Caribbean @ MindSay 
cruise
Ahoy me mateys! We are about to cast off on a two week expedition across the Caribbean in search of pirates! Under the expert navigation of Cpt Merrick of the ship, The Redemption, we will be checking our pirate maps and using our spyglass to locate and capture those ruthless robbers of the high seas ... and their stolen treasure chest! Pirates!
Yes, really! :) Avast, me hearties! Fanned, I'm sure, by the charming and resilient Capt Jack Sparrow and company, I have fond more than enough adorable books to read and clever crafts to make to fill 2 weeks of Pirates Adventures!
Should be a wild adventure, hmmm?
~ B
NOTE: The Redemption , by Marylu Tyndall, is an exciting and refreshing historical romance on the highseas. I highly recommend it for fun and entertainment!
This will be my SECOND attempt to blog my Caribbean adventures last month. The first draft, pictures and all flew away somewhere. Talk about being PO'd! Grrr! So I've resorted to using part of a review I posted on Cruise critic.
We flew out of Burbank at 6:55 AM to Dallas to San Juan, PR. The hotel we booked through Priceline was absolutely awful! Don't stay at the San Juan Beach Hotel. Ever! The only good thing about it was the view when we awoke the first day.
Unfortunately, the hotel had had a party the night before and I didn't get more than about 2 hrs sleep. Let's just say the windows weren't all that secure in their frames. Kind of like the broken night stand, the shredded bathroom cabinet that held the sink and the fact that we got only two bath towels. No face cloths, no hand towels, no mat for the floor. The phone was broken and the light over the night stand was hanging by it's wires. Oh, and the bed was short sheeted.
We saw loads and loads of PR families out for a night on the Condado area. No offense against PR women, but tight clothing does nothing to make your Muffin Top look better! And shiny tight clothing does even less.
St Thomas: Lovely island. So beautiful on so many different levels. Great shopping, if you have $$$! There were just too many high end jewelry stores there for me! I did find a silver shop that made me very happy though. K got nabbed by a saleswoman in one of those other shops and I had to rescue him by saying I really didn't like the piece she was showing him. It was ugly, so I wasn't lying!
We had lunch at Cuzzin's in Charlotte Amalie. It was recommended to us by the lady in the silver shop. Great food! I highly recommend it! I can't remember the drink I had (it was at the bottom of the drink menu) but it was potent. Wow! Our server wasn't great and seemed to have his mind elsewhere, but everything else was fantastic! Now I think of it, I want to try to make some of the things we had that day for dinner tomorrow. Curry chicken, fried plantain, rice and peas...
Our tour took us up and down the island, showing us the sights and telling us about the island's history the end of the tour was our stop at Emerald Beach and it was beautiful. Incredible stuff for someone from LA! Fabulous place, but we were only there for an hour before we had to head back to the ship. Emerald Beach. Gorgeous!
Dominica: We had booked the River Tubing excursion through the ship and had a really good time. They had to corral us together several times along the way so the guys could run ahead and station themselves where we were likely to get into trouble. One gentleman took a bad spill along the way and was all scraped up. That was kind of surprising to me as I didn't really think the river was that violent. This is at the Layou River.
Dominica is very beautiful and rural. I wondered how the houses we saw made it through hurricane Dean. I only bought one souvenir from the warehouse-like bldg. set up as a market for the ship. Most tables had all the same stuff--mostly hematite necklaces (hundreds and hundreds of them!). I opted for a Caribe-made small basket.
Barbados: The excursion we booked for this port was the Catamaran Sea Turtle and Snorkeling tour. Great trip on the catamaran! We absolutely loved sailing up the coast. The sea turtle swimming thing was pretty crowded and I'm really glad they didn't allow fins to be used as I'm sure someone would have been hurt-probably the turtles.
This pic was totally unexpected. Isn't that so cool???
From there, we went on to an area to snorkel. The beach we dropped anchor on was very nice and I got quite a collection of sea glass there. They fed us on the catamaran and had an open bar, so that was pretty nice. K didn't have the best time snorkeling since he couldn't see a thing past arm's length. I felt bad for him. My big souvenir from this island was a coffee cup w/the Caribbean screened on it.
Our 2nd best day of the cruise. Look at this! Isn't it gorgeous?
St. Lucia: K is a tall ship fan, so we booked the Pirate ship excursion through the ship. The Brig Unicorn took us from the dock along the coast to Pigeon Island where some did the treasure hunt and some hiked and some went to the beach. We did the beach, such as it was. It was an OK excursion, but I much preferred the catamaran in Barbados. The diesel fumes from the motor gave me a huge headache.
Antigua: The shops are very close to the port here, but the taxi drivers won't take no for an answer and we had to duck into the market stalls to get away from them so we could shop. I found another silver shop!
On this island, we had booked the Sail Around Antigua by catamaran though the ship. What a great time!!! This was the best day of our entire cruise. The water was beautiful, the skies with enough cloud to make beautiful patterns and the island was gorgeous. We snorkeled off of Green Island and then had lunch of BBQ chicken or grilled fish, rice and salads. We could have wine or a refreshing adult beverage from the open bar. The rum punch was great. They sailed us past Devil's Bridge, through Nelson's Harbor and Jolly Harbor. We saw homes of the rich and famous. One of the crew gave a running commentary of various sights and beaches and landmarks. I cannot recommend this tour _highly_ enough. And that rum punch has a kick that you just don't notice at first! Whooo! This the Excellence cat on Green Island.
Imagine 4 hrs on a catamaran in the bluest water you've ever seen and 2 hrs snorkeling and beach combing. I ventured further afield than the rest of the people, hoping for a decent shell or two. I must have found some fisherman's leftovers. At least 2 dozen conch shells with holes drilled near the spiral to get the critter out. I didn't care they weren't perfect. On the way back to the boat, I encountered K who wanted to know if I found anything good... I pulled my 7lb conch shell out from under my sarong and said, yeah, I found a shell. LOL! He about died. He also has a shell, but I think his is 5lbs. Isn't it pretty? It's far prettier now after it's week spent in a bleach bath.
We spent our last day in the Caribbean looking around Old San Juan. K wanted to see the El Morro fort, so we caught a tram up the hill to see it. Thank goodness the parks service has trams or I would have died. He would have keeled over way before me since I can outwalk him, but it wouldn't have been pretty. We had dinner at a local PR restaurant that was very popular with the locals on the recommendation of one of the bell hops at the Sheraton OSJ. This was a MUCH better place to stay! I preferred the food in St Thomas, but it was better than our first night in SJ when we ate pizza at Subway. This is part of El Morro.
The "Jolly Green Giant" drove us to the airport the next morning. That taxi driver was a trip and had us laughing the whole way. I wish we'd had as good a time in San Juan's airport. Not a nice place.
Flying home on the 22nd was sobering. We could see all the wildfires in San Diego, Santa Clarita and other areas on the flight back to Burbank. It kind of looked like Mordor as our friend commented. If that weren't bad enough, the fwy was closed in Santa Clarita when we were on our way back home that night. It was around Midnight and we noticed a Hwy patrol car doing a traffic break about 4 cars in front of us. We didn't think it was a fire since the fire we'd seen from the air was on the other side of the valley from where we were. Then we saw the ash falling and smelled the smoke. A whole hillside was glowing embers when they let us continue on.
part of the fidius.org network
~ Since I really dont feel like bloging anymore
Anyway, before I get all caught up in that shit, I have blogging to do!
I think I'm just going to stop contributing to discussion in my sociology class. Also in my Modern Lit. class. I love discussion and I enjoy getting involved, but my comments always seem to go over everyone's heads and get misinterpreted by the teacher who misreinterprets (< not a word but that's OK) them to the class and then all hope for me being understood seems lost. Today in sociology really ticked me off and made me not want to talk in there any more.
Today's topic was victimisation, how we have become a society of victims. We watched a video and they touched on racism against blacks. They talked about the differences between some blacks in America who are on welfare and don't do much to get ahead because they see themselves as victim and have the idea that change is not going to happen no matter what they do to try and get ahead, they will always be oppressed, so there is no reason to try because it is futile, compared to Caribbean immigrants who come over with nothing and make something of themselves. Some of these immigrants agreed to talk about this in the video. They expressed how they think it is ridiculous that some African Americans use racism as an excuse to not get ahead, that if you want to get ahead you have to be willing to start somewhere (many of the American blacks said that they would never work at McDonald's because it is degrading; they'd rather collect welfare) at the bottom and work your way up. One man with dreadlocks talked about how he walked in to get a job and they took one look at him and turned him away. After this he decided to start his own small business.
A student named Matt started off the discussion. He said that in the particular case of the Caribbean immigrant with dreadlocks trying to get a job, he didn't think it had as much to do with race as it did with his appearance otherwise.
The teacher reiterated his point to the class with an example. She said that she would hire a particular student in the class who happened to be white, and dressed nicely, over 50 Cent because he might come in with his pants sagging and she would come in dressed nicely. That has nothing to do with race because a white person could do the same thing (come in dressed sloppy) and she would pick the person dressed nicely still.
This really struck me and so I raised my hand to comment. This is pretty much what I said word-for-word:
About Matt's comment: I think it's interesting that, like they mentioned in the video, people were stripped of their culture in the past, when we're still expected to do it now. I don't think something like his hair or how someone dresses should matter in getting a job. A lot of these things are cultural and we shouldn't have to sacrifice our culture and identity to get ahead in the world and fit into society. But I also think these things can't like, be enforced through laws. It's going to take some kind of shift in society... in our like... consciousness, some raise in it, for these things to not matter any more. I noticed that the African American guy in the movie who was a success and talked about not using racism as an excuse to not get ahead had a very white American accent. The way we talk is part of our culture, and he has lost that.
My teacher started to talk but I wasn't done so I interrupted her and kept going
About your example of hiring her over 50 Cent because of his sagging pants, why does that even matter?
She repeated her case that she would see him dressing sloppy and that would tell her that he is a sloppy worker.
She then told me that I should save this for later in the week and bring it back up again because I was jumping ahead of the class. She said "we aren't there yet" so to just hold that thought until we get there. Whatever the fuck that means! Damn.
My point was the cultural part of it and she ignored that and reiterated something completely different to the class. My point was that getting ahead in the world should not mean conforming like that. Maybe it is the INTJ in me that does not appreciate social rituals and I have never for the life of me been able to understand the concept of "looking/dressing professional". I was going to talk about how I anticipate difficulty finding a job because of my dreadlocks, but she cut me off.
It is my belief that there is some validity in judging people by appearance. We chose how we dress, how we do our hair, how we present ourselves in general. These things are usually a reflection of our culture, the society we live in, as well as our individual identity. The man with the dreadlocks or 50 Cent with sagging pants - it shouldn't matter. I also understand that the reason an employer might chose against giving someone a job is because what customers might think. Okay. I don't see how hiding from each other is supposed to breed an accepting, open society. It may bring about some conflict at first, yes, but you have to work through that, I think. Change has never been made by people sitting back in the shadows and waiting for some shift to just magically happen. WE have to make it happen. Like I said to a friend a while back, it amazes me that people kind of tend to talk about society as though it is something separate from them. YOU are society, I am society, WE are society. Each and every one of us contributes to this greater whole, and it's important that we each question ourselves and how we think things should be and how we are contributing to that bigger picture if we want things to be different or whatever you want. Anyway... I digress. If I can't get a job anywhere I am qualified to because of my hairstyle, if someone can't get a job anywhere they're qualified to because they have tattoos, etc., that's not right. These things are an expression of us as individuals and in the case of the man from the Caribbean, that was an expression of his culture and that should not deter him either. No, there aren't laws we can create to force enlightenment. It is just a shift that is going to have to happen as we evolve... I don't know if it ever will happen. More and more I'm seeing us, human beings, as a very primitive species still. We think we are very evolved and shit, but we aren't. We are far, FAR from it.
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