Cruising the Caribbean: Part 2

September 28, 2009    Category: Albino Bowler   3 Comments »

This is the second post in a two part series.  You can find part 1 here.

Barbados:    Out of all the islands, Barbados was the one I was the most disappointed by.  One of the main problems with the island was that the ship was docked right in front of a huge industrial yard and it was very ugly.  We had no excursions planned for the day so we just stayed on the boat the entire day.  I found that there was a ping pong tournament on the ship at 12:30PM so I went to it.  My brother and I also competed in the mini-golf tournament

and he beat me!  I ended up winning the ping-pong tournament though so it was a good day.  My mom and I were bored after ping-pong was over so we went down to the shopping plaza next to the ship.  It didn’t really have that much but I did end up buying some sand and shells for my girlfriend, Roslyn. 

    We got back onto the ship and went to eat sushi, dinner, and played some games in the casino.  I did VERY well on the Blackjack tables. My brother also did very well but didn’t know when to quit and ended up losing all of his money for the night.  I turned 20 dollars into 117.  I realized that Blackjack was awesome at this point and decided that it would be my game of choice for the remainder of the cruise.

St. Lucia:     The ship docked in St. Lucia the next morning at around 10:00AM.  We had already eaten breakfast so it was time to go do our next excursion which was a Canopy Tour (Jungle zip line).  It was yet another long bus ride but totally worth it.  We were able to make it to the zip line area but it was so humid (duh, it’s a jungle).  There was a giant tiki bar at the start of the tour where they showed us how to put on our harnesses and helmets.  The only problem I had with it was that they

made me wear a hairnet, even though I had very short hair, so most of my pictures look stupid.  There were 11 zip lines to go on total and each of them went higher off the ground.  The very last zip line we went on was about 600 foot long, 250 foot in the air and we reached speeds of about 50 miles an hour.  It was an absolutely incredible excursion and probably my favorite of the entire trip.

    My mom and I made it back to the ship and ate some sushi.  You may be wondering what my brother has been doing since we were in Dominica.  Well, a month ago, he broke his leg completely through both bones.  He had to have surgery and they put a steel rod in his leg.  The only two excursions he was able to do were in St. Thomas and Dominica.  He spent the rest of the trip laying in the room and watching TV (yes I know, stupid).

That night, when we went to dinner, Scott and Tom had a great idea.  Everyone at our dinner table decided that we would hijack an entire Blackjack table at the casino once we were done eating.  This turned out to be an awesome idea since all of us did incredibly well in Blackjack.  I ended up turning 40 dollars into 148.  Once again, my brother didn’t know when to quit and lost all of his money again.  Either way, we had a great time.

Antigua:     Antigua was our most busy island.  My mom and I had planned 2 shore excursions in 1 day for this island.  In the morning, we were ATV’ing.  It was VERY fun because we were on trials that drove through the country side and could go very fast on the ATVs.  It was a very beautiful island with lots of palm trees and historical buildings.  One of the stops we made while ATV’ing was at an old plantation windmill.  It was built in 1850 and was still standing.  We were able to

get back to the ship just in time to go back out to do our 2nd excursion, horseback riding!  It was a quick drive to the beach where we were going to do the excursion.  My mom and I have plenty of experience horseback riding since my grandfather used to own horses so it wasn’t anything new to us.  We were hoping they would give us free reign of the horses but the guides made us stay in a line and we couldn’t even make the horses gallop.  Otherwise, the guides would yell at you.  The horseback riding was the worst excursion we went on just because the guides were very unfriendly.  My mom and I both agree that we would’ve been fine if we had just done ATV’ing for that day.  We still enjoyed the beach after the riding was over.  We had also made a tradition of trying the local beer of the island.  I got a few Albino Bowler pics of him with the beer and on the beach.

    Dinner that night was amazing as usual.  Our dinner table decided to hijack a Blackjack table again for the night.  My luck was not so good and ended up losing 40 dollars on the table.  Oh well, you win some, you lose some. 

St. Kitts:

    We arrived in St. Kitts at about 10:00AM.  I wasn’t expecting much out of the island because my mom had been there 12 years earlier and said it was a very run down island.  I was completely surprised when we pulled into the island because it was the most beautiful one of all the islands we had been to.  Not only that, but it had the best shopping center as well.  We decided that we would definitely be visiting it before we went back to the ship after the excursion.  Everyone met right outside of the ship for our last excursion which was Nature Kayaking.  This one was my pick because I wanted to do something to work off the massive amounts of food that we had eaten all week long.

It was a nice bus ride to where we were kayaking.  The bus driver was incredibly nice and had a lot of knowledge about the island.  She even stopped the bus in the middle of the road so we could see some of the monkeys that live on the island!  We eventually made it to the starting location for kayaking.  First, we went snorkeling though.  It was fun; there were a ton of black sea urchins everywhere.  Once everyone was tired of snorkeling, we got into our kayaks and made the 2 and a half mile trip along the edge of the island.  The entire time, my mom complained because she actually had to paddle to make the boat go.  I kept pushing her to paddle and we eventually made it to the stopping point.  As soon as I stepped into the sand, my feet felt like they were on fire.  The beach was all black sand and it was extremely

hot that day so it felt like we were trying to walk over lava.  We made it to the shack on the beach and found that the excursion guides had set up a local fruit feast.  All the fruits on the plate were from the island.  I tried a few that I had never had before such as papaya.  It had some of the best pineapple I have ever had.  Once we finished eating, we rode the bus back to the ship.

The shopping in St. Kitts was amazing.  We went through many stores and eventually found an ice cream shop.  As if we weren’t fat enough already, we got ice cream cones.  I ended up buying the most stuff out of 2 of the shops.  We eventually got tired and went back to the ship.     Later that night, I took the Albino Bowler around the ship and took some pictures of the various places I had spent the most time.  This included the casino, internet café, sushi bar, and main lobby of the ship.  I also had our waiters and our entire table take a group photo with him.

San Juan (Again):

    The ship pulled back into San Juan at about 8:00AM.  We had to go through the debarkation process which is usually pretty easy (it’s just a lot of standing in line).  We ate at the San Juan airport and prepared to go home. 

    Overall, this was one of the best vacations I have ever had.  It had great people, great excursions, great food, and was very relaxing.  Till next time!

–Zac McKinney

Tags: Antigua, Barbados, Kayaking, Puerto Rico, San Juan, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Zac McKinney

Cruising in the Caribbean: Part 1

September 28, 2009    Category: Albino Bowler   4 Comments »

   It was finally my turn to take the Albino Bowler on vacation again!  Carnival Cruise Lines graciously allowed AB to come onto the ship for the entire ride (ok so I didn’t ask for permission, I just took him).  The cruise was 7 days long and visited 7 islands in the southern Caribbean.  The home port for the ship (Carnival Victory) was in San Juan, Puerto Rico.  It was an incredibly long flight (3.5 hours from Atlanta to San Juan) but luckily there was a LCD TV’s built into the back of the seat in front of me.  We arrived in San Juan on time and headed to the hotel.

San Juan:     My mom, brother and I woke up at around 8:00AM and ate breakfast.  We were unable to board the ship until about 1:00PM so I just sat around and read a book.  Once we were on the ship, the real fun started.  One of my favorite places on the ship was the deli.  It opened for lunch as soon as we boarded the ship.  They made a delicious turkey sub for me.  After we were done eating, we went up to the top of the ship and took some pictures

with San Juan behind us.  The ship pulled out of the dock at 9:30pm and we were on our way to St. Thomas!

St. Thomas:    We were able to sleep in on the second day but still had an excursion.  We went to the top deck of the ship to eat breakfast.  I really enjoyed the omelet stand on the ship.  They cooked it exactly how you liked it.  Once we finished breakfast, we explored the ship some more.  I checked out the casino and sushi bar since they were right next to each other (they weren’t open though while we were in port).  My mom, brother, and I got ready for our excursion at about 1:00pm.  While we were waiting, I snapped a shot of the Albino Bowler next to the ship.

The boat arrived to pick us up for the underwater motor scooter excursion shortly after.  It was a 30 minute ride out to where we would be snorkeling and using the scooters.  They went through a quick tutorial on how to steer the scooter and divided us up into two groups.  The crew was absolutely hilarious that were running the excursion.  Once of the girls that went with us was terrified of fish so as soon as she jumped in the water, the owner of the boat threw a TON of goldfish (the snack, not the actual fish) around her.

She was swarmed with yellow striped fish within seconds and screamed so loud.  Everyone on the boat was laughing about it.  The motor scooters were a blast.  We were able to go about 20 feet down and still breathe normally.  They didn’t go very fast but we were able to see a ship wreck and some very beautiful coral.

   After about 3 hours, we loaded up and went back to the ship.  We all prepared for dinner and to meet the other diners at our table.  My mom and I had decided that since everything on the cruise (except alcohol) was completely free, we would try as many new things as possible.  We started going to the sushi bar every day at 5:00PM when it opened and trying every single thing that was available.  The first day was barbequed eel and believe it or not, it was VERY delicious.

We went to dinner and met 3 of the 6 other people at our dinner table.  Their names were Michele, Tom, and Scott.  All of them were from New Jersey and they were some of the coolest people the entire cruise.  All of us got along with no problems and we had dinner over conversation about the excursions we had done that day.  We were also able to meet our main waiter, Alexander, and our assistant waiter, Pospita.  They were also incredibly nice and did a great job serving us the entire week.

   Shortly after dinner, we went back to our rooms and fell asleep from a very long day.  The ship left port at around 5:30PM to head for the next island so we were already on the way before dinner.

Dominica:

   We woke up as early as possible and found we were already in port at Dominica (pronounced Dom-a-ne-ka).  We all went up for breakfast but had to eat quickly because our excursion was an early one.  We finished eating and went down to deck 0 to get off of the ship.  As soon as we stepped on to the island, we heard a guy playing steel drums.  We found our excursion guide for river tubing and waited for everyone to arrive there.  Everyone piled into a bus and we made the long trip to where we would be river tubing (1 hour and 15 minute drive).  Once we were there, everyone had to put on life jackets and helmets.  The river tubing guides gave some instructions and told us to just relax when we hit whitewater on the river.

Everyone formed a line to get into the river with a tube.  Once we were in, it was very relaxing and clam so I took out the Albino Bowler to get a few pictures before the whitewater part.  The water was colder than I had expected but still felt great.  We were on the river for about 2 hours and had a great time.  We stopped on the bus ride back and tried some local rum punch (it was VERY strong and delicious).  We got back to the ship and prepared for dinner.

    We still had time before dinner so my mom and I decided to go to the casino and learn how to play some of the games (the first few nights of the cruise they host a teaching session and show you how to play 2 or 3 games).  We learned how to play Roulette and Blackjack.  I decided that Roulette was not my kind of game and stuck with Blackjack.  The casino host, Paul, taught us everything we needed to know about Blackjack.  Of course, the version he showed us was Face-Up Blackjack, in which the casino has better odds of winning.  Luckily, Tom and Scott from our dinner table knew exactly how to play the regular version of Blackjack and told us how to adapt what we had learned to the regular game.

The other 3 members of our table showed up for this night’s dinner.  They were also from New Jersey, not far from where Tom, Michele, and Scott were from.  Their names were Janette, Gabriella, and Tom (yes we had 2 Toms). Stay tuned for part 2! –Zac Mckinney

Tags: Caribbean, Dominica, Puerto Rico, San Juan, St. Thomas, Underwater Motor Scooter, Zac McKinney