Days 190 - 205: Crusing in the Southern Caribbean - Oranjestad, Aruba
Oranjestad, Aruba
Destination: Southern Caribbean (pronounced Krib-e-in)
Transportation: Cruise liner / floating retirement village
Number of ports visited: 8 over 14 days
Welcome in many of the native tounges: Bon Bini or Hi Mon
Random ship statistics - each day: 14,000 bottles of water sold, 15,000 plated meals served (excluding buffet), 60,000 sugar sachets used
Mum, Dad, Dave and I boarded the new sparkly Celebrity cruise liner where we were warmly greeted with a glass of champagne on arrival before being whisked away for the first of many three course lunches. That morning at the Fort Lauderdale Port, a mere 5 cruise liners with nearly 20,000 people disembarked then again embarked. It was the smoothest checkin process we've ever had. To feel like you're the only ones checking in, when in fact there's 2,800 beings on your ship, is quite something. After physically stuffing ourselves so much with tasty deliciousness we unpacked our clothes... in drawers. Those two things aren't something we take for granted. We caught up on the lack of food over the last 6 months and made up for it by gorging on copious amounts of free food, cocktails, wine and beer for 14 glorious days - where the calories don't count and tummies are sucked in for photos. If any cruise agent offers any type of upgrade, a drinks package is the one you want! As for our room; a whole room to ourselves for 14 days with our own toilet, shower, wardrobe, drawers, lounge and BALCONY! This room is something quite special even for people who haven't lived out of a backpack for 6 months.
It's been, rightly so, commented on how we were going to get away with fitting into the crusing scene with our backpacking attire. Thanks to my wonderful parents, who brought us over some 'normal' clothing, thankfully at tonight's formal evening Dave can wear a suit not boardies and I can wear HEELS not my normal outing shoes.. hiking boots. Those damn heels required cracking open the first aid kit for the first time. I wasn't expecting that to be for bandaids on the ankles though. Needless to stay we are easing into this lifestyle well, particularly the unlimited amount of free cocktails served under the sun on our private lounge chairs while passing by islands like the Bahamas and Cuba. I'll have to learn not to stock up food for the NEXT 6 months though. I ate so much on the first night I was sick then feel asleep in the show. Which was embarrassing because with the exception of mum and dad, we would be the youngest people on this particular ship by about 50years: zimmer frames roll by, string quartets play all day and being poolside next to 2,000 speedos filled with shrivelled peas and a droopy bean. Dave reckons there's more wrinkles on the deck than in his backpacking clothes. But in all seriousness its not so much about the age as mum and dad know how to rock and roll like the youngest of them, its more about the atmosphere of this particular cruise ship. This ship was once awarded the most prestigious award of all cruise ships and that she is, a stunning new $800m ship. However this brand is more about classy piano music aaalllllll day and not so much about the 'Ya mon' steel drum energy occasionally. It's like somebody has forgotten to tell the cruise director that we aren't at heaven's door, we are in fact in the Caribbean. Not to worry, I arranged a meeting with the cruise director and the four of us put forward our requests to liven this place up.. by putting some Caribbean swag into these old ***** before the morgue on Floor 2 swallows them whole. We are now on first name basis with the cruise director who has taken it on as her personal mission to "pump some life back into this place". Later on she spotted us in the oldies 'nightclub' and suddenly Caribbean music started playing and the titanic death quartet stopped.
At the end of the day, none of that really matters. We are here to enjoy quality time with Mum and Dad in both port days and sail days. Sail days involve a lot of food and alcohol. Here's a snippet of life on board our floating retirement village: champagne breakfast on Mum and Dad's balcony which takes us until lunch when we migrated to the extensive buffet restaurant on the deck. Then onto the pool deck for sunbathing and cocktails for me while Dave participated in Heston Bloomfield style cocktail making. If energy allows, Mum and I participate in 5 minutes of Zumba on the pool deck. No strain though as they've watered the moves down to cater for those with hip replacements. And for the boys, Dad and Dave's spare energy is used in a short but highly competitive game of ping pong. That was of course until Dad broke his arm! Yes, he now has a broken arm in a cast :-( We throughly enjoy the glass blowing activity (far better than that in Venice), and of course winning two separate raffles in 10 minutes can't be bad either. That's where my white hat comes from. The final exertion of energy is used to take the lift one floor to a four course dinner in the stunning dining room. The boys often have a double appetiser and double dessert so that's 6 courses! Without fail our 4 waiters knew our order from the moment we sat down. They would never let us leave without a dessert cocktail in hand. The after dinner entertainment at the theatre is always a bit of a non event, so I manage to get in some shut eye.... Surprised? Following the theatre performance we would often (the once) head to a party by the pool as our favourite band was playing. The theme: White Night. All guests are dressed in white and most even have hair to match. We left before it became a white 80year old's wet teeshirt competition in the pool - no wet soggy peas and a droopy bean seen otherwise we may have had to scratch our eyeballs out! (Remind me of this in 50years - karma's a *****)
It's not all about the shows, cocktails and food, it's about the destinations - after all, this is the 'Exotic Southern Caribbean Cruise'. First off the boat is ARUBA . I swear Dave only chose this cruise because of the Beach Boy's song about "Aruba, Jamaica Ooh I Wana Take Ya...."
Our mode of transport for seeing our first Caribbean island was a hired Jeep convertible. It did the job too, although it needed band aids to hold it together. A whip around the island was easily achieved in a few hours. It's very flat with more cacti than people. If it wasn't for the beaches, I wouldn't write home about this island. We had lunch in an 'authentic shack' on Baby Bay's white sandy beach. It was our first swim in the pristine turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea. The outside temps are mid 30s, complemented by the warmest water we'd ever felt. It felt very much like swimming in an ocean size warm bath tub. Even mum said so, and that's saying something.
I had a chuckle upon our arrival back on to the ship. Miraculously Caribbean music was 'finally' being played and upon our return to our room a bottle of vintage champagne awaited our arrival. It had a note from the cruise director attached saying that "we are listening to you". Caribbean music playing in the Caribbean - who would have thUnk it! In all seriousness, it irks us something shocking why rich cruise companies can't hire locals to perform on the ship on port days. They pay thousands for talentless yanks to fly over and perform just the once when they have talented locals on their doorstep who would shed a tear for $50 - one sees another chat to the cruise director is required. Then we'll see if she's 'listening'.
Throughout the world you'll see speckles of Dutch influenced architecture. Take Copenhagen Denmark as an example, one street of brightly painted buildings. Ninety percent of houses in the Dutch colony of CURAÇAO are painted in random bright or pastel colours. Reason being the Dutch king in the 1800s requested all buildings be painted this way to prevent him getting migraines as the standard white claimed to have done. It was later discovered that he owned a paint company! As the buildings are all made from coral shell, the paint requires reapplying once a year. The Curacao-ians aren't overly rich but you wouldn't know it. Our dutch guide said its that way as they're a very proud race which is why it's an immaculately stunning country. You've probably never heard of Curacao but I bet you've heard of the liqueur Blue Curacao. It's actually pronounced cura-so, not cura-kay-o. Unfortunately for this little island the Dutch, in Holland, have bought the rights to it and here in Curacao they can't export it off the island. The liqueur has alway been made in orange, red and blue with no taste difference. The blue colour took off and the others didn't.
The other thing I loved is their floating food markets. Every week the Venezuela-neese sail 12 hours from Venezuela to bring the Curacao-ians fruit and veges. The grower - come sailor, pulls up at the dock and sells his produce. If you're driving by, just slow down and the floating produce market becomes a drive through. It just doesn't rain here, so nothing grows. Like many Caribbean islands, ocean water is desalinated for an extortionate price, making the cost of living difficult.
Little GRENADA, but a big Caribbean feel. It'd be the last place I would have expected to first feel the Caribbean spirt. Steel pan drums, Rasta's with dreadlocks and colourful beenies shone through in the tiny backstreets of the countryside. The local radio only streamed Bob Marley type music, proving it wasn't 'just put on for tourists'. It doesn't feel as well kept, new and shiny as other places. It's a place where 90% of the country was affected by back-to-back hurricanes 10years ago. A tiny country of 100,000 smiles rely on two sources of income; the cruise ships delivering 3,000 people every other day and its exportation of spices. We all hear about natural disasters affecting countries abroad. To be in Granda today, 10 years on, you can see and feel how much they rely on tourism and strong vegetation. It's survival for them. They are still living and breathing it, long after we hear about a natural disaster briefly on the TV headlines. Here's an example of a country's determination. After the rain, there will be sunshine.
BARBADOS! Here's a place we've all heard of so expectations around its beauty were bound to be high. First impressions were she's quite a run down old island but the stunning sandy beaches and turquoise waters compensate. Like many Caribbean islands formally under British rule, their roots as slaves and it's abolishment is remembered. Even after 150odd years, the stigma still remains for some. There are government initiatives to rectify this including improving the literacy rate with free education. The country is now proud of it's 98% literacy.
So what is it that makes THIS island well known over the hundreds of other islands? I asked that same question to our full of life local guide. His response was of an interesting perspective. Last year a campaign hit Barbados through billboards: "what improvements have you made today - do 100 good things in 100 days". The mission was to improve the overall standard such things as politeness, morals and manners. The 100 days have passed, yet the locals are still living in harmony and are genuinely warm people. The warmth from these well rounded locals is being felt by the thousands of tourists bringing money onto the island daily. It may not be the most beautiful of countries, but the people's hearts sure are.
The cost of cruising can sometimes be the cheap part as it's very nearly all inclusive. Cruise companies make their money through overpriced shore excursions, like $50 for a trip to the beach! We learnt that lesson on the first cruise we did in Australia. This time around we have mixed it up and organised our own tours or hired a car. With 8 ports on this cruise, its easy to get wrapped up in seeing each one of the islands extensively when our backpacking budget doesn't allow for us to do everything. Arriving into the beautiful country of ST LUCIA we paid $55pp for a boat tour of the island and then realised our budget required us to ask for a refund and go on the $15 water taxi around to a neighbouring bay. This may sound like a very insignificant paragraph but this is our daily predicament: when to spend money and when not to. Otherwise you end up saying "we're only here the once" followed by a contradicting statement "we're only half way though this trip and so is our budget". As Dad has his broken arm, beaches aren't as enjoyable, so today they opted for a short island tour. I'm writing this paragraph lying on the sand under a palm tree at Marigot Bay. It's where the first Dr Doolittle was filmed. I can see Mick Jager and George Forman's houses. George's actually looks like his famous round grill. Dave is out snorkelling. He just saw a gigantic barracuda and other tasty fish. I like snorkelling too but not when I'm hungry.
ANTIGUA and its 365 white sand beaches was the one Caribbean island we didn't swim at. I was surprised Dave let me do an island tour by myself today, after yesterday's experience. Yesterday our prepaid water taxi didn't return for us from secluded Marigot Bay. Our only way back to the ship was a ride in a full on Rastafarian ya mon's car. This colourful Rasta's remedy for stressing was to just smoke some dope and "no problem mon". Surprisingly, we opted for the car ride not The Ride.
SINT MAARTEN or SAINT MARTIN is dependent on which side of the island you're on. This island has the smallest land mass in the world to be shared by two different nations. Each side has their own language, capital and airport.The Dutch on one side and French on the other, with a land size of only 58 square km. A treaty signed 350 years ago agreed that residents on either side can be commercially active on the other side without any red tape. This contract turns out to be the oldest, undisputed treaty in the world.
It's so small it takes only 1.5hr to drive around it. We hired a car to really experience both sides and it's as contrasting as day and night. My Mum always told me to say the positives, so I'll mention the Dutch side only. Sint Maarten is beautiful, well kept and pristine and very Dutch. It's one of the most popular destinations in the southern Caribbean for it's uniqueness and tax free shopping. Dave got an early birthday present, a Swiss watch from here. (he didn't want a pair of diamond earrings unfortunately). Maybe the French side is a sh*t hole (oops did I say that), because the cruise terminal and money is on the Dutch side. The French side does have a nudist beach though, where people in their late hundreds swim - not a place you want to be accidentally snorkelling at. Regardless of that, these two separate lives coexist in contrast but in perfect harmony.
Today alone, 6 cruise liners with 15,000 people and another 4,000 staff entered onto this island, home to only 112,281 Dutch, French and natives. The locals must look at the cruise ship parking lot and rub their hands together in glee. One of the biggest tourist attractions is swimming under planes arriving overhead at the Dutch side international airport. Due to its short runway, landing aeroplanes have to fly at unusually low altitudes, only 10-20 metres above the beach. Jet blasts from overhead aircraft create artificial waves. Cool place.
One of the biggest attractions for Dutch nationals living in Holland is flying over here to buy their driver's licence for a few dollars rather than getting it in Holland where hundreds of hours with a driving instructor is required.
And last but not least, the US Virgin Islands - ST THOMAS. There were 6 super cruise ships in the port today, each with between 4-5000 passengers. Except for ours with a measly 2,800 so we had to take tenders for the first time this cruise. Its an odd place really. As its a US island they have right hand drive cars but drive on the left like us normal folk do. The place its self is beautiful, but not my favourite with the brash American inhabitants. It is however supposedly the best snorkelling in all Southern Caribbean islands. We snorkelled straight off Coki beach. Within 2 metres of the beach its was like swimming in an aquarium with warm turquoise water. Pretty cool beach to end our 2 week island hopping.
It's probably come across as if we haven't enjoyed our 14 night stay on the Love Boat, but in actual fact we have. Its been the ideal way to see so much while eating every 18minutes. A great mix of relaxing sea time with the bustle of port days in between. It's interesting you know, after 8 islands, 6 back to back, you become very blasé and many islands become same-same. It's only after reviewing the photos and seeing how stunning these places really are that you appreciate it. We are so fortunate to have been able to see them, their people and culture. Of course the beaches just speak for themselves!
As for the cruise it's self, I loved the 'concept' of an indoor lap pool or gym but found more joy in reading a book on the balcony. Celebrity Cruises also have a real grass lawn for sunbathing and for events such as golf or wine and cheese on picnic blankets with live acoustics. We were fortunate to be on the ship for the thanksgiving day celebrations: an American style buffet brunch with 15 full size ice sculptures, followed by televised American football (Dave now knows the rules to that weird game). In this blog the Celebrity brand was 'slightly' mocked, but in all seriousness their entertainment and activities cater for a much, much older demographic who love it. That aside, we still very much enjoyed the two weeks. This range of new 5 star ships is beautifully decked out with exceptional staff and impeccable food. We, of course, throughly valued the quality time we spent together without forking out much money... Which is why we're going to do it all again next week!