Western Caribbean Trip
So this portion of our 8 week adventure started EARLY on a Wednesday morning. We are heading to Ft. Lauderdale Florida for a couple days before boarding the Freedom Of The Seas for our journey through the western Bahamas. So up again way to early to catch a 6:00 am flight out of Redmond here in Central Oregon. Background.... Redmond is just to the north of Bend, and where the regional airport is. So, we board the plane heading to first stop Seattle, with projections of plenty of time in Seattle to get from this flight to the next.... OF course, what was not projected was sitting on the runway for 30 minutes waiting for a deicing of our airplane. That in itself is a first for us, never had to be deiced before, so cool, but in reality.... NOT COOL, COLD.... Anyway as anyone from Central Oregon knows that when you fly to Seattle you basically see the seat belt light go off for 30 seconds, and then it comes right back on because it is time to start the landing procedures. Yehaw, maybe we won't have to run in the Seattle airport after all... WRONG..... But, we made it just as boarding was in progress, and to our great amazement, so did our luggage!
So off we go, for three days free to do anything we want in Southern Florida. We landed about 5pm, got our rental car and made it to our motel with little issues. We had a great location with a nice restaurant just next door, and enjoyed a wonderful dinner with maybe a cocktail or two (SSSHHHHH don't tell my cardiologist!). Next morning after a wonderful breakfast (cough cough, like motels here are anything like the wonderful spread in Ecuador) we grabbed the GPS, got the phone hooked up with the car, and headed out for a day in the Florida Everglades. Easy peasy right? Actually it was, but took a few times seeing double white lines in the left two lanes on the freeway to figure out that was an added expense unless you had the travel pass, which actually the rental car did, or Enterprise would bill us later and THEY DID! Then we figured out if you stay out of those double white line lanes, you just paid the standard toll fees and not the express pass fees. Anyway, the Everglades were in front of us with no issues. I was taking a picture of Jill in front of the sign when a local women pulled up, jumped out of her car, and instructed me (verbally attacking me more like it) to give her my phone so that she could get us both in the picture. So here is Jill's standard smile while I am wondering how long this lady is going to take to pull off the phone steal thing.... Anyway, we both survived and my phone was returned with said picture.....
The Everglades were great, and we enjoyed a long day there sight seeing and grabbing a few Geocaches to add to our collection of smileys....
We spent the next day driving north along the beach from Ft. Lauderdale to see wonderful beaches and OUTRAGEOUS Mega Yachts. Holy friggin "where does that money come from" thoughts all day long. Anyway, returned the rental car at the airport, grabbed a Uber back to the motel, had dinner, got a good night sleep and then..... Off to the cruise port to board The Freedom Of The Seas and hit the "Cruise Life"on our way to our first stop, the Grand Cayman Islands!
So this is not our first cruise, but it is our first onboard one of these newer "Mega Cruise Ships", and Tom's first cruise to the Caribbean. A couple things he noticed right away.... The Caribbean Cruise term means "PARTY PARTY PARTY" and the large ship means "LOTS AND LOTS OF PARTYGOERS". What a totally different vibe to this portion of our retirement party, something actually totally inviting and engaging. So when in Rome??? You got it, "LETS PARTY" right??? Yea well at our age, we partied on our level and enjoyed watching the rest of said partyers party harty! But, fun was had by all for sure. So this ship even has an ice rink for gods sake. Which we went to the first night to see shippers skaters do their thing. The main stage was huge for a ship, even had and elevating band pit. One thing for sure, large ship means large profits, and that was evident in the level of performances, Fantastic comes to mind. We went every night and were totally amazed, especially for a cruise ship!
One thing we have to say about cruising in the waters of the Caribbean, the color of the water is such a vibrant color of blue, nothing like the waters off the Northwest Coast of Washington, Oregon and Alaska.
So in 7 days we visited Grand Cayman Islands, Jamaica and the lines Coco Cay which turned out to be very relaxing. George Town was a very nice small town which we walked from one end to the other. Chickens everywhere, but on Central America standards was clean and hospitable. Jamaica however was just the opposite. We did not book any excursions on either island, which was ok in George Town, but don't try to walk around Falmouth as we quickly learned. Jamaica has a level 3 travel warning for Americans which we understood before getting there, so we were a little leery or lets say "observant" of before getting off the ship. I wont get into details but, we only made it about 4 blocks off the ship and high tailed it back into the compound of the ships harbor. Nothing to see here LOL.... Here's pics for the rest of the trip as there was nothing really intense but rather calm and relaxing, something we really needed after the previous 3 weeks...
Se we get back to Ft. Lauderdale at 9am and we are looking from our deck across port, about 1/2 mile away to our next stop.... Off the Freedom Of The Seas and boarding the Island Princess! Get the heck off, and All Aboard as the saying goes in a matter of 2 hours.... Visit our next portion of our 8 week trip, From Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles through the Panama Canal. A 16 day adventure that was AMAZING!!!!
