After getting up at the OMG hour of 3:15AM we headed for Miami and onto our cruise ship with no problems at all. At first sight, one cannot help but to be amazed at the enormity of the new NCL Pearl. I spent Friday afternnon taking an organized tour of the ship. The show theater in the Forward of the ship is very impressive. The cocktail lounge BLISS in the AFT is furnished with plush chairs, sofas, and beds (yes beds) and draped on both sides by the bowling alleys. The art and wall murals throughout are very colorful and fun. Dinner at the Japanese restaurant on the first evening was excellent. It was here I met Steve and Jill Cooper from Seatle. My guess is they were barely in their 40's but this trip on the Pearl was their 50th cruise! Steve was writing an article for CruiseMate.Com with which he is affiliated.
After having only about 10 hours of sleep in almost three days, the first night on board was a great time to get to bed early and get lots of sleep. Our next two days were sea days as we travelled to the southern portion of the caribbean and by the time we reached the island of Dominica, everyone was anxious to go off the ship and explore. We had a whale watching excursion planned for Monday afternoon. I was preparing myself for dis-appointment thinking we really were not going to be seeing any whales. The captain of our tour boat confirmed the possibility of dis-appointment too. After travelling about three miles out of the harbor we stopped and used an echo locator only to find no whales making sounds. We soon came upon 100's of dolphins in the water splashing at the surface. They started chasing our boat, swimming in front of.... and along side of it too. All of a sudden I didn't care if I saw any whales because the dolphins were awesome. We stopped again and watched. Before long, a whale was spotted blowing out its' spout, it was easily identified as a sperm whale, largest of the whale species in the area (the same whale in the movie Moby Dick). The sperm whale is identified easily because the blow whole goes forward and to the left side (other whales blow straight up). This excursion turned out to be perhaps the best shore excursion I have ever done. Before the afternnon was over, we came across 9 sperm whales and I was able to film 6 of the tails raising above the water as they dove deep to the bottom where they feed on squid. They eat squid that is almost as long as they are and sometimes surface with squid tentacles still hanging out of their mouths!
After very little rest Monday, we took a Catemaran excursion on the island of Barbados.... on the Tiami II. We have found two catemaran companies to be awesome every time, one is Tiami and the other is Fury. If you ever get to Barbados, take the Tiami sail, snorkel, and swim with the sea turtles tour. Swimming with the sea turtles was a first for me. What an awesome creature. They didn't care a bit about the people in the water. The Tiami crew made a great barbecue chicken lunch before we headed back to the Pearl. Wednesday we docked in St. Lucia where we took a taxi ride into the inner island area and visited banana orchards and Marigot Bay. We stopped near a local community college where the students whear different uniforms depending on the course of study they are enrolled in. Thursday was another unbelievable shore excursion on the island of Antigua. We boarded the Excellence Catemaran for a high speed trip around the entire island. We stopped about half way for snorkeling and lunch on the beach at Green Island. I never knew how beautiful the island of Antigua is. Our tour showed us lavish wilderness and sea molded cliffs. We also saw many of the 100's of beaches on Antigua. The tour even showed us homes of famous people like Eric Clapton (Eric had the stones for his home shipped from Scotland). The color of the home matches the cliff it is built over and blends right into the mountain. At first glance, one cannot even see that the cliff, is really a house!
I cannot remember a cruise where we took 3 shore excursions and every one of them was such a great experience. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have to give all 3 of these excursions a 10 (except the whale watching in Dominica was more like an 11). We have been so busy having a great time that it was not until our short day here in Tortolla, that I have had time to write about this trip. We are now getting ready to sail away from Tortolla and make our way to Miami which will take about 22 hours. Nothing but sea days left, and while there is still vacation time remaining, you can now sense the vacation mode winding down.
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