We sailed the seas (though just to be pedantic, we were in the Caribbean for oh about 8 hours...) the glorious blue seas for 3 days and put into port 3 times (plus Miami - the world's busiest cruise ship terminal). Stealing a page from Ros & Marc's book, each child chose a destination and did a brief presentation to the family. They were wonderful and diverse:
Annabel - Puerto Rico: music
Alex - Dominican Republic: baseball
Adam - Turks and Caicos: cuisine
Sophie - US Virgin Islands (which was cancelled b/c of the hurricane): indigenous people of the islands
Seb - Miami: economy & trade
First stop, Turks & Caicos for our wonderful snorkelling and beach bash.
Then Amber Cove in the Dominican Republic - where some of us nipped off to see Puerto Plata, others ambled about and shopped for rum and a leather belt 9and had an interesting chat with the tourist office staff), and others went zip lining. Yup, zip lining with 5 kids at 70!!
And then San Juan, Puerto Rico with thousands of other cruisers. The city struck me as Havana without the sanctions - not that we have ever been to Cuba!
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| A statue of Christopher Columbus, which reminded us mightily of the one in Seville. His boat - la nina - capsized off these shores on Christmas Day no less |
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| M and his maps; S and her style |
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| One of the 3 kings - we are in a former slave-holding colony |
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| The iguanas |
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| Here in la Perla, you can see some of the hurricane damage. 50% of the population on the island still didn't have electricity. We saw something that might have been a distribution point. |
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| Art as resistance |
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| It was hot & humid and a certain teen had been roaming the ship with squads of youth until all hours. A nap did him some good! |
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| We came across an amazing restaurant built on avocadoes. |
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| and we loved it! |
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| Seb & I were amused by these sets supposedly depicting the nativity around the world. They were 100% stereotyped and some even blatantly racist. |
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