Cruising to the Sun Part 1: What's New in the Caribbean?

Life on the Caribbean cruises seems to be slowly settling back towards normal after the disruption of the pandemic and the ensuing craziness of the first year or two back in the cruise trade.

 

Once again, we've arrived into a world where you can get some fantastic deals on cruises by travelling either before or just after the Christmas/New Year's holiday periods. Even more to the point, the deals are again available on fairly short notice, as on the cruise I've now embarked on -- a 10-day Western Caribbean circuit on Holland America's 2008-built MS Eurodam.

 

Holland America photo

I'd been marooned at or close to home for about the last 6 months with medical issues. In the process, I'd had to cancel a much more ambitious winter travel plan. Finally, towards the end of November, I got the medical all-clear to travel some more, and the very same week the "Black Friday" deals began landing in my inbox. I was a bit startled to see that this ship had a good number of unoccupied cabins, and quickly picked one and reserved it. Given the short time frame until departure, I had to pay the full fare when booking.

 

It's the fare that was startling. The entire cruise, with all taxes and fees included, came out to CAD$220 per day, and that's for me taking single occupancy of a cabin for 2 adults! Anyone who's tried travelling to a landside resort recently can judge of the value here. Last winter, I stayed for 4 nights in a Florida mid-level chain hotel, not a lavish resort, for US$320 (CAD$460) per night -- just for the room, no meals included. Here on a cruise ship, of course, you get room, all meals, taxes, and transportation at a rate which is a real bargain by comparison. It's not hard to see why I jumped at the offer and booked the cruise right then and there.

Nor was the ship full even then. On three occasions since the beginning of December, I got upsell offers to move to a better cabin for an extra charge. The extra charges were reasonable, but I felt no great need to take up those offers -- I was content with what I had reserved.

 

Note, though, that the voyage is now sold out, or as good as. The sales begin at the 90-day mark when all reserved bookings must be paid in full. For obvious reasons, the best choices of remaining cabins will be available at Days 89 and 88 and the selection will diminish from then on down to sailing day! One thing I would not change from all my previous advice: I would still urge that nobody should ever book a cruise, no matter how tempting the offer, if you can't get a confirmation of the number of the exact cabin you will occupy, right at the moment of booking. Remember that passengers on more than a few lines have been booted when the cruise company miscalculated and oversold the ship -- and the ones to get left behind are the ones who had a guaranteed fare but not a guaranteed cabin.

The next little trend is the 10-night length of the cruise. My two favourite lines, Holland America and Princess, are both offering more and more 9-night, 10-night, and 11-night sailings in this region. Eight years ago, when I took my first Caribbean cruise, most of the cruises on offer were one week long, with Saturday to Saturday the preferred timing. 

Today, the main cruise ports at Miami and Port Everglades (Fort Lauderdale) are both bursting at the seams with the growing numbers and sizes of the newer ships. Longer trips such as this one have a built-in advantage in spreading the cruise dates around the various days of the week over the course of the season. They're also attractive to people who find 7 days not-quite-enough but don't want to go for two full weeks. Indeed, Holland America's Caribbean list for 2025 has only 30% of the dates being traditional 7-night cruises!

 

Another result of the crowding sees some companies spreading out their operations. Holland America with its relatively small fleet isn't one of them, but Princess Cruises certainly is. By the end of 2025, Princess will have Caribbean ships homeporting in Port Canaveral FL (east of Orlando), Galveston TX (near Houston), and San Juan, Puerto Rico, as well as some shoulder season voyages to and from New York NY, no less -- and all of this is in addition to their standard offerings out of Port Everglades!

Then there's the itinerary. There are a number of newer cruise ports springing up in various parts of the Caribbean region to meet the demand, and this cruise includes one of the more recent arrivals at Belize City. For this trip, Belize is the one new country which I haven't visited before. The unusual snake bend in the route between Montego Bay and Grand Cayman is likely due to the availability of port times at those two popular destinations.

 Source Map attribution:  https://freevectormaps.com/

 

I've already planned to simply skip going ashore at several of the ports. That's due to the high number of ships in one case, and my lack of interest in the others after multiple visits. Here's a very useful tool if you are taking a cruise: a website which allows you to find out how many other ships will be in port at each one of your ports of call. You can make a fair estimate on how crowded the onshore facilities will be for each of your stops. The first time I used this website, I planned on skipping the shore experience at a port where we were calling after seeing that we would be in town with the guests from four other ships!

 

Cruise Timetables

I first found out about Cruise Timetables from the YouTube channel called Tips For Travellers. Gary Bembridge, who runs this channel, filming and producing his own high-quality videos, is one of the most knowledgeable and experienced cruise experts I've found on the internet. The range of topics and the number of ships and companies he's reviewed give you a very comprehensive portrait of the cruise business as it grows and changes.

 

YouTube -- Tips For Travellers

One trend Gary has noted is the tendency for more and more experienced travellers to simply stay on board on port days. This can be from familiarity, or from the realization that the differences between one port and another in the Caribbean become less and less noticeable as time goes by. Certainly this is a feeling that I share. After a while, it's all so predictable: the mandatory EFFY and Tanzanite jewellery stores, the Ron Jon Surf Shop, the inevitable Señor Frogs restaurant. If you're lucky, you may hit a port where these get pushed farther away from the dock by old-established local merchants (Nassau, for instance). Even rarer are the ports where these names don't appear at all (such as Bermuda). 

 

Of all of these corporate invaders, the one whose business model baffles me the most is EFFY. It's not just the assumption that so many cruisers want to spend every day of their holiday in the sun shopping for bling. It's the fact that every cruise ship I've been on in the last decade has an EFFY store right on the ship -- and they still expect people to make a beeline for the nearest EFFY as soon as they get ashore! 

 

One more helpful hint. When buying a cruise nowadays, you have to decide whether to take advantage of the various "all-inclusive" bonus packages which the various cruise lines now offer. I've sailed both with and without them, and come to the following conclusion. Most of these comprehensive package offers are not going to save you much money (if any) unless you are truly a raging alcoholic. 

 

Many people's dreams of going crazy on cheap booze get overturned as soon as they realize that if one person in a cabin gets the drink plan, all the people in the cabin get billed for the same plan as well. Another dodge gets closed off when the servers are allowed to serve only one drink per card at a time. The bonus packages are billed as offering huge savings ("60% Off!") but you only save that much if you consume, for example, the allowed maximum number of alcoholic drinks each day. You really need to keep your head as you assess these plans for value.

 

As the various bonus plans stand right now, I would only be convinced to invest in the package from Holland America if I were booking far enough ahead (1.5-2 years in advance) to get their biggest premium package offer which includes $100/week of shore excursion credit and an upgrade to premium WiFi -- but I would only buy it for a cruise of 3 weeks or more. Princess' package plan is even less tempting as it proudly offers premium desserts (which I don't eat) and exercise classes (which I don't take, they just take time away from walking out on deck). No incentive for me there!

 

Now, what about the MS Eurodam herself? This is an intriguing ship, being the exact same hull size as the MS Zuiderdam which I sailed on to Europe last spring -- but Eurodam can carry about 140 more passengers. This was made possible by enlarging and repurposing the top two decks above the navigation bridge to fit in some 70 more cabins. The similar upper deck area amidships provides space for the Asian-fusion specialty restaurant Tamarind, which the older Holland America ships do not have. These areas are shown by the outlines on the picture.

The modifications increase the net tonnage of the ship by about 4,000 tons over the older ships such as the MS Zuiderdam.

 

With that, here's a photo tour of the MS Eurodam to introduce this ship to you, once we get the pesky guy with the big grin out of the way (can you tell I'm happy to be cruising again???).

 

Start with the three-storey Atrium in the middle of the ship. Eurodam has been "blessed" (?) with a particularly ugly and pointless sculpture here.

On Deck Three, the top of the Atrium is surrounded by the Ocean Bar, a favourite hangout of mine. Music is provided nightly by a jazz-blues trio, and it's a great place to sit and nurse a drink and enjoy the music to the full. Many couples like to get up and dance, and more power to them. I love to watch, it brings back memories of how much my parents loved to dance together.

 

 

Other music venues nearby are the Rolling Stone Lounge...

... and Billboard on Board, where everything from old favourites to duelling pianos can be on the program.

As always, some facilities are closed while the ship is in port: the shops...

...and the casino, neither of which is of any interest to me, either closed or open.

If you take the forward elevators all the way to the top at Deck 11, you will find there the Crow's Nest Cafe and Bar, a games room, and the headquarters of the Shore Excursions team. Perhaps I should keep quiet about this, as so many passengers don't seem to know it exists, but the Crow's Nest gives splendid views forward and to either side, through its panoramic windows, views which go very well with a cappuccino and cookies.

Deck 9 is where the outdoor deck spaces, pools, and hot tubs are found, as well as the buffet. Another of my favourite spots is here: the huge open deck and Seaview Pool at the stern. Appearances, though, can be deceiving. It looks like a perfect sunny day for the pool, but the 15 Celsius temperature and brisk north winds put that out of many people's minds. 

 

This has to be counted as a typical winter day in Key West, our first port of call. The probing fingers of the Arctic cold snap and winter storms can and do reach south even beyond the bottom of Florida. Getting so much sun was bonus, but it was hardly beach weather. The next blog post will look at my day in Key West, a day featuring far better weather than the last time I came here.

 

Sunshine Supertrip # 3: A Real Desert Island?

Strictly speaking, Aruba isn't a desert island, although it may appear close to that at a casual glance. Early Spanish explorers labelled it as a "useless" island, but that certainly doesn't tell the whole story either. 

 

Although Aruba and Curaçao are very near neighbours, and share a similar mix of nationalities and cultures, there are some significant differences between them -- as I discovered during our one-day stop in Aruba. I admit that I may be selling Aruba short due to limited experience, but during my visit I saw no sign of the playfulness which kept bubbling to the surface in Curaçao. Aruba seemed, by contrast, to be business, through and through.

I first sensed that when I came off the ship. We were on a utilitarian concrete dock, a fair distance from the centre of Oranjestad, the capital. The dock gave every appearance of being easily adaptable to cargo service, and it probably is. You have to go some distance outside the dock area to hit the first shop. In Curaçao, the shopping district begins inside the security perimeter of the cruise terminal! Here's the view of the dock area and the city from the ship's decks.

The tour which I took didn't go into Oranjestad, but as far as I could see from my ship's upper decks, Oranjestad had only one or two examples of the colourful old architecture which so characterizes the centre of Willemstad in Curaçao. Instead, Oranjestad has ample examples of modern glass-and-concrete business architecture.

 

As we were leaving the port and driving northwest along the shore road, our guide pointed out, at great length and in detail, each of the many resorts along this beach stretch. I understand that tourism is the mainstay of Aruba's economy, especially since the oil refinery has been mothballed, but our guide's endless emphasis on it certainly reinforced my impression that Aruba is all about business! It's not hard to see that these resorts would have to use a lot of desalinated water in irrigating their beautiful lawns and lovely gardens.

Since my tour in Curaçao focused on cultural features, it seemed appropriate to pick a tour directed at the nature lover here in Aruba. So I did that, and here's what I found.This island isn't nearly as large as its near neighbour, but within that small area there are significantly different natural regions. The southwest side, in and around Oranjestad, is largely flat and, in landscape terms, monotonous. 

 

The northeast side, which we visited during our tour, is rugged and hilly, although not rising to very high altitudes. The hilly region is formed of volcanic deposits of great age, but there is no other or more recent sign of volcanic activity here. Much of the remainder of the island is formed primarily out of limestone, a pale grey colour, covered with broad stretches of light brown sand. If the rocks were red sandstone instead, the whole place would begin to look like it belonged in the American desert southwest.

 

 

While the Hooiberg looks like a perfect volcano shape, it's not volcanic. It's a noticeable and prominent feature in the middle of Aruba's flat region, but that's all. There is a trail climbing to the top of the Hooiberg which has 587 steps, according to one account I read on line. I didn't propose to check that particular detail myself.

 

 

Aruba will appear to most visitors as being, for practical purposes, nearly a desert, even though its climate is officially defined as semi-arid. Large clusters of cacti and scrubby bushes dot the landscape, and tree growth is limited to barely three percent of the island's land area. On average, Aruba receives only 16-18 inches (406-457 mm) of rain annually -- and it shows. The aridity is believed to have been caused largely by deforestation during the Spanish era of the colonial period. The aloe vera is another plant which makes itself right at home here, its economic significance attested by the choice of the plant to appear in stylized form on the Aruban coat of arms.

Our first of three stops was at a butterfly farm. Here we got a detailed explanation of the complex biological mechanisms which dictate the life cycles of butterflies and moths. During his talk, our guide was able to find caterpillars hiding under leaves, and spot a female butterfly in the process of laying one of her eggs. He even spotted a pair of butterflies mating. With so many butterflies whizzing around inside the large netted enclosure, it seemed pretty difficult to take a picture that didn't have butterflies. The challenge was to find one where the butterflies would sit still long enough to pose. The brilliant blue ones were especially difficult to capture sitting still. But I did my best.

This is a rack of pupae or cocoons, some of them in the process of breaking open to release the adult butterflies. The butterfly will have to sit and allow its wings to unfold and dry for 24 hours before trying to fly on them. That glorious specimen in the middle was the only one of its kind which I saw.

From here we drove on to Casibari Park, a site of sizable and startling natural rock formations. Like many amateur travel writers, I've been known to crack jokes about the Amazing Scenic Boulder Tour. This place was of another order, though. I had trouble guessing whether the rocks had been thrown together here by force of nature, or if they were eroded into these fantastic shapes where they sat.  I didn't climb the stairs of the main hill as the rocky steps were uneven and there were no handrails except at the top. But there were plenty of intriguing formations to be seen down at ground level, in the area around the highest rocks.

Casibari was also the place where I tried to make friends with this little Aruba whiptail. It's an endemic species. This one was, at a rough guess, about 100 mm long (4 inches).

We then drove northeastwards, up into the hill country and over to the northeastern shore. Here we were just at the edge of Arikok National Park, which encompasses most of the Aruban lava beds. 

 

 

This is a shore where the ocean, driven by the northeasterly trade winds, is busily engaged in carving and remaking the landscape. Here we saw the Natural Bridge.

You might wonder how that convenient open space on the landward side of the bridge came to be. Here's a photo of a new one, just beginning to form. It's usually a matter of the water eating its way in through crack and crevices in the rocks, and then eroding the sides of the openings until the land above collapses into the vacant space underneath.

Our guide told us that this was the "little" bridge. The bigger one collapsed one night in 2005. Even this one, he told us, has gotten noticeably longer since then as the ocean keeps gnawing away at the foundations at sea level. As with ocean-carved natural bridges everywhere, it's only a matter of time.

This coastal lookout point is also a great place to watch and try to catch the "big one" smashing into the rocks. This is a place where you really need video to depict the violence of the cross-currents as the waves pile into the shore from different directions, no doubt redirected and distorted by crumbled rocks hidden below the surface.

 

 

 

Despite the reddish appearance of the rocks, due to the sand overlay, these are actually beds of the same limestone variants which form so much of the island. 

 

For a single morning outing, this tour gave a quick cross-section view of several different landscapes in Aruba. This island is a very interesting place in its own right, and certainly not typical of what most people imagine a Caribbean island as being.