Our Last Day

A regular mystery occurred again on this cruise.  Our last stop was Bonaire and then we were too have two days at sea before arriving back in Fort Lauderdale.

Ship's resident entertainers in the Grand Foyer

Waiter Ahmed (left) from India with Celeo from Honduras

This time the group includes our wine waiter Olga from Kaliningrad

The distance from Kralendijk on Bonaire to Port Everglades is 1071 nautical miles.  The ship has a maximum speed of 25 knots.  That means it could sail the distance in just under 43 hours.

And so we return to Port Everglades at Fort Lauderdale

We left Kralendijk at 3pm on the Tuesday and docked at Port Everglades at 7am on the Friday.  That’s 64 hours, so 21 hours more than needed.

Now I know that the ship can’t do the whole stretch at full speed, but our average speed will have been just under 17 knots.  If we had left 4 hours later at 7pm the average speed needed would have been just under 18 knots.  Perhaps it’s a case of looking for fuel economy or perhaps giving the passengers longer in the casino (the ship’s casino can’t be open when the ship is docked).

The danger of taking a photo through what turns out to be tinted glass

We did indeed dock at 7am.  We were asked to be out of the cabin by 8am and that we should expect to leave the ship at 8.40am.

That proved to be about right and we then had quite a long wait to get through immigration. That in itself was quite quick – passport check, finger prints and a photo and we were through.  We had a short wait for the All Stars shuttle.  Never again on that one – a very cramped minibus which was extremely claustrophobic.  We got to the airport by 10am and were checked in and through security by 10.30am.

Then it was just a case of waiting for our 1pm flight to Newark New Jersey.  At around 11.45am we got a text message and then an announcement at the gate that our flight was going to be delayed because of air traffic control restricting flights in an out of Newark due to weather conditions.

When they confirmed that the delay was likely to be an hour and three quarters when our stopover time at Newark was only just under two hours, memories of the last time we flew out of here came flooding back.  The desk clerk assured us that there were later United Airlines flights out of Newark but there was no assurance that we would have a seat.

Abba Night Plus ....

On Wednesday we were determined to stay awake long enough to join the ABBA party. It started with a quiz of two massive teams where we had to identify the songs from the intro.

I've been in trouble for not drawing your attention to our cabin pet - or is it stateroom mascot - before now.  Our cabin steward / stateroom attendant gave birth to him for us

More than 20+ cruises behind us and this if the first cabin steward who has laid out my pyjamas each day in such a closely folded and buttoned fashion

As our team was doing quite badly, Mrs A couldn't resist the temptation to trot to the mike and answer some questions. This led to her being appointed team leader and having to lead a conga round the ship!

Royal Caribbean's 'Navigator of the Seas' heading back to Miami

Our last afternoon - a flat calm

Grand Foyer

Mrs A's favourite perch at the Passport Bar with another pina colada

We then had a great time dancing first to ABBA  songs and then 70s stuff. The ship's gay passengers were strutting their stuff brilliantly, dancing in unison in the lifts and competing with some ladies in the lift opposite.

The Passport Bar

Hi jinks at the Martini Bar

It was so funny to see regular passengers getting in the lifts and then being sucked into joining in with the dancing.

Now that's what I call a pudding!

Leaving Bonaire - Our Last Port of Call

Bonaire - amongst other things!

It’s interesting on board to hear how people ask for things in the cafeteria.  Phrases range from my almost grovelling “Could I please have ....?” to “Can I (please) have ....?” to “I’d like ....”, and “Can I get ....” to “I’ll get ....” with some variations along the way.

Mein Schiff 5 is stalking us again

Spare or old bumpers to stop the ships rubbing against the dockside

And talking of grovelling, we’ve been on their anytime dining arrangements which means in theory that we can turn up for our evening meal whenever we like.  Sometimes we have to wait with a pager but usually we manage to get straight in.  Natasha on the welcome desk tries to get us with the same waiting team each evening and our Indian waiter is called Ahmed.  And he is so ultra courteous and concerned about everything that it does indeed almost amount to grovelling.  Charles Dickens’s character Uriah Heep springs to mind, except that he proved to be insincere whereas we have no such doubts about Ahmed.

On board the trolley train

I look like I'm in some sort of tuc-tuc!

The other interesting person on our team of waiter, assistant waiter and sommelier – or rather sommeliere in our case is Olga from Kaliningrad, formerly a German province of Königsberg on the Baltic Coast and now part of the Russian Federation.  Olga said her family moved in from Siberia – well it has to be warmer in Kaliningrad than it ever is in Siberia!

Some sort of girls' club by the look of it ....

So many colourful houses

This 'club' is on the same street as a primary school and a church

We waxed lyrical with her about Russian wines and the supreme red wine from the Crimea that we recalled drinking while on our visit to East Germany in the 1980s and how we used to buy Bulgarian red wine called “Bull’s Blood” from the supermarkets at home.  She told us that the wine industry in these areas had disappeared when the Soviet Union broke up in the late 1980s - shame!

A drunken mosque?

Slave hut where slaves used to live when working on the salt pans.

Beware wandering donkeys!

Cactus Fence

Young goats being bred for food, a staple part of their diet here

And a sort of postscript to the things that people say - Mrs A was in the cafeteria getting breakfast items when she overheard a man asking for an item.  He pointed to an arc-shaped item on the bakery counter, something that is a staple part of many a French breakfast table and said he'd like a "croy-zant"  A what?!  A "croy--zant".  How on earth is it possible to pronounce the word "croissant" like that?

A rare thing here - a gated, private community

Cactus fence

Indigenous tree which flowers all year round

Anyway - Bonaire.  By the way, all the photos above are of Bonaire.  Bonaire was our last stop on this cruise and the last piece of the alphabetical jigsaw of the ABC islands.

Dry stone wall - fascinating for North Americans

Jason our guide, is holding up a local variety of fruit peculiar to these islands

Once again we were on the sea side of the ship so we headed up to the Ocean Cafe for breakfast to get a view of Bonaire.

There are a lot of cactus fences - or should that be cacti fences round these parts!

Crash helmets are apparently not compulsory here!

This lady waited very patiently while our guide showed us what was in the next photo.  Like on Aruba, islanders seem to have been briefed that tourism is an important part of the economy and that tourists do pay a lot of the island's bills

I was always told that money doesn't grow on trees but it seems that shoes do!

Opposite the tree is this house whee they also collect car licence plates!

To our surprise a lot of people had beaten us to it maybe because they had earlier tours than us.  We could see that Bonaire looked a small, pretty and tidy place. 

Another house, another colour!  One guide told us that all the house used to be painted white.  The a new Spanish governor of the islands arrived and told the home owners to start to brighten the place up and use some different colours.  It turned out his brother owned a local paint factory!

Desirable apartments with sea view

We had opted to do a trolley bus tour so we met our fellow travellers and off we went with Jason as our guide.  He said to look out for the tall guy with the bald head - so we did!  The trolley bus took us around Kralendijk which translated means 'coral dyke'.

In Papiamento

The Dutch Princess Wilhelmina

It brings a home good luck to have an aloe vera plant above the door.  If you leave the roots and some earth on them, it draws moisture from the air and can live like this for a number of years

Apparently Bonaire is the second best place in the world for coral after the Great Barrier Reef. Jason gave us some interesting bits of information about the island.

A typical homestead in the early days

Exhibits in the local heritage museum

Again the inhabitants speak 4 languages - Dutch,  English, Spanish and the local Papiamento. He told us about the word dushi but we already knew about ! Once again we were struck by the lovely bright colours of the buildings.

The sign suggests that this is 'Reception'

The population of Bonaire is around 22,000, so about the size of Retford and there are more goats and donkeys than there are people.

Flamingos are their emblem here

The goats can wander anywhere but dogs must be kept in the house or yard. There are also a lot of donkeys and they have 'Beware, donkeys crossing' road signs where we might have them for deer crossing.

Bonaire

Kralendijk

Lots of craft stalls at the market

Jason showed us the dry stone walls (which the North Americans are unfamiliar with). In Bonaire they are called 'slave walls' as originally they were built by slaves. He also showed us cactus fences which grow quickly and are effective in keeping the animals in and intruders out.

Harbour Master's Compound

We then went to one of the beaches. Just like the other ABC islands Bonaire is blessed with white sandy beaches and turquoise waters.  After a look at the flip flop tree we visited the local museum - not the most exciting we'd visited, but still he was very proud of it and it was a joy to sense that.