AN ISLAND A DAY

Angie writes,
We have just completed wirlwind tours of St. Croix, St. Kitts, Dominica and Dominican Republic in the last 6 days and are on our last leg of the trip to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. It doesn't seem like we have been on the ship for 21 days. I would like to update you on the fact that Blaine has spent the entire 21 days in t-shirts that were bought from different ports-of-call because he still does not have his luggage and does not know where it is. He has been an extremely good sport about the whole thing.
Mark is doing quite well considering the fact that he has had a serious lack of "American Hershey bars" and stated last night at dinner that when he gets past customs he will sprinting to the nearest shop to get a Hershey's Chocolate Bar, or two or three.
Chris is starting to strongly consider purchasing a motorhome to travel the US, and I suspect one of her motives is the ability to take Rosie along on her vacations.
I would like to say that even though we had quite a few problems and criticisms regarding this cruise in the beginning, we have had a great time and experiences to talk about for a lifetime.
Thank you Chris and Blaine for being such good traveling companions. Having had little or no contact with someone for over 20 years and then spending every day together for 3 weeks really is a trial by fire and I think we came out of this with flying colors.

Where We Have Been in 2009

It has been a very interesting and busy, busy time for us as we continue on our 21 day voyage. We tried to call home from this phone booth cleverly disguised as a blue macaw in Santirem, Brazil, but no luck!

We spent New Year's Eve aboard ship and celebrated the arrival of a new year in style, but none of us made it to midnight! I am starting to think we might be catching the "old fart syndrome" that is running rampant on this ship! We are however; travelling with a few celebrities and one of them is our formal sitdown dinner table mate. His name is Fred and he is the author of "Eddie and the Cruisers", and also wrote "Dog Day Afternoon." He and his wife Pamela are on-board and we have learned lots about the publishing world.

The other known celebrity on the ship is the late Art Buchwald's daughter Jennifer, and she and her partner who is also named Jennifer won the "Nearly Newlywed Game" the other night. She remarked to me the other that she could not believe she "outed" herself as Art's daughter for a measly 25 points to win the game!

New Year's day was spent walking in a downpour through one of the sleaziest parts of Port of Spain, Trinidad. Angie has a photo of what apparently is the Trinidian equivilent of our raingear.

The evening of our very quick walkabout through Port of Spain we decided to get some culture, and so off we went to listen to the national steel pan orchestra of Trinidad. These are some very talented musicians and they even let a girl join the band after like a few hundred years. Yahoo....

The next day, January 2 we took a long, bus trip into the rainforest of Trinidad. The road reminded all of us of the one that goes to Hana. It is supposed to be the dry season in Trinidad, but it has rained everyday since the first of December. We braved the rain and had a very interesting, but wet trip through the Asa Wright Nature Center.

Note to Chrissy Chapin: We came upon a young, coiled female Ferdelance snake at the very end of our hike. I thought about you and the time in Costa Rica when the same type of snake decided to visit your bathroom!

January 3 and we were on the beautifully lush and almost zero tourist island of Dominica. We took a river to sea kayaking trip in the afternoon, and it was a blast. Blaine and Chris almost went an entire afternoon without arguing who should be in charge, but Chris did manage to fall under the kayak and was trapped for a few minutes in the Caribbean Sea. Oh well....those of you that know her will not be surprised as it always seems to happen to her!

The moxt exciting/scary part of our trip happened as we tried to get back onboard the ship. The seas had quite large swells on them and the two minute ride back to the ship lasted 2 hours for us. The swells were making it VERY hard to load the passengers back onto the platform which was hung from the side of the ship. As the swells would raise and lower the tender it would CRASH against the platform, sometimes coming up underneatht the platform, raising it a couple of feet and then the platform with the crew people would slam back down, all the time the metal was screeching and banging. It was terrifying. If you go to YouTube and search on MV Explorer, Dominica, you will find a video that one of the passengers shot during their tender experience. It looks like their was during the day because it was light out. Our trip was later because it was dark and ours was worse than what you see on the video. Chris made this title for our experience:

"TENDER IS THE NAME OF OUR NIGHTMARE"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyWJuu7q6R8