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!





2012-11-12 Dominica:

Another new port for us Dominica.  We had absolutely no idea what we were doing that day.  I had heard of Champagne Reef, but thought it was mainly an area where bubbles were in the water and wasn't sure it would live up to all the hype.  After all, I could stay in the jacuzzi and see a bunch of bubbles!  The port wasn't much to look at.

 The info I had said it was the nature island so I figured we'd head off the ship and see if we could find a tour.   We headed to the info booth and asked about tours.  As an afterthought, I asked about Champagne Reef.  She said it was a quick taxi ride and accessible from the beach and was an excellent place to snorkel.  That's all I needed to hear! --- back to the ship we went to change into swimsuits and grab our snorkel gear then head to the taxis.  Fortunately there was another couple there waiting, too, so we got to share the taxi cost---which was then $30@ rt.  At the destination, we paid a $2@ admittance fee and were led down a boardwalk and dirt path to the "beach"--made up of rounded rocks.

At first I was little concerned, all I saw was a rocky shoreline.  Then a tiny sandy opening appeared.

 Just to the left of the entrance starts the large area where lots of bubbles come up from the bottom of the ocean giving the area it's name.  I'll have to admit, it was more impressive then a jacuzzi and there were quite a few fish in that area.

We noticed a tour group was already there and snorkeling quite a ways off shore.  So we ventured out there, too.  That's where we found a fabulous reef!  We snorkeled for well over 2 hours.  Here are just some of the sealife we saw there.
Yellow tail snapper---

 ?

 pretty coral---

 Lots of schools of fish---

 Really neat coral species--

 more coral and fish----

 an eel---

 A banded butterlfy fish.

 Another fish I've not seen before---

and another--- (Rock Beauty?)



 And the bubbles really were pretty neat!

 The variety and colors of the coral were amazing, too.

 We saw a couple different tour groups come and go while we were there.

I could have stayed there much longer, but the other 3 in my group were getting anxious to leave.   So we headed back to the taxi.

The poverty of the island was pretty apparent as we rode through the port town.

(Hurricane Irma and Maria in 2017 made  a direct hit on the little island.  Word is it's been destroyed.  So sad---it had a lot of charm!)

 After tipping the taxi driver another $10 and tipping the young man at the entrance to the place who actually swam out to the reef with us, we ended up spending about $45@, much better then the $80@ fee the ship excursion was and we got to spend more time there.  For a day that started out shakey (couldn't find my ship card and had to get another one; I also mistook contact cleaning solution for soaking solution and my eyes didn't like that much) , this turned out to be a fantastic day!
 The little island as we cruised away.

 This turned out to be one of my favorite Caribbean islands so far.