Apparently the weather on this island is very unpredictable. This was our view pulling into port:
See how it changes so quickly?
Wake up call this morning with coffee delivered to room service at 7:15. That tied me over until we managed to get our act together and make it down to Blu at 8:00 for breakfast. I wanted to go a little lighter this morning so just got a fruit and cheese plate with a blueberry muffin. As usual, everything we had was wonderful and we were able to leave for our beach excursion with a full belly.
We left the ship about 8:45 to meet Liz Pereira at 9:00. On the way we got waylaid by one of the guys with monkeys ... You know I'm a sucker. And this being the monkey island (seriously, there are more monkeys on the island than people - for real!). Since we were headed to the beach you know I looked like a hot mess. Holy cow just not how I normally want to remember I looked, but it is what it is.
So the meeting with Liz didn't go exactly as planned. At first we couldn't find her at the place she designated. Then one of her affiliates told her we were looking for her. When she came over to us it was as if she had completely forgotten that we were coming in today. When Bob showed her the email, she made an effort at recovery and walked off to find us a driver to the beach. There was some haggling with the first guy and in the end he refused. So she found Tony and he agreed to drive us.
Tony was great. Especially if you overlook the fact that he piled us into a little as 4 seater car (there were five of us including him) to drive 30 minutes to the reggae bar. He told us stories anout the island while driving these little pot hole riddled roads dodging oncoming cars and slamming on breaks. It was quite an adventure. The kicker came when we arrived and he wanted to know who was paying him. Uh Ooohhh. We had already paid Liz for the transportation there and back. Apparently she didn't pay him. He promised us he'd be back at 3:00 to pick us up. Crossing our fingers ...
The Reggae Beach Bar was an interesting place. It's right on the beach and is lined with chairs and umbrellas to rent. (Liz was supposed to have reserved chairs and umbrellas for us - she didn't.) Either wa, we enjoyed the day laying by the beach, floating in the water - this beach was much calmer than Sand Castle yesterday, even though it as still pretty windy. One of the nicest things about this beach is the service. You don't have to get up to do anything but go in the water. Everything as brought right to your chair. Awesome! Our server was Shirley and she made sure we lacked for nothing. We bought a bucket of local beer, 6 for $20 and were in heaven.
The water was a bit cold until we got used to it but was nice once the shock wore off. The snorkeling still wasn't great here either but at least we did break out our masks and snorkel to try them out. Looks like they're going to work great!!! - once we actually have something to look at. I saw about three fish this afternoon. Bob saw one. Oh well.
Not much is it? A guy came walking around selling his own reggae CDs. He was something else. Bob haggled with him and made a deal - we got 2 reggae Christmas CDs and 2 regular reggae CDs for $30. He had a boom box with him and played quite a few of his songs. They actually sounded pretty good. Nice local souvenir from the island.
We split a mahi sandwich with fries for lunch and started packing up to go back to the ship around 2:30. On the way out we checked out the shop and bought a couple of "Rush Slowly" t-shirts and bottle coozies. I love it.
While waiting for Shirley to settle the tab, I noticed there were dollar bills posted on the ceiling by the bar, and flags from all over the world signed and hung up inside, and people had written their names and dates on anything they could find. You know we had to do that too!!
After we settled the tab and wrote our names on the bar, we went out front to wait on Tony. He didn't show. Onto Plan B. We managed to hitch a ride with another company on an open trolley kind of vehicle - for $5 ea. We took it. Boy was that an experience!!
Made it back to the ship about 3:45. So I have a review to write on tripadvisor.com about Liz Pereira and the way she does business. I know things can happen but she apparently scammed Tony by not paying him up front because we had already paid her, and then didn't take care of us by making sure we were taken care of for our ride back to the ship.
We did our typical sauna thing before coming back to the room and getting cleaned up for dinner. It was nearly 5:30 by the time Bob started shaving and 6 before I got in the shower. Needless to say, we were going to be a little later tonight. I wanted to run up on the 11th deck to get a shot of the ship leaving port. St Kitts is such a beautiful island. I think we'd all like to come back and stay here for a week to explore it more. Anyway the wind was brutal!! It's been windy since we landed in San Juan Saturday and seems like it just keeps getting worse. I hope it's gone tomorrow! I've been really excited about snorkeling champagne reef. And we've learned the snorkeling just isn't that great when it's this kind of windy. But we sure are rocking this boat tonight!
By the time we finally got down to dinner we had lost our table, but we still kept the same servers, Jasna and Vincent. The meal, once again, was amazing. We started of with almond encrusted Brie overtop of hot pepper jelly. Oh. My. Goodness. It was AMAZING!!! My salad was a jicama salad with cucumbers and watermelon drizzled with some kind of lemon oil. Excellent I tell you. Excellent!! Dinner was a new kind of fish we have never had before. It was a Mediterranean Sea Bass. Cooked to perfection. Was delicious!! And dessert was chocolate lava cake. Uh, that was Vincent's recommendation. Spot on. Perfect!
The show at 9:00 tonight was called Sirens. It was a burlesque show. Apparently I don't know what they're supposed to be. I was not entertained. It was like sitting throug a high school musical just because someone's kid you knew was in it. It was pretty bad. And that's a shame because the tat lent available is really good. But the content of this thing really sucked. Jacques and Gigi kept nodding off in hopes that when they woke back up it would be over!! Didn't work that way. Unfortunately.
That segwayed right into something we had been looking forward to - The Newlywed Not So Newlywed Game at 10:30 in the rendezvous Lounge. We had seen it on the Alaska cruise and it was fabulous!! This one was pretty good too. It's hysterical that people will volunteer to go up in front of a bunch of people and embarras themselves by answering intimate questions. Works for us!!
After all that laughter we needed a snack before turning in for bed. LOL. Of course we did. We're on a ship! We moseyed up to the Ocean Cafe to see what we could find. Trouble. Jacques had his pizza and the rest of us got a plate of cheese, bread and olives. The ship was really rockin' and rollin' tonight. I got so tickled as we were walking back to our cabins because as the ship rocks we all walk in a zig zag line, back and forth, back and forth. It really is hysterical. You can't help it. We got back to the cabin around midnight and started journaling as soon as I got my face washed and teeth brushed. It's now 1:22am. Gonna be a short night. Wake up call is 7:00. We have to be off the ship at 8:30 for our Dominica tour.
So G'night!!
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