Our Southern Caribbean Cruise

We had such a great time on our 11 Day Southern Caribbean Cruise, October 26-November 6, 2009, aboard the Celebrity Millennium ship, with our friends, Cara and Andy Mejia, Nancee and Marc Revere, and our new friends, Donna and Rod Guilmain. It was a very memorable trip!!Friends together!

(Top l to r: Andy, Karen Nick, Cara, Marc
Bottom: Nancee, Donna and Rod)

We flew into San Juan, Puerto Rico and spent the night there boarding the ship on Monday. We set sail at 8:30 pm sailing to our first port, Fredriksted, St, Croix, US Virgin Islands (84 sq miles). From there we headed to Basseterre, St Kitts, West Indies(65 sq miles) ; then to Roseau, Dominica (298 sq miles) ; on to Castries, St Lucia(238 sq miles); Bridgetown, Barbados (166 sq miles); St Georges, Grenada (133 sq miles), Willemstad, Curacao; and our final port of Oranjestad, Aruba (75 sq miles). From Aruba, we sailed back to San Juan, PR, where we spent one more night at a fantastic resort, The Conrad Hotel.

We saw plenty of lush, green, tropical foliage, fruit trees, and tropical flowers, in and out of rain forests, and met some friendly people along the way. Most of the cruise it was hot and humid, ranging from about 87 to 89 degrees daily with about 85% humidity! It only rained on us a couple of times--but the rain didn't last long. We did a lot of sightseeing, took some taxi tours, a bit of shopping, river tubing, swimming and snorkeling in the warm Caribbean waters,
and enjoyed martinis and wine aboard ship!!

St Croix is the largest of the US Virgin Islands, 19 miles south of St Thomas. The US purchased the island from Denmark for $25 million in 1917.Taken from St Croix looking at the Caribbean

St Kitts is a lush green island and home to the "green monkeys" on St Kitts-the fur on the belly of these monkeys is actually a bluish green color. Caribelle Batiks are designed and hand made on this island. The "Green Monkeys" of St Kitts!

Dominica is home to 365 rivers, many waterfalls and the cool waters of the Emerald Pool in the rain forest, pictured below.

It rains approximately 435 inches every year on Dominica. English is the offical language and Patois, a mix of French and Creole is also spoken.

Barbados is the easternmost island of the West Indies islands. We spent Halloween day here. It rained a bit while we were in port and the rain just added to the heat and humidity! That night we "dressed up" in masks for the festivities!

Grenada is known as the spice island, since many spices are grown on this island, such as nutmeg, mace (which grows on the outside of the nutmeg), cloves and cinnamon.View of the coastline from the fort on Grenada

Curacao is a very diverse island composed of 55 nationalities and many languages are still spoken there, including Portuguese, French, English, Dutch, and the local dialect known as Papiamento (a mixture of the languages). This island is not very green, as most plants won't grow on it since the island is coral and it rains very little in Curacao. Curacao is 35 miles from the northern coast of Venezuela. We were told one can only see the coastline of Venezuela 15 days out of the year and we were there on one of those days! We visited their "Sea Aquarium" set right on the coast of Curacao--the setting of which was breathtaking!

These are pictures of the Dolphin pools and the rocks mark the separation of
the Sea Aquarium pools and the Caribbean Sea.

Aruba is 18 miles off the coast of Venezuela and is the westernmost Caribbean island. The official language of Aruba is Dutch, but almost everyone also speaks English and Spanish. Aruba has gorgeous white sand beaches with the whitest sand I have ever seen.

Our new friend Rod doesn't much like monkeys....... but we thought we'd get him one to help him get over his "fears" and the remember the trip!Rod and his green friend.

To see all our pictures and Mejias' pictures together go to my flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/72308330@N00/sets/72157622667712183/

HAPPY 31 TO US!

Today marks our anniversary---Happy 31st Anniversary to us!!