2012 Noordam 11 night cruise

11 night Southern Caribbean Cruise

After our last 2 November Caribbean cruises in less then ideal weather conditions, you would think we'ld learn not to cruise the Caribbean in hurricane season!  But we persisted and gave it another try.  This time we did our longest cruise yet---11 nights on the Noordam and had almost perfect weather the whole time!   We actually booked this cruise while we were on the Eurodam last year.

I chose this cruise , (Holland America's Noordam) mainly because it went to St. Lucia.  I've always wanted to see St. Lucia.  The cruise also included stops in St. Maarten, Barbados, Dominica, Martinique, St. Thomas, and Half Moon Cay.  It was very port intensive, which I loved---6 port days in a row, another port later.  Ken's more of a sea day fan, but he held up pretty well.

2012 Noordam ship

2012-11-5,6, and 7  Up to and including our first 3 nights:  Sea days

2012-11-8  St. Maarten 

2012-11-9  St. Lucia

2012-11-10  Barbados

2012-11-11 Martinique

2012-11-12  Dominica

2012-11-13 St. Thomas


After 6 port days in a row, the next day was a welcomed sea day!  Even though I'm not a big fan of sea days, the day of rest was nice.  Althought my plans for sleeping in didn't go so well.  Somewhere in the Caribbean waters I encountered what I assume was sea lice---invisible to the eye, larvae or jellyfish or other stinging ocean critters that attacked me---and I ended up with an extremely itchy rash.  I had this happen before on a couple of our trips to Hawaii (out of about 20 trips to Hawaii), so I wasn't surprised.  Apparently they don't bother everyone---like Ken---but they sure like me.  Took about 5 days for the extreme itching to subside.  At least it happened near the end of our cruise.

2012-11-15 Halfmoon Cay

his was Ken's 4th cruise, my 10th.   Other than my first cruise (when my Dad almost drowned), I haven't had a bad one yet (not counting weather).  I really enjoyed seeing the new places and revisiting the ones we've been to.  We enjoyed it so much we even did the onboard booking for the ship board credit for the next one.  The $200 ship board credit for booking onboard last year and the $100 OBC for having CCL stock came in really handy this year.  After gratuities of $12/day@ , the Canelleto dinner, and a couple other items we bought onboard, we only owed $56 when we debarked. 

Now to start dreaming about where to go next!





2012-11-15 Half Moon Cay:

After our sea day, we had one last port---the HAL private island, Halfmoon cay.  We have been here twice before and were looking forward to a restful day at the beach there.  We were not disappointed.  This was the only port we had to tender to, but that didn't take too much time.  We threw our towels and bag on a couple chairs and donned our snorkel gear and headed into the water.  There's a little snorkel area by the kids area which we'd snorkeled before and knew it didn't have much, but we didn't care.   We knew the water would feel great.

the shopping area on the island

 the ship from the water.

Getting in the x-mas spirit.

Much to my surprise, the snorkeling this time was considerably better then the last 2 times we were there. We were even able to get all the way to the rock wall to the far left of the bay.  The last 2 trips the water was too churned up to see anything over there.  This time we saw a  cute Caribbean grouper---

A large gray triggerfish---

 A hard to notice large octopus---

 Then I noticed this baracuda watching us----

 Next thing I knew there was a school of barracuda, as you can barely see here.  I didn't venture too close to them!  But they seemed as scared of us as we were of them.

Here is a picture of part of the artificial reef out by the kids play area.

 A few of the fish by the rock wall in the "snorkel" area.

and more by the rock wall.

 even schools of minnows by the rock wall.

 Goatfish could be found in the sandy areas.

 It was another beautiful day on Halfmoon Cay!  Love that they have a picnic lunch there, too!  It's a short walk to the picnic area.  Along the way was this chapel---

 and this appropriate sign---

 and more views of the Noordam---

 even a play ground with this boat to play on.

 The pathways are even landscaped.

 and the food is good.

 maybe too good!

 There were a bunch of birds cleaning up after us, including these cute little yellow bellied ones.

When we weren't eating or swimming in the water, we wandered around the beach a bit.

While we were there, the tide really went out.  The chairs to the right were almost in the water when we got there.  With the low tide we had even calmer water.

 All too soon it was time to get back to the ship---and wait in line for the tender.

Here's a view towards the tiny snorkel area on the other side of the rope as we head back to the ship on our tender.

Another beautiful day on HAL's private island!  And a beautiful sunset as we sailed away.

It's was really nice have a port day when we didn't have to wonder where we were going to go and whether or not we would get back to the ship in time.  Good way to wind down from a great cruise.

2012-11-13  St. Thomas:

Today we were in port at St. Thomas.  Having been here before, we knew the snorkeling was great and had an idea where we wanted to go.  We also had rented a car here before and did so again.  Pick up was easy----just made our way to the windmill on the port and called Budget for our courtesy pick up.  Rental for the day was $45, plus we paid $10 for supplemental insurance.   They do drive on the wrong side of the street there, but my driver didn't do too badly! 

We had planned to go to Coki beach first before the ship tours got there, but with the poor road signage, we ended up at Sapphire first.  I had read Sapphire was the place to go for snorkeling, but because of weather had never made it anywhere but to a beach in Cowpet Bay before.  Although Sapphire was beautiful, we found the snorkeling to be only so-so near the shore.

 

 Typical snorkel area at Saphire.

 Yellow tailed snapper at Sapphire---

 Blue tang at Sapphire----

 blue head wrasse----

After less than an hour at Sapphire, we headed to the place our daughter told us about last year---- Cowpet Bay at the Elysian Resort---

last look at Sapphire from the top of the hill

Cowpet Bay by the Elysian Resort



 Snorkeling here was excellent again.  Even saw some creatures I hadn't seen before like this guy---(smooth trunkfish?)

four eyed butterfly fish---

 Never saw one of these before,either, but there were several of them here this time.

 Not sure what happened to this guy.  I was thinking it was a shark, but seeing it's missing some basal fins, I now think it was a dolphin.

 Another interestingly marked blue tang.

  flounder

trunkfish and parrotfish

 tiger fish

a wrasse, I think

Lots of these squirrel fish, too

 A curious school of squirrel fish---

 The largest porcupine puffer fish I've ever seen---

 The last beach we had time to go to was Coki Beach.  It was gorgeous, but got quite crowded with the cruise ship excursions going here.  Also had lots of "waitresses" and venders trying to drum up business.  We bought a sandwich and drink from Subway on our way there and didn't have an problem pic nicing on the beach before we entered the water.  We enjoyed snorkeling there for about another hour.

 The snorkel area really isn't very big, basically the rocky area shown above.  But it was better then where we snorkeled at Sapphire. (On a later trip, we found really good snorkeling at Sapphire, but it was way out at the point to the right of the bay)

 a spotlight parrotfish

 jelly fish

 sea bird

 A portion of the crowded Coki beach area.

We didn't go to the domed viewing area where lots of ship tours go.  There is a roped off area by it which we didn't go past. 

I had hoped to get to Megan's beach, too, or at least to the overlook, but time ran out.  We stopped at K-mart for some post cards and to the post office to mail them.  Then sat in traffic for a good 30-45 minutes getting back to the Budget rental place.  Caught our shuttle back to Crown Bay port.
pretty flowers by the port

 our ship, the Noordam in port.

 the port shops as seen from the ship.

 Crown Bay as seen from the ship.

 After really bad weather here the last 2 years, it was so nice seeing the sunshine and beautiful waters of St. Thomas!  Next year, we're even planning a land based vacation there instead of cruising.  (here's a link to that trip)