Nov 13 Terre-de-Gaut Iles des Saintes, Lesser Antilles

 

Sorry about how the blog is posting.  Hopefully I will figure out how to get the words and the pictures lined up.

Rainy, windy and cool day.  Going ashore to post this blog. 

 

                                                      

Just found out that we are in Guatolupe.  This place has enough names.

 

We went ashore in the orange tender.  It is very choppy, so I had to keep my eyes on the horizon.

Town is cute, but only shops and a church.  So here are some pics.

 

             this is our tender

                    Church, pretty plain inside

      Everyone rides a motorcycle very fast on very narrow streets.  It’s scarey

      Here also there are signs of damage unrepaired.  These islands were hit bad.

Nov. 12 Phillipsburg, St. Maarten

We came to our first port this morning.  The island has 2 countries owning it.  16 square miles is owned by the Dutch and  21 square miles owned by the French.  The Dutch built a port where cruise ships can dock and became a tourist attraction.  Tourism is the basis of their ecomony.  The hurricane recently has left some work still to be done.  The Dutch side has make great strides in rebuilding, but not the French.  We didn’t go to the French part, but others told us about the disrepair. 
We came ashore and took a water taxi to the town.  It was hot and very muggy.  Only 90 degrees, but when the sun came out, it was stifling.  We walked around the town, bought some soda for the ship, and saw some repairs being made.  There is a LOT of shopping here, since it is a duty-free port.  You can buy diamonds in almost every store.

                                                                                   the island

                                 

           
                     tourist walk and courthouse                                    one street over (there is a KFC here)
                                     
                                         hotel being worked on                                          still more destruction

We are getting settled into ship life

 

Here are, sitting in our stateroom, trying to decide when to have dinner.  Tonight, even tho it is the first full day of the trip, it is a formal night.  We are to be addressed by the captain.  So, we will do some Colorado formal wear…. meaning we will wear nice clothes and not shorts and sandles.

We are still recovering from our journey to the ship, the Princendam, by Holland American ship.  She is being sold next year, so we won’t be sailing on her after this trip  We had to get up at 3:30 am to make the 6 am flight.  Our connecting flight was 2 1/2 hours late.  Thank goodness we left a day before the cruise started.  We got picked up by the hotel shuttle very quickly.  So far, so good. 

Then it got more interesting.  To make a very long story a little shorter, we had no TV, no internet and no radio, but we did have ……..bedbugs.  I never saw a bedbug before, but I googled it and yest that is what I had killed.  It took 2 hours to get another room. 

We arrived at our ship with no problem.  While waiting to board we met some fun people and we have met some more fun people on the ship.  We will be sailing today and tomorrow, before reaching.Phillipsburg, Sint Maartin on Monday.  See you there.