Around the Caribbean

At last, a chance to quickly update people on where we are ... at this moment, we are sitting (well I am sitting, Janet is still sound asleep as all sensible people are at 5am) in San Juan harbour waiting to disembark the Carnival Victory after our week cruising the Caribbean. It has been a very busy week ... each day a new island or city/town to check out and explore. The absence of sea days on this cruise has meant however that there has been little rest time (and therefore no time to write a blog or even transfer pictures from the cameras to the laptop) ... it's been good though, even if it feels like we have been staying in a mobile hotel rather than enjoying a week-long cruise.

Our jaunt around the Caribbean has taken us to an amazing diversity of islands ... some with British heritage/links, some with French, some with Spanish and even one with Danish. It's seems that after Christopher Columbus stumbled across the Caribbean back in 1492, a race began amongst the early European explorers to plant their flag on an island (maybe any island) and claim it for their country! First in got the spoils ... unless, of course, somebody else (other countries or pirates) tried to take it from you! And they did ... I think it was St Lucia, for example, that changed hands 14 times during the 16th century ... 7 times by the British and 7 times by the French. The irony is that while Europeans colonised the islands (and pretty much wiping out the native population of the islands in the process), their physical presence there has pretty much disappeared ... today they are mostly populated by descendants of the African slaves who were brought to the islands by the European colonists.

We boarded the Victory in San Juan last Sunday after staying overnight in a waterfront hotel in the Old City (we were lucky enough to get upgraded to a suite that had a wonderful view of the harbour and cruise ship pier into the bargain). San Juan is part of the US these days but it was hard to see evidence of America there, other than the usual collection of fast food outlets (which you find everywhere in the world anyway) and posters of Obama. The city still has a very strong Spanish feel and indeed, Spanish is the language used everywhere. We had a great time wandering around the cobbled laneways of Old San Juan ... many of the 300-400 year old buildings there have been restored to their former glory. It was interesting comparing Old San Juan to the largely unrestored old city area of Acapulco and the “yuppified” restoration of Cartagena's old city.

St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands was our first port of call. Some amazing views and beaches here so we decided to do an island tour ... unfortunately, unseasonally heavy rain meant we couldn't see as much as we would have liked so we bought a few postcards to remind us of what we didn't see.

We spent the next day in Dominica (not to be confused with the similarly named Dominican Republic, also in the Caribbean) which is described as the nature island of the Caribbean. Lots of tropical rainforests, waterfalls, etc here but rather than doing a tour of areas that looked very similar to North Queensland, we instead had a pleasant day wandering around the capital of Roseau taking in the local sights.

Next stop was Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados and this provided us with our first taste of a Caribbean beach. We rented a beach umbrella and a couple of beach lounges and enjoyed a few rum punches (included in the price) on the beach in between dips in the beautiful blue sea. Janet says it was the day she had expected to have every day in the Caribbean!

Next day was the very pretty island of St Lucia, where we enjoyed a full-day tour of the island, albeit in the rain. It was just us and a guide and a driver, who happened to be the owner of the tour company, so was quite an exclusive tour. We did lots of things including driving into into a drive-in volcano crater which was steaming (like in Rotorua) and having a dip in a warm mud bath, and enjoyed a typical Creole lunch in a restaurant with an amazing view.

Antigua, an island that boasts having a different beach for every day of the year, was our next stop so this meant another lovely beach day, but not before we spent a couple of hours wandering around the town of St John. We even found and wandered through Antigua's cricket arena, pretending to watch Viv Richards face up to Andy Roberts on their home ground.

Our final port yesterday was Bassitiere on the island of St Kitts. Here we enjoyed a scenic train ride around the island, then spent a couple of hours wandering around enjoying the town ... it was a good to watch all the locals doing their Saturday morning shopping and to finally see some examples of colonial architecture. Everywhere else we had been, there were just remnants remaining of the former colonial days so it was great to see the style of buildings put up by the English and French here.

I may add some more to this post later, but time now to disembark and head for the airport for a very long flight to LA via Miami. The trip is almost over ... we are homeward bound even though it will take a week to get back to Sydney.

By the way, I think we might be getting swine flu ... if starting to eat like a pig is a symptom. The food here on Carnival Victory was plentiful, like it is on all cruise ships, but it came in larger quantities than we are used to. Just as well we have been doing lots of walking in our ports of call ... although Janet would say too much walking!