Saturday, November 29, 2008

More Cruise Stuff

As I mentioned before we left, our cruise had four stops. The first was at Princess Cays, Bahamas, then Ochos Rios, Jamaica, Georgetown, Grand Cayman and Cozumel, Mexico. At each one you can pay extra for little excursions or tour around on your own.

The first stop was at a privately owned area of the Bahamas called Princess Cays. There wasn't a lot to do here, except beach stuff which is not really my thing. We just wanted to spend the day relaxing, so that's what we did. We grabbed a couple of beach loungers and camped out. It was wonderful. There were also some little shops to check out. There was one little market area that you had to leave the Princess compound to get to so we checked that out too. We didn't really see anything that caught our eye so we just enjoyed the buffet lunch and the sunshine again. It was probably in the high 20's that day. A few clouds but it only rained for a few minutes. By mid-afternoon it was getting quite windy, right about the time we had to board the tenders (little boats) back to the ship. Our tender ride was very rough. There were little hatches that could be opened. The one by us was closed. We debated opening it but decided to leave it closed. The one opposite us was open. As the ride continued and got rougher more water started coming in the hatch. Two women were sitting underneath it and one woman got a little wet and decided to come and sit by me to keep dry. Almost as soon as she moved a huge wave hit and it looked like a waterfall came in the window. The woman who hadn't moved got absolutely soaked! She was a good sport and laughed so we all could laugh too. Good thing, because it was pretty hysterical.

The next stop was on Tuesday at Ochos Rios, Jamaica. Here we had a cool excursion planned which involved climbing Dunn's River Falls followed by a bobsled ride on Mystic Mountain. It was an amazing day but with one major problem. It was pouring. I can't state that enough. Absolutely pouring. This was a negative on a few levels. It was raining so badly we couldn't take our camera out of the bag so we didn't get any pictures. It also meant that after we climbed the cooooold waterfall there was no way to get warm. The bus that took us to the mountain were air conditioned and that didn't help either. I had a dry shirt and dry shoes to put on afterwards but they were both soaked within minutes too. I was in Jamaica and I was freezing. They were giving away coffee samples at the top of the mountain and that helped a bit but not much. We had ridden a chair lift to the top of the mountain and the higher we got the windier it got and I was just unbelievably cold.

We looked around a bit at the top of the mountain, which had a bit of a Jamaican hall of fame, specifically some Jamaican athletes who've made it big like the original bobsled team. I finally got nearly warm enough to attempt the bobsled. It was on a roller coaster-style track but we could control the speed. Our cars were attached together so Nick in the front got to control the speed. I took this video to give you an idea of what it was like for us. What you can't see is our camera case (empty) flying out of Nick's seat at one point. He was sitting on it for safekeeping but wasn't counting on being lifted out of his seat! Oh well. We were told that the ride was going nearly twice as fast that day because of the rain.



After the bobsled, I was still cold. We took a bus back to the main shopping area near the boat and in one store a sales clerk told me to imagine I was somewhere warm. I told her I was in Jamaica, I thought I was somewhere warm. After a bit of shopping our day in Jamaica was ended and we got back on the ship to warm up and dry off.

Tuesday night was a very rough night at sea. Even people who had cruised many times found it to be very rough. As a result when we got back to our room after dinner we found out that our excursion planned for the next day in Grand Cayman had been cancelled due to the high winds we were experiencing. We were supposed to visit Stingray City and swim with stingrays. This was something Nick was really looking forward to, and so was I but there was nothing we could do about it. Any of the other excursions we were interested in were also cancelled so we decided not to do anything and just sightsee around Grand Cayman.

The first thing we wanted to do was call the kids. We hadn't spoken to them since we left and it was now Wednesday. We had brought some international phone cards with us but couldn't find a phone to take them, they only took credit cards. So we took a chance and used our credit card (found out when we got home that it cost nearly $70) and called home. It was great to hear Darcy's voice and hear that both kids were doing great while we were gone. We got to hear, many times, about Wesley peeing on the carpet of Darcy's room. Funny stuff. We spent the rest of the day walking around Georgetown and eating a ridiculously overpriced lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. There were three cruise ships docked there that day, adding ten thousand people to an area with a normal population of 40 thousand. All the restaurants were really busy and we thought that was the best we could do. Never again!

Thursday was spent in Cozumel, Mexico. We had arranged an excursion here called "Discover Mexico on your own". It said that taxi fares would be included as we discovered Mexican culture or something like that. When we got off the ship and found the people we needed to talk to we found out that we were actually being taken to a place called, "Discover Mexico". We were being taken on our own instead of part of a tour group. It was a replica village filled with miniature versions of some historical Mexican landmarks. It was interesting but not what we would have chosen for ourselves if we had had all the information. We got back in the taxi and paid a few extra dollars to go downtown. We had a bit more shopping to do but we weren't prepared for the high-pressure bartering that happens down there. Holy moly! No prices were marked, it seemed, you just had to haggle with the sales people. And heaven forbid you tried to leave to go to another store. They'd follow you out of the store, yelling the whole time. It was a bit much. We bought a few things and then decided to go back to the ship for lunch. Afterwards we stayed closer to the ship and bought the rest of the things we needed in a less intense environment.

So, I think that's about all for our cruise trip updates. I think I've covered all the major things. If I think of anything else, I'll write more later.

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

$70 for that phone call?! Ouch ...

3:48 PM  

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