I got up in the night and as Paula was suffering a bit, I opened the ranch slider to let some fresh air in from the balcony. I’m sure there is a reason why you can’t turn off the air conditioning on the ships, but you can’t.
I was awake at a reasonably early time, but I let Paula sleep on as she probably needed the sleep.
We’d docked in a tiny harbour which must be deep enough, as there was no need for a tender transfer – which is always a relief, as tender transfers can mean long queues either on or off the ship and often in the blazing sun.
After a leisurely breakfast, town looked to be within walking distance, but we still had to run the gauntlet of pushy taxi drivers. My stock response, which seems to work well enough, is simply “No thanks. We are walking today.”
It was pretty warm and we walked through to town OK but didn’t venture far. We should really have gone to the supermarket, but we missed seeing it. The market, across the road was either very touristy or very local.
Back across the main road on the water side, was another market and once again, all they seemed to have was touristy clothing and knick-knacks.
Paula rather likes the colourful throw-over sun frocks, but prices do vary from country to country but most are probably made in India anyway! At one stall, she spied a rather nice one and while she sorted that out, I started chatting to one of the other the young ladies on the stall, whilst watching yet another doing the nail painting. Bear in mind that this was just a tiny market stall. She called me ‘young man’ and offered to do MY nails! If she thought I was a young man, I presumed her spectacles were away for repair, therefore she might have had trouble with painting my nails. Anyway, she was good fun and I challenged her to state where young finished and old started. When she said 58, my face dropped… We asked how old she was and we were as far out in our estimations as she was. We thought she looked about 23. She was 38. So we’ll call that a draw. Definitely the highlight of the day though, as we meandered back to the ship quite early accompanies by Len. He volunteered to pick up some Strepsils if he went ashore again, as the ship’s shop had run out – as usual.
At the port are several duty free shops, including about three bars and restaurants, plus several clothing, jewellery and another tourist stores, plus a wines and spirits outlet. I bought a plastic tankard which is double skinned, with liquid in the gap, so that you can put it into the freezer and when you pour your drink onto it, it should stay colder for longer. Cheap and tacky looking but it makes for a different memento from yet another shot glass.
The two or three bars/eateries at the dock seemed to not want to publish any prices. Strange.
From the little we saw of Castries, it certainly looked more prosperous than Antigua but we can’t really understand how it is that purchasing just about anything in these poorer countries is often quite expensive. Whether it is just targeting ‘wealthy’ tourists, who really knows?
On board, we called at deck 5 for a coffee (I’d forgotten to take a coffee bag to breakfast) and I went to the bar and gave my instructions directly to the coffee maker. Nice coffee!
To the cabin before afternoon trivia. We should really have joined forces with another couple, whose paper we marked, as between us, we would have had enough correct answers for a clear win – and we only needed another 3 points!
For the first time in 65 days, we batted the moths out of our swim togs and went to the pool at the rear of the ship. Lovely and warm. About 29/30 degrees. One of the spa pools was empty of cruisers, so I hopped in there too for a while.
Paula was still a bit throaty and snuffly, so we opted to stay in the cabin for dinner rather than spread the germs around and I just raided the buffet twice, once for each of us.
So, a quiet evening in as we set sail for Bonaire, well on the way towards the Panama canal and the Pacific Ocean, but a day at sea first and time for Paula to get some fresh sea air.
At last I have finished reading my Bill Bryson book – 634 pages of it and thoroughly enjoyed it. He is one of the few authors who can make any aspect of history interesting. Now I move on to a 2013 John Grisham novel – ‘Racketeer’ at $9.95 on a Princess ship. Much cheaper than Auckland.
We’ll sleep with the balcony door open tonight.
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