Here we are at the last two days of our adventure. There is still a lot going on aboard ship. Each ship in the fleet on each cruise has an “On Deck for a Cause” fundraiser where participants make a donation, get a shirt, and walk 5K (12 times around the deck) for cancer research. The fleet has raised over 5 million dollars since they started the drive. It was good to be a part of it, especially since this time I was able to label myself as a “cancer survivor”!

Much of our time has been taken up with thinking about packing and the actual packing itself. What will we ship? What will we take on the airplane? Will everything fit? It has all worked itself out. We leave all but one bag in the hallway before midnight and it will magically be taken to the pier warehouse in the morning. Monday morning, we will hire a porter, find all of our bags and then go through customs. Most of our bags will be shipped home via FedEx and we will only take two small bags to the airport.

I finished one last art project, the cultural show by the Carib Indians on the island of Dominica. I cobbled together three different pictures to come up with this scene. This afternoon, we are putting on a small art exhibition in the area where we do our painting every sea day. I will display three pictures including this one of the Carib Indians.

It will be great to be home again, but at the same time it is tough to say goodbye to the ship and the crew who have made this South America/Antarctica adventure so memorable. We have made a few new friends along the way, but we really miss our Oakridge family.

St Thomas is our last port of call for this cruise. It is another island with lush green vegetation and beautiful beaches. This island was also severely damaged by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. However, in contrast to Dominica recovery is well underway with 90% of the electricity restored. Signs of the damage are still evident as shown by the gnarled and twisted communication tower.

We did not have an excursion today as we chose to explore the city on foot.

The wharf area where the ship docked has 5 or 6 buildings of clothing, jewelry, and souvenir shops. We did a little shopping and then went looking for an ATM to replenish our cash.

On the way we were buttonholed by a local taxi driver (J.R.) asking us if we wanted a city tour. We started to refuse and then said “Sure, why not?” So we spent a great 2 hours driving around the island. The taxi could have held 12 people but we were the only two who signed up. J.R. was a great guide stopping every so often at a viewing point, explaining the history of the island, or talking about the effects of the hurricanes (actually there were two class 5 hurricanes within a week to hit the Caribbean islands).

One stop was at a huge souvenir shop at the highest point of the island. At the rear of the store was a balcony that overlooked the beautiful “Magens Bay” and beach. While there were very few people there today, at its busiest it’s known to be wall to wall with people.

When we returned to the pier, Paul went back to the ship to get lunch. I went to “Pirates Treasure, A Shipwreck Museum” displaying authentic artifacts and treasures from the Virgin Islands and other shipwrecks from around the world. The two-story museum incorporates history and interactive exhibits to immerse visitors in the world of pirates and the deep-ocean exploration technology used to recover treasures that were once thought lost forever. Great Fun! There was also an exhibit on female pirates. My favorite was Ching Shih. After I completed my tour I went back to the room to get ready for dinner.

Dominica is another island with lush green vegetation and beautiful beaches. This island, like others we will visit, was severely damaged by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. Even though the hurricane hit six months earlier, our guide told us that rebuilding is only just now getting underway. There has been financial aid from various countries, but rebuilding is slow. There is electricity in the big city of Roseau, but the outlying villages are all without water or power unless a household has its own generator and the fuel to run it.

With that said, we were still able to visit and enjoy a lovely tour of the island. We started with a trip to the top of the island for an impressive look down over the city and beaches of Roseau. We were struck with the variety of brightly colored buildings accented by the blue tarps taking the place of the roofs that were destroyed during the hurricane.

We continued on to the Botanic Gardens. As a first-time visitor, the gardens looked green and lush, but the damage from the storm was evident here as well. Leaves and even bark were stripped from the trees by the hurricane and after six months, patchy clusters of leaves were starting to reappear. We did see the remnants of an earlier (1979) hurricane that uprooted a huge tree and crushed a parked school bus.

Our next stop was the lovely Hibiscus Waterfall with a pool of crystal clear water below. Getting to the falls involved stairs, but we are pretty used to that on this trip. We were allowed to swim in the pool which is reputed to make you look and feel ten years younger, but we did not partake… no use “gilding the lily”.

We had a lunch of fresh fruits and vegetables (pumpkin-coconut soup, taro root, rice, beans, green salad and potato salad) and were then treated to the culture of the Carib Indians in the form of dancing and drums. The Carib Indians are the only indigenous people on the island. Our guide was also part of the Carib people.

I think the moral of the excursion is that even though bad things happen, you have to simply move on with your lives. Tourism is pretty important to Dominica, but we were the first cruise ship to visit for awhile. Hopefully more people will visit and the island will recover soon.

Barbados looks like all the other Caribbean islands in this region but at its heart it’s very different. Unlike the other Caribbean islands that were formed by volcanic activity, Barbados is composed of coral roughly 90 m (300 ft) thick! Barbados sits at the junction between the Caribbean and South American tectonic plates. The subduction of the South American plate under the Caribbean plate scrapes sediment from the South American plate and deposits it under the island causing it to rise 1” every 1,000 years.

Barbados’ location in the south-east of the Caribbean region puts the country just outside the principal path of hurricanes (unlike our next two stops: Dominica and St. Thomas).

Today, Paul and I went on different excursions. My excursion was called “Barbados In Focus”, a photography oriented tour. Paul’s excursion was called “ Harrison Caves Experience”.

“Barbados In Focus”

My tour started with a discussion of the photography rule of thirds.

Rule 1: If your taking a picture of a person or thing, the object should be positioned 1/3 of the distance from the left or right edge of the picture.

Rule 2: If photographing a landscape, the horizon line should never appear in the middle of the picture. the horizon should be positioned 1/3 of the distance from the top or bottom edge of the picture. The reasoning here is that either the ground or the sky is the important element but not both.

Our first picture stop was at a “Chattel House”.

At one time, the island was covered with sugar plantations. The plantation’s workers would buy these small wooden houses called “Chattel Houses” . They are set on blocks rather than being anchored into the ground. In addition, they are built entirely out of wood and assembled without nails. This allowed them to be disassembled (along with the blocks) and moved from place to place. This system was necessary historically because home “owners” typically did not own the land that their house was set on. Instead, their employer often owned the land. In case of dispute with their employer, the house could be quickly moved to a new property. As time went by, they often added additional units to the house. (The lady that lives in this one is 90 years old and loves to have people stop and take pictures of her house. Our guide suggested that we give a small donation to the lady for upkeep.)

It was almost noon by the time we reached our next stop “The Sea Side Bar”. All this traveling left us very thirsty so we were treated to a sample of the local drink “Rum Punch”. It is made with 1 part lime juice, 2 parts simple syrup, 3 parts Barbados’ Mount Gay Rum, and 4 parts orange juice.

Barbados’ Mount Gay Rum is made from molasses and water that has been filtered through natural coral. This mix is fermented using an exclusively selected yeast and then distilled in both copper pot and column stills, before being aged in oak barrels.

Our last photo stop was at “Barclays Park” at “Bathsheba beach”. Bathsheba beach is known as the Soup Bowl where local and international surfing competitions take place annually. Another notable feature of Bathsheba beach is the large boulder that sits slightly offshore, known by some as Bathsheba Rock.

It was then a quiet ride back to the ship.

Harrison Caves Experience

The cave tour was an easy tour because narrow roads were built inside portions of the cavern to accommodate electric vehicles. Two passenger cars and a driver car make up one tour group. When we were gathering for our tour, we met a much smaller, younger group of college-age students with helmets, lights, and knee and elbow pads. They were going into the parts of the caves that require crawling on your elbows and knees. Luckily, none of that would be required on OUR tour.

The pictures do not fully capture the beauty the limestone formations and their sparkling surfaces. The pools of water are crystal clear. Many caves are cool, but not this one. The temperature was warm and humid, but not unbearably so. The most impressive part of the tour was when the guide had us turn off all cell phones and cameras, close our eyes, and then open them to absolute darkness. I’m not sure I have ever experienced such total blackness. It was fun (for a few minutes).

This Grand Voyage is coming to its end. The talk now is sprinkled with ideas for packing, exchanging contact information, and what the weather is like back home. This seems like a good time to show our mascots for this voyage, the penguins. When we first boarded the ship back in January, there were eight large stuffed penguins in the atrium. The have been reappearing throughout the cruise in varied outfits… Australia night, Black & Gold Gala, Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, prison night because we visited Devil’s Island yesterday, and my favorite, Chinese New Year.

When we walked around Devil’s Island, I saw my first agouti. This little guy became my art project for the day.