Pirates Retirees of the Caribbean, Part 2 - The Eastern Caribbean

Yesterday we viewed the travelogue for the first half of our cruise vacation last month, featuring on our visit to various locations in the Western Caribbean. Today we look at our visits to several locations in the Eastern Caribbean ...

Since we were doing two one-week cruises back-to-back, we had a day to spend in Ft Lauderdale while the Regal Princess disembarked some passengers, boarded others, and restocked all its onboard bars and restaurants. We decided to spend the day on an excursion that combined visits to the Everglades and to a beautiful botanical garden (we love gardens).

We started with an airboat ride through a small corner of the Everglades, Florida's "River of Grass." Our tour guide was a fellow named Tom, who was an amazing fountain of interesting and entertaining knowledge about Florida in general and the Everglades in particular; at the end of the day, we knew all about the geography, geology, hydrology, and twisted history of the Everglades - his descriptions of the political and economic decisions that have caused grave damage to the ecology, and the expensive attempts to recreate the original natural flow of water and control invasive plants were a cautionary tale about what happens when greed and business interests overpower the natural order of things.

If you've never experienced an airboat ride, imagine this: you are sitting in an open-sided, flat bottomed boat, propelled by two giant fans driven by two huge (and very loud) engines ...

For the most part, we cruised sedately (if noisily) across the surface of the water, over patches of grasses and other water plants, watching for the lurking denizens of the Everglades, such as this alligator, who laid there and totally ignored us as we went by. A grouchy woman on the boat was convinced that it was a plastic alligator, placed there so that we'd be able to say we'd seen one. I noticed, though, that she wasn't convinced enough of that to try to reach out and pet him.

And there's a good-sized iguana sunning himself in this tree ... click the picture to embiggen it and see him ...

Twice, when there were long, open stretches of water, the driver of the boat put the pedal to the metal and we roared along at high speed ... an exhilarating, if extraordinarily loud, experience.  

After the airboat ride, we watched a presentation at an alligator rescue facility, where the American equivalent of Steve Irwin delivered an informative and often funny lecture on alligators, assisted by two of his rescued gators, "Godzilla" and "Target," who moved lazily around just enough to possibly convince the grouchy lady from the boat that they were real ...

From there, it was back onto the bus and off to the Flamingo Gardens wildlife preserve and botanical gardens ...

Flamingo Gardens got its name - oddly enough - from the presence of large numbers of flamingos, which are far more interesting in person than as tacky lawn ornaments. Here, Agnes makes the acquaintance of one of the bubblegum-pink birds, whose garish pink color (we were informed) comes from the chemicals in the shrimp and other marsh things they eat ...

We took a tram ride through the park, which offered us a chance to see the efforts being made to recover from last summer's hurricanes. A great many trees had been blown down, and whenever possible they had been straightened up, replanted, and propped up to try to save them ...

As it happened, our visit coincided with the annual Flamingo Festival, which featured a contest for ladies wearing garish homemade flamingo-themed hats, as well as all sorts of flamingo-inspired art ...

Flamingo'd out, we headed back to the ship to settle in for the second week of the cruise. Our first stop was, once again, Princess Cays, about which I will say no more ... if you're interested, go back and read yesterday's description of that visit, because it was pretty much the same.

After departing Princess Cays and enjoying another relaxing day at sea, we arrived at St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. We'd visited there before, loved it, and had been looking forward to our return visit with great anticipation. Sadly, though, much of what we'd hoped to do was no longer possible because of the lingering damage from last year's hurricane. From the balcony of our room on the ship, everything looked relatively normal, if not downright beautiful ...

But when we walked into town, the unrepaired damaged became more obvious, as in this fence at the edge of the port area that was mangled, twisted, and propped up with two-by-fours ...

We caught a bus tour up to the summit of the highest point on the island, and along the way we saw many ugly scenes of unrepaired damage. The driver told us that red roofs were an old island tradition, but that the "new" island tradition was blue roofs - the blue coming not from colorful shingles and tiles but from the plastic sheeting still covering missing or damaged roofs ... in this picture, you can see the ratio of blue roofs to any other color ...

As far as recovery from the hurricane goes, here are two data points from our bus driver: hurricane Irma struck in early September, and he regained power in his apartment on November 4th; and the three major resort hotels on the island are not expected to be able to reopen until sometime in 2020. The economy, which is driven almost 100% by tourism, is taking a huge hit.

On reaching the highest point on the island, we were able to see beautiful vistas once again - this picture looks out over Magens Bay, rated as being one of the world's most beautiful beaches ...

At the summit, we enjoyed banana daiquiris advertised as being "world famous." World famous or not, they were very potent ...

We returned to the ship soon after that, and relaxed in the hopes that the island's recovery will continue speedily and that our next visit will be to the beautiful place we remember. And then we sailed off into the sunset, headed for our final stop at St Maarten ...

We arrived in the harbor at St Maarten early on the morning of Thursday, January 25th. From our balcony, I had the first view of some of the residual damage from hurricane Irma ... I'm not sure how well you can see it in this picture, but there's a huge area behind the building that's piled high with crushed and battered cargo containers and other wreckage awaiting salvage ...

We'd planned to visit the island's famous zoo, but tours there were cancelled because of damage, escaped animals, and looting sustained during Irma's pounding of the island. Instead, Agnes, Bernadette, and I decided to just walk off the ship and take the water taxi ($7 for an all-day ticket, not a bad deal!) into Philipsburg to wander around for the day. Of course, the touristy happy-snaps had to come first ...

We saw the first of the storm damage from the water taxi at a distance as we cruised across the harbor, and found ourselves up close and personal almost as soon as we got off the taxi at its second stop ...

We wandered around the city on foot, trying to get away from the tourist areas near the harbor. As you might expect, the areas closer to the harbor and the major tourist spots (shops and restaurants) were in generally better repair, while a few blocks further into town, the damage was more visible, with lots of the blue tarps we'd seen in St Thomas, as well as large chunks still carved out of buildings, streets, and sidewalks. 

In spite of the damage, we enjoyed our brief (second) visit to St Maarten and look forward to going back again. After all, where else can you see glorious sunsets like this one? ...

One last thing to mention about our cruise: we've grown used to fine food and excellent service on the Princess ships, but the real stars of all this are the many exceptional crew members who always seem to remain cheerful and happy no matter how busy they are. One evening at dinner, one of our waiters was a young Filipina named Alpha (at least, according to her name tag) who laughed, sang, and joked throughout the entire evening. Agnes and I were too full to want dessert after dinner, and when Alpha returned to serve the desserts everyone else at the table had ordered, she put this plate in front of us - 

In case you can't read it (the strawberry syrup had started to run a bit), she'd written, "We are sweet enough :)."

Awwwwww ...

Oh, and one really last thing to mention ... when we arrived back at Ft Lauderdale on Sunday, I got a text message from our daughter asking us to text her when we left Dulles Airport in DC, headed for home - because she planned to meet us at the house with a nice meat loaf and mashed potatoes dinner!

And if there's a better way to come home at the end of a wonderful vacation, I don't know what it is!

So, that's the story of our cruise. We had a great time, with only minor glitches for weather and modifications because of last year's hurricanes. It was wonderful to see St Thomas and St Maarten again, and we're looking forward to going back again at the earliest opportunity.

But until then, I'm done.

Have a good day. More thoughts, on a more serious topic, tomorrow.

Bilbo