Port Reports :)

I have to say, the ports on our new itineraries are SO much better than the ports on our previous ones. However, my judgement may be clouded by the fact that I had been to each of those previous ports more than 10 times each..

I have been fortunate enough to do some wonderful tours in each of these ports as well. I’ve already written about Dominica, but I haven’t said anything about the rest of them yet- so I thought I’d do a quick overview.

Bonaire
Bonaire is a lovely Dutch island that is part of the ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao) in the Southern Caribbean. I went on a snorkelling expedition on board a teak schooner called “Samur”. Now owned by a Dutch Bonaire-ian family, the boat was built in Thailand in the 1940’s, commissioned by a US CIA agent. He retired from the service and he and his family (and pet dogs) sailed the world in this little junk-style ship. It then passed to a Dutch family who did the same thing, eventually reaching Bonaire and settling there. They then ran the ship as a charter boat in the area until moving to the US to further their children’s education- which is when it passed to the ship’s new owners/operators, the family’s good friends.
We sailed to a small island called “Klein Bonaire” which is a small sand island that is a protected marine park. Here we did a drift snorkel along 300m of the in-shore reef, which bordered a massive drop-off into a deep ocean channel. It was simply beautiful – so many gorgeous fish- -especially the myriad of beautiful species of parrot fish. The whole island is made of parrot fish poo- they scrape the coral with their beaks and almost immediately poo out the crushed coral as sand. One parrot fish can poo 150kg of sand in a month!!
The island of Bonaire is very beautiful – it is out of the hurricane belt and thus is semi-arid. The people who live there are mostly of Dutch descent and speak a language that is a combination of Dutch, English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. They had a lovely market there, which kind of felt like a mini Southbank market - people selling the lovely quality crafts they had made themselves (not the mass produced crap you see on most of the islands). I was very impressed!

Aruba
Aruba is a very beautiful, semi-arid island – lots of cactus and dry scrub. It is also a very developed island with many luxury resorts, hotels and shopping centres. It’s almost “posh”. My tour here took us to the butterfly farm (which was actually exactly the same as the one on St. Maarten), the aloe vera factory and to see the amazing rock formations on the far side of the island. These rock formations were spectacular with massive granite boulders strewn around the arid landscape as if they had been thrown there by a family of giants.
Aruba was VERY nice – however it was a Sunday and everything was closed when I got back to town, except the diamond shops. Boring! Next time, I look forward to wining and dining in one of the many nice beach-side restaurants.

Antigua
Today I was in Antigua – our first stop on the second 10 day run “eastern Caribbean explorer”. I’m really impressed by this lovely ex-English island. My tour took us across the countryside of the island, where our guide provided us with heaps of information about the island, its people and history. The island has a population of 86,000 - 30000 which live in the capital St. John. Lots of stars have homes in Antigua, including Eric Clapton (we saw his house)! The Crossroads rehab centre is also located in Antigua – where Britney Spears and Whitney Houston have famously spent much of their time.
We visited Nelson’s Dockyards, the docks set up by the British government to service all the ships in the Caribbean. The island was of great strategic importance and was protected by 40 English forts. We visited lookouts, forts and the interpretation centre – where we saw a super cute “sound and lights show”. The Antiguan people are lovely, very organised (albeit super relaxed) and very proud of their country and heritage. The main industry on the island is tourism, although it used to be a huge exporter of sugar back in the slave days.

Upon returning from the tour, I went to subway for lunch and had my regular- six inch roast chicken on wheat bread, toasted, with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, capsicum, olives, cucumber, salt & pepper and mayo. It was the taste of home! SO creepy that it tastes exactly the same, right down to the white chocolate macadamia cookie!

In other news, I got extended seven days – so I will be leaving the ship in St. Thomas in two cruises time. I leave on the 26th and will probably get home on the 28th of October. It’s annoying but I must say I could do with another week’s pay…