Lazy Days in the Caribbean

Friday, January 12, 2018 The last several days have been wonderfully relaxing days, luxuriating in the 80 degree weather, reading, and occasionally glancing at the lousy weather back home. Wednesday morning our ship ship docked in St. Lucia. In the morning we took a break from the busy work of relaxing to walk about the town of Castries, the capital of St. Lucia. The market was a short walk from our pier and was a typical market with a mix of souvenirs and food stalls. The food stalls were of interest as there were a wide variety of fruits with which we were not acquainted.

We did have an interesting encounter with a clerk at the post office. Tim asked for a stamp to mail a post card and was told it would be 80 cents. He handed the clerk 3 quarters and a nickel which the clerk handed back saying they only accepted West Caribbean dollars. Tim explained that he had no West Caribbean dollars at which point the clerk handed Tim the stamps and said it was okay. Rob - would a clerk at a U.S. Post Office be as generous with a visiting foreigner?

View from Stoney Hill

In the afternoon we took a two and a half hour tour of the island. The tour included a visit to a place called Stoney Hill. This was a private residence high on a hill that had a beautifully commanding view of the Caribbean as well as gardens around the house that were much more impressive then the botanical gardens we had visited in St. Kitts. There was also a small orchid house on the property that had a small but stunning collection of these lovely flowers. The owner of Stoney Hill, a proper Englishman, personally welcomed us to his home. We were offered punch and a kind of fish cake that is local delicacy. Bananas are a major crop in St. Lucia, so when we were offered Banana Catsup to put on our fish cake it would have been rude not to accept. It was actually quite delicious. While enjoying our snack, we were serenaded by a young man playing a steel drum. It was actually a steel pan according to our host but sure looked and sounded like a steel drum to us. If it walks like a duck.....etc., etc. The fact that it rained the whole time we were at Stoney Hill did nothing to diminish the beauty of the home and surrounding gardens. The rest of the tour was a scenic drive around the island with frequent stops to point out fruit trees. We know that sounds a bit boring but was, in fact, quite interesting.

Orchid House

Thursday we were in Bridgetown, Barbados. We had booked a morning tour of Bridgetown and surrounding area that Tim hoped would include a drive by of Sandy Lane, an exclusive golf resort where Tiger Woods wedding with Elin Nordegon took place. However, Tim was not feeling well Thursday morning (he may not have needed the extra glass of wine or the Tiramisu dessert the night before) so we skipped the tour. In the afternoon, with Tim feeling more up to speed, we took a taxi from the pier into Bridgetown. Bridgetown, at least the part we walked about, was not particularly attractive. There seemed to be few shops of interest although we did venture into an art gallery where a painting caught our eye, but not enough to buy it. Wrong color of blue! It did not help that the temperature was 86 and very humid. As we write today's blog we are in Pointe-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe is a Department of France, which means it comes under the direct rule of France, probably having a Governor General that oversees the government in Guadeloupe. It also means Guadeloupe is a member of the European Union and the Euro is the official currency. We took a tour this afternoon that took us through the city center of Pointe-a-Pitre, a truly ugly city center, out to the eastern end of the island. The first stop was St. Francois, an ocean-side resort town according to our guide. We would disagree. The purpose of our stop was a city market. This was a market for the tourists, unlike the city markets we like to visit where you see many locals. It had the usual touristy stuff: jewelry, clothing, crafty stuff. Evidently, we were the last bus of the day because, as we left, vendors were already taking down their booths.

City Market

Next stop was Pointe des Chateaux at the very eastern tip of the island. There was a castle nearby and a cross stood at the top of a hill overlooking the ocean. This is where Columbus landed in 1493. Apparently he stayed about a year and there were no other visitors for nearly 200 years. Again here the original settlers were Indians from South America who arrived by canoe before Christ. Beautiful scenery and a beautiful beach. Our last stop was Pointe a Cabrits, another beautiful beach, this one with a bar. Then it was back to the boat. The guide told us that there is a Club Med and a Scandals resort on the island. From our perspective, the beautiful beaches are the best thing to recommend about Guadeloupe.

Pointe des Chateaux, Guadeloupe

St. Kitts

January 9, 2018 The pier where our ship docked this morning may be one of the ugliest piers we have experienced in all of our travels. As we left the pier in our excursion transportation we were surrounded by containers either waiting to be loaded on a container ship or having already been off loaded. Our excursion vehicle was a small bus but without any windows, although it, fortunately, did have a roof. We were on our way with 10 other passengers to a Botanical Garden located on the Romney Estate, named after the British Earl of Romney. At one time this was one of the largest sugar cane plantations on St. Kitts. However, as the price of sugar went down over the years the sugar business in St. Kitts went into decline to the point that it is pretty much now nonexistent. The garden was not particular large but did feature many lovely bromileads, bougainvillea and even some poinsettia growing as a large shrub. The centerpiece of the garden was a huge 500 year old tree, fondly called "the tree" by the locals. The original house on the plantation now contains a studio and shop for the making of Batik. Batik is a process of dyeing cloth which is used for all manner of clothing as well as art work. The process starts with a whole piece of cloth on which an artist sketches the design for that particular piece. Then one of the workers puts wax over everything on the cloth that is not to be dyed. After drying the wax is removed and the whole process repeats in preparation for a different colored dye. This is done up to 5 times for different colored dyes. The resulting product is really quite beautiful. The next part of the tour was a walk through a tropical rain forest. When our guide started passing out walking sticks and suggested the walking stick was our new best friend on the walk, Lynda decided to stay on the bus. (Actually is was the sandals I was wearing - never thought about needing closed toe shoes but the locals near us told me I'd be crazy to try the walk with the shoes I had on. Lynda) It was a good decision on her part as the walk lasted an hour and a half and was quite rugged. The narrow path we followed was up and down fairly steep hills. It followed a stream most of the way. There were several brief rain showers during the walk but because of the canopy of the trees we did not get wet. We saw several very impressive ficus trees, one of which was at least 50 feet from the stream with a root that reached the stream. It was a gorgeous but exhausting walk. Our guides thoughtfully provided us with a fruit punch with a shot of rum at the end of the walk. (They included me in that! L.) The garden/rain forest was about a 25 minute drive from our ship, which took us by a university-level nurse training school and a veterinarian college. We also drove through several villages, most looking rather poor. We did have spectacular views of the ocean. Tomorrow it is on to St. Lucia.

Greetings from aboard the S.S. Viking Sea

January 8, 2018 As we write this we are located in Frederiksted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands on the third day of our 11 day cruise through the West Indies. We booked this cruise last summer and then in the fall watched the coverage of Hurricane Maria with our itinerary in front of us checking off each island on the itinerary as it was reported to be destroyed by the hurricane. We received periodic emails from Viking Ocean Cruises assuring us that our itinerary was still good to go. Two weeks before the cruise Viking announced that our first port of call after leaving San Juan, Puerto Rico had been changed to Frederiksted in the U.S. Virgin Islands from our port of call in the British Virgin Islands. Flying into San Juan on Saturday, we observed from our plane a significant number of houses with blue tarps covering damaged roofs. The driver of our bus from the airport reported that almost 50% of the country was still without power. He also told us his was one of the "blue roof" houses. He had been told power and water repairs would be done by April but seemed unsure that that was going to occur. The Viking representative on the bus indicated that repairs were slow because of both a lack of contractors and materials. On our Sunday tour our guide pointed out the main power station that provided power for San Juan and reported that it had come on line just 3 weeks ago. He gave no indication of where power came from before then. Our tour was in the old town of San Juan and suffered less damage then other parts of the city because of the type of construction used during the building of this area. All of the Puerto Ricans we encountered thanked us vociferously for still choosing to come to their country for our vacation. In Frederiksted, Lynda stayed on board our ship while Tim did a walk about. There was little to see in this village. Tim saw palm trees that had been damaged. He walked through a veterans park that had small obelisks for each branch of the military serving as memorials for those who lost their lives in service to our country. Several of the memorials had lost marble panels. In one of the shops Tim visited, the shopkeeper told him that she was still without power but crews were working in her neighborhood so she hoped to have power soon. She did say that 90% of the island did have power and that overall the island had recovered from the storm much quicker then they had originally been told. That's enough serious news. Let's get on to the fun stuff. Saturday was long travel day for us. Our flight out of Detroit left at 6:00 a.m. so we chose to stay at a hotel near the airport Friday night. We left our hotel Saturday morning at 4:00 in below zero temperatures. After a short layover in Atlanta where it was 18 degrees, we arrived in San Juan at 2:15 with temperatures in the mid 80's. By the time we collected our baggage and bused to our ship it was 4:00. We spent the rest of the day unpacking and exploring the Viking Sea. Some of you may remember that we sailed this same ship last January on our cruise from Rome to Barcelona. Sunday morning we took a two hour walking tour of the old town area of San Juan. We saw an interesting mix of architectural styles from fortresses that were built 400 years ago to a church whose facade looked strikingly like the facade of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, to a beautiful art deco building from the 1920s which was the first skyscraper built in San Juan. One of the highlights of the tour was visiting the Cathedral of San Juan, the 2nd oldest Christian church in the western hemisphere. It also is the resting place for the explorer, Ponce de Leon. This cathedral was not as massive as those we have visited in Europe but it was equal to these cathedrals in its beauty. We were there during mass and were surprised by the informality of the service. The singing of hymns was accompanied by several musicians playing mandolins. It had the feel of what we would in the states call a contemporary service. Our guide explained that this music was actually played only during the celebration of Christmas. As mentioned on a facebook posting, the Festival of the Three Kings, Epiphany back home, is as important a celebration as Christmas day, with gifts exchanged on both days. In the gift shops we visited we saw more small statues of the Three Kings than we did Manger Scenes. One of the statues actually showed the Three Kings playing bongo drums!

Sunday night we dined in one of the specialty restaurants, the Chefs Table. The menu is a five course fixed meal with a different wine pairing for each course. We had dined in this restaurant on our last cruise and had not been particularly impressed but decided to give it another try. We were glad we did. Our sumptuous meal included tomato and watermelon gazpacho, grilled scallops with beet root and passion fruit, prosciutto and cantaloupe granita as a palate cleanser, veal tenderloin with pumpkin sauce and red onion marmalade, and a strawberry and basil delight: Grand Marnier bavarian cream accompanied by basil jelly and strawberry sauce. It was a delightful meal. After dinner we arrived at the theater in time for the Captain's welcoming party. The Captain introduced the senior staff and then we all joined in a champagne toast. After the toast we were presented with a sample of the entertainment that would be appearing in the theater during the cruise. We had been impressed with the entertainment on our Viking cruise a year ago and from what we saw last night it should be equally as good on this cruise. Today's (Monday) port of call, Frederiksted has already been covered earlier in this blog posting. Thanks for reading. More later.