I spent last week onboard the Carnival cruise ship Splendor. We departed from Ft. Lauderdale and after a day at sea, spent time in San Juan, Puerto Rico; St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; La Romana, Dominican Republic; and Nassau, Bahamas (with another day at sea sandwiched between La Romana and Nassau). On the boat were Angie and me, Angie's step-sister (Chris), and her husband (Rod), her dad (Craig) and stepmom (Ellie; both great, great people), and two old friends of theirs (Marshall and Mary). So, in all, there were eight of us traveling together. If I had kept a diary, it would've gone a little something like this:
Day 1: Arrived at the port around noon. There are a few different cruise ships in the harbor. Upon seeing our boat, I channel my best James Earl Jones in Hunt for Red October, "Big son of a bitch." The check-in line is long (this boat apparently houses the population of Wasilla), but relatively painless. We're given plastic cards that serve both as ID and as credit cards for use on board the ship. This could be trouble.
Around 4:00 we depart Ft. Lauderdale. Having lived only in Michigan and Indiana, I've not spent much time around the ocean. Growing up we spent two weeks every summer staying with my mom's parents on the coast of Rhode Island. That may be more than some, but two weeks a year on the beach and going on a boat for an occasional whale watch is not a lot of sea time. Nevertheless, as I watch the sun start to set and the Florida coast shrink further back on the horizon, there's something incredibly familiar about it; there almost always is when I'm around the ocean. It just feels right. Perfect. I'm not a big believer in any particular ethos, but it's hard not to wonder if there's something to this whole reincarnation thing when I consider my inexplicable love of the open sea (despite a healthy fear of things with large pointy teeth beneath the surface). It feels like home.
Day 2: It's Sunday, the first first of our two full days at sea. (The next will be Thursday.) We decided to plunk down some cash on a week long pass to the onboard spa. This is not smart spending of funds, but damn did the aromatic steam room kick ass. The food buffet's are ridiculously massive in scope, but the food itself is so-so. Some of it's really good. Some not so much (the jalapenos, for example, were of the type you'd get on a burger at Hardee's; i.e. not fresh). Dinner in one of the two main dining rooms, is really good, however. We also found out at dinner that Marshall was the only one of us to get seasick. Not fun for him, but he got one of those patches and was fine for the rest of the voyage.
Did you know that boats are well stocked with alcohol? On this particular day the bars were open on the captain's tab for an hour before dinner. I had a couple glasses of a thick red wine. At dinner Craig brings a bottle of zinfandel. I have a couple more glasses. (Surely you can see where this is going.) It's formal night, so after dinner we go for some family pictures. One of the many bars around the ship is literally dumping unserved glasses of wine down the sink. Angie grabs me two. I drink them both while in line for pictures. There's a stand-up comedian scheduled for one of the ship's lounges. We get there early and I get some more wine. The comedian (the name escapes me) is frigg'n hilarious. Craig and Ellie call it a night while Rod, Chris, Angie and I go to the karaoke bar. Nobody else will do it. Me however, what do I care? Rod treats me to another glass of wine while imploring me to sing. "Dude, you'll be my hero." Like I need more convincing than that. I step up and belt out Jon Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive in front of a sparse crowd. I wanted to do Journey's Don't Stop Believ'n, but some tramp two songs ahead of me gets it first. Either way, it's a miracle I was not sued for verbal abuse. The karaoke bar closes, so we hit the piano bar next door. Don't Stop Believ'n starts to play. I look up and see that same tramp draped over the shoulder of the piano guy singing the song again. More drinks. The piano bar closes. We hit the dance club. Drunk white people dancing is rarely a good idea, but it's probably better than sober white people dancing...
Day 3: I feel bad.
Around 5:00, as I rejoined the 3-dimensional people, we hit San Juan. I read something that it was once the city that was called Puerto Rico and the country was called San Juan. At some point the two names were flip-flopped "by accident." I find this notion dubious at best. How exactly does that happen? Did nobody there speak up? Was it like in high school when I let Mr. Dent (my favorite teacher) call me Mr. Brake for four years because by the time I got to his class on the first day I was tired of correcting people?
As the sun set we took a tour of a fort located near the port (I think it's El Morro, but my memory is hazy). It was beautiful looking out over the coastline at dusk and as the sun fell the fort became more than a little spooky. I need to find a book on the history of the place because I found it fascinating. After the fort we shopped a bit, stopped for Rum and Cokes, or as I always knew them, Roman Cokes. Shut up. I took flack for that all cruise long.
Day 4: Probably the best overall day of the cruise. We hit St. Thomas early and went on a snorkel tool of "shipwreck cove" aboard a catamaran called the Castaway Girl. The two guys and a girl (I failed to ask them if they also had a pizza place) were entertaining as all hell on the way out. I'm a poor swimmer and have only been snorkeling a couple of times, always in shallow water, so I had some anxiety to get around since the cove we were in was in a nature preserve (or some such thing) and we weren't allowed on or near the shore. My resolve to get over this anxiety was tested early on when our guide pointed out about a six foot shark near the sea floor. Screw National Geographic, I've seen Jaws. I know what they can do. But, nobody else panicked, and I have my pride, so I said, "Hey, neato," waved politely to the shark and did my best not to look appetizing.
A bit further out we swam over the shipwreck, the remains of some boat that was used for drug-running in the late 70s. We were told it was set on fire to avoid capture, was eventually towed to the cove and then, in the 90s, sank during a hurricane. (That's an abbreviated and possibly errant history; I was watching for the shark.) I was hoping for something older than this (like Pirates! Yargh!), but snorkeling over the remains of a sunken ship is still tres cool. I suddenly find myself enjoying this whole snorkeling thing.
Our host points out a barracuda swimming about 20 feet away. Tension rises. Fortunately, he swam the other way and I relaxed as we circled around back towards the Castaway Girl where one of the crew was throwing tasty morsels into the water to get the attention of host of different types of fish. (I still say he was chumming for some meat eaters.) Very pretty. Very cool.
We get back on the Castaway Girl. The crew passes out cups and keeps them filled with rum punch the entire way back to port. This is almost as good as the snorkeling. We then stopped for a late lunch and did some shopping at some of the shops near the port. It was a good day.
Day 5: We arrived in La Romana early and took a boat excursion to a beach on Catalina Island. Spent the next few hours reading on the beach with a couple of quick dips in the ocean (some cold water there). I was bummed that there was no surf at all as I really hoped to get a chance to do some body surfing (something I haven't done since those Rhode Island trips when I was a kid). Later, at dinner, Angie and I get in a snit over something I won't write about here and hardly speak for the next 20 hours. It was bound to happen.
Day 6: Our second day full day at sea. Spent a lot of the day out on the deck reading. Tried the mini-golf, but the course was a bit lame. At dinner I discovered my newfound love of lime margaritas. Rod wants me to do karaoke again and offers to buy me another drink. I remind him that I don't need the drinks to make a fool of myself. (I accept the drinks anyway. I'm not a complete idiot.) After dinner we meander for a bit, hit the smoking bar to try some "Cuban" cigars Angie picked up from a beach vendor on Catalina. The cigars were labeled, "Habana, Cuba," so make of that what you will.
After a cigar and some drinks we all head down to the karaoke bar, which is 100% packed and already has a one hour wait. Suddenly nervous, I consume many margaritas as I prepare to do Tom Petty's Free Fall'n. An hour goes by and the three songs preceding me are all quiet tunes. The place clearly needs a shot in the arm. As I'm called up, I know what I have to do. I approach the "karaoke goddess" (I'm not making that up) and tell her to switch it to Don't Stop Believ'n. I won't be denied this time. The place goes absolutely ape shit. Mayor Adam West had it right in Family Guy when he said, "Journey. I love Journey, especially when amateurs sing it!" Between the early applause and the alcohol I get a good surge of confidence and adrenaline going and belt it for everything it's worth. Maybe a bit more. I'm quite sure that before the week is out I'll have been served for verbal assault. Whatever. It was fun. I'm told there are pictures of it. If they get sent back to me I'll post one or two of 'em here.
Day 7: Chris told me that I should take a Tylenol before bed and drink a lot of water with it. Surprisingly, it works. No hangover. We arrive in Nassau around mid-day. We were going to try another snorkeling excursion, but they were booked up, so we decided to join the rest of the family for a tour through the portside shops and a couple of drinks at Senior Frogs. This was easily the least interesting of the stops. The vendors are very aggressive in Nassau, which I found annoying. Plus, I was out of cash so it wasn't like I was going to be buying anything in the straw market anyway.
After dinner I hit the one hold 'em poker table they have set up in the shipboard casino. (It was $1/$2 blinds.) I had played earlier in the week and dropped $50, most of it on an extremely bad beat. This time I vowed to be more disciplined because the other players at the table showed themselves to not be very good. Patient players can usually do well in that kind of environment. I played for three hours, had one of the longest dry spells of my life in terms of not being able to hit a flop, and still ended up making $25, covering half my loss from my previous stint. (I was actually up more than that, but I got careless on the adrenaline of winning a big hand and dropped $20 before stepping way from the table.) In the meantime, others at the table dropped hundreds of dollars on some epically bad plays. A guy two seats down from me reaped the most from the asinine play, having won a total of $700 over a series of five consecutive hands. That was nuts. If I had had any real luck all night, I'd of done a lot better. As it was, I was on the Olympic folding team while I waited to hit something, anything, worth playing. Given the horrid string of bad flops I had to endure, I was pleased with how I played.
Day 8: We arrive in Ft. Lauderdale around 8am. The debarkation process was chaos incarnate, despite the ship's best efforts to keep it under control. People just don't listen to instructions. Nevertheless we were off the boat and at the airport by 10:30, which wasn't bad time. Too bad we planned for the worst and had a flight that didn't depart until 5:00. Worse, the plane arrived late and was then further held up with the dreaded "mechanical difficulties." We ended up not boarding until about 7:00.
The whole trip was kind of surreal (in a good way). If, as is true of me, you haven't done a lot of traveling, the whole notion of spending a day in a port and then moving on is actually kind of nice. You don't get to see a lot of any one place, but you do get some quick hits on a few different places and it gives you and idea of where you might want to visit again. In my case, that would be St. Thomas. Based on the view from port, it was by far the prettiest place we stopped and every place we did stop was incredibly friendly and accommodating without being overly aggressive, like in Nassau. That said, it looked like there's a lot more places of historical significance in San Juan, which ranks it high up on my list too.
Ultimately, I just like being out on the water. As much as I liked visiting various ports, I also really liked the two days we spent at sea where there was absolutely no agenda other than vegging out in the sun. I think I'd like to try a smaller boat next time just to see how much different that is. Either way, I'm glad to get home to my kids. We haven't been without them for anything close to this kind of stretch of time. But at the same time, I really miss the experience of being on the boat, the gentle shifting from side-to-side, up and down, the blinding reflection of the sun off choppy seas, the strong winds whipping across the outdoor decks as the ship pull 20 knots, etc. Like I wrote above: Perfect.
