Due to
unexpected technical difficulties, I was unable to carry on blogging while I
was on the ship. Now that I am back in Canada, I have been getting caught up --
and with this post the travel blog for this trip is now complete. In a few more
months, I’ll be doing another cruise on Princess, and after that trip I will do
a detailed comparison of the two companies: Princess Cruises and Holland
America Line.
Half Moon Cay is
Holland America Line’s name for its private island, Little San Salvador Island,
between Eleuthera and Cat Island in the Bahamas.
Unlike the
Princess private resort stop at Princess Cays on Eleuthera, this is not just an
enclave on an otherwise inhabited island. Carnival Corp., the owners of Holland
America, bought the island outright from Norwegian Cruise Line in 2006. Ongoing
development of the island has been carefully restricted by the company to just
one-fifth of the total land area at the western end of the island, leaving the
other four-fifths as a wildlife and bird sanctuary (basically the entire area
beyond the large, enclosed body of water).
The evocative name
harks back to the VOC (Dutch East India Company) ship Halve Maen (“Half
Moon”) in which Henry Hudson conducted early explorations of the New York and
Hudson River area.
When we arrived off
the shore on Friday morning, we got an early demonstration of the difficulties
inherent in running an operation like this on an otherwise uninhabited island.
The captain
announced that we were having a tough
time finding a position for the ship which would allow us to anchor safely and
still provide a calmer lee in which the tenders could safely come and go,
shuttling people from ship to shore and back throughout the day. In fact, in
the end the ship was unable to anchor and had to use its engines all day to
maintain a safe position.
The captain also
announced that the daily supply vessel, the Half Moon Clipper, had been unable to make the
crossing from Eleuthera due to the weather, and so a number of the daily staff would be missing-in-action,
and services ashore would be somewhat limited.
The big
consequence of that was the cancellation of all escorted tours for the morning,
including my planned glass-bottomed boat ride. Sigh. Of course, in those
conditions, and with a 25-knot wind blowing straight into the bay, it’s
questionable whether we would have seen much
of anything at all in a glass bottomed boat once the wind and waves
stirred up the sand.
So once tender
operations had finally begun, was I going ashore? The answer is “No.” Like the
companion Princess facility on Eleuthera, this one is primarily a beach, with
eating facilities, a bar, private chalets, a little shopping, and a few waterborne
and landside recreation opportunities. It’s not a gigantic amusement park such
as Carnival Line has built for its guests somewhere else around this region.
And I am just not a beach person. This would give me a nice quiet day on board,
with relatively little crowding at the pool, and a chance to just relax and
“don’t worry, be happy.”
In the meantime,
though, here are a couple of further photos from the stern of the ship to show
you what I was missing.
This picture shows one of the tenders shuttling guests from ship to shore. Behind it you can see some of the two-storey chalets which can be rented for some monstrous number like US$600 per day. Smaller chalets at smaller prices appear to the left.
In this photo, I
zoomed in to get a good view of the tender sailing through the narrow
winding channel to the island’s protected artificial harbour.
And after we’d all
had a nice sunny day, ashore or afloat, the ship powered up and sailed away
just after 3:00 pm on the final leg of the voyage, to arrive in Fort Lauderdale
at 7:00 am the following morning. It was a great cruise and a fascinating chance to see a list of Caribbean destinations I've never visited before. Of them all, I think the one I would most like to visit again for a bit longer would be Grand Turk, perhaps because the small-town vibe is familiar, and perhaps because it hasn't been completely spoiled by heavy-duty commercial development -- yet.
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