Summary of Days 4-9 -- January 17 - 21

((in paragraphs for the old people, lol))

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Wow, time really flies. It doesn’t seem like it’s been so long since I wrote a blog! Our first sea day was pretty relaxed, we wandered around the ship some more, lost at bingo, and got addicted to the quarter-drop game in the casino, and Dan continued to win on the slot machines repeatedly.

Made some friends sitting at the quarter machine that we keep bumping into on the ship… it’s funny how you get to know random people completely by coincidence without even trying. There are a lot of people from Wisconsin here, apparently. That’s what everyone keeps telling us, though we have not met any.

The next day was Samana (pronounced saman-AH), in the Dominican Republic. The joke on the ship about that port is “I’ve never seen so many people get on and off on the same tender boat!” (there’s no port so we have to drop anchor and take little boats in, called tender boats.)

We did not book a shore excursion, which was apparently a mistake, but even people who did take them were also not thrilled with Samana. It was advertised as underdeveloped, but put in a positive light “it retains its original island charm, unspoiled and remote,” well we found out the hard way that this means “ghetto.” It was filthy, extremely poor, and generally annoying.

It was hot. It was smelly. There was garbage on the sidewalks, dirty chickens clucking around eating it, mangy flea-ridden stray dogs laying asleep (or dead) on the pavement or chewing on themselves in the cracked, dirty roads.

We bought postcards and some gifty things at the one tourist friendly mall, which is still under development, contains only souvenir shops and bar, and is only accessible by walking down a boardwalk littered with Dominican children selling shells for $1, and cab drivers hustling you to get a ride to the beach—which is on the other side of the island, and costs $100 to get to. (I did hear a woman say she talked a guy down to $10 each person but her friends were leery… rightfully so.)

There is a resort on an island nearby and one of the shore excursions took you there, which probably would have been the only good way to go. On the post card to my parents I wrote “We came, we saw, and then we decided to leave!” Of course, we tried to find a post office, asked a bartender if he spoke English (which nobody did at all, even though the brochure on the ship says most of them do *cough*lie*cough*) and he said he did but did not understand us when we asked where the post office is.

So we followed our crappy map and ended up in a completely run-down residential neighborhood where there was a horse eating tall grass in someone’s yard, and everyone staring at us. Obviously we were out of place, so we just said “you know what, we’ll just mail these in St. Thomas." We got back on the ship, showered, because I felt so dirty just from being in that country. The good news is, tourism will help bring them out of poverty and someday Samana will be another thriving Caribbean tourist trap, with diamond jewelry shops as far as the eye can see.

That night we ate at Aqua, which was free, and just as fancy as Salsa. I had some fruity chilled soup and tortellini, and Dan had Salisbury steak and fries. We saw a Magic show that was cute and funny but pretty average and easy to figure out (the chick he cut in half was obviously a contortionist) except for the last vanishing-girl act, that one blew us both away.

Dan bought a watch he was scoping out the night before, and I told him if he won $90 at the casino the night before he could get it. So he got it! Then it was Monte Carlo night at the casino, where Dan got picked to help pour the champagne fountain along with about a dozen other people, including 70-year-old ladies that scared me because it looked like they were going to knock all of the glasses over with their unsteady hands! I was glued to the addicting quarter-drop game, and Dan was back on his favorite slot machine for much of the night, until we decided that we were not making money anymore, and that was depressing, so no more casino for us.

The next day was much better. That was St Thomas, in the US Virgin Islands. After another awesome omelet for breakfast, (I’m telling you, I could live like this…)we did a little shopping at the mall (jewelry, liquor, jewelry, tee-shirts, jewelry, liquor, perfume, jewelry) right off the port before we had a shore excursion that mom and dad bought us for xmas, called The Best of St. Thomas. Which is less ghetto than Samana by a long shot, but still slightly run-down and crowded.

We stopped at a lookout point photo-op and they had a little flea-market type deal with people pushing $5 tee-shirts at you, and you could get your picture taken with the old donkey for $5. Then it was up to the Great House and Gardens, which was a beautiful manor up on the top of the mountain overlooking Magen’s Bay—which has been called one of the world’s top 10 beaches of all time), really great pictures of the garden and the aqua-turquoise-and-navy-blue sea. The house was destroyed by a hurricane in the past and was completely reconstructed out of what they could find and new materials, and it was an OK house tour, but no history or interesting stories were to be found.

Then the open-air bus took us up to Mountain Top, a bar and shopping center at 1,550 feet, the highest point of St. Thomas, providing more panoramic views of the Caribbean islands and ocean… and also the home of Banana Daiquiris! Quite tasty.

Hopped back on the bus and back down through Charlotte Amalie, the main city, to the port. We had about an hour and a half before we had to be back on the ship, so we went to a place called the Butterfly Farm that we spotted on the way back (less than 5 minutes to walk from the port) and it was adorable. The floor in the gift shop was made of sand.

We got a little tour and learned about butterflies in their little atrium—(did you know that a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly involves dissolving into a complete primordial goo and then a butterfly forms from that? Really cool.) and then they let you wander around and take pictures of all the butterflies and of course I harassed a few into getting off their leaf or flower and onto my finger. My favorite, the Blue Morpho, was abundant, but they didn’t open their wings up for any good pictures, so those are the ugly brown ones with circles on their wings. :P

Then back on the ship for some dinner at the Venetian (the only other free restaurant), where I went out on a limb and had stuffed cabbage which was their only advertised vegetarian meal, and it was actually pretty good, though I could not bring myself to eat the whole thing.

Our bad experience at Samana led us to the Shore Excursions desk when they opened at 6 to book something. Our first pick, snorkeling at Virgin Gorda, had two spots left! We booked it for basically free because we each got a $77 credit because the gas prices went down since we booked our trip. (In addition to the $100 mom and dad gave us, and $50 each for booking during their promotional thingy… wooo free booze money!)

We hung out by the pool at the bar until it was time for “Who wants to be a Bazillionaire,” a fake game show they were having. There was literally nobody there, and the first woman who got picked did not want to be on stage and was not a very good contestant, so I signed both me and Dan up. And Dan got picked. Dan always gets picked. He won the “fake million dollars that you can buy nothing with,” but did get an NCL beach bag. LOL! The host of the show was extremely helpful on the questions Dan didn’t know “I’ll guess C,” “Ummmm maybe you should guess again,” so it was pretty much guaranteed that both contestants “won.” Still entertaining, however lame and cheesy.

Then back up to the pool bar for the Caribbean party night, which was our obnoxious Australian cruise director leading about 5 line dances (Macarena, Electric Slide, etc) and then the music cut off and the party kind of fizzled, which is what happened the night before at Monte Carlo night.

I wanted to post this blog last night but there was drinking to be done! Made friends with a poolside bartender from the Philippines, he said working on a cruise ship was basically his only option to bring home enough money for his family to buy a house and have a future, which are back at home.

Dan wants to look into getting a job on the fire department on board (ideal dream firefighting job) and is still attempting to hunt down the cruise director to see if he can get a tour of the facilities “behind the scenes,” neato. That means I would either stay at home (boo) or have to try to get a job on board, which is probably very competitive, and is all apparently paid by commission. Something to consider…

Friday was Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. The name of the city we dock in is Road Town, which was much cuter than what we saw of Charlotte Amalie, as far as the shops near the port go. We parked right next to another NCL ship, our sister ship, the Norwegian Gem (which has waterslides and a rock climbing wall!)

We looked out our porthole this morning and saw big green gems and guessed that it was the Gem! We found a post office first thing, mailed our post cards in Tortola because we ran out of time in St Thomas, then went to a cute shop called Sunny Caribee Spices and Art Gallery, and got some more gifty things. Tortola is our favorite port of call because it’s so cute. There’s a law that states none of the buildings can rise higher than the palm trees, so its tightly packed streets and colorful buildings make it much more charming.

Then we headed back to the ship to get ready for snorkeling! After a catamaran ride out to the Virgin Gorda Baths, which are boulders that have been carved out by the sea to make caves and bowls , we hopped out of the boat. I hyperventilated for a few minutes, which was expected—because I’ve snorkeled before I knew how I would react at first, but after getting used to it we had fun.

We saw a stingray, which was huge, a good 4 feet long (but for all I knew it could have been 20 feet long it looked so huge) and a flat fish (or a stone fish we are not sure what they are called) which are the ones that are completely flat and swim sideways, and are camouflaged so they just look like part of the sand. I spotted him because I saw him move, if he didn’t we would have no idea he was there.

Then we got to the beach and hiked through the caves, which was interesting because Dan barely fit through some of the crevices, and out the other side to snorkel our way back to the boat. We got some use of our camera underwater because it’s waterproof to 3 meters, which was fun. Dan did some free diving to get some close-ups of coral and fish.

Then we got some free rum punches on the way back to the port, and then it was time to get back on board. We had a quick lunch, and then watched as we undocked and waved goodbye to the cruise ship parked next to us, it was cute. It rained a little bit as we were taking off, but as soon as we got out to sea it cleared up, and we playing shuffleboard with another older couple (the guy has gigantic white eyebrows and a waxed mustache, quite a character) on the promenade, and then watched the sunset up on the 13th deck. (I think there’s 14 or 15 midship, but they are all fancy schmancy suites that we can’t go to)

Then we came back to the stateroom to blog and ordered room service—which we discovered is FREE—and now it’s off to the internet café to post pictures and blogs. There’s a choco-holic buffet at 10pm that we are going to check out. Tomorrow is another day at sea before we get to the Great Stirrup Cay—NCL’s privately owned resort island—where we will relax on the beach and hike around the island most likely.