Going Cruising Again Yippeeeeeee

Time to switch the blog over slightly, now it becomes my cruising blog. We're going to the Amazon in January.  Peter leaves before me, he sets off from Tilbury on Tues 3rd Jan just after the bank holiday.  I'll follow and join him and and the ship at Lisbon on Sunday 8th Jan.
We've found a brilliant TV article about the ship Travel Channel Cruise Today - Marco Polo, The actual cruise we are going on is here: Our Cruise.   Now I'm starting to really think about packing and stuff.  Peter will be taking my things with him, so I need it all to be ready when he leaves.  It's getting close now..........

The Amazon River taken from Santarem last time we visited.

Day thirtyfive, Saturday 5th March, Our last day onboard

So what does it feel like?  There is an air of excitement. Is it because we’ll be getting off tomorrow and back to home comforts?  Is it because everyone is waiting for the passenger talent show?  Nah, it’s because today is the day for the big exhibition.  All Peter’s students have given us pictures to display, and we keep getting asked what time is the exhibition? When are we putting the pictures up?  Do we need a hand?  All the students are dead keen.

We on the other hand are filling in time. We sat in on the ghost talk that did not convince us about ghosts, and then we happily sat in on Moss’s talk about the birds seen in the Caribbean and the Azores.  Moss is a good speaker, and fun.

Then we had lunch, and chatted to a few passengers, then finally it was time to get the paintings on the wall.  It seemed like the whole class turned up to help us, and it was a good job they did, because we would never have got all the pictures up in time if they hadn’t, remember this was a very large class, and they were working with Peter for 18 workshops/classes.  We covered every inch of wall we could find.

The area used for the display was the sort of foyer/reception area into the Neptune lounge and the restaurants.  Everyone had to go through there for something (especially as the passenger talent show was due to start at 3.30, and our exhibition was ready at 3pm.).  It was packed. out.

The “general public”  were genuinely impressed with the standard of the paintings of the class, and the whole occasion was an absolute success.  The students were happy, Peter was happy, and I managed to slip out and get cake whilst everyone else was “mingling”.  Superb.  I also managed to pop in on the talent show.  None of them are going to get a job on stage I’m afraid, but it could have been worse......... I could have had a go. The choir didn’t do too badly though.

Our exhibition is still running on.  We had thought to take it down about 4.15, but it was closer to 5 by the time we had started to get the pictures down. We delivered those that hadn't been collected by the students, (and got to have a nose in on the cabins on floors 7 and 8 - Dead nice!) Then we had to get back to our cabin to pack.  Then it was dinner, a game of Scrabble with Moss and Robina, which we thoroughly enjoyed, then back here to the cabin for a final blog.

Tomorrow we are back in Southampton, Monday I go back to work and normality.  I have kept this blog as a sort of diary.  We have seen so many things and enjoyed so many new experiences it has been hard to keep track. Peter has videoed just about everything and will make a DVD type film of our cruise. I have taken hundreds of photographs, we have hoarded all the Daily Times, information sheets, maps and details of the tours and places we have been, and as I said before, we managed to get a copy of the Ship’s DVD.  If possible, I don’t want to forget anything.  I can honestly say have enjoyed these last 5 weeks, the only downer has been rough seas. Would we do it again?  To the Amazon?  Oh yess!!  But not just yet eh? 
Final pictures are Peter in class and one of the exhibition this afternoon, and the pink dolphins.  I never managed to get an actual photo of these but I did take some film.  I have finally managed to cut a few stills out of the film to give an idea of how these creatures look.  They are pink, (and grey), have very long beaks, and a sort of floppy dorsal fin.  Cool huh?

Day thirtyfour, Friday 4th March, the last formal night.

Tonight is our last formal night and us ladies like to dress up.  We love posh frock do’s where we can go all out and get a new dress, visit the hairdressers, spend hours in the salon getting nails n legs n eyebrows done, and finally spend 2 hours getting showered, make up and dressed ready for the night.  The reason we love it is it is a rare opportunity to make ourselves look and feel real good. Us run of the mill, normal women look forward to those special occasions when we can do this.

On the cruise ships, we get the chance.  There is a dress code for every evening, and not one of them allows a pair of jeans or a Black Sabbath t-shirt, except mebbe on the first and last days of the cruise:

Formal means black tie for him and evening dress for her.

Informal means a suit for him, “informally smart” for her, (a small step down from formal).

Elegant Casual - trousers and shirt for him, “casual separates or summer dress” for her.

Casual is “comfortable attire for ladies and gentlemen, yet with a casual elegance”??

On this cruise we’ve had 6 formal nights, 9 informal nights, fifteen “elegant casual” nights, and 3 theme nights (western, tropical and british).  That’s an awful lot of dressing up and while it was nice at first, it eventually got to be tiresome, having to get changed for our evening meal every night.  You begin to wish for a “slob night”, and the dressing up has lost it’s attraction.  It was as much as I can do to get the frock out of the wardrobe.

Peter only brought 2 suits, his dinner suit and a beige one - no other trousers as such, just his combat trousers, jeans and shorts.  He’s just about worn out the trousers on that beige suit, because he has had to wear them most nights. (I insisted “Elegant Casual” does not mean combats or jeans).  Tonight he got his dinner suit out again, which at least gives the beige one a rest.  Tomorrow we are allowed to dress casual, since all our cases will be packed and everyone will be down to the clothes they are travelling home in. Jeans at last........Phew!

Overall today has been relatively uneventful.  We listened to Moss again, (on the tele), watched the dolphin racing and Peter’s last class had 42 people, who all brought their pictures to be included in the Grand Exhibition tomorrow.  It was nice to see how appreciative they were of Peter’s teaching, the compliments and thankyou’s were overflowing.  Really lovely.   The show tonight was the crew show, made up from the staff of the ship, such as engineering, deck, reception and housekeeping.  They sang, danced Philippine and Indonesian dances and included a couple of modern routines.  Good fun.

We have one more sea day, and we wake up Sunday morning back in England.  I am looking forward to solid ground, our bed and loads of space to walk in.  The ship doesn’t seem very big when you are on it for this long.

Enjoy the pics, the first lot are from Antigua. The one of Peter was taken as he walked off the ship as an escort for the “Spectacular Antigua” tour.  You can see now how he earned this responsibility.  It was taken by the onboard photographers, who charged us £7 to get it off them.  I’ve had to photograph the photograph to get it onto this blog.  Worth it though.

The responsible, reliable, sensible escort

Leaving Antigua

And I’ve added a few more from the Azores.  

Sao Miguel. The view of the east of the island from the top of the central volcanic crater

Symmetry. The old city of Ponte Delgada is a fantastic place to see

Day thirtythree, Thursday 3rd March, the end is nigh.

Another seaday.  The sea started out smooth enough, but has developed a bit of a rock n roll thing for us as the day progressed.  The captain did warn us that today would be OK, but tomorrow is gonna be pretty rough, but it will all calm down for our last sea day on Saturday as we get closer to Southampton.  That’s good actually, because Peter is organising an exhibition of everyone’s work for that day.  We don’t want everyone feeling too ill to come see.

It’s been cold and windy outside, so we didn’t spend too much time on deck, but we did go see Moss’s presentation about Africa.  We’ll never remember what he’s told us, but we can try.

We’ve spent loads of time in the cabin today, on the computers.  Peter is working, looking after his online students etc.  I spent the day going through my photo’s, of which there are hundreds, deleting the duff ones and renaming the good ones.  I’ve only got as far as Santarem so far.

Peter had a class of 41 today, and as usual they all seemed happy.  It’s “British” night tonight, which means we all wear red, white and blue (or your national colours if you don’t come from good ole blighty), and join in on patriotic songs in the Neptune Lounge.  Well done Sophie for getting Peter his union jack t shirt.

Anyway, because there isn’t much to say about the day, more piccies.. These are from Bridgetown, Barbados where we went to Harrison’s Cave in the morning

Gardens around Harrison's cave are lovely

These are from Castries, St Lucia where we did escort duty to the Mamiku gardens.  The view overlooking th port of Castries shows four cruise ships.  The one first left is a Royal Caribbean ship, second left is the Boudicca, which looks absolutely tiny, the third from the left is another Royal Caribbean cruiser and the little one furthest right is a Silver Seas ship and about the same size as ours.  The little cruisers carry around 850 passengers and 300 crew.  Those big monsters carry 3500 people.  Basically, they bring a small town full of people into a city or port.  Much too big to go down the Amazon though!

Orchids in Mamiku gardens

Spider orchids

Day thirtytwo, Wednesday 2nd March, Ponta Delgada, Island of Sao Miguel, Azores

We’ve had a really good day today.  We woke up to the view of the port of Ponta Delgada which is on the south coast of Sao Miguel, one of nine islands that make up the Azores.

Our first impression.......?  These people have got OCD!  That’s a bit mean, but this place is so different after the unkempt and disorderly Caribbean.  Everything looked so neat and orderly and in place.

We were on a tour today, so this morning we followed our escort out to the bus where “Connie” our Portuguese tour guide met us.  Lovely lady, very enthusiastic, loves flowers, English not brilliant, very cheerful and chatty.  She did our heads in after a while.  The tour bus took us first to a ceramics factory.  It did seem to be a working factory, but maybe not a very busy one.  Staff appeared in various rooms for the period of our visit, demonstrating the skills.  Hand painted really does mean hand painted in this case.  I have to admit, I would not have chosen to visit a ceramics factory ordinarily, but it was mildly interesting.

From there the bus took us through the countryside to the place Peter and I had wanted to see, the Fire Lake.  Interestingly, the countryside is very green and has loads of cows, (shades of England).  The bus climbed the 900 metres to the edge of the crater and stopped at a couple of sites giving magnificent views over the lake.  Glorious. 

Sao Miguel island is actually very long and thin, made up of 3 volcanoes in a row of different ages.  If I remember rightly, the one furthest east is 6 million years old, the central one is 60,000 yrs old, and the one in the west is 1.3 million years old (thereabouts).   From our viewpoints almost central on the island, we could see the eastern volcano/hill and both the north and south coasts.

The views were spectacular and our tour guide explained that the area was now all national park with conservation orders all over it, although all outdoor activities such as walking and climbing were being encouraged.

The bus then took us down to the small city of Ribeira Grande, where we were left to our own devices for half an hour.  A lovely, lovely placewith fantastic buildings and a lovely little central park, we could have easily spent a lot more time there.  Sadly it was time to leave, and we returned to the ship in time for lunch.

A quick meal, and then we dashed back out again to have a look round Ponta Delgada itself, which is the capital of the island and actually a wonderful city.  Everywhere we looked was a pleasure.  Like Madeira, the people used the volcanic basalt to create their houses and streets.  The streets and paths are made from basalt blocks and another cream stone in wonderful mosaics. 

The houses have ornate balconies and doors and are a pleasure to look at.  As were the churches and official buildings.  We were looking at the “old” city of course, we had seen the modern buildings of the “new” city further out during our tour this morning.  As we passed our fellow passengers they all said the same thing – “what a wonderful place”, most saying they wanted to come back.

Sadly we had to return to the ship which left the port at 4.30 this afternoon.  And that’s it.  The last port.  I’m slightly sad but also pleased to be getting home.  5 weeks is a long time, although I am certain then when I turn up for work Monday morning it’ll seem like I’ve never been away.

Day thirtyone, Tuesday 1st March, ANOTHER seaday.

We keep putting the clocks forwards as we make our way east towards the Azores and eventually, the UK.  Now we are only an hour behind British time.  This means that although we were dead lazy and got up at 10 this morning, if it had been 5 days ago, it would have been 7am. 

Amazon 17^th Feb Swallowtail moth onboard ship just as we were leaving the river.

Anyway, we woke up, and there was a distinct difference in the sea.  Not smooth, but definitely less rise and fall.  Everyone is feeling much better about it, and the sun even came out, so a lot more people were out on deck.  We still have the front of the ship and one deck closed off due to high winds, and the pools are still empty, because they just rock with the ship, create massive waves and flood the decks.  There is no way you can swim in them.

Today we watched the Can’t Cook Won’t Cook show which involved one of the chef’s and the two comedians.  I have seen this before on the Braemar, and it is fun to watch. We followed this with a coffee and a chat in the Iceni lounge, lunch, dozing in the iceni lounge and then Peter’s class.  Numbers have been down, but we had 42 today, and as usual they seem to enjoy themselves.  Then a cup of tea out on deck before the sun went in before coming to the cabin to chill.  We will probably not watch the show tonight, I feel a couple of episodes of  X-Files coming on.

Tobago 20^th Feb the Argyle waterfall again with Peter trying to get a better photo shot

Tobago 20^th Feb the stream from the waterfall.

Tomorrow we are in Ponta, on the island of Delgada, which is one of the islands in the Azores.  We have a tour booked which should be fun.  We were supposed to get there about 11.30, to go ashore about 12.30 and leave at 5pm.  Apparently there port staff want to go on strike, so now we have to get there earlier and leave earlier.  I think it works in our favour, and we get an hour or so in town after our tour.  We’ll see.

St Vincent 21^st Feb  Another view from the beach at St Vincent

St Vincent 21^st Feb Peter doing “the thinking man” impression

St Vincent 21^st Feb, a tiny little blue eyed gecko at the beach bar.

Day thirty, Monday 28th February, More Rough Seas

Now the captain promised us better weather today.  He lied!  The sea was described as rough to very rough today, not quite “A perfect storm” but enough to make the ship go up and down like a seasaw all day.  Humph! I am not liking it at all!  Seasick pills are being chewed as I type.

Today was dedicated to charity fundraising, the charity being an orphanage in the Philippines.  The first of the fundraising events was quite novel.  It is basically a line of coins started at the lowest level on the staircase. Passengers add their loose change and foreign coins and the line of coins climbs up the stairs.  The aim was to get it to the top floor (level 9) and back down again.  Well, by 13.30 this afternoon, it had already gone all the way up, and then back down to level 3.  So it was sent back up the stairs doing another circuit, I’m not sure how far it got, but there is definitely a load of money there.  Apparently all euro’s and pounds will be donated to the orphanage, and the foreign coins and notes to the RNLI.  We’ll find out later how much was raised.

As for the rest of the day - most of the normal entertainment was cancelled in favour of the “Country Fair” this afternoon in the Neptune Lounge.  There were loads of raffle stands and fundraising games.  Our favourite was the living fruit machine – 3 guys stood behind the bar with a bag containing fruit each, and one stood in front of it – he was the arm of the fruit machine- you lifted it and swung it down, and the three guys each pulled a piece of fruit out of the bag - 3 matching fruits and you won a prize.  Brilliant fun.  Although I nearly wrenched the guys arm off doing my “spins”.   Trying to get ping pong balls into brandy glasses also kept our attention, but we didn’t win.  

Peter did win a copy of the ships DVD in a raffle though, which is actually good, because there are clips in there that we haven’t managed to film or picture. 

The final event of the occasion was the auction.  There was a fantastic wall flower display made by one the staff, several photographs, two paintings by one the passengers, a painting by Peter of Boca Do Valeria, and a ship’s chart showing the route of this cruise signed by all the senior officers.  The last item was expected to be the chart topper and raise around £500.  As it happened, although everything sold well, Peter’s picture went for the largest amount of £420, and the map only managed £270. (How smug are we!).  And all for a good cause.   We will find out later how much the whole event raised.

More pics from the Amazon, except they are from the towns.  The first four are of the Opera House and surrounding building in Manaus – the area bears no resemblance to the rest of the city, which is teeming with people.  The last three are Parintins, the last place we visited on the river.  If you remember, this place does not have a dock big enough for the ship.  It was also the place we liked best – a cleaner, more attractive and more restful environment. You can play “where’s Peter” on two of them, but they do only show a back view. 

Opera House Manaus

I think this is a governers building or palace, Manaus

Parantins

Another Parantins street.  Bright and sunny 

Inside the cathedral, Parantins

Day twentynine, Sunday 27th February, still at sea

And it isn’t being very nice to us.  It’s been getting steadily rougher since we left Antigua. Today the captain described it as “very rough”.  The waves are quite awesome I suppose, and the wind is giving it some, so much that the decks have been closed off to save us getting blown overboard. Not pleasant really. I don’t like sitting inside, but you cannot really sit outside.  Never mind, the captain promises it’ll be better tomorrow.  Let’s hope so.

The reason I didn’t put the pics on on Friday was because the internet was playing us up, and yesterday I didn’t blog because the seasick pills make me sleepy, and I was in bed straight after the show.   Hopefully they’ll all go on today.

I’ve not done a lot over the last couple of days, except maybe sleep, I’ve listened to one of Moss’s bird talks, watched the new acts at showtime of an evening, and caught the tail end of the pianists classical show this afternoon.   I also went to see the Rosario Trio yesterday afternoon, - they were really good.

The “Rosario Trio” is a group is made up of a violinist, guitar player and a double base player.  When we were on the Braemar, there was a Rosario trio, but it was made up of completely different people to the one we have here on the Boudicca - they played background music. The trio here on the Boudicca plays of an evening outside the restaurants and is enjoyed by the people waiting to go in for second sitting, as well as those in the bar having a drink.  The trio enjoy what they do, and encourage people to join in when they sing or dance about a bit, they are very popular.  So popular in fact, that the passengers asked the management if the trio could have a show on the main stage.  The wish was granted, and they played to a full lounge yesterday afternoon.  As I said, they were really good.  So good that many of the audience gave them a standing ovation. (The night-time entertainers who are no doubt paid a lot more money don’t often get that).  They seemed to love the opportunity, and the audience really enjoyed the show.

Anyway, thas me for now.  Hopefully I’ll manage to the pics from Friday, and the one’s I’ve chosen today onto the blog.

All the pictures below were taken on our riverboat journey from Manaus on 14th February

Day twentyseven, Friday 25th February, Seadays, one down five to go

I have very little to tell you about today.  The sea swell has had the ship moving quite a bit all day, and loads of people have been feeling unwell.  I’ve taken a couple of seasickness tablets myself.  In my case it was more prevention than cure, and it worked, I’ve been fine. (Mebbe I would have been fine anyway, who knows?).  Peter of course is fine.  That man has a stomach made of cast iron, I swear.

So, because of the sea and its effects, I’ve done very little, except doze  (cos the pills make me sleepy).  I helped in Peter’s class again, but only 38 today –(the sea is making its presence known), then up on deck for a laze in the Atlantic sun. Not too bright this afternoon, and very windy, blew all the cobwebs away.

Formal night tonight, so I’ve got Sophie’s posh frock on again, and we watched the Boudicca show company do “Licence to thrill”.  I was really impressed with the singers, they did good.  We went to the Lido Lounge after that to listen to Pat Logan for a bit, then we took part in the “who am I?” quiz.  We got 16 out of 20, and Peter came up with all the answers.

For other info, Peter has been painting scenes from the Amazon, which have proved to be popular, and he’s also produced a painting for the ships charity auction on the 28^th Feb.  And because it’s a sea day and I can, I’ve added a load of pictures from the city of Santarem and the village of Boca Do Valeria on the Amazon, we were there on 12^th and 13^th Feb.

Riverside at Santarem.

Street in Santarem

Boca Do Valeria

View of Boca Do Valeria from Church door

Day twentysix, Thursday 24th February, St. Johns, Antigua

Awwwwwwww......  Our last Caribbean island, and only a short day while we’re at it.  Me n Peter are doing another tour today, “Spectacular Antigua”, as escorts again.  He went off on coach five, me on coach six.

As l said yesterday, I was quite looking forward to this one. Our guide was knowledgeable, with a sense of humour and kept us entertained during the 45 min drive to our first destination within the national park to the Dows Visitors Centre, where we were given an audio visual presentation that was really intended for the primary school children of the island.  But the views from the centre  were, as per the tour title,  quite spectacular.  

From there we went on to see the ruins of the British fortifications, the “Blockhouse Ruins” from where you could see Eric Clapton’s holiday home, and “Shirley Heights” which overlooked Nelsons Dockyard village and the protected harbour.  We could even see the island of Montserrat.  Again, the views were wonderful.  From there we were taken to the Nelson’s Dockyard, which is now a lovely marina and worth a wander around.  All very nice.

Then back to the ship to meet up with Peter for lunch, after which we took a quick wander around the town to get a feel for the place.  It’s quite nice near the Port, but the further you walk into the outskirts, the grottier and more tumbledown it gets.  We visited the local market, and on returning to the port, found bar with free wi-fi, which is where we spent our last hour until boarding the ship. 

A big brown pelican was diving for fish nearby, difficult to take pictures of, but I tried anyway. 

The ship left Antigua at 4pm, and as usual, we went out on deck to watch the island slowly drift away.  After that, exhausted, it was down to the cabin for a nap.  Later, our dinner was outside on the rear deck, and the show was split between a female singer/impressionist/entertainer, and Barnaby the comedian.  Loads of laughs.

We are going to be at sea now for six days, tonight the boat is rocking more than it has done for a long time.  Not enough to make me feel ill....... yet.  But I remember the Captain saying something about rough seas and a storm, so I now have seasick pills at the ready.  We will be back to the sea day routine tomorrow, methinks I may end up reading another book or two.

St John's visit 2012                     Flying from Antigua 2012

Day twentyfive, Wednesday 23rd February, Castries, St. Lucia

We woke up this morning to see another extra large size cruise ship outside the window, and when we got up on deck, we saw to Royal Caribbean ships, and a Silver Seas cruiser docked around us. We liked the Silver Seas boat, it was about the same size as ours.  The sun is out, the sea is blue, and we have another island to explore.

OK, so somehow or other I’ve landed escort duty with Peter to the “Delights of Mamiku Gardens”.   Now let’s be honest, gardens aren’t really my thing, and I would never have chosen this tour.  On the plus side though, the tour guides tell you loads of stuff about the island as you travel, and they stop at convenient panoramic views, and gardens usually have loads of butterflies n birds ns stuff, so it’s not all bad. 

And it wasn’t at all.  My coach wasn’t a coach, it was a minibus.  There were only nine passengers, and our tour guide was really knowledgeable and did tell us loads of stuff about the island as we were driving through.  When we got the gardens, we were handed over to the local expert that walked us through and explained various things about the plants, herbs and the gardens themselves.  It was very pleasant, the orchids were lovely, and we managed to see hummingbirds. 

The hummingbirds didn’t stay long enough to have their pictures taken, but the big fat caterpillar and a lizard did. A few local snacks including banana bread and rum punch, then we were on our way back. We arrived back at the ship at 1.45pm, just in time for lunch.  By the time we’d finished, we just had time for a short walk into Castries itself.  

From what I’d seen as we drove through this morning, the city does have some nice places to see, but we didn’t get far, just to the craft market about 15 mins away.  For a long time I’ve been admiring all the wonderful colours and clothes, and today I finally bought a lovely top/dress thing.  As you can tell, I haven’t worked out how to wear it, but it is gorgeous.  The back to the ship for a nap, cos we were shattered.The ship was due to sail at 5 tonight.  but we were late leaving.  I’m not sure why. Maybe we it had something to do with the other massive cruise ships leaving before us.  We had dinner on the deck, and could see one of the other cruise ships as we sailed past it.  (For some reason it was going slower than us, very colourful with all its lights in the dark though).  We finished up in the Neptune lounge to watch the first of the acts that have just joined the ship.  We really liked Colin Fingers Henry who made us laugh and played piano too.  Really good. Tomorrow we dock at St. Johns, Antigua, and we’ve been asked to do escort duties on another tour “Spectacular Antigua”.  I’m looking forward to this one actually, cos it isn’t too long, and it takes us to a few sites in the National Park.  Should be good.

Day twentyfour, Tuesday 22nd February, Bridgetown, Barbados.

Before I go on about the things we did today, I will just finish off the blog from yesterday:-

We stayed in the internet cafe until 7 yesterday, doing as much as possible to update everything before heading back to the ship.  We went for dinner, which was once again outside on the rear deck, and once again I ended up eating me hair (when will I learn!).  It was nice tho.  Then we went to watch the show, which was a local show, i.e. the show was provided by St Vincent, and Fred Olsen has no idea what it’s getting.

Once again, the local talent was brilliant.  They started with a Calypso singer and his steel drum playing father, (some of the songs may not have suited everyone, a little risqué, but I thought they were hilarious).  After that we had a dance school display the talents of the children.  They put on a really good show, full of colour and energy which displayed the culture of the island. My favourite had to be the little girls that danced with such attitude.

The ship was due to sail at 11, but we had to wait until the show people had left the ship.  We waited up on deck for them to disembark, and as they walked down the pier towards the exit, all the passengers on deck started clapping them again.  One little lad shouted up “thank you for letting  us dance for you”.  Awwwwwwwww!

Anyway we watched the twinkling lights of Kingstown go dim as the ship left the harbour before coming back to the cabin and bed.

And then this morning broke beautiful and blue and with us in the port of Bridgetown Barbados.  Our little Boudicca was parked between two other huge cruise ships, one from Royal Caribbean, and one from Princess Lines.  Of course, we decided they were far too big and ugly, and our ship was much better.

We didn’t have a tour booked today.  We had wanted to go to Harrison’s Cave, but the ship tour was full, so we decided to have a crack at getting there independently.  We walked out of the terminal only to find that the taxi services right outside wanted $80 (£53.75) to take us (admittedly a return fare).  We decided that was too much, and after a little mulling around the tourist information office and not finding anything we liked, we left the terminal and the port to wander around town.

As soon as we left the port gates, we were surrounded by taxi drivers wanting our fare.  These guys weren’t allowed to tout for business inside the port, which I suppose made them less “official”, but it also meant they could take us to the cave for $50, (£33.75, much better) so off we went.  It took about 30 mins to get there and the cab driver agreed to wait until we had done the tour of the cave (which takes about an hour), and then take us back.  Once there, he walked us to the ticket booth at the Harrison Cave Centre and then  went off to his car.  (Please note, Peter has not given him any money yet). 

When we went to get our tickets tho, it turned out that the next tour ride available was at 1.20 pm, two hours away.  Uh oh!  Peter hurried out to the taxi driver who agreed to come back at 2.30 pm, and we wiled away our time at the centre.  There are a few gardens and crafty type shops to look around, and we managed to get an ice cream and a tuna sandwich for lunch.

The cave tour itself was very good.  A little film explained the history of the island (how it is made mostly from coral), and we were taken around the caves themselves in a little buggy towed by an electric car.  How?  Well, a large tunnel, like a road almost, has been cut through, connecting all the caves.  So we sat in the little cars, with our guide at the front explaining the names of the caves etc.  Me n Peter both felt it would have been nicer to walk, and spend as much time as we wanted at the various sights, but it was pointed out to us that if the tourists were allowed to do that, they would touch everything and change the way the caves developed. (What about the tunnel then?) No matter, it was a n enjoyable experience, and worth the hassle it took to get us there.

Tour over, we left the complex at 2.20pm and our taxi driver was just parking up.   He took us back to Bridgetown and dropped us off in the city centre for a look see.  The taxi drivers really are very helpful. 

 I think, during our port talks, Bridgetown and Barbados where described as the shopping centre of the Caribbean.  Our wander through the city streets proved that, loads of duty free shops and department stores.  There are some wonderful colonial buildings about, and a statue of Nelson, erected 36 years before the one in London.  Funnily enough, he used to stand in Trafalgar Square, but they changed the name to Hero’s Square.

Right, so we’ve had a look at the town, now for the beach.  So, back to the ship (walking, and its very hot), a quick change, and out to get another taxi.  Again, we were given a return fare price, and again, the taxi driver agreed to wait for us, since we only planned to be on the beach for an hour.  (it’s 4.30 pm now).  We went to Carlisle beach, south east of Bridgetown and thoroughly enjoyed the white sand and warm blue water.  Beautiful

Then back to the ship, shower and changed for dinner on deck again, and our final treat is another local show.  The Barbadians gave us a comedian host, dancers, drummers, a mad acrobat and a guy on stilts who was too tall for the most of the lounge.  The stilt guy danced and jumped and hopped, constantly looking like he was going to topple over.  Another brilliant evening’s entertainment.  

Right now the ships engines have just started again (rattle rattle rattle).  Tomorrow we will wake up in Castries, St. Lucia.  I have been spammed to act as escort on a tour of some?  Me and Peter both.  Obviously no-one else wanted or could do it, and we did say to the tours guy that if he needed anyone...........

This is gonna be interesting.

Bridgetown, Barbados 2014