes in tunnels under the land in the Everglades. Our guide gave us a pretty amazing statistic. If you walk through the Everglades, you have more of a chance of catching a disease from cuts from the sawgrass which grows there and walking through the dirty water than of being attacked by one of the 1.2 million alligators and crocodiles there. We went to a show after the boat ride and the trainer had actually trained a croc and an alligator to come when he called their names. And he fed them by hand with his face about a foot away from their snapping jaws - not a job that I would like.

Since we have been home, everyone has asked me how we liked our cruise and I have to admit most of the time, I was pretty bored. I guess I am more at ease in the woods and also more entertained there. One of the things which we did right was to get a room with a balcony. I spent a lot of time there reading because laying around a pool all day with hundreds of people around is not my idea of a fun time. Walking around decks with a view of miles and miles of ocean on one side and the walls of the ship on the other provided needed exercise but was not as rewarding as walking through the woods. I was also surprised and disappointed that we didn't see one beautiful sunrise or sunset. There was a haze over the horizon most of the time which blocked any colors from shining through. Of course, there were highlights, Ocho Rios was my favorite one but as a whole, it was not exactly what I was hoping for in a vacation. It was an experience which I am glad that I had but not one that I plan on repeating.