Finishing up: The Cruise

Time to wrap this re-telling up! I thought I'd post the final photos of the cruise tonight so I can move on and blog about everything else that has been going on lately. Here we are at dinner. There's nothing like eating really good food night after night and not having to cook or clean any of it. We ordered 1-2 appetizers, an entree and 2-3 desserts most nights. I decided that if I didn't LOVE something I wouldn't eat it because there was so much to eat that was really, really good. Why waste space on something that wasn't? My favorite food item on the cruise was still the lemon tart.

We decided to buy tickets and play bingo this year. We kept losing to Millie, the wonder retiree, who had the best luck in the world. She won several times and walked away from the cruise, if I recall correctly, with over $4,000 in bingo winnings. 

Our ginormous cruise ship had a zip line. Scott and I had just finished a trip across it. We also climbed the rock wall and rode the flow rider (surf simulator).

We had one more stop on our cruise at St. Maarten, where we chartered a speed boat and got a fantastic tour of the island. We made several stops throughout the day and I wish I could remember the names of each location.

One that I do remember the name of is Pinel Island. It was a tiny stretch of island off the shore of the main island with nothing on it but a lovely beach, a restaurant and bar, and a funky souvenir hut with the beach as a floor. This is where we did most of our souvenir shopping for the trip.

We had lunch on the beach. Apparently ribs and chicken are big on St. Maarten, according to our tour guide. 

As I'm sure is the case for most islands in the Caribbean, Pinel Island had a role in the slave trade. If you look behind me and Scott you can see the wader out in the water a good distance offshore. The water was waist or chest deep almost the entire way between Pinel and the main island. So the slave ships coming from Africa would stop at Pinel and deposit the slaves in the water to wash them off after their long journey. It was shallow enough that they wouldn't drown but there was nowhere for them to escape to. I must say that while the history was interesting and I love learning about the past, it sort of marred the day to know that such a horrible thing occurred there.

At another stop we jumped into the water, which was so buoyant we hardly needed to do anything to stay afloat. We each grabbed a noodle and a lovely iced beverage and just chilled in the ocean.

A funny thing happened here. Lindsay and I were the last two still hanging out in the water. The rest of our group had swum ashore. She and I were talking and laughing when I saw a dark shape moving toward us beneath the surface of the water. I asked "What's that?" and when she saw it she immediately began freaking out and trying to swim away. I tried to go with her but quickly realized that if it were something wanting to eat us, there was no way were fast enough to get away. So I stopped swimming and hoped like heck that whatever it was, it wasn't hungry! Turns out, it was a huge mass of seaweed moving in the current. Lindsay was so funny, though, the way she reacted to the whole thing. It reminded me of how she literally jumped into my arms last year in Grand Cayman when the stingrays swam up to us in the sandbar offshore. 

At another stop in St. Maarten we snorkeled with a school of fish related to the piranha. They didn't have the teeth, but when we brought bread into the water they demonstrated the swarm and attack characteristics of their cousins. They were gorgeous and it was so neat to be able to swim with such a huge number of amazing fish. You can see them just below the surface of the water there.

St. Maarten was completely beautiful. My favorite thing about it was the snorkeling. We stopped three separate times to snorkel and each time the sea life was amazing. Sea turtles, barracuda, a leopard spotted ray, and giant schools of fish that seemed unfazed by the humans among them.

I adore people watching, which may be a big part of a cruise's appeal to me. Where else do you see grown men wearing white speedos in a belly flop competition?

Our last night on the cruise ship we decided to go on deck at sunset, but we picked the only night of the cruise with overcast skies. It was still pretty at the front of the ship.

After dinner we went to sit outside in the "Central Park" area of the ship, a lovely outdoor courtyard designed to replicate the feel of a charming, tree lined city street, complete with shops and restaurants. There were several nice places for a group our size to sit comfortably and hang out and talk. While we sat relaxing and listening to a violin/piano duet we heard over the loudspeaker "Bravo! Bravo! Mayday! Mayday!" along with some other cryptic announcements. We all got a little wide eyed and waited to see if anything else happened. Another minute went by and we heard the same "Mayday" announcement, then we smelled smoke. Holy cow! It was a little scary! There had been a fire in the engine room, which fortunately they were able to contain. The ship had to be turned to allow the smoke from the fire to ventilate out to sea, but everything carried on pretty much like normal, with what seemed like an excessive number of announcements to explain the situation and keep passengers calm. We asked a ship employee how often that kind of thing happened on board and her response was basically, "Never". So there was our excitement. We had to wonder for a very brief amount of time if we were going to be the latest cruise ship on the news having to be rescued from disaster.

Once all that fun was done the boys headed to the pizza parlor downstairs for a late night bite. We spent  quite a bit of time at this place in the evenings. We also hit the karaoke bar where Kim, Jared and I performed (butchered, whatever you want to call it) California Girls by Katy Perry, the dance club, the comedy club, the hot tub, the ice cream bar, the outdoor aqua theater, the outdoor movie theater, and the indoor theater where we saw Chicago and some really cruise-stereotypical lounge act. Other than one or two performances, all the shows we saw were very good.

Many happy meemories were made on this trip! We hope to be able to do it again someday in the not-too-distant future! !