Devils Island & Approaching the Amazon.

Travel Blog   Sunday and Monday, December 29-30, 2013

At sea in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of French Guiana

On Sunday morning, we presented our third show for the guests and we had a full house in the show lounge. We were presenting information on our “visit” to Devil’s Island our stop for the following day. Since this was one of the high points of the cruise, many of the guests were eager to learn everything about this former French penal colony located off the coast of French Guiana in South America. We were very pleased with this new show that we had produced and the guests complimented us on it. It was broadcast on the stateroom TV continuously after our live show ended.

We had been told that we would be landing on one of the islands and would spend a few hours exploring the remains of the prison located on one of the three Iles du Salut (Salvation Islands). We anticipated walking in the footsteps of Papillion, the most famous escape Baynard (prisoner). This determined man who escaped during the Second World War and subsequently wrote an excellent book on his life in this French prison system. His memoirs later became an award winning movie by the same name.

A few days after we embarked on this cruise, we were told that we would not be landing on Devil’s Island but would be spending two hours cruising around the island and the cruise director wanted us to narrate the experience for the guests. Many of the guests were equally disappointed in the decision to not land on the island. We had a short amount of time to prepare for our on the spot lecture on Monday.

We decided to forgo the late dining hour on Sunday as we knew that we would be changing out clocks and losing an hour’s sleep so we wanted to go to bed earlier and be ready for this unexpected “play by play” on deck in the morning.

Upon waking, we felt that our first week on the Pacific Princess had been a success and we were ready to offer our comments to the guests who crowded the pool deck and jogging track on decks 9-10 in anticipation of viewing Devil’s Island. We answered numerous questions and took turns relaying information on this infamous penal system that gave a ‘black eye’ to France’s modern history.

Later in the day we watched the silly ceremony marking our crossing the equator. Many members of the cruise staff, who had never done the crossing were doused with various liquids and thrown into the pool. Even the ship’s captain allowed himself to be tossed into the pool in full uniform. It was a delight for all who participated and for those of us “shellbacks” happy not be included but just watch the proceeding on the pool deck.

We are now off to the mouth of the Amazon and will not be ashore again until Thursday.

A Day at the Beach

Travel Blog   Saturday, December 28, 2013

Scarborough, Tobago, West Indies

Today was our third port day. Sunday will be an at-sea day.

We were pleased when we arrived at Scarborough harbor on the island of Tobago (pronounced to bay go).  We were the only ship in that day.  Tobago doesn’t get many cruise ships. Scarborough appeared to be a clean and well-organized city and we had a nice view of the entire waterfront area.  This was quite a contrast to the mountainous, and somewhat randomly-organized character, of our previous day’s visit to St. Lucia. 

Tobago is the smaller part of the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago and is a vacation destination for many, including the residents of the other island, Trinidad.

Since we had not enjoyed a beach day on this cruise so far, we decided that that this would be a great opportunity for one.  Our guidebooks recommended Pigeon Point, a famous beach area on the southwest end of the island.  We hailed a taxi at the port area and enjoyed the half-hour drive to the beach.

Saturday was a busy day for the residents of the island, also and the roads and towns were crowded with shoppers and beach-goers. Passing through a security gate and paying our nominal admission to the beach   Palm trees provided just the right amount of shade in the right places and we pulled our beach lounges up to a spot overlooking the sandy beach.

reserve, we were enchanted by the setting.

The beach at Pigeon Point provides nearly everything one could desire.  The water is warm and, after the first 30 feet of broken coral, the bottom was sandy.  The waves were just right, small enough so they didn’t knock you down and large enough to make swimming fun.  A reef far offshore tempers the size of the waves.  I don’t think Hawaii has any swimming beaches that can beat this.

We spent our three hours at the beach swimming, sunning, reapplying our sunscreen and talking with the other ship’s lecturer, Michael, who showed up there about an hour after we did.

Unlike many Caribbean ports, Tobago does not have dozens of vendors selling tacky tourist goods at dockside.  The central town market carried only normal goods for the Tobagans.  We will be stopping here on our return voyage and will try to find some items to bring home.

We were back aboard Pacific Princess by 2:00 and grabbed some lunch and relaxed on deck before our desk duty from 5:0-6:00.  We enjoyed music in the lounge before our 8:15 dinner.  The ship is quite a ‘roller” and the deck’s motion sometimes makes it difficult to walk. We turned in about 10:00 and tired and contented.

Sunday will be a sea day on our way to French Guiana and Devil’s Island

A day in St. Lucia

Travel Blog December 27, 2013

St. Lucia, West Indies

Welcome to the lovely island of St. Lucia. We have been here before but there are things that we have not done in past trips. We thought that it would be nice to go to the beach for a kick-back day but the weather looked like some tropical rains would appear which they did. We changed our minds and opted instead to walk into the capital city of Castries and experience a cultural immersion day in the market place.

We walked into town which is approx 1.5 miles from the cruise port and went downtown to the central market and wandered with no real destination for about an hour or more. Even thought we were the only ship in port today, it was still crowded in town with lots of local shoppers. The St Lucian’s speak with a melodious lilt to their voices in a combination of English and their distinctive local Creole dialect. It is lovely to just soak up the sounds and bright colors of the buildings and clothing. It is a true Caribbean experience.

The temperatures approached the 80’s and the humidity equal, so we decided to return back the ship to cool off. The walk back took us less than an hour around this snug harbor of St Lucia.

We have been given an assignment on this ship that we have never had on previous ships to sit near the excursion desk and answer questions on the ports. We didn’t get many questions so we wonder if it is really worth our time but we are listed on the daily calendar of events so we will continue to do this each day we are assigned to do so.

The evening show time was changed today so were didn’t have to wait until after our late dinner for entertainment. We attended a show with a very funny comedian. In our experience on board cruise ships, we have heard many comedians but this was one of the better that we have seen. He played to the audience and included a number of them in his jokes and presented a show which lasted over 45 minutes. The dinner was excellent and the day was likewise here on the lovely island of St Lucia.

Off to Tobago, the smaller island in the country of Trinidad and Tobago for more exciting experiences and some beach time tomorrow.

Public market at Castries

a Day in Sint Maarten

Travel Blog   December 26, 2013

Sint Maarten, West Indies

Today is a port day.  Because of strong headwinds in the Atlantic the last two days, we arrived in port a bit later than expected.

We ate our typical leisurely breakfast on the short deck aft of the buffet on the Pacific Princess.  The food has been excellent and the service staff quite friendly.  The temperatures have been absolutely ideal.  What a wonderful place to be on Boxing Day. 

The ship was secured and we were ready to go ashore by 10:30.  Since we had spent much time on the island on previous visits, we chose to stay right in Philipsburg, the capital of the Dutch Side.

The island is split between two countries  Sint Maarten, occupying the southern portion of the island, is a self-governing entity under the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  St. Martin, in the island’s North, is French territory.  There is not border visible between the two parts.  The island is the smallest geographic piece of land occupied by two different countries.

John enjoys Philipsburg beach

We decided to take a walk from the port area to town, a distance of about 1 ½ miles.  For us, this is a leisurely stroll. 

We coated our pale winter skins with sunscreen, topped off with a layer of mosquito repellant and set off toward the commercial center of Philipsburg.  It was a very pleasant walk, although we soon got in the habit of sticking to the shady side of the street.  It may be midwinter, but we are definitely in the tropics!  We walked down the boardwalk at beach-side and then went inland one block to Front Street, the crowded commercial center of the town. 

We had a list of a few items to buy that we needed to bring with us and Philipsburg is possibly the best place in the Caribbean to shop.  We had soon purchased everything we were looking for and were ready for a break.  After reaching the end of town, we returned to the beautiful beach fronted by the boardwalk and found a little beach-side bar that had wi-fi as well as cold beverages.  We listened to the live reggae music performed for us as we Skyped our daughter, Kari, from our table.  What a perfect way to spend the middle of the day! 

We hauled our purchases back to the ship and headed up to the buffet for a 2:00 lunch.  This gave us a few hours to relax and clean up, since we were scheduled to answer questions at the excursions desk from 5:00 to 6:00.  We had a number of questions from the passengers about our next stop, St. Lucia, and were pleased that Kari had been there only a few weeks ago and had given us fresh information.

We again chose to dine at our scheduled 8:15 time in the Club Restaurant and traded stories about our day ashore.  The meals were excellent, as usual.  The evening show featured a pair of twins, performing on the electronic violins, which seemed to be enjoyed by all. 

John turned off his reading light at midnight.

Friday we would be in St. Lucia.

Travel Blog December 24-25 2013

Travel Blog   December 24-25 2013

At sea, the Atlantic Ocean north of Puerto Rico

Merry Christmas to all

We awoke feeling more rested on Christmas Eve day, after our 3 hour sleep before embarkation in Florida.  Today was our first of many shows that we are scheduled to present for all of the guests. With this being the first morning on board and also with a time change we expected a very small turn out at our 9:45am show but were pleasantly surprised at the amount of other early risers. We had approximately 100 guests attending our show covering the first three ports of call in the Caribbean: St Martin, St Lucia, and Tobago. The show was very well received and we enjoyed explaining the ports of call that we enjoy visiting.

After our show and questioning period, we had a nice relaxing day on board ship. We purchased an internet card so we were able to send and receive emails. The most important reason for doing this was to be able to keep in contact with Kari and Jim. We Skyped them in the afternoon from our stateroom on deck 3 so we were excited to see that we will be able to talk to them “in person” as we continue this 28 day journey.

Christmas Eve was the first formal night and we attended the captain’s cocktail reception before dinner. We still needed to catch up with our sleep so we decided not to go to the evening production show but opted to go to bed soon after dinner. We have been assigned late seating which means that our dinner doesn’t start until 8:15. The show on Christmas Eve didn’t start until 10:15 and we were sure we would embarrass ourselves by falling asleep in the show.

On Christmas morning the sun was shining but it was windy. This made a challenge to get our daily deck walk accomplished as we had to push against head-on breezes as we rounded the track. The ship was bucking the winds all day which made for a very rocky experience.

The daily program called the Princess Patter listed us three times on the 25th. Our port show from Christmas Eve was rebroadcast continuous on the stateroom TV’s so we watched and critiqued our performance in our room. We normally tend to be overly critical or maybe nit-picky when we watch ourselves on TV but we thought that it looked pretty good. Our background music was not picked up on the theater’s audio feed so we know we will have to correct that with the staff for our next shows.

Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum!

On Christmas, there were religious services and a variety of activities throughout the ship. We presented one of our favorite shows on Pirates to a large crowd in the afternoon. The show lounge was almost filled. We enjoy giving this show and by the comments we received from the guests, we knew that they enjoyed it also. After the show, the cruise director had listed that we would be available near the excursion desk for an hour to answer questions from the guests. We had a few people stop by with questions.

We wanted one more night to catch up on sleep so we decided to eat an earlier dinner and go to the early show. We ate our dinner in the Panorama Buffet and then attend the special Christmas variety show at 8:15. The turkey dinner was quite good with many traditional foods for the holiday. We were in bed by 10:00. Tomorrow we have our first port in St. Martin so we will be refreshed and ready to hit the shore with renewed energy.

We hope all of you had a wonderful holiday and that 2014 will be a great year you.

At sea, off the southeast coast of Florida

Travel Blog   December 22-23 2013

At sea, off the southeast coast of Florida

We awoke Sunday morning to a beautiful Palm Springs area day.  This Sunday was the first full day of winter, but you would never know it, as the sun was shining bright with a temperature of nearly 70* F and there was no wind.  The mountains sparkled as Gary, our house-sitter, drove us from our winter home in Desert Hot Springs to Palm Springs Airport. 

Since it was the peak of the holiday travel rush, with reports of horrible weather all over the center of the US, we were quite apprehensive about our travel plans.  We would be partially right about this.  We checked in at the Delta counter with our two large bags.  We thought they might be overweight, but they didn’t even bother to weigh them with the rush.

Our plane was right on time for its 12:15 departure and we were soon flying over the glistening, snow-capped peaks of southwest Colorado. As Delta does not fly directly from Palm Springs to Fort Lauderdale, we were forced to change planes in Minneapolis, a city known for its winters. 

We were not surprised to land after dark in the middle of some snow flurries.  Ascending the jet way into the terminal, the sharp cold air made us very much aware of the difference between the California desert and Minnesota winters.  We had packed no winter clothes for this trip. 

Since we had just over an hour before boarding our flight to Florida, we rushed to our departure gate, located at the other end of the airport, grabbing a sandwich at Subway while on our way.  We seated ourselves comfortably in the departure lounge and waited for the boarding call for flight 1688. 

Just as the Law of Gravity keeps us from floating off into space, another law often prevails, Murphy’s  We had both been concerned that bad weather might delay our departure, but we hadn’t considered that a series of human and mechanical errors would make the trip more challenging.   Immediately before our scheduled 6:45 loading time, an announcement was made that the airliner, a venerable MD90, was having some computer problems, which would need to be repaired and the computer reset before takeoff.  After a few more announcements were made, finally telling the passengers that a new plane would arrive from Seattle at 8:30 and, after it was unloaded and serviced; it would take us on our way. 

We were eventually loaded on the new plane, carry-ons stowed and seatbelts adjusted when the captain made a new announcement on the intercom.  Water and drinks had not yet been loaded and there with be a further delay.  A short time later, another announcement came from the cockpit.  Because of the delay, the maximum 16 hour work day for the cabin stewards would be exceeded and we were directed to leave the plane, carrying all of our things until a cabin crew could be found.  It turned out they were on a Minneapolis bound flight, but would board as soon as they arrived from Atlanta.

The mood of the passengers turned from impatient to downright surly as we off-loaded our gear and headed back to the terminal.  John decided that DELTA must stand for “Doesn’t Even Leave The Airport.”  We knew if the flight was cancelled that we would miss our cruise. A series of phone calls and texts to our travel-agent daughter, Kari, kept us informed of what we could expect.

Finally we re-boarded the plane and taxied a short distance to have the plane de-iced.  We finally headed to the runway at 12:30 am, five hours and ten minutes after our scheduled departure time.  Although everyone aboard was dog-tired, we found it nearly impossible to get any serious sleep in the rigid and cramped seating on the jet.  We arrived to a nearly empty Ft. Lauderdale Airport shortly after 5:00 am, grabbed our luggage from the carousel and took a taxi to our hotel, where we checked in 6:00, Monday morning!

We awoke about 9:30, grabbed breakfast, showered, packed and headed to the nearby Port Everglades Cruise Terminal, where, after a bit of a wait, we got onboard the beautiful Pacific Princess.  This is one of the smaller cruise ships in the fleet, with a passenger capacity of only about 600. 

Our stateroom on deck 3

We were very pleased with our spacious outside cabin and the classic beauty of the ship, but we were tired and hungry.  We obtained our lecturing schedule and met our tablemates for our late-seating dinner.  The food was excellent, as was the service.

We are scheduled to deliver our first program at 9:45 am in the Cabaret Lounge.  Nearly exhausted, we remembered to turn our clocks ahead before retiring at midnight.

Beginning our Amazon Adventure

December 21, 2013

Desert Hot Springs, California

Today is the first day of winter in the Northern Hemisphere.  It is the shortest day of the year.

We are trying to get all of our last-minute bill-paying and packing done in preparation for our latest adventure.  An old friend, Gary, arrives today to act as a cat sitter and house sitter.  I hope Ocho, our black Persian, doesn’t terrorize him too much.

Today is a typical winter day in the Palm Springs area.  It is a mild morning with blue, sunny skies and very little wind.  You couldn’t ask for better weather.  We fly to Florida tomorrow to embark on our cruise.  Unfortunately, the weather forecast for much of the US is not promising and we hope that we can get to Florida by Monday, when our cruise departs.  This is also one of the busiest air travel weekends in the USA.  We are especially concerned about making our connection in Minneapolis.  I guess whatever happens will happen.

We will be working as lecturers on two separate 14 day back-to-back cruises which will leave Ft. Lauderdale on Monday and end in Manaus, Brazil, 1000 miles up the Amazon.

We have three ports of call in the Caribbean, a stop at Devil’s Island, French Guiana, and four stops in the Amazon.  We will spend Christmas and New Year’s Day at sea on the southbound trip. Our ship, the Pacific Princess, will offload its passengers in Manaus and bring on a new load of passengers on our northbound voyage.

We sincerely hope that Murphy’s Law does not kick in for us on this trip.  We will try to update this blog when possible.

Smooth sailing and Happy New Year.

John and Donna

You might be able to catch us during our travels on Skype at j.mollan

Minneapolis forecast

SUNDAY	SUNDAY NIGHT	MONDAY	MONDAY NIGHT
Cloudy	Cloudy	Snow	Snow	Chance Of Snow	Mostly Clear
Hi: 19°F	Lo: 14°F	Hi: 17°F	Lo: -6°F	Hi: 4°F	Lo: -14°F
		POP: 70%	POP: 60%	POP: 20%