Hello!  We are on day 5 of the cruise and have already had several nice adventures!  Driving from Homestead to Miami on a Wednesday morning was not the best time – the traffic was horrible – tough for the driver and the navigator!  But we made it and boarded the ship shortly after 11AM.  Carsten and I are in a balcony room on the 9th floor, Falk & Svenni’s balcony room is on 10.  Nice (small) rooms, convenient to all the activities.

Some scenes from the ship:





Day 3

Our first excursion, on Dominican Republic, was “Zip & Dip”.  This is a combo of 5 zip lines, 2 suspension bridges and 7 waterfalls.  It started with a 45-minute hike through a rain forest to the zipline platforms. The ziplines and bridges were very nice – always fun to zip through the forest.

After the fifth zipline we arrived at the Damajuaga River and JUMPED in – off a 10ft platform – WHOOOMP! It was loud when you hit the water.  The river was in a deep canyon, after the first jump we walked down the river to get to the next waterfall.  This one had a natural slide!  I don’t have any pictures because it was not a good risk to take the cell phone with us, but this was SO fun!  There were more slides and fun floating/walking down the river.  The last waterfall had both a natural slide and a jumping platform (plus a ladder to give you a second chance).  We of course did both! 

After a 20-minute hike back to the start we hopped back on a bus to return to the ship.  It will be hard to top this excursion.

Sorry there are no pics from this - no way to keep a camera safe.

Day 4

St. Thomas, USVI – EcoTour with Kayaking, Hiking and Snorkeling.  This tour started with a 30-minute kayak tour of a bay surrounded by mangroves.  We learned about the 4 kinds of mangroves and how they each survive in and around the saltwater environment.  We beached our kayaks and hiked into Cay Key.  We had up-close encounters with hermit crabs… literally you had to watch where you stepped!  They look like rocks, until they move!  It was beautiful there at water’s edge.  The snorkeling was in a protected reef area.  It was super shallow which was both good (everything close and easy to see) and bad (tough to swim without kicking up sand).  Mostly it was good as we saw many schools of fish, a barracuda, a huge bait-ball, and a red-tip reef shark.  The 2-foot shark apparently swam around Carsten quite boldly! Awesome!  We kayaked back and jumped in an open-air taxi for the (wrong-side of the road) journey back to the ship.  Another great excursion!






We found a great guitar player in the Sugarcane Mojito Bar, we have enjoyed listening to him play. Here is Lorenzo:

Lots of catching up to do.  More soon.

Sheri & Carsten





 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Christmas Letter

Image
Hi!  I have developed an allergy to stamps and licking envelopes but wanted a way to reach out to our family and friends far and near ... then I realized that the blog might be just the ticket! Carsten and I have had a wonderful 2024! If you follow the blog you know that we have literally been around the world! In addition we are blessed to have spent many hours making and delivering beds to kids in North Houston. We did our first Swing Event in San Antonio, joining with hundreds of volunteers to make almost 800 beds in four crazy hours! Our final delivery of the year will be on Christmas Eve. Sleep in Heavenly Peace (Houston North) will deliver 2,000 beds in 2024. With a backlog of more than 800 we will be busy for a while!  If you are interested in helping by building and/or delivering beds, please check out https://shpbeds.org/chapter/tx-houston-n/ to sign up.  It is a lot of fun. Austin and Jamie had plenty of visitors to keep them company their first year in Detroit....
Read more

Iceland in Winter

Image
Hello from Reykjavik! We are here with my (Sheri) cousins, Christie & Chester, primarily to see the Northern Lights! Leaving Houston a day early to make sure we did not miss our flight due to the big winter storm, we had a little time in Virginia (near Dulles airport) to see the Air & Space museum. This was an unexpected pleasure. Among the 250+ aircraft was the Enola Gay, a Concorde Jet and the Space Shuttle Discovery. As Marieke informed us, there were many cancelled flights out of Dulles and delays were pretty standard. Our 7:40 pm overnight flight to Reykjavik finally took off at about 11:00. Apparently there were only two baggage handlers to unload and load AND shovel the snow that had accumulated. Once loaded, the de-icing took a minute as well.  We arrived at 10:00 am, got our car and headed to our walking food tour. Our guide's name was Burgersagdjckeuegvcn (sic) but we were to call him "burger". We stopped at five different places and enjoyed an appetizer...
Read more

More of Iceland

Image
On Friday we had a free day to walk around and explore Reykjavik. We started, as one must, with Hallgrimskirkja . Daytime Night time  Views of inside and from the top: Not sure what the hurry is but worshipers here get their praying done quickly! The streets are lovely this time of year with the lights ... and surprises like this one Santa's washing!. The Sun Voyager is lovely looking over he harbor. The stores have lovely things to offer, we bought a lovely Icelandic Wool blanket. Not sure how useful it will be in Houston?! There were some more useful items (for someone): We walked (trugged) through a sculpture garden. This one, entitled "Grief" was particularly moving. We had some fish for lunch and went back for a little rest. Dinner was pizza, followed by gelato. Early bedtime because we have to be up early for our next adventure! Ok. Next adventure is a trip to an Ice Cave. In general when I see 8+ hours I am not inclined to go. However, my cousin Christie had her he...
Read more