Wednesday February 9th–St. Kitts

We hope to be launching this blog from St. Kitts.

On Monday we visited Barbados.   Barbados seemed like a great place.  We started the day, after our routine gorging on breakfast, with a snorkeling tour.   

We knew it would be interesting when we saw the name of our snorkeling boat, Thriller.    It was a high speed catamaran.   When zipping along we were kicking up duel rooster tails of spray and passengers were treated to a complimentary sea spray facial scrub.    At one point we zoomed past the Grand Princess from bow to stern in 20 seconds, which would suggest we were going well over 30 miles an hour.  Our first stop was a small bay where the sea turtles like to hang out.  We jumped into the water and the tour operator put out food to attract the turtles.   Eventually at least five, and probably six turtles were swimming around amongst us.   Farther down on the ocean floor two stingrays were playing around.  Next we jetted over to a protected area where the wreck of the Berwyn lies in 25-30 feet of water.   The Berwyn was sunk in the early 1900’s and is covered in several varieties of soft and hard corals.   The top of the wreck is only about 8-10 feet down.  After liberal sprinkling of fish food we were swarmed by fish enjoying their breakfast.   Finally we went to a nearby white sand beach, which was beautiful.  We paddled around and talked with other passengers while enjoying rum and coke, rum and sprite, rum coolers or rum and rum.  Everyone was happy.  Unfortunately we were not able to get a photo of the “Thriller.”

After we returned to the ship and had lunch, I (Roger) went back out and took a two dollar shuttle into town.   I searched for an internet site, and was finally given directions to one, but when I went in they said I could not use my laptop.   There were some Mormon missionaries in there, and one of the suggested I try the library four doors down, and sure enough, they had Wi-Fi and I was able to launch the Barbados's blogs. I grabbed a five dollar cab back to the ship, where we spent the evening at a great Motor City (Motown) show.

On Tuesday we visited St. Vincent.  St. Vincent seems like a new port for the cruise ships.   There was relatively little development of the tourist industry.  We walked about 10 minutes into town, and it was clear that was where everyone came to shop.  The streets had the typical indoor “supermarkets”, pharmacies, and small restaurants.  Also a market area where hundreds of little stands  were set up selling fresh fruit, salted fish, spices, and vegetables.  We walked past a Methodist church and stopped briefly at a garden courtyard of the Roman Catholic school in an old church.  A lot of the cruise ship staff don’t like the stop as it is not well developed, but we felt like we were visiting an island unspoiled by tourists.  We found a place to send some E-mails, and then returned to the boat for lunch and an afternoon nap.