Saturday-
· - Flight from SLC
·
Sat on SLC tarmac for 30 minutes due to air
traffic control.
·
Missed our flight to Miami since we were late
but we got put on a direct flight to San Juan that only got in an hour later
than expected.
·
Once we got to San Juan, our bags were missing
so we set up to have them delivered to our hostel.
·
A cab took us to our hostel that turned out to
be less than mediocre.
·
It was crazy hot and humid all night long but we
got our own “room” (which was actually just plywood around two beds in a room
with 4 other beds…)
·
We ate at Denny’s for dinner cuz that is all we
dare try since it was dark and scary by 7pm.
Sunday-
·
We got up to take a shower in the nasty showers
they had. The water was heated as it came out of the wall by a little metal box
you plug into the wall.
·
We walk to a church building we found online and
went to church with the locals.
·
One of the 6+ missionaries, Elder Stout,
translated for us and he knew Melina.
·
After church we went back to collect our stuff
and walk to the bus stop
·
We ate at Denny’s again on our way
·
We were glad we took the bus because a cab would
have been expense and the bus was only $.50 each.
·
The bus took us straight to the cruise port. We
could see the ship even when we were still far away.
·
We arrived early but we were glad we did because
there were already HUGE lines.
·
We found out when we got onboard that a huge
storm was headed our way.
·
After several announcements we found out we’d be
leaving at 6pm rather than the scheduled 10pm so we could try to avoid
“Tropical Storm Irene” (which later became “Hurricane Irene”- it went through
St. Thomas, San Juan, and was headed up the Caribbean islands to southern
Florida).
·
Since St. Thomas got a hit, they shut their
ports so our itinerary for the week was changed. We are now doing St. Thomas on
Saturday and skipping St. Maarten.
·
Turns out the dining room food is much better
than the buffet…
Monday-
·
Sea Day
·
Welcome aboard party/dancing
Tuesday-
·
Sea Day
·
Woke up early to see the sunrise on the horizon
from the top deck (ordered room service
for 5 am breakfast J)
·
Tonight was a fancy dinner night so we got all
dressed up and took pictures at the stands all over the ship. We ended up
buying one of them J
·
Also, Vincent, our waiter sang us “Happy
Honeymoon” that night J
Wednesday
·
Barbados!
·
We woke up early to get ready and eat breakfast
before getting off the ship for the first time since we boarded.
·
We met our tour guides by “the tree with the
bench” just outside the cruise terminal.
Four people were late so we left them behind…sad for them.
·
On the way to our first destination, we picked
up four people that got into a car wreck in their tour van on the way to
Harrison Cave.
·
Our first stop was Flower Forest, another
popular site in Barbados. We took the self-guided tour and saw all the amazing
plants and trees from all over the world.
·
Next, our tour guide (the owner of the tour
company) took us on a ride to the other side of the island to see Cattlewash
beach (cattle used to roam wild on that end of the island and sometimes get
bitten by flies so they’d go into the ocean to rid the flies and sooth the
bites.
·
On our way to our next destination, we were
stopped by TONS of short-haired sheep blocking the road. They were mostly brown
with a little white and there were really cute little baby ones J
·
We stopped at Cherry Tree Hill (which doesn’t
actually have cherries anymore) and say two of the parishes on the island
(there is one parish for every district of the island)
·
Next, we went to the beach where we were getting
picked up to go snorkeling! Another tour had already started so they picked us
up and took us to see a wrecked ship with all the other people.
·
Then, our tour guides dropped off the other
group at their beach and took us out on a private snorkel trip to see the Sea
Turtles!!
·
We jumped in and there was probably 5-6 turtles
swimming in and out of view.
·
They made me so nervous when they got close but
they were really friendly and we actually got to pet a couple on their backs!!
·
Our tour guide brought out some food for them (a
dead fish) and they all came swarming!! We took lots of great pictures and
really enjoyed our experience!
·
Our tour guide took us back to the cruise
terminal where Alex bought a Barbados drawstring bag. We also just strolled
through the shops before it was time to get back on the ship.
·
We went back to our room and took a nap then got
up to see the nightly show and have dinner. The show was awesome. The guy
performing was a juggler and did all kinds of crazy stuff. Like juggle ping
pong balls with his mouth.
·
(Alex) I Loved dinner, I had an awesome
quesadilla for appetizer and Jerk Pork
with fried rice, then some really good, light cheese cake for dessert. It was
probably the best dinner I have ever had.
·
The servers at dinner danced and sang to “Apple
Bottom Jeans” tonight it was hilarious.
Thursday
·
St. Lucia!!
·
Today we went to a little shop on a beach of St.
Lucia to learn how to Scuba dive!!
·
We met our instructors at the dock and they took
us by boat to their little beach resort.
·
They had a beautiful resort with mountainside
beach condo and a dock for diving/boating.
·
Our instructor, Lester, got us all ready to
Scuba dive
·
We watched a video about Scuba diving skills
then it was time to get suited up.
·
Lester got us all hooked up with a wetsuit,
tank, tubes, goggles, etc. Alex and I couldn’t believe how heavy all the gear
was! (We also had weights around our waist to make us sink
·
Next, we got in the water and learned the basic
breathing and equalizing skills we needed to go under water. Once we got them
down, Lester took us just a few feet down to do all the skills. We both did
great!
·
Next, we finally got to go down!!
·
We saw all kinds of things like a giant
barracuda, a few lobster, a big polka dotted eel, big ugle fish, blue glowing fish,
schools of fish, crabs on the cave walls, coral, and long skinny fish.
·
Lester pulled a spidery looking crab out from
some coral and we got to play with it in the water. I think we got some
pictures.
·
Also, we found a small eel, snake-like creature
that we touched as it was swimming along. It was really slimy.
·
One time, I was trying to take a picture of Alex
and he accidently hit a sea urchin with his finger and it poked him! He said he
was bleed purple into the water.
·
We were underwater for probably an hour and a
half. We forgot how heavy everything was when we got out of the water. It was
hard to walk up the stairs.
·
After diving, we were served lunch. Alex and I
both had burgers for our entrée and we shared some weird appetizers. For
dessert we had a banana split J
·
Once we finished eating, we took out a kayak
into the ocean so we could snorkel around the base of the mountain/water edge.
We had a lot of fun taking turns to see everything under water.
·
We spent the whole day out at this beach. When we
were all down, we were taken back to the dock where our cruise ship docked. We
shopped around for a while they got back on the ship.
·
We were really tired after such a long day so we
took a nap and only got up to see the nightly show before dinner.
·
The show was call Vrooom and was basically a
musically of a bunch of well-known songs throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s. It
was pretty good, better than the first musical this group put on Tuesday night.
·
Tonight was an Elegant night so we got all
dressed up for dinner and even took a few pictures with the photographers on
the ship J
Friday
·
St. Kitts
·
We didn’t have any excursions planned for St.
Kitts so we slept in a little bit and ate breakfast in the dining room before
heading out into the city.
·
We ended up sharing a cab with another couple to
go to a big close by. We rented some chairs and an umbrella and just hung out
on the beach for a while, swimming and resting.
·
We tried to snorkel a little bit but the
visibility wasn’t very good. We ended up heading back to the ship kind of early
to shower then go out into the city.
·
I bought some big rhinestone earrings and Alex
bought sunglasses and a really cool St. Kitts shirt.
·
Our day in St. Kitts was less eventful than our
other port days but we still had fun.
·
The nightly show and comedy club was kind of a
dud too. That night the show was a magician but he spent 50 minutes doing only
5 tricks, making them pretty anticlimactic. And the comedian just wasn’t funny
tonight.
Saturday
·
St. Thomas! The best port!
·
We had such a blast in St. Thomas! We started
out on an open safari van headed to the downtown area. We stopped and shopped
at some of the little tents there and I bought a colored purse.
·
The shopping districts are all full of diamond,
perfume, and alcohol shops so we just browsed around until it was time to head
out again.
·
Our tour guides took us up to a few points on
the mountain where we could see out to the cruise dock from high on the
mountain
·
Then, we went to “Mountain Top”, a lookout point
over Magen’s Bay and other islands on the East side of St. Thomas.
·
Next, we took part of our group to Magen’s Bay
to do some swimming and laying on the beach. Alex and I signed up to do Coral
World so our guide took us there.
·
We had so much fun at Coral World! We saw sea
turtles, sharks, starfish, sea cucumbers and so much more.
·
We saw a sea lion show with a sea lion name
Romulo. He was really entertaining! We videoed the show J
·
Next we went to the Stingray feeding. We got to
stick out hands into the Stingray exhibit and feed all the sting rays as they
swam by! It was really cool. The stingrays would swim up the side of the pool
and we’d hold a piece of dead fish on the side of the pool under the water and
they would suck it up!! They we were cool. Sometimes they’d get really high on
the wall trying to get the food from us!
·
The stingrays were really slimy and soft J
·
Once we were done at Coral World, we went out to
Coki Beach, which is attached to Coral World.
·
We took our snorkels out and swim along some
rocks and the beach. It was SO clear and SO beautiful!! There were fish
swimming around us everywhere! We could see so far out!! I think this was our
best snorkel experience yet, our of 4 ports!!
·
Once we got picked up from Coral World, our
driver took us back to our boat and we went straight to the Carnival Slide we
hadn’t been to yet. We played in the pool for a bit then went back to our room.
·
We went to dinner in the dining room that night.
Our waiter, Vincent, has been awesome our whole trip!! Ironically, his assistant’s
name was Vincent too J
They were great.
·
That night, the show was after dinner since it
included some of the guests on our ship! They sang a bunch of songs by
different artists like James Brown, Garth Brooks, Sonny and Cher, Gloria
Estefan, and many more.
