Cruise Tales: The first week comes to an end

Holy crap, how did that happen? It’s day 7 on board the cruise ship Oasis, and this is our second consecutive day at sea.

Now that I have some time, I’ll write about the things I couldn’t in port with limited time and battery power on my cell phone…

My favourite day so far has to be our excursion in St. Thomas – as I mentioned earlier, we did a power snorkel trip to Turtle Island, which is about an hour’s sail from the cruise ship dock.

We immediately boarded a “pirate ship” and motored over to the island in about 45 minutes, where we got quick instruction on how to best put on our masks, and use our floatation devices (not really required in such incredibly highly salted water… it was effortless to float without adding any air in the vests.

Barry and I elected to add on power turbines to our adventure, and were a little let down that they didn’t have enough machines to go around for those that had paid for them. We ended up sharing ours between the two of us, but as it turned out, it felt really good to kick about rather than power through the water with these hand held props. We definitely needed the exercise after the last few days of indulgences, not to mention the rum punch we partook in after we got back on board the boat.

We ended sailing most of the way back, and enjoyed the sun, the rum, and the great tunes. It was a lovely day…

St. Maarten was great too, although not much to write about there. We ended up finding this cute little bar at the end of the beach (see the previous post for the photo) and enjoyed a bucket of Desperato (tequila flavoured beer found down in these parts) and then decided to make our way over to the French side of the island. Uck. I wish we hadn’t done that, actually. Because of a traffic issue, what should have been a 20 minute cab ride ended up taking over an hour longer than that – And, only to get over there to discover the tags for everything in Euro, and crazy-out-of-this-world prices. By the time we got there, we literally had half an hour to walk around before finding another cab back. Oh, did I mention, the first cab had no air conditioning? In one of the most humid and hot places on the planet? Ya… Not the best choice, but we can say we did it, anyhow.

I’m currently enjoying a glass of Lindeman’s on the balcony while my hair soaks up some much-needed conditioner.

As I think about this past week, I am really looking forward to getting on board our next ship, the Crown Princess, where we’ll be meeting up with both sets of parents, and Annette and Lee (friend’s of Penney and Bob’s from Austrailia) – The last two weeks with them will be awesome! Besides, I’m looking forward to being on a more conventional cruise ship, if you can believe it, as we have barely seen any shows on this ship due to scheduling fiascos, and the inability to see a show without pre-booking them (and if you miss it, too bad, you lose). I don’t like that part of cruising with 5600 other people, that I can tell you.

I do want to mention, that Barry and I have really enjoyed meeting some awesome fellow Canadians on board – we’ve been sitting with a couple from Winnipeg (one of whom is currently still in radio) Patty and Curtis, and a really nice couple from Ontario, Louise and Elliott (who is in the cruise business) and finally the first couple we met at the terminal, Eves and Karen.

Time to rinse out my hair! Hope you have been enjoying my updates!