Update directly from the Caribbean

Yes, right now I am blogging directly from the Golden Princess Cruise Ship somewhere in the middle of the Caribbean sea!  Found a few spare minutes in my evening to hop onto a computer in the internet cafe via high-speed satellite.

Started off the week on monday with a full day at sea finally arriving to our first destination, Barbados!  What a beautiful place for my first stop on my first caribbean cruise.  While mostly flat, Barbados has a unique culture which is noticeably different than the latter islands I have visited.  Around 8am Tuesday, I started hiking through Barbados, trekking through Whim gully.

Wednesday I woke up in the port of St. Lucia, a much more mountainous and hilly region of the caribbean compared to Barbados.  Because St. Lucia has more rugged terrain, we took a Land Rover 4-wheel drive excursion all around the southrn part of the island.  We we through small towns and also across rivers where we finally ended up at a 200 foot waterfall where we could relax with some local beer and swim.

Today, I arose to the sights and sounds of the island, Antigua, where 90% of their main industry is tourism.  Once on the island we took a 25 minute bus ride to Seatons, which is small fishing village where we met our guides.  We headed out about a quarter mile off shore in Skiffs where we were able to snorkel and swim with Stingrays and other colorful fish.

As I type, we are heading at 19.3 knots northwest towards St. Maarten and will arrive at port approximatley 6:15am EST.  As for shore excursions for tomorrow, we have nothing planned so I expect we will most likely head to the city and shop along with lunch on the beach and some swimming.

For the end of my cruise, we finish off with St. Thomas which is known as one of the more developed caribbean islands and then head west to our original embarkation point of San Juan.

Time to join the Caribbean party which is happening on the back of the ship; look back later for more details and a full photo gallery!

-jw