Day 76: Bequia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

There was much excitement today as we were visiting another (for us) virgin island. Bequia is the northernmost area of islands called the Grenadines and lies just 9 miles south of the capital, Kingstown, St. Vincent, which is the main island of the small country. St. Vincent and the Grenadines achieved its independence from Great Britain in 1979 but remains a member of the British Commonwealth. We had been to St. Vincent a few times in the past (and had taken one of our most memorable independent excursions there, climbing the Falls of Baleine and visiting the set of the recently released original Pirates of the Caribbean, which was filmed there), but that was the only island in the country that we've visited. Mustique is another Grenadine island, and it is famous for being a favorite vacation destination of Princess Margaret. 

Bequia is only 5 miles long and 7 square miles in total, with a small population (4,300) to match. We were up early and watching from the Panorama Terrace as the Pacific Princess entered Admiralty Bay, the harbor for the island's tiny town of Port Elizabeth. The island is green and very hilly but is not really large enough to have tall mountains. But Admiralty Bay was gorgeous, sleepy and quiet and surrounded by steep green hills on all sides. The morning was sunny with very frequent, brief tropical showers, making for a parade of full rainbows and partial double rainbows, bright and dropping right into the water. 

The showers were frequent enough to delay my wanting to go ashore but G was antsy to, and took the first tender over to check out the taxi situation. Our plan for the day involved only going to a beach...there was not much else to do on the island, especially on Boxing Day. The ship offered only two tours:  a sail and snorkel and an island tour. A beach day would be perfect for us. 

G texted me shortly, telling me what to bring and I boarded the next tender. He had already arranged a taxi to take two couples to Lower Bay Beach for $3 per person. It was about a 15 minute ride to the beach, up and down some of the steepest and worst roads I've ever seen.  They were made even more exciting by the two foot deep open storm sewers that ran down one side of the road. I commented to G that it must be a tough thing, teaching a four year old how to ride a bike when he was either pedaling straight up or coasting straight down, or falling into a storm sewer on one side or off a cliff on the other. 

Lower Bay Beach was a perfect place to spend the day. In fact, it was located on Admiralty Bay with a view of the Pacific Princess at anchor. We settled in two loungers ($5 each) under palm trees at Keegan's Beachside Restaurant and Bar. It was still early, just after 9am, and if I tell you we stayed there until after 3pm, you know how much we loved it. I wasted no time getting in the water and it was a little rough, making it quite a workout to swim the length of the beach and back. I collapsed on a lounger and listened to an audiobook while G tried to get their WiFi to work (it was non-existent on the beach). 

 

 

 

By noon I was starving, and we knew not to wait too long for lunch or we'd have no appetite for dinner (we still didn't...read on). We split a burger with fries and a side of breadfruit fries in Thai sweet chili sauce. I haven't had those since we were at the Intercontinental Tahiti almost exactly two years ago. Eaten surfside and accompanied by the local beer (Hairoun) and the sound of waves crashing and a live steel drum performance in the background, it was a memorable meal. 

 

We took turns then, G walking the length of the beach and back and me swimming it (I remembered while I was swimming Mom's old rule about waiting an hour after eating to get in the water. Ha! How about 15 minutes? I sometimes eat ice cream for breakfast too, Mom, and it hasn't killed me yet! ;-)). I was weary as we boarded a taxi back to the tender pier about 3:15pm. We still had time to spare (last tender was at 4:30pm) and so we walked into a tiny grocery store where G bought another beer and a bag of Lays potato chips and I got a Bitter Lemon (a local soft drink) and we sat under a tree watching all the comings and goings around the Admiralty Bay pier. There were well over 40 sailboats moored in the bay and the water was busy with their tiny zodiac raft tenders crossing between boat and land. 

Finally, we caught the second last tender about 4:20pm. By the time we had showered and I had washed out and hung up my swimwear, I was not only very hungry but also too tired to go to dinner in the Club Restaurant. Instead we were on the Panorama Terrace for sailaway, and it was beautiful. The rain had held off all afternoon until about 4:30pm but by 5pm it was again dry and we could see St. Vincent in the distance and the lights of Bequia and some of the other Grenadine islands off our port side. We had our open bottle of Chardonnay retrieved from the Club Restaurant and finished it accompanied by wine and cheese from the Panorama Buffet, and called it dinner. It wasn't our healthiest food day but it was a fun food day. 

I am simply too tired after all the swimming to attend the 7:45pm show of vocalist Bobby Brooks Wilson, son of Jackie Wilson. He is good- we've seen him several times in the past- but he is not in the cards for me tonight. I am back in the cabin and will be asleep soon after I publish this post. Captain D said the weather tomorrow in Tobago is not very promising (well...shoot) and advised that we may have some bounciness tonight and tomorrow night, but, again, it's Caribbean rough, not North Atlantic crossing in December rough, and there is no comparison. 

Day 75: Christmas Day at sea

Captain D told us, in his noon announcement, that overnight the wind gusts rose to 40 knots and though the Pacific Princess' planned route to our next port of Bequia in the Grenadines was on the outside (eastern side) of the Lesser Antilles, during the night he had turned the ship around and we are now traveling down the Caribbean side of the Lesser Antilles. We hadn't noticed a thing and slept through any bounciness we might have encountered. As I've said before, it's all relative. 

G was up and out early today, and had his main breakfast in the Panorama Buffet, but I was slower to get moving. Finally, around 8:45am he returned to the cabin and then joined me at breakfast in the Club Restaurant. I splurged and had banana walnut pancakes, because I knew that lunch was a sure thing and there would be plentiful opportunities for more nutritious meals today. Eggnog was served in the Panorama Buffet but not in the Club Restaurant but our waiter ran up and got me a small cup of it. Nothing says Christmas like a little egg nog. Except stollen. :-)

G and I went only as far as the sunny side of the Promenade Dexk where we sat in loungers and watched the sun dance on the swells and saw hundreds of flying fish. It was still windy, but not as much as we saw on those first two days out of Fort Lauderdale, so we were covered with salt spray but not as much or as quickly. G fell asleep and I plugged in ear buds and listened to an audiobook (Winter Solstice, which I could recite by heart) and quickly fell asleep myself. We awoke in just enough time to go to an activity of interest we had seen in the Princess Patter:  Christmas cookie decorating. 

Have I mentioned how much we love cruising on the Pacific Princess at Christmas?  I know I have, but have I mentioned it lately?  On the larger ships, these sorts of activities are pretty much limited to families with kids, which is fine and right, but with only five kids on the Pacific Princess (and at least two of them too young to participate), all of these things truly are open to everyone. We went up to Sabatinis where we found stacks of huge sugar cookies (about 7" in diameter) with a hanging hole and a loop of ribbon at the top. Three members of the cruise staff were there to help us fill decorating bags with different colors of frosting and there were all sorts of decorations to be applied:  candied cherries, Froot Loops, marshmallows and rainbow sprinkles. 

I took two cookies, one for each of us, and basically decorated both of them because G was too busy getting email addresses to send photos and videos from last night's caroling to the cruise staff's families. Several fellow passengers remarked how wonderful it was on this ship to have this laid backed atmosphere and ability to truly participate in all these sorts of things. We could have decorated gingerbread houses three days ago but I couldn't find anyone to do it with, though Johnny said later that he'd have joined me. So maybe next year... Not wanting to take our cookies back to our cabin, G and I took them to lunch in the Club Restaurant. I had a chicken Caesar salad and he had four cheese pasta and we both had a few bites of our cookies for dessert. And left them there. That sort of thing gets kind of gamey in the cabin after a day or so. 

 

 

 

G finished in time to go to Goofy Golf in the Atrium where he tied for first place and won a nifty Princess neck wallet filled with candy that we'll give to a 10 year old on board named Charlie who tells the best jokes. I went to the cabin and caught the movie White Christmas on the cabin TV from the beginning, but fell asleep (again!) and missed part of it. No worries; it looped over and over again the rest of the day so I eventually saw the middle and just now watched the very end. It's not like I haven't seen it before!

We stopped by the PES Lounge for a few shrimp, and then went to dinner at exactly 5:30pm. I took photos of the Christmas menus but we went with the traditional: salad and turkey dinner for me and fruit and a Virginia ham for G. The waiters all sang two Christmas carols in a language not their native one, and it was very sweet and much appreciated. We skipped all the wonderful desserts; we were full by then and, frankly, have had each of them at least once in the past. 

 

 

  

 

The big entertainment tonight was a much anticipated Christmas Variety show. The Pacific Princess showband started it off with some Christmas tunes, and then vocalists Simon Breen and Deana Julian from the production show casts each sang two songs and comedian/juggler Thien Fu did a funny bit and guitarist Duncan Tuck played some wonderful Christmas folk songs and finally the dancers came out in those darling Christmas costumers we've seen before (looking very Rockettes do Dickens) and danced and it was all just perfect and fun. We went right into the Casino Lounge to listen to Jere Ring for an hour but then called it a day. I said yesterday that we have have five upcoming port days in a row, but I was wrong. It's six. And only one of them (Martinique) is not as exciting to us as all the others, so we may use that day to slow down a bit. 

 

 

The Pacific Princess dancers (and cruise staff)

Officially today we must now say that we are going home next week, and although there are many wonderful things about that (I received a new photo of the boys and their older sisters today that made me a tad homesick), this will not be a happy disembarkation. They may have to pry my fingers off the ship's hull when it's time to leave. We've had the BEST time!

Happy Holiday wishes!

 

 

Day 74: St. Kitts

Today was the bestest best day of our season at sea, for so many reasons. But it is already 10:30pm as I start this post, so I will have to be succinct, lest I fall asleep and get hit in the nose by my iPad. 

For our first time ever, the Pacific Princess was docked at the freight port on St. Kitts, about 15 minutes east of the cruise ship pier and all the shopping at Port Zante. We were thrilled by this, as we were able to walk right off the ship and get a taxi a shorter distance to a beach. For those passengers interested in shopping, a free shuttle ran back and forth to Port Zante all day long. After a quick breakfast on the Panorama Terrace, during which a brief shower passed over (and we saw a beautiful rainbow), we gathered up our minimal beach gear and walked off the ship. The rain had already stopped and the rest of the day was mostly sunny with no additional showers. 

We soon discovered the one drawback of being on the Pacific Princess at the freight port...nearly every disembarking passenger wanted to shop instead of go to the beach (go figure). We waited a few minutes for two more passengers to join us in a taxi; the price was $16 for 1 to 4 people and G is just frugal enough to not want to pay $16 for two of us. Finally, two crew members showed up wanting to go to the beach and, in the end, we still paid the $16 as a gift to them, but that way G was fine with it. At least we weren't wasting money. ;-)

We wanted to go to the beach bar on the east end of South Friars Bay Beach called Shipwresk. Carambola on the west end is far more upscale and trendy, but there is a charge for chairs and umbrellas and an even higher charge for food and drinks. Shipwreck is a dive through and through, and the beach is quite narrow, but the chairs and palapas are free and there is no pressure to buy food and drinks. Since we weren't sure at that point what the day would bring, weather-wise, we decided a no investment day gave us the opportunity to return to the ship if it started to rain. 

We first went to Shipwreck over ten years ago, when it was even more of a shack, selling just beers and drinks. Now there is a kitchen and small restaurant/bar with a sand floor. We settled into two loungers and I wasted no time getting in the water. As far as beaches go, none of them on St. Kitts compare to St. John yesterday (the sand is browner and coarser and the water rougher), but we love the atmosphere on St. Kitts. I plugged in ear buds and listened to an audiobook (Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher; I read/listen to it every December), and we enjoyed watching the five masted sailing vessel Royal Clipper tendering its passengers directly into Carambola. Carambola has built a huge business since it opened just a few years ago, with Royal Clipper and Azamara tendering passengers there instead of Basseterre where Port Zante is located. 

 

 

 

Carambola Beach bar is down by the white canopy  

 

Cheeseburger in paradise

I swam and played in the waves app much that by 1pm I was starving. We walked into the beach bar and I ordered a cheeseburger (I only crave them after being in the water) and G got nachos and cheese and we drank a couple of beers and enjoyed the phenomenal views east towards Nevis. About 3:30pm we decided to walk down the beach 10 minutes to Carambola because it would be easier to hook up with two more passengers to share a taxi back to the Pacific Princess from there, and it was. By shortly after 4pm we were reboarding the ship. 

After quick showers, we watched sailaway at 5pm from the Panorama Terrace. At the same time, the Royal Clipper raised its many square sails and made quite a picture sailing away with Nevis in the background. We went to dinner at 5:30pm. It featured a menu that was new to us. I ordered roasted asparagus with  bacon and a warm vinaigrette dressing and -wait for it- an Austrian pot roast with red cabbage for my entree. I mostly hate German food but I do love red cabbage, and the beef pot roast was surprisingly good. 

 

Nevis

 

The southern end of St. Kitts

 

Port Zante

 

 

 

The Royal Clipper sails away

 

G and Maitre d'Oscar

 

G and headwaiter Petros

At 7pm we were gathered in the Atrium for what I had been looking forward to since we booked this cruise. The Pacific Princess crew and officers (including Captain D in a Santa hat) stood on the T-shaped stairs and, accompanied by Jere Ring on the keyboard, we all sang Christmas carols. It was my favorite part of Christmas on the Pacific Princess in French Polynesia and will no doubt be my favorite part of it this year too. There is just something so homey and fun about doing that, especially with Captain D waving his Santa hat in the air during Jimgle Bells. Both Decks 4 and 5 were full of passengers, but it wasn't crowded. It's the Pacific Princess!

 

Jere Ring at the keyboard

 

Caroling in the Atrium

 

Captain D sings along

Tonight's entertainment was guitarist Duncan Tuck. We had seen him in French Polynesia two years ago and he is so talented and does a very entertaining show. Following that, we listened to Jere Ring in the Casino Lounge playing mostly Christmas carols but other songs too, and he played Do You Hear What I Hear, which he announced is my favorite song (it's certainly my favorite Christmas song he sings). We stayed until I could stay no longer, but when I returned to the cabin to prepare this blog post, G went into Duncan Tuck's late show. He has just returned to the cabin as I am finishing up this post, so that worked well. 

We are at sea tomorrow, which I think is a perfect way to spend Christmas Day. It will also be an opportunity to recover from two beach days and prepare for five port days in a row. Thankfully, even days spent playing in the waves are less strenuous than walking 20 zillion steps in a European port. We've been cruising for more than ten weeks, and less strenuous is a wonderful thing. 

Finally, I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday. All the best from me and G. :-)

Day 73: St. John, USVI

Oh what a wonder it is to tender directly into Cruz Bay on St. John!  In all the times we've been on the island, this was the first one that didn't involve a taxi ride and a ferry ride from St. Thomas to get there. We loved it!

Backing up, though, to that alarm that went off at 5:30am...I turned it off, looked out the window at the still-night sky, re-set it for 6:30am and immediately fell back asleep. When the alarm sounded again, it was getting lighter outside, and I dressed in the dark (laying everything out the night before helps) and went up to the Panorama Buffet where I enjoyed coffee, stollen and an egg white veggie omelet with Johnny on the Panorama Terrace. The scenery was gorgeous...I could see a larger cruise ship approaching Havensight pier on St. Thomas, but was happy to sail on by, heading for St.  John. There were clouds at the horizon obscuring the sun but it soon poked through them and I was busy taking photos first of the sunrise off the starboard side, and then of St. Thomas and the myriad of little islands that surround it on the port side. 

It felt so very good to return!

Shortly after 7am, I phoned Mom using the AT&T signal I'd had since I awakened at 6:30am. She said she was glad I called when I did. Today was going to be a busy one for her:  Christmas trivia followed by the Christmas party revealing the results of the door decorating contest, then lunch, then the Walking SenioRitas, then a Christmas movie. I asked if I could phoned her later today, and she said she thought she might be back in her apartment by 5:30pm my time. (All of this was music to my ears.)

And how was I planning to spend my day, she asked. Um...lying on a beach, swimming in crystal blue water and drinking alcoholic beverages, though i was a bit ashamed to admit it after hearing how productive she was going to be. 

G eventually showed up for breakfast but I had to return to the cabin to plug in my iPhone before going ashore. Still, by 8:30am or so!we were taking a rough tender ride through Cruz Bay to the tender dock, which is located in a harbor just north of the ferry dock, next to the Virgin Islands National Park office. All along, we had felt certain we didn't want to go to Trunk Bay today. First, we were at St. John with the Azamara Quest, which is the same ship as the Pacific Princess, plus a SeaDream Yacht Club ship (very small) was also at anchor there. Then there were all the cruis ship passengers coming over from St. Thomas, and finally all the people staying on both islands for the holiday week. Instead we had decided to go to Honeymoon Beach, the first beach just north of Cruz Bay and one that involved a hike to reach. 

We decided to hike from the National Park office. The Lind Point trail leaves from behind the office and takes about 30-40 minutes to reach Homeymoon Beach. We took 45 minutes because, although it's not a steep  trail, it is a very rocky one. It had just rained last night and it was fairly slippery, but I had come prepared with my collapsable walking stick. We did not encounter any mosquitoes walking through the rain forest, but did hear the bleating of donkeys all along the way. 

 

The Line Point trailhead just behind the National Park Service office

 

Our first sighting of the beach was heady stuff. The view of the surrounding small islets and St. Thomas was breathtaking but it was the crystal blue water that had me ditching my backpack and diving in as fast as I could get there. The beach is fairly wide with perfect soft sand and is rock free, and though it isn't a bery long beach, it is a perfect one for walking. The water was just like the water at Matira Beach in Bora Bora, but on Honeymoon Beach there are waves, while Matira Beach is protected by the surrounding reef. 

 

 

 

 

 

G rented one chair for the astronomical price of $15; I decided I didn't want one, and there was plenty of shade without an umbrella. We went down to the north end of the beach, because a ship's tour was using the middle part. I'm glad we went to a beach that was a little harder to reach today, because even Honeymoon had a fair amount of people. I can't imagine what Trunk Bay was like. 

We had packed thoughtfully, but it was our first beach outing of the year and I forgot to take reading glasses. While I initially busied myself with swimming and drinking the sangria we had bought in Barcelona (We had purchased a 1.5 liter plastic bottle. Today I put .5 liter in an empty water bottle and poured it over ice in a disposable  cup we had brought from the ship), eventually I started realizing I was missing a window of opportunity to test beach pictures to friends. I ended up removing my hard contacts on a sandy beach so I could see my iPhone, and quite happily spent several hours interneting and swimming without them. Cleaning the sand off my fingers to re-insert them was a bit tricky but I managed just fine. (G just shook his head, picturing himself digging through sand looking for a tiny piece of plastic when things went wrong.)

I had had enough sangria and nothing to eat since breakfast to lead us to choose to walk the 10 minutes or so along a trail north to the Caneel Bay Resort to catch a taxi back to the tender pier ($5 per person).

 

We arrived back on the ship about 3:45pm, covered in sand. G, of course, showered and made himself scarce, leaving me to empty out and wash out and hang up to dry the many things that were coated with sand and salt water. I joined him on the Panorama Terrace' bringing the cold bottle of Barefoot Bubbly from Walgreens that we hadn't drank at sailaway from Fort Lauderdale and..:.well, this is when things started to get fuzzy. We each had a slice of pizza which was not enough to cancel out the wine, and watched sailaway from the Panorama Terrace (gorgeous) and by 5:30pm decided to go to dinner in the Club Restaurant and just eat lightly and I ended up finishing off an open bottle of Reisling while I wa there. It is now 8:25pm and I am already in bed for the night, having had a fairly inebrious day. G is in the Cabaret Lounge watching juggler Thien Fu. I'm sure he's very good, but that is not in the cards for me tonight.