Bonaire.

We arrived in Bonaire the next morning pretty late - 11am - so we were all awake and fed in time to watch our progress coming into the port.





Mom stayed on board, I think to chill out and possibly have another session with Zee, while Mark, Dad and I went on shore to see if we could find a way over to Klein Bonaire. It's a little island off the coast of Bonaire that is meant to be good for snorkeling. Mark and I had managed to finally get our hands on some snorkeling equipment, and Dad had his already, so we were all set.

Bonaire had lots and lots of excursions going on, including one on a "historic Dutch" sailboat. I think we had considered going on that one, but we were all glad we didn't when we saw everyone packed on there like sardines:


Anyway, thanks to the Canadians that Mark and I had met on Grenada - who we also ran into on Bonaire - we were able to find a place that offered a water taxi over to Klein Bonaire. It was an open air bar with a little dock in the back.




We got on the boat, which was a bit of a squeeze because of the number of people wanting to go over, but it was fine.



Our captain and first mate were originally from Holland. Since Bonaire is part of the Dutch Antilles, it's a popular place for Dutch expats.




Klein Bonaire was a big, wide, white sand beach, with bits of dead coral washed up here and there. It was pretty nice and we had good weather for a morning on the beach. Quite a few clouds, but still very warm and pleasant.



We found a spot away from the other excursions that had made it to the beach and put our snorkel gear on. There ended up not being all that many fish where we were, which could have been the bit of island we were on, or maybe Klein Bonaire isn't that good for snorkeling after all. The live coral that was still around seemed to be suffering a bit - probably from the sheer numbers of tourists like us.





One of the attractions was a pelican that was feeding around the bit of beach we were on.



Mark took this nice picture of it in flight:


Mark and Dad stayed on for a while longer, but I caught a water taxi back to the main island, in order to meet up with Mom for our afternoon excursion to Bonaire's Butterfly Farm. We were collected just off the boat, and got into a minivan to ride to the farm. There were seven people in our group, including Mom and me.




All around the interior of the island are masses and masses of cacti. It's pretty amazing. It's what I always thought Arizona looked like, based on Road Runner cartoons, but Arizona never seemed to look like that. I realize now that the Road Runner actually lived on Bonaire.





This is the Butterfly Farm, which is run by a Dutch family:



...and we did, in fact, see butterflies:





Here's a picture Mom took:



After the visit to the Butterfly Farm, we sat around a bit and then got back in the minivan and the driver took us on a little tour of a few other parts of the island, including an area with the famous mangroves:


It had some nice covered seating areas:




We also stopped a place where we got a nice view of our boat (the guide obviously knows how to cater for cruise ship people!):




Meanwhile, Dad and Mark made their way back from Klein Bonaire and headed off to their shore excursion - land sailing. They had only a short introduction and then they were off.








Mark said that Dad started out by taking it easy, but then started lapping everyone by the end. If you zoom in on this picture, you can see Dad has a big smile on his face - I think he was having a good time!! We have a short video that Mark took of Dad zooming around - I think he goes up on two wheels at one point!





Mark really enjoyed it too, and as soon as we were back in Clevedon, he found out how much it costs to get one of those land yachts (about £1500, new). There is actually a club on Brean that does it regularly - it's a big wide beach with lots of wind, so it's a good place for it. Not as ideal as Bonaire, though!

Next stop is our final one - Aruba!

Grenada.

Our next stop was Grenada. This was our shortest day in port, only from about 9am to 1pm, I think because of the time it takes to get to Bonaire, which is all the way down right off the coast of Venezuela. I'm planning to do a post or two of just on-and-around-the-ship photos, so I haven't been including them in this chronological account. That means that this post is a bit short on shots, since we didn't do much out on the island.

Team Horn and Team Vallentine went separate ways in the morning and met up again in the afternoon. Pictures from that afternoon's activities (drinking cocktails and playing a card game) will be included in the later post, so we only cover the morning here.

If I remember correctly, that was the morning that Mom and Dad had their first "detox" session with Zee, so they were on the ship for most of the morning. I think Dad went on shore briefly at one point, and I think this photo is from that jaunt. Would you like to add anything, Dad?:




Mark and I headed off to find our way to one of the beaches I had read about, in order to maybe do some snorkeling, or at least laze around a bit. So we went in search of a taxi to take us to the beach, which wasn't within walking distance, especially in the short time available to us. We wandered around a bit looking for a place to rent snorkeling equipment, which we hadn't brought with us. We were hounded by a few taxi drivers, but none quite caught our fancy, and we still hadn't found any equipment. So we wandered around some more and then eventually gave up on finding any.

We then went to the "official" taxi rank and stood there for around 10 or 15 minutes while all kinds of chaos happened around us. We didn't want a tour of the whole island, so the guy running the show was having a hard time finding someone to take us, especially since the drivers tended to wait until they had a full car to set off. I later worked out that I think we were actually at the island's "bus station" rather than an actual taxi rank, so they weren't taxis at all, but informal buses going to various destinations.

We had been trying to get someone to drive us to where we knew a dive shop was, and then take us to the beach we wanted to try, all of which was very close to each other, and not that far from where we were, if you were driving. We eventually realized that asking for this was equivalent to asking for a large yak wearing galoshes that knew the Charleston. So we gave up and finally just asked how we could get to the beach we wanted. And the fourth guy we talked to said, "You take the water taxi. Through there."

We went through there, and found the water taxi. We had to wait for it to fill up, which we didn't mind doing, since we were good at waiting by now and we were feeling like we were making some progress. Our boat-person (captain, I guess), finally satisfied with his number of passengers, set off, so we were on our way:





We finally got to the beach we wanted, Morne Rouge:



It's a nice beach. Sandy, with clear water and lined with trees. I think some were almond trees and some were something I can't remember the name of, with poisonous fruit (our captain warned us against those). We didn't have any snorkeling equipment, but it turned out to be OK, because some Canadians who shared our water-taxi with us did, and when we saw them on the trip back they said that there hadn't been anything at all. I did swim a bit, and if you could blow up this picture you would see a tiny head, which is me:





We stayed a couple of hours and then our water taxi captain had come back to pick us up, as we had arranged with him when he dropped us off. Which is a good thing, too, since I have no idea how we would have got back if he hadn't asked us if we wanted him to pick us up! (The picture is grey because I was experimenting with the settings on my camera again...)




On the way back, we stopped off at the other island again, to pick up more people, and again had to wait for the taxi to be full, which took a while. This is when I got badly sun burnt, since I wasn't paying attention to sunscreen at this point. We were there so long because there was this big conference of water taxi captains and a big hoohah at which our captain was at the heart. Someone who wasn't supposed to work on Monday HAD worked on Monday and this was a very bad thing.




This meant that our captain should get to take more passengers over the other boats, and should get to leave first, because the guy who wasn't supposed to work on Monday HAD worked on Monday. This is possibly the worst thing that anyone could do and it causes much slightly, but not overly, heated discussion. The result was that our water taxi went last and we were a bit later than we had hoped getting back to the ship.



But we still made it in plenty of time to get on board before we set sail, even though once we got back to the port, we weren't allowed off the boat until everyone had paid their water taxi fare. Still, not bad, considering...although it did mean that we were too late for lunch in the dining room and there were NO seats in the buffet area, because that was the only place serving food and everyone was on board at that point since we had such an early sailing time. No seats at the buffet was probably the lowest point of the cruise. But we recovered...

...because the next stop was Bonaire!

St Kitts.

So sorry it's been a while since I've posted...but let's keep going!

The next morning we arrived in St Kitts. This was the first stop where we had an "official" cruise excursion planned - a trip on the island's scenic narrow-gauge railway.

We soon learned that official excursions tend to start like this - a long line:




Everyone on our excursion was eventually herded into shuttle vans:





for the drive to the "station," a big grassy area, which is where we first saw the train:




It's a doubledecker train, with an open-air seating area up top:




And a glassed in, air-conditioned, seating area below:




We were in the end car, so we had a little portico thingy at the end of the car. (I think it probably has a name, but I have no idea what that might be):




Anyway, we boarded the train, they passed out drinks of our choice (fruit punch, rum punch, coca cola, etc) and we watched the island go by. There was a nice lady doing commentary along the way.












There were a lot of fields of sugar cane, which are completely unused because it is no longer an export. Something to do with the industry being stopped because it no longer was profitable for the island (I think subsidies were stopped, or something, so the island could no longer compete on the open market). Dad might be able to remember what the commentary-lady explained. But here is a photo of one of them:




We also saw the prime minister of the island, who we passed along the way. Unfortunately we didn't stop, otherwise we might have been able to get clarification on the sugar cane issue:




We also saw some scenic goats, which I think had the greatest impact on our group (even more than the Prime Minister, I'm afraid!), since both Dad and I took almost identical pictures of them! Here's Dad's photo:




And here's my version:


We passed another type of tour of the island. A lot of people will hire taxis to take them around, or there are more colorful ways of looking around, like the tour bus below. You can't really see it, but I'm pretty sure the guy in the back seat was waving a spliff around for us all to see:




But of course, the best bit was the instructional sign in the train's toilet, in case any one was hoping to fill their pockets before leaving the train:





Next stop: Grenada!

Saint Thomas.

Early on Sunday morning, we reached Saint Thomas, our first port of call. Getting off the ship a couple miles from the main town of Charlotte Amalie, we had our first up-close-and-personal view of the ship.




A lot of the architecture in Charlotte Amalie looks pretty much like the picture I have in my head when when I think "colonial":




Once we got off the boat we took one of the open air taxi/buses:



To the Skyride, a gondola (or closed-in ski lift, if you prefer, or cable car, if it is one, I'm not sure, since there are some specific differences, I think) that takes you to a viewpoint high above Saint Thomas.




It was a bit tight in the cabin:




But the views on the way up and then from the top were very nice. In the second image you can just barely see our cruise ship, towards the left of the picture:






And here are Mom and Dad at the top (not that you can tell that they're high up, but the foliage is nice) :




Later we went shopping, since the US Virgin Islands are supposed to be a good place for good deals because of their tax-free or duty-free status, or something like that. Mark and Mom each ended up buying cameras (after we did the research at an internet cafe on the island, of course!), which we proceeded to spend the afternoon playing with, at one of our favorite tables by the windows in the buffet area.

This is the first picture taken with Mom's camera (notice Dad has not yet perfected the technique necessary for taking a thumbless picture with Mom's camera). Mom is holding Mark's new camera:




And here is Mom with her new camera. I took this with my camera, using its "color accent" mode. I found this mode when I fiddled with my own camera trying not to feel miffy that Mark's new camera was better than mine. I realized that my camera (which is still quite new, to be honest) can do some cool stuff! You've seen this next picture before, but it shows Mom's camera well, since it's bright green, so I thought I would repeat it here. The other image is just another picture in the same mode - it picks up the plastic cup quite nicely, you know:



And then in the evening we set sail for St. Kitts.

Puerto Rico.

As promised, here is the first installment of the picture calvalcade that is going to be beamed into your living room, detailing both the cruise and Dallas elements of the recent trip. I'm hoping that posting the pictures day by day will act as a soothing balm for the vacation withdrawal from which I am ailing and that the process will distract me for so long that by the time I've finished, the effects will have gone away. The fast flurry of Christmas planning that the Horns have just achieved has helped somewhat, but nothing beats going through photos for reliving the glory of a past holiday.

If you can't wait for the whole trip to play out over what may be weeks or even months of blogging (based on my past rate of posting), you can see a collection of photos from the trip at our Google album. I'm trying to use different photos for the blog than are posted on the album, since it's more interesting that way, and heaven knows we have enough to do it (a total of about 1550 photos were taken, across our four cameras, during the two weeks. I was the winner with the most photos taken - 646).

So here we go, I'm trying to stay light on the commentary, which means I won't make you sit through the harrowing account of our trip from JFK to San Juan, but pick up with our trusty travellers on the two glorious days in Puerto Rico prior to embarking the cruise.


This is one of the beaches of San Juan:




Our first main 'sight' that we visited was the Arecibo Observatory, the largest single dish radio telescope in the world. You might recognize it from the setting for the showdown in the movie Goldeneye:





Dad noticed that part of the telescope was wobbly:




So Mark had to hold it up for a bit, while they fixed it:





There was also an inside bit, with one neat exhibit (fog - below) and a video of a "Day in the Life" of the observatory, which was really sweet because it featured scientists Acting.




The next day we visited El Yunque, which is the only tropical forest in the National Park System (a fact of which they are very very proud). I just thought it was neat because I think it's the first rainforest I've seen. It's kind of a like any other forest, but with a few more dangly bits. And frogs that click.

Nothing says "tourist" like a fascinating array of sandals:



More from El Yunque:





(Notice how I cleverly framed this next photo so you can't see the kid who is climbing on the rock behind mom and dad. Yes, I'm proud of it:)





And then after the rainforest, we headed to the boat. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn on our way to Old San Juan, and ended up in stand-still traffic resulting from some kind of religious rally that was taking place nearby. It took us the longest time to figure out what was going on; no one's Spanish was good enough to translate the signs we saw (no one in the car, I mean, the Puerto Ricans around us probably could have translated, but no one would stand still long enough for us to ask, and none of the cars around us had their windows rolled down - believe me, mom tried to find out). All we saw were lots of kids dressed up in leotards with flags like in a marching band and giant dump trucks and things all convoying somewhere not very quickly. There was a bit of a panic that we would never get out, but of course we did, after lots of sitting and inching forward and "what could this be?" and "are we going to make it?" and "do you think we'll get to turn left up there?" etc.




And then, after escaping and driving a bit more, we finally got our first view of the boat:



And then the real fun began...