Caribbean Farewell

Post tourist season and the tender docks are being repaired

Not a Yellow Submarine, but a white one, good venue to watch underwater wonders

Local open air tender tied up to the side of Veendam and awaiting passengers

Disney Fantasy with twice as many people aboard than Veendam...



Shore side scene in Grand Caymans



Stack of Veendam, as seen through the tennis court net

The 'retreat' on the aft deck. Never beautiful, but even less so when all the hot tubs are closed

The 'Retreat' on the aft deck of the Veendam, rather abandoned looking. Even the artificial palm trees have lost their luster

Our wake, reaching all the way to the horizon....passing Havana Cuba right now

Hand Washing station at the entrance of the Lido Restaurant...now used quite often.

Delphin sculpture in the Lido Pool, which is still open to the public.

Ship Board art, unaffected by any Gastric afflictions...

For a last port of call - Grand Cayman on the Cayman Islands. Unloading of the ship was handled by two of our own tenders, this time functioning normally, and an open air local tender. Sea swells co operated for a change.

The little town ashore has changed  since the last hurricane, a few years ago, damaged almost all of the buildings, many did not survive at all, and toppled hundreds of palm trees lining the shore and the famous Seven Mile Beach, which is only five miles long.

The town lost some of its colonial charm, although some historical buildings were restored to former glory, many have disappeared and paved hot parking lots have taken their place. The city seems to  have morphed into a super collection of jewellery stores, rum cake stores, t-shirt stores, fast food like Subway and KFC, a plethora of international banks, several shopping malls all offering the same 'unique' items, and three or four overpriced restaurants. Outside is 'Hell' a little settlement with a post office, where one may send post cards from Hell. The main attraction are the long sandy beaches lapped by azure, emerald green and cobalt coloured water of the Caribbean. Scuba divers, snorkelers, and sting ray petters are in heaven here.

I walked around, checked a sea side restaurant - no prices shown on the menu, always a suspicious sign for me. When I asked for pricing of some of the menu items, which were mostly North American style fast food, they were so outrageously high, that I refrained. After making several rounds through town, in ever rising temperatures and without feeling any inclination to fry on a shade less beach, a returned via local tender to the ship.

Disney Cruise Line had just dropped anchor beside Veendam, meaning that another 3000 or so customers were going ashore to spend money. Looking up to the upper decks of this ship, the Disney Fantasy, one could see yards and yards of water slides, waterfalls, elevated mini rails, all crowned by the unmistakable Mickey Mouse logo.

The Veendam is still under Code Red shut down, although Gastric Intestinal cases are apparently reduced to four. Still, the bucket brigade - about a dozen house keeping staff with gloved hands and sanitizing equipment - board tour buses and local tenders to sanitize any surface that could be contaminated and touched by human hand. Walking from the bow area to the stern area of the ship still involves going through at least three enforced hand sanitizing stations. No towel can be re-used even in your own cabin, all is laundered after one use. In cabin fruit baskets have disappeared. Daily newspapers are handed out by rubber gloved attendants, paper racks are empty. And that on top of all the shut down measures already in place. The black and white Captain's Ball has been cancelled - too many people too close together. Even the orchid plants and flower bowls on dinner tables are quarantined to a storage room for the duration. The ship's outside and inside handrails are sanitized several times a day, even arm rests on chairs are wiped down. It is said, that some passengers imported the bug after returning from a shore side excursion in Callao which we visited 17 and 18th April. But, the strict measures had effect, not only that the illness has all but disappeared, but people finally got the message to 'wash their hands'. The odd guest still insists that they do not need to wash theirs, to which the standard answer is - hold out your hand for the sanitizing squirt.

Packing time has arrived, at least for this segment of the trip. In a few days, we will no longer recognize the Cruise Director by the strong whiff of heady scent (he just bought another 20 bottles, he says), we will miss the remarkable fleshy monuments to cruise ship eating, which mostly have managed to escape being crushed or asphyxiated under their own weight, we will miss the background bickering of couples arguing whether the word 'nice' is the supreme expression of something 'nice' (what is better than 'nice' she asked, to which he answered 'maybe great'), we will miss the handful of pre-teens oblivious to any other human standing in their way, we will miss the Birkenstocks and baggy jeans on formal night, the large lady who insists of wearing skin tight leggings over her continence aid...and so on and so forth. 

Overall a decent trip. Definitely no longer being what it is advertised to be: luxurious, elegant, unique, excellent and so forth. Rising costs and cruise fare pressures have made sure of that.  But still, a very pleasant way to go from A to B - certainly a lot more comfortable and a lot more interesting than hours and hours sitting on a plane.

On Wednesday I will change venues, from the MS Veendam to the MS Amsterdam, where friends await....

28 April 2013 - Falmouth, Jamaica

Honorary Citizen of Jamaica, Pirate Henry Morgan

Caribbean Fate - Slavery for 300 years

Usai Bolt, Olympic Gold Hero of Falmouth

Vendor stall in front of decrepit old building

Tourist vendor stalls outside of Cruise Terminal

Main Street in Falmouth

Smoking kills....

Falmouth Fountain, where the very first city water system of the Americas was born

Bob Marley, long dead but not forgotten

Falmouth Finest keeping watch

Parish Church in Falmouth, one of dozens of churches here

Invitation to service by St Peter the Apostle Parish Church

1494 and Columbus sights Jamaica, in 1503 he is stranded for a while on its north shore. Only 10 years later, in 1513, African Slaves arrived in Jamaica. Twenty years after that, trade was booming with slaves arriving from Africa, and valuable loot and produce going out. Pirates realized pretty quickly that this was fertile ground for their activities, and they settled on the island around 1535.

Only in 1769 the present town of Falmouth was founded. It quickly became the world's  largest sugar port, and more than 100 rich plantations exported sugar and rum to England.

However, one leg of the lucrative trade triangle (slaves from Africa to the New World, sugar and other goods to England, and slave purchasing 'currency' goods to Africa) collapsed around 1840, when slaves were set free in Jamaica - after more than 300 years of one of the longest lasting holocausts on the planet. Slave trading ended and economic decline started.

What stayed behind together with the descendants of slaves who worked the old sugar cane fields, is the typical architecture of the bygone era: intricate gables, balustrades, louvered windows and churches upon churches. Market street is lined with Georgian style homes, now barely hanging on to faded grandeur, which made Falmouth in its heyday the  'Paris of the Indies'.

Market Street was used as a location for the filming of 'Papillon'.

Falmouth is said to have the most churches of any community in the world - a Guinness Record. Falmouth also prides itself of another record, that of having the first public fresh water system (another Guinness record) in the new world, earlier even than New York.

After the sugar business collapse, the port's importance declined, especially when deeper draft vessels could no longer enter and used Kingston or Montego Bay instead.

No matter, the 21 Century fixed that little problem. Royal Caribbean Cruise Line with its floating cities of the sea - the 5000 and more passenger cruise ships - constructed a passenger cruise terminal to end all cruise terminals, using some of the old warehouses, stately mansions et al to convert the port area (with appropriate landfills, dredging, dock construction) to a shopping complex in which 6000 people can get lost quite easily. Well, if one parks two of these monsters there at the same time, it may get a little crowded. The port area seems to be the only district of present day Falmouth, that is not falling apart or sinking into jungle greenery covered masonry or corrugated tin structures. It is vast...and not yet finished. Work is underway to expand 'Margaritaville' even further by adding a giant swimming pool (inclusive of bars and wave machine) and a few fake beach areas (inclusive of bar).

One can enjoy hamburgers and hot dogs, visit Margaritaville, or eat some local delicacies....however, if one expects to find any fish in the cruise terminal fish fritters - forget it. Spiced up corn flour in the shape of dumplings is what you get.

Jamaica's most well known citizen of today may well be the Olympic Gold Medal winner Bolt, the fastest man on earth - for now. One of the most famous of its chequered past was Captain Morgan, who not only was a prolific and ruthless privateer and pirate, but actually held the honorable office of Governor of Jamaica for a while.

Bamboo raft parking lot

Raft Captains...

River Side souvenir store

Floating down the River....

I enjoyed a little detour onto the River Martha Brae, which slowly winds through verdant and lush tropical rain forest, ideal for a leisurely ride on a long bamboo raft. One reclines on a low bamboo bench, upholstered with a plastic cushion, and watches the forest glide by in silence, with nothing but a little gurgling of water each time the rafts man lifts and inserts his long bamboo pole into the stream to propel the raft forward and past any obstacles. The little journey lasts about 1 1/2 hours and transports the traveller for a short while into a more peaceful and gentle environment than that of noise and commercialism of the terminal or the contrasting poverty of Falmouth proper.

Colourful scenery floating quietly along...

Watch your head - and your raft...

One man power motor - it works

26 April 2013 - Cartagena, Columbia

Typical street scene in Cartagena, Colombia

Plaza San Domingo

Overhanging balconies are filled with flowers

Plaza Santo Domingo

The balconies are almost touching across the narrow street

Pleasant open spaces in historic Cartagena

School bus driving through a gate in the thick old city walls

Lizzard door knob

Monk Pedro Claver with one of his charges, a slave

Public art depicting a street vendor

Oneof the church towers in Cartagena

Cathedral Cupola

Street vendor

Oh my, we must have been inspired aboard ship....

Too short a layover in one of my favourite cities of South America: Cartagena. It is an eclectic mix between colonial and modern, just like Panama City. However, Cartagena has managed not to let the old part of the city fall into ruins, instead it is the most attractive, vibrant, and pleasantly agreeable part of it. Colonial architecture prevails, and flower bedecked balconies form a shady canopy over quaint narrow streets. Simon Bolivar's statue presides over the central square. Thick walls enclose the old settlement. Capital city of Colombian emeralds, the finest emeralds in the world.

We were late arriving, as the ship developed 'technical difficulties' overnight and had to slow cruising speed. Turns out, one of the ship shafts was overheating, and had to be 'fixed' before we could resume full speed ahead. It was anyway a 'fun filled' twenty four hours for the ship, and I am not talking about the 'fun filled entertainment' in the show room either.

We had anchored off San Blas Islands on the way to Cartagena. Tigre Island, a small island in the San Blas Archipelago, consisting of about 365 islands. The Cuna tribe still lives here, and many islands are covered beach to beach with rickety thatched huts tightly surrounded by dugout canoes equipped with either bed sheet sails or small outboard motors. Locals, especially the women, often still wear traditional beaded garb and maintain their old customs and crafts.

I had visited San Blas some years earlier and photographed (dollar a photo) native children with parrots perched on their heads, little children reluctantly sitting in water filled tin tubs for the duration of a tourist visit, colourfully attired local women trading in molas, native applique work, so I stayed aboard.

This time I watched the violent bouncing of tenders loading passengers wishing to visit ashore - and aboard seeking shade, tropical heat is a killer here. Anyway, tendering to shore appeared to be a very slow process with 'delays' due to wind and waves, however, it turned out that one tender ran aground entering the rock strewn little bay of Tigre Island (?), and another developed a small fire in the engine room - drop in oil pressure and overheating. The fire was put out almost instantly, but the tender was hors de combat, and a 'rescue at sea' had to be performed, getting the stranded passengers from one life boat onto another mobile tender whilst being tossed around by some rather lively waves.According to ship board rumors, the 'rescue' illustrated quite clearly that in times of panic live boat procedures tend to fall apart.

Anyway, the reduction in 'public transport' slowed the whole tendering process between ship and island down to airport security check speed.

But, back to Cartagena de Indias, where we are safely docked now, was founded in 1533. It was famous for being a centre of the Spanish Inquisition, as well as being a major slave market. The Convent of Pedro Claver tells the story of the Spanish monk, who ministered and cared for slaves when no one else would even think of it. He was instrumental in ending slave trade in 1853, and was canonized later for his life work.

Anyone who has read Marquez 'Love in the Time of Cholera' can imagine what life was like a couple of hundred years ago in this still beautiful city.

In 1811 the colony declared independence from Spain, but it took a lot of fighting until 1821 before Colombian patriots prevailed. After 1917 oil was discovered in Colombia's hinterland. Coffee and emeralds are a major export. There are no official statistics about the influence of narcotics on the local economy. The city now boasts 850,000 inhabitants, many of them living in 'New Miami', a densely built up area on a peninsular adjoining the old city. Glass condo buildings form an impressive skyline separating the Bahia de Cartagena from the Caribbean Sea. The rich and infamous cavort on the sandy beaches or take out their luxury floating gin palaces.

Apart from being accosted by hundreds of street vendors to buy anything from real fake emeralds to t-shirts, a walk around town and along the 50 foot thick walls (used historically as store rooms and later as prisons) is a pleasant and rewarding experience. Taxi drivers appear to have toned down their barrage of sightseeing offers, guiding offers, good shopping offers - one can ride in relative peace. For me, Cartagena is one of the most appealing ports in the Caribbean, offering much more than beach activities and parties as so many others ports offer. One of my favourite stops by far.

The ship's sticky shaft was fixed  - and we are able to travel full speed ahead again.

Wild Life and wild life in Cartagena

Young lady of Cartagena is her dancing make up....

Getting ready to dance for a show to be aired on CNN

Parrot eyeing passengers in the Marine Passenger Terminal

Lovely Toucan in the Terminal Park

A serious look over from a local Cartagenian

Lush greenery all over the terminal

Vibrantly coloured Parrot

Chatting on a park bench

Stolen kisses...

Feeding station for local birds

Singing the praise of a free lunch

Flamingoes performing mating dance

Lizards crunshing their way through a mountain of fresh lettuce

Veendam, with a newly painted logo - 140 years of Holland America

Cartagena must have one of the most beautiful cruise terminals in the world. Walking along the dock towards the official terminal building one strolls along hedges of bougainvillae hiding high stacks of containers, ginger blooms in abundance, and large containers containing flowering tropical plants line the passage.

The terminal is located adjacent to what maybe called 'tropical jungle'. Flamingos, monkeys, parrots, toucans, ducks, lizards all wander and flutter around freely, no doubt attracted by the many human provided feeding stations.

A pile of fresh lettuce is being crunched up by lizards, birds pick at melons filled with seed, flamingos peck away at unseen goodies in the grass and monkeys descend from the dense foliage of surrounding trees to steal whatever they can get. Trays with sunflower seeds are paced in photographically strategic spots.

The human contingent may spend money in a few dutyr free stores and artisan and emerald stores or refresh itself in the shore side cafe stocked with a complete array of beverages and various items of junk food. Heaven.