Tracey and I returned from our latest cruise on Sunday. Our vacation was almost flawless in that it was the little things that went right for us, but we paid a price. For example, we lined up to get off of our ship at about 8:30 on Sunday morning and yet our flight didn’t land in Louisville until midnight. After sixteen hours of traveling, I didn’t want to do anything when we returned except for sleep. It wasn’t just the fatigue; the changes in the barometric pressure made my nose bleed constantly and with all of the stress of travel, I had no energy at all. Still, there were so many highlights to our cruise that the trip was worth it, which is good news since we intend on making a similar trip to Panama in February.
The quality of our excursions really depends on our guides, especially with Tracey’s handicap. Ben Hoeck was our guide in Aruba and, since it was January 1st, our vehicle turned into a party bus. The Puerto Ricans who shared the tour with us quickly tired of Ben’s narrative and began drinking beer and singing songs in Spanish. Tracey sat up front with our guide and, in effect, had her own private tour because Ben gave up on trying to talk to our fellow passengers. In Grenada, Philip was our guide, and we took a walking tour of the old fortress and the cathedral. In 1983 a group of rebels were lined up and shot for fighting against the newly established dictatorship. The highlight of our tour was when Philip showed us where the rebels were shot. Finally, Kenville was our guide to St. Kitts. We had a two and a half hour tour of the island and, once again, Tracey sat up front. Kenville gave my wife a personal tour which was good because I didn’t see anything remarkable about the island and was glad that Tracey received a lot of interesting facts.
The only bad tour that we had was the one that didn’t happen. We were in Bonaire and the lady who sold us our tickets told us to wait at her stand and she would eventually come back to pick us up. This guide had such a great personality, and made the promise that Tracey could sit up front with her, that we paid cash up front and waited under her tent because it was a guaranteed good time. We waited under her stand for a total of two hours before giving up on her. The lady at the adjacent booth called the responsible company and we learned that our guide never returned because she had forgotten about us. I don’t think that she did. I think that we had become an inconvenience to the tour company and that she left us because we were easily disposed of. My only solace is that this lady has to live with herself for leaving a helpless blind woman and her husband behind on a major tour.
We didn’t even get off of the ship at Barbados because we had been there before and had two remarkable excursions. At St Marten and St Lucia, we did get off of the ship, but we decided that we would make our own tour rather than rely on the excursions sponsored by the ship. When we walked around St Lucia my constant thought was “where are all of the white people at?” because none of our fellow 3,500 passengers chose to walk the streets with the locals. On the other hand, it is difficult to walk in the Caribbean because, if there are sidewalks, then they are broken and uneven. Usually there are drainage ditches off to the side and they can be up to two feet deep. Add in the erratic traffic and a blind person has a hard time navigating the streets of the islands.
On New Year’s Eve, as we were getting ready to go out to dinner, Tracey unexpectantly gave me a big hug to thank me for taking her on this trip. The cruises are really for her because they give her complete freedom while we are on the ship. For example, all of the floors are handicap accessible and every room had a Braille sign outside of its door. A huge benefit offered to us by the Norwegian Cruise Line is that we were offered a ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) room which is about twice the size of a regular cabin. There are designated smoking areas where Tracey can easily find a place to take a cigarette break. Finally, we both enjoy eating out and, while the meals at the standard restaurants were good, the specialty restaurants that serve Italian, French, and Japanese cuisine were spectacular. We both had a great time and look forward to our next cruise on the NCL Joy which sails through Panama in February.
• We met Wilma, an 85 year old woman who has travelled to over 200 countries, on the ship. Her former travel companion died at the age of 103 after traveling with Wilma for 20 years, so now she has a much younger woman helping her on her journeys. Wilma had a lot of energy and a zest for life that I truly admired.
• A beautiful young woman dressed cute for her big day on St Martens when, while walking on a sidewalk, a passing car splashed her from a puddle that it had driven through. That cute little mouth let loose a string of obscenities as she was drenched from her hip down to her ankle. We heard her curse in Japanese but it didn’t take a Rhodes scholar to get her meaning.
• I like to show off my knowledge of geography so when one of our servers said that she was from the Philippines, I rattled off the three main islands from that island-nation. When the server asked me if I was in the military, because who else would have that knowledge, I replied with, “No, because I am a coward!” The more that I thought about it the funnier that reply became.
