We had a good sleep last night, and I awoke completely pain-free in my #13 tooth. Yay! Having that behind me, and having my new iPhone, I'm feeling really settled and comfortable in a way that I haven't since that tooth first started bothering me, just before Christmas. I feel really good going into the last bit of our winter at sea. (Knocking on wood).
We didn't move our clocks ahead an hour last night. Doing this itinerary in this direction, we won't move an hour ahead until tonight. The Bahamas are on EST; it's just when Princess Cays is our final port of a cruise that the ship is on AST though the port is on EST. Most people never leave the Princess Cays area, and so aren't even aware that the local time and ship's time don't match. Most people...
Yes, after a hearty breakfast in the dining room, we packed my backpack for another hike down to the lighthouse on the southern tip of the island of Eleuthera. I left this decision up to G, and at first he waffled a bit about the 8 mile hike, but, in the end, he thought we really needed to do it. His eight daily scoops of ice cream are catching up with him. Not only do we get a bit of a workout when we do this hike, we also skip lunch altogether, not a bad thing at this point.
So we found ourselves on a very early tender and again left a note with the Medical Center at Princess Cays letting them know who we are and where we went for the day. I guess it's kind of the equivalent of signing a register at a trailhead: in case we end up missing, here's where to look first.
We were almost an hour ahead of the last time we did this, on December 26th, and left the Princess Cays area at 9:45am. It was already hot and sunny at that time, but if that was any indication of what our walk back in the early afternoon would be, we chose to ignore it. As always, it took 15 minutes to walk from the Princess Cays area to our first turn off, then 15 minutes further took us to the southbound "road". And that's when we really started to feel the heat of the sun. What we can usually do in 35 minutes took us 45 minutes today, as we carefully picked our way down that horribly pitted road. We could hear the wind and the waves before we could see them; our first sighting of the palm trees that line the beach area propelled us through the last bit of the walk.
The beach on the Caribbean side was empty today; in fact, we didn't see another person the entire five hours we were away from Princess Cays. We walked to the beach on the Atlantic side over the sand dunes, and, once we arrived (it was close to 11:30am by that time), sat down right on the sand, drinking our water and eating the protein bars we'd packed. The wind was blowing so hard and the waves were so big that if we were more than 10 feet apart, we couldn't hear each other even if we yelled.
Finally, I decided to walk down the entire length of the beach, to see what lay beyond where the beach curved out of sight. The sand on these two beaches is perfect powdered sugar sand, just as there is on Holland America's private island resort, Half Moon Cay. That's not surprising; Half Moon Cay is only about 15 miles south of Princess Cays, and I could see two cruise ships anchored in the distance, no doubt the ships at Half Moon Cay today. Walking on that sand was just like walking on snow; I'd walk on top of the sand and then occasionally break through up to my ankles, then be back on top of it again. That walk alone was a workout.
Beyond that curve, there was simply more beach as far as I could see. More beach and still no people...this is one isolated place!
At 12:30pm we climbed the rock cliffs up to the now-familiar lighthouse, and then made our way down to the beach on the Caribbean side. We walked the length of this until 1:30pm when we climbed back up the dunes and began our walk back to Princess Cays.
As soon as we started back, I became aware of how hot it was away from the cooling ocean winds, and how unrelenting the sun was. And how tired I was after walking all that way on the beaches. And how warm our remaining water was. A walk that we can do in 65 minutes took us nearly 90 to complete, and it was just before 3pm when we checked in at the Medical Center on Princess Cays to report that we had returned home safely.
I nearly fell asleep on the tender back to the Emerald Princess, and once on board, we fell into our now-familiar roles: G went to a hot tub and I washed out our water bottles and rinsed out the nylon shorts I'd worn.
I showered before G returned to the cabin, trying to psyche myself up for the evening ahead. For some reason, we had received an invitation to the Gold Captains Circle members party, which took place in the Princess Theater at 4:45pm. Never ones to pass up a party, we went, and enjoyed the Emerald Princess orchestra's live music and the singers performing a jazzy rendition of the Love Boat theme.
By the time the party/presentation had ended, the dining room doors were open and we were anxious to eat. We. Were. Starving. I had a pineapple and prickly pear starter, then a salad, then TWO entrees (salmon and a seafood skewer) and my usual broccoli and spinach. I had to skip dessert...I was full after all that food, and once again marveled at how it's possible to go from being so hungry to so full in the course of an hour.
As tired as we were, we forced ourselves to go to the 7:15pm performance of comedian Al Katz. We'd seen him before, but not this winter, and we enjoyed him a lot. There was no show in the Explorers Lounge tonight, and though we caught a few minutes of juggler Aaron Bonk in the Piazza, we decided to skip listening to band Sole Provider tonight and just head back to the cabin.
G was asleep in five minutes, and I will be too, soon after sending this post.
After visiting Princess Cays twice in three days, and a busy turnaround day in Fort Lauderdale, we are so READY for a day at sea!
Photo 1: the "well" at the entrance to Princess Cays from the road
Photos 2 and 3: the "roads" we take to the southern end of Eleuthera
Photo 4: Mr. Crabby, a hermit crab, was crossing the road carrying this shell on his back when we happened by
Photo 5: finally, our first view of this line of palm trees indicated we were getting close to the Caribbean beach