Feb 1. At Sea. 88 Sunny. Seas 6’. 

Can’t believe it’s February already and that we are truly heading home! It says it’s 88, but the weather is perfect today here on the equator. No humidity and a wonderful breeze. It’s so nice that we skipped the morning lecture in favor of just sitting out by the pool. There was the Equator Crossing ceremony prior to lunch. Cute, and there must have been 100 polywogs who kissed the fish to become shellbacks. We mostly enjoyed the weather but did go to the afternoon lecture on stars in our galaxy. The evening was lounge, CR and we did go to the show; the 2nd performance by the comedian. He wasn’t as funny this time.

Feb. 2. Devil’s Island, French Guiana. 100, hot and humid.

We are anchored here. There is almost no infrastructure here so no organized tours. One could tender in and walk around on their own. We spent the morning debating if we would do that, but in the end decided that hot, humid, muddy, and millions of misquotes …Also, there was a requirement that one have a yellow fever vaccination to go ashore,  which we didn’t get. Although there is no one to check, we might as well not risk it with all those mosquitoes! But, just being here and seeing the island from the boat makes me want to watch Papillon  again. We had lunch by the pool, but it was too hot to linger too long. We spent the afternoon in our nicely air conditioned cabin watching a really good,  feel-good movie,  “A Million Miles Away”. The internet is really terrible today, slow and kicking in and out, apparently because of our remote location. We had our usual cocktail in Observation then a very slow dinner in CR. We did go to the show because we had heard this guy’s  previous show was great and he was an amazing entertainer. We were sorry we missed his previous performances. He plays many instruments, and sings exactly like the original performers, from Billy Joel to Micheal Jackson to Lionel Richie! He was really a great entertainer!

Feb. 3. At sea. Sunny, 86. Seas 4’.

It’s a spectacular day at sea. Really not too hot with cloudless sky and a beautiful Caribbean breeze. We are almost up to the Caribbean, heading home! We gained an hour overnight. We have been 2 hours ahead of EST since Chili. We went to the morning lecture on Coral Reefs, then on to hanging by the pool. I guess we must be mentally preparing to go home because we      only had 1 drink at lunch and didn’t really enjoy them! Because of the ideal weather, we spent the afternoon on our balcony, watching the sea roll by. Tonight is a private farewell dinner for those 123 of us on the Grand Voyage. We met up with Nick and Sharon for cocktails as they had arranged for the 6 of us to sit together. The event started with cocktails on the fantail at La Veranda. That was lovely, however when we went to our table another couple had already squatted there. After a bit of a kerfuffle, we ended up ok with the Cruise Director joining us. The dinner was a good and I was really the only one near the Cruise Director so spent the meal making conversation with him, which was interesting. After dinner we all 6 went to the show, a male singer doing a whole show of Neil Diamond. He was very good and of course ended on the high of Sweet Caroline!

Feb. 4. Castries, St. Lucia. 86, partly cloudy.

We are definitely in the Caribbean, with beautiful water, weather and breezes! We canceled our tour today, because we’ve been here twice before, and there really isn’t all that much more to see than we’ve seen. There is a beautiful, clean , fun cruise port, so I figured we could spend time walking about there, but we docked across the bay, right at the city center, while the 5,000 passenger ship that came in behind us and docked at the nice place. We went to the town version of a cruise port, but there was almost nothing there. As we were about to go back to the ship a local said there was a water taxi across the bay to the nice fun place. It was $6pp round trip, so we took that and did get to spend time in the fun place with tons of shops and beer gardens and restaurants. We thought about going to a beer garden, but realized we have a free one on our ship, so we took the water taxi back for lunch and a beer on our ship. We spent the afternoon on our balcony. Our cocktails in Observation were a little disruptive because the ship seems to have run out of orange juice. How can that happen on a supposedly 6 star ship? We got into Chartreuse for dinner, and got our favorite table all the way in the back, although it was pretty dark to see too much, but it was a nice meal. We took a glass of wine to our cabin and skipped the show, a new magician/comedian.