2005 - Amazon Cruise

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Dec 15 – Today we are back in France. The island of Guadeloupe (you don’t pronounce the e at the end) is a Department of France like Martinique. We have docked in the city of Basse-Terre, the capital. The island is shaped like a butterfly. There’s a strip of land no more than a mile wide that joins the two wings. Christopher Columbus landed here on November 3, 1493 during his second voyage to the ‘New World’. As usual no one stayed to colonize the island until the French came in 1635. Once again they encountered the hostile Carib Indians and gradually conquered them.

The French and British exchanged control of the island over 16 times in the next 200 years with the French taking final control in 1816. In 1946 it became a Department of France. In the early 1980s there was an active independence movement but following a series of bombings in 1984 the authorities outlawed the Caribbean Revolutionary Alliance and crushed the rebels. Things have been peaceful ever since. Proving, once again that the only effective way to deal with terrorists is to eliminate them, not negotiated with them.

Today we are going to visit Fort Louis Delgŕes (left) here in the city. It was built in the 1600s to protect the city from numerous attacks. It’s built from volcanic rock and much of it is still intact. The various levels of the fort are connected by wide ramps to facilitate the movement of cannon and material from level to level. The walls on the lowest level face the city of Basse-Terre to the west, those on the highest face directly inland to the north. The midlevel walls face north and east. One of the walls has a beautiful view of the main volcano on the island, Le Soufrière through one of its crenellations (right).

Louis Delgŕes was of African decent and led a slave revolt that resulted in slavery being abolished in the 1800s. The fort was renamed in his honor in 1989. Today it

houses the city’s historical museum. One of the more unusual features added to the fort in Delgres honor is a series of concentric circles with Stonehenge like standing stones. At the center of the circles is an 8-foot carved stone likeness of Louis’ head (left). It’s weird, but I’m sure the artist had some symbolism in mind. I just can’t figure out what it is. We trudged up and down the hills on which the fort was built. Some of the ramps were pretty steep and paved with very uneven stones. I was a little worried that some of the older folks on the tour would get hurt. But, with a little assistance, everyone made it safely back to the bus.

Our next stop was the city market (right). It was a place to buy spices, fruit, vegetables, meat and some alcoholic beverages (read rum). While Diana was shopping I found a small plaza where a man was cooking something on top of a large pan over a wood fire. He had a half coconut bowl with some flour in it. He would spread a small pile on the hot pan and then spoon some very interesting looking substance onto it (below-left). After it cooked a while he would spoon some more flour on the top and flip it over like a pancake. After it cooked on that side for a while it was ready for sale. The flour was very white and after it was cooked it browned a little in spots but the main color was still pale white.

I asked what it was and they called it ‘Cassava’. I immediately thought of the melon of almost the same name but realized there was no relationship. I asked what the flour was made from and he said, ‘Manioc.’ Now I knew that was the major starch in the islands. I asked what the filling was and he said, ‘Coconut jam.’ Now that sounded pretty tasty so I had him make me one.

It was not at all what I expected. When the manioc flower is heated it forms a very gummy, chewy pancake that is filled with coconut. It was very good. I expected it to be crisp from baking on the hot surface but it was dry on the outside so you could hold it without getting messy. The inside, however was chewy like a gummy bear, and the coconut jam inside was a little sweet and had lots of shredded coconut in it. I shared some with Diana and was very pleased when she only wanted one small bite. The chef and some of the women there danced some of the island’s dances for us. After a while our guide joined them. It was fun to watch, they are very enthusiastic dancers. At one point the chef took off his large straw hat and was using it to fan the other dancers legs. His way of saying, ‘Too Hot!!’

After that we crossed the road to the fish market. Our guide’s nephew has a stall there (left). He showed us his fish and explained what they were. Some were obvious; some were not (right).

After that is was back to the ship. Just before we were scheduled to leave a local dance troupe came on the ship and gave a performance. Drums accompanied them and the dances were very athletic and colorful. After the performance, they left the ship and danced for us on the pier until the ship pulled away. The French certainly had their best foot forward today.

Dec 16 – Today we are in Philipsburg, St. Maarten (below). We’re sharing the port with the Adventure of the Seas, a Royal Caribbean mega ship (right). Thank God there’s only one of them. The three thousand people they dump in the city can really jam up the system.

Just like Hispaniola, which is shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, this island is shared by St. Maarten, which is Dutch and St. Martin, which is French. It’s not the only island that is shared by two countries but it is certainly the smallest. This island is only 37 square miles in area; the Dutch have 14 square miles and the French 23. It seems that the island was divided by treaty. Each country could pick a representative. They would walk towards each other and where they met would be the boundary. Well, the Frenchman took wine to drink and the Dutchman took gin. It seems that the Dutchman had to rest a while after getting tipsy and thus didn’t get as far as the Frenchman.

Like Guadeloupe, the island changed hands many times over the first hundred years of its settlement, but this time between the Dutch, French and Spanish. One person in history that St. Maarten and the USA have in common is Pieter Stuyvesant. As you know he was the last Dutch governor of New York colony, then called Niew Amsterdam. You may remember that he had a wooden leg. Well, he lost the leg here in an unsuccessful attempt to take the island from the Spanish. Pieter may be buried in the New York but his leg is buried in Curaçao, one of the ABC islands just north of Venezuela still held by the Dutch.

Our trip today is to take a ride around the island and take a short ride on a submarine. The Atlantis Company has several spread around the world. The bus ride from the Dutch side of the island to the French side took about 30 minutes. We boarded the sub and rode out to the reef. It’s a pretty nice reef, which appears to be making a comeback. There’s lots of fire, brain, red, fan and finger coral that seem to be well established and showing signs of spreading. The fish were abundant. Puffers, parrot, angel, trigger, jacks, needle and other types I couldn’t identify were all over. The only mollusk I saw was conch and there were lots of urchins and starfish.

A short way from the reef the bottom becomes very sandy and has patches of grass growing on it like little pastures. That’s exactly what they are because we saw sea turtles grazing lazily on the bottom. There were at least 4 down there munching away. Our presence didn’t seem to bother them at all. It a nature reserve so they live in peace there. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a ray or skate on the sandy bottom but no luck on that front. I was more impressed with the trip than I thought I would be. It was a pretty reef and lots of life.

After coming back to land we drove to Marigot, the capital of St. Martin. Just like Martinique and Guadeloupe, St. Martin is a Department of France and a thus a member of the European Union. The Euro is the currency but everyone takes dollars. We stopped at the city center and spent some time in the local market. I was actually able to find a tropical shirt that fit me and was in an acceptable design and color. Yikes!! At $20, I couldn’t pass it up. The shops sold local handicrafts, carvings, weavings and art of all types (right). The French in the home country could learn a lesson from these island Frenchmen about how to treat tourists. They were warm, cheerful and very easy to get along with.

When we returned to the ship there was a little market at the pier that we browsed while getting sprinkled by a tropical shower. It actually felt good to cool off a little. They had a statue of our old buddy Pieter Stuyvesant (left).

This evening we are not leaving port until 11PM so they had a BBQ outdoors on the Lido Deck. It was very good. Bratwurst, chicken, steaks and huge shrimp all grilled to perfection. Corn on the cob, baked potatoes, green beans, rice and all sorts of salads rounded out the menu. The scattered clouds passing over the just past full moon, the Ocean Bar band was playing old rock and roll songs and a gentle breeze made for a great night.

We have a fairly early tour tomorrow so we won’t be staying up too late tonight. This ship is looking very festive; they’ve started decorating for Christmas.

Dec 17 – Today we are in Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands (right & below-left). This is as close as we’ve been to the USA in a while. St. John’s, USVI is only 4 miles away. We’ve never been here before so we have booked a tour that goes around the entire island. Like St. John’s the island has numerous bays and beaches. It’s gorgeous!! Being British the language most used in English although it is spoken with a very ‘island’ accent and so fast that sometimes it is hard to understand. They have a lot of slang that confuses the issues a little as well.

Tortola is the northernmost of the islands that make up the Lesser Antilles. Once again it was ‘discovered’ by Chris Columbus during his second voyage in 1493 but not settled. For some reason in 1555 King Charles I of Spain ordered at attack that wiped out the Arawaks who had occupied the island for at least 1,500 years. The island was uninhabited until Dutch buccaneers came to the island in 1648. They abandoned the island to the British, including many Quaker farmers in 1666.

The Danish took possession of the western islands and established the Danish West Indies, which became the U.S. Virgin Islands at the end of WWI.

Have you ever wondered where the name ‘Virgin Islands’ came from? Our old buddy, Chris Columbus, named them in honor of Welsh Saint Ursula and her 11,000 virgins who were martyred near Cologne, Germany because they would not recant their Christian faith and marry Hun warriors. Gosh, don’t let the ACLU find out about this or they’ll file suit to have the name changed. We really can’t be having any governmental involvement with Christians, after all. I’ve always been surprised that they don’t try to do something about Bethlehem, PA. To make matters worse the city’s nickname is ‘The Christmas City’! How absolutely unacceptable!!

Editors Note: If you know me at all you know that I have no use whatsoever for ‘political correctness’ in any of its various forms. But I have absolutely no use for those who take the ‘anti-establishment’ clause of the U.S. Constitution and use it as an excuse to remove any vestige of faith from the public arena. That’s one reason it’s great to travel. The islands of the South Pacific are, by a large margin, very Christian. In the Dominican Republic, every public building (Including courthouses and military bases) had a manger scene featured prominently on the grounds. On Guadeloupe, St. Maarten, Tortola, Barbados and the ship religious Christmas carols are being played and sung by the bands that are greeting us. It’s great!! Reminds me of the US when I was young. Seasons Greetings, Happy Holidays, bah humbug!!

Merry Christmas!! Sorry, I just had to do that!


Back to travel stuff. We have never been to Tortola so we booked a trip around the entire island. It’s pretty small so it only took about 3.5 hours. It’s truly beautiful, lots of bays with fantastic beaches. The British have purposely kept large development and a lot of chain stores from coming to the island so the pace is slow and it’s a very low key feeling, somewhat like St. John’s in the USVI. St. Thomas has all the shopping and nightlife. St. John’s is not much developed and most of the land is now protected.

Tomorrow we have another day at sea. Yea!! After that it’s HAL’s own island Half Moon Cay and then off the ship in Fort Lauderdale. That means packing tomorrow. Ouch!!

Dec 18 – A relaxing day at sea, sort of. I’m having our cabin steward deliver our suitcases today so we can pack this afternoon and get it out of the way. Didn’t do much exciting today. The show this evening was a performance of ‘It Takes Two” by the cast. It was a new show and it was very good. The costumes were great and the singing and dancing was wonderful. Anton, the tall, thin, black dancer did Rollin’ on the River dressed as Tina Turner. He was a riot!! The first thing he said as he danced out onto the stage was, ‘Somebody’s got to pay the bills, Honey!’ Then he breaks into song. He actually did a good Tina right down to her dance moves. He brought the house down. This cast has been truly superb.

Tomorrow we’re on Half Moon Cay (pronounced Key). HAL acquired the island in 1995 but improvements took some time and the first ship came here in 1997. It’s a small island in the Bahamas between the southern tip of Eleuthera Island and the northern tip of Cat Island. It was previously named Little San Salvador, but was renamed when HAL purchased it. It has a crescent shape and this could account for its name however the actual homage is to Henry Hudson’s ship the Half Moon that is shown on HAL’s logo. The island is the largest employer of people from Eleuthera Island except for the government. HAL keeps a ship here to bring employees to Half Moon Cay from there. There are some living facilities on the island for the island administrator.

We were here in May for the first time and it is really a beautiful place. This time I’m taking my camera ashore to get some pictures.

Good news!! We get our hour of sleep back tonight.

Dec 19 – Today sunny, warm and clear. We’re in Half Moon Cay (right), Holland America’s private island. It’s small and fairly flat and covered with small trees, shrubs and palms. I understand that before HAL bought it there was very little vegetation. It was basically just a huge sand bar. HAL brought plants native to other nearby islands here and they took over. Looks like they were always here.

We caught a tender to shore and went out to a small cove where the stingrays live. They are being fed constantly so they stay there all year long. They have a large area netted off to prevent sharks and other predators from coming into the area, but it is taken in at night so the stingrays can go elsewhere. They have from 20-30 that come in every morning before the nets go up.

The guides gave us food to give them. They have a huge mouth and no real teeth. You hold the food in between your thumb and forefinger with the rest of your fingers closed over your thumb. Like a fist but with your thumb inside. The stingray swims up and over your hand and sucks the food right into its mouth. If you let your fingers stick out they can suck your whole hand into their mouth. They have no real teeth so you are not in danger of being bitten, but if you try to pull your hand out they are like a dog with a chew toy, they just suck in harder. The trick is to just let them take the 3-4 seconds they need to figure out that your hand is not something they eat and they will spit it out.

After swimming with the stingrays we crossed back to the other side of the island to the dining room and had a BBQ lunch. Very tasty indeed.

Then it was back to the ship to finish packing. Tomorrow we’re in Fort Lauderdale and they’re throwing us off the ship.

Dec 20 – We arrived in Fort Lauderdale a little early. We’re scheduled to get off the ship at 9:15AM but they never meet these estimates. Being eternally optimistic we head for breakfast at 8AM in the hope that this time they will. At breakfast we saw most of the members of the ship’s cast and got to thank them for the great shows they gave us.

Last night one of the staff in the Explorer’s Lounge asked me if I had seen Nancy Wright, our CSI escort. I hadn’t seen her since earlier that day. He told me that he had something for her; a letter to his girlfriend who is on another HAL ship that Nancy will be on in January. Nancy said she would take the letter to her. I saw him again this morning and he still hadn’t been able to get the letter to her. I said that I would take it and mail it to her so he gave it to me.

We went back to our cabin to wait for disembarkation number 7 to be called. As usual we had to sit through several announcements for people to come to the front desk to clear their accounts. I guess they figure if they wait long enough HAL might let them off the ship without paying. They won’t let anyone disembark until all the accounts are settled.

This morning they were making an unusual sort of announcement. They were paging specific people to come see Customs. I’m thinking that Customs must have looked at the ship’s accounts and found people that were over the tax exempt limit from the tax free stores onboard and still hadn’t shown up in the Half Moon Room to clear Customs. I was wondering when they would start that. It’s easy to do for the agents. You just have the ship sort the passenger files by amount charged in the ship’s stores and all the people over the limit will be right on top. You check them off as they show up for inspection and then page the ones who don’t. Quick and easy!

I usually go see them just to get my declaration inspected and cleared ahead of time. We often spend more that the Custom’s allowance, but since some of the items we buy are exempt from duty, we seldom have to pay anything. I bought Diana’s 25th anniversary gift on the trip and that pushed us over the limit. The item I bought is exempt from tax because the materials come 100% from Brazil and more than 70% of the processing done to it was also done in Brazil. In fact, 100% was done in Brazil. So you show up to the Custom’s agents on the ship with the item, the paperwork and your declaration. The agent inspects the item and the paperwork to confirm that the item is exempt. Once they do that they see that your total is now under the limit and they stamp and clear your declaration. With this in hand you always sail right through the Custom’s inspection ashore.

Paging all the recalcitrants has taken its toll on the disembarkation schedule. At 9:15 no one has gone ashore yet. However, once they started calling numbers it went quickly. We were off the ship at 10AM and, since we didn’t need a porter, we grabbed our luggage ashore and headed for a taxi to the airport.

Unfortunately we were taken to a van with other people going to the airport. This is a problem as they will all want to go to terminals and the rental car center is on the opposite side of the road from the terminals on its on elevated road. So we got off at Terminal One and took the elevators to the second floor where there’s a flyway over the roads to the second floor of the rental car center. Unfortunately, Hertz is on the third floor so we have to negotiate another elevator up there.

We got a Chevy Impala for the trip to Fort Lauderdale. It was a very nice car, comfortable, smooth and all of our luggage fit into the trunk. Quite impressive, actually! We have one very large suitcase, one large suitcase, a rolling duffel bag type case, a carry-on type roller, my camera bag and a fully packed backpack. I really like to have everything out of sight when we travel so that when we stop for lunch or dinner, no one is tempted to smash our windows to steal stuff.

Here in Fort Lauderdale they are giving us a Cadillac STS, YIKES!! It’s a nice car but our luggage doesn’t fit in the trunk. Two pieces, the large suitcase and the carry-on roller have to ride in the back seat. I’d say the trunk is about 13-14 cubic feet. On the Impala the trunk was at least 19 cubic feet. Other than that, the car is very nice. It has an unusual starting system. I looked for about 5 minutes to find a place to put the key into. No luck! When all else fails, read something. I looked at the instrument panel and there was a message to step on the brake and push a button on the dash that was green and lit up. When I did this the car started. You don’t have to hold the button in to crank the engine like the old days. You just push the button and the car takes over from there.

The other feature was the Hertz ‘Neverlost’ system. I guess they are trying to build demand for it and they threw it in for free on this trip. It’s a GPS system built by Magellan. There was a little plastic instruction sheet attached to it by a short chain but, being an instinctive ‘button pusher’ (as my friend George calls us) I ignored it to see how intuitive the designers had made it. I have to say that it was very easy to use.

First a little screen pops up that says you will not ignore your driving duties to fiddle with or look at the system. If you don’t select ‘I Agree’ and press enter they system will turn off. I see the work of at least 10 liability attorneys in this. After that it gives you a choice of how you want to enter your destination. I picked ‘Street Address’ since I have the address of the Holiday Inn Express in Demopolis, Alabama our first destination.

I entered the address and the system asked me if I wanted the fastest, shortest, freeway or freeway avoiding route. I said fastest and took some satisfaction in the fact that it selected the reverse of the route I had planned manually on the way to Fort Lauderdale. No need to enter where you are as the GPS knows exactly where the car is.

After the map is computed, the first segment pops up on the display. You can set it for several scales from showing the next 1/8-mile to then next 20 miles. When you set it to the 1/8-mile you see every little detail of the road ahead. At 20 you don’t see much detail at all. I found that when I was on the open road I liked the 10-mile range and when maneuvering in town or tightly packed interchanges I preferred the ¼-mile setting.

When you are approaching a maneuvering point, a voice alerts you to the next turn at two miles out by announcing what you are going to have to do. (By the way you can select a male, female or computer type voice. I’m so attuned to taking orders from Diana that I selected the female voice.) It repeats the instructions at 6-tenths of a mile and then warns you at 1-tenth of a mile and a little bar graph (like the ones you watch as a web page loads) shrinks and a gong goes off when you should be executing the turn. It even warns you to go straight at major intersections or highway junctions.

When you are on an interstate and you push the select button it shows you the next 7 interchanges and tells you all the services available at each. If you push it again it shows you the next 7 maneuvers and you can scroll down and select any one of them to see what the maneuver will be. It shows your route in fuchsia and an arrowhead shaped, yellow icon represents the car. If you have it on a detailed setting it even shows the water hazards on the golf course if you are passing one close by. In one corner it tells you how many miles it is to the next turn and how long the rest of the trip will take. In short, I loved the thing. A combination of the two things I like most, technology and maps. Now if the darn thing took pictures I’d really be hooked!

Our trip back was uneventful. Good weather and the traffic wasn’t too bad considering it’s Christmas week. Any time we went through a city the traffic was slow. I avoided going on Interstate 10 either way because the bridges are still a problem in Mississippi and Louisiana. Unfortunately that means you are on state highways all across Alabama to get from I-10 to I-20 and you have to negotiate a lot of cities and towns. The one nice thing about the route is that from Montgomery to Selma you follow the route taken by MLK and the voting rights marchers of the middle 60s. I was in Montgomery in 1965 while I was in medical school for the USAF. Things were really hopping at that time, lots of integration protests, sit-ins, etc.

We arrived home at about 8PM on December 21. Glad to be home and glad to have gone.

I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and all God’s best in the New: Year.

Thanks for taking our journey with us. Hope to see you on the high seas!!

(c) Rodney Longenberger - 2005 All Rights Reserved