Departure day

I’ve packed so little for this trip that I honestly find it hard to believe it can be done! I refuse to pay baggage fees to American so I am doing carryon from PHL to Miami.

The flight went well, if you consider sitting in front of a family of four in three seats – two adults and one 18 months and one under 3 years old. You have to give them credit for traveling – their nerves were shot also. But I concentrated on my book and music – there was even a movie/TV show. It’s been a few months since I’ve flown so some of the events seemed like I was doing them for the first time!

We’re at the Residence Inn Miami Airport South – love it. Free shuttle from airport. Breakfast included. Two rooms with full kitchen. Desk for working. Fitness room, free internet, fresh oj and apple juice, view of the planes arriving to Miami airport, nice front desk personnel and if you stay during the week, they even had dinner and drinks!!

We're off to SURINAME (where???)

"Suriname, once known as Dutch Guiana, is one of South America's smallest countries. A country full of contrasts, natural beauty, lush rainforests, abundant wildlife and colonial architecture abound.

Discover a little of Africa, a lost and untapped jungle, the Amazon, diversity in population, culture and historical backgrounds found in no other place on the planet. Paramaribo, the Capitol City of Suriname is a junction of cultures. Established as Dutch colony, people from many countries arrived to work in the plantations.

Located in the middle of the Amazon Jungle, Suriname has plenty to offer that is truly a most exotic destination in South America."
We're off to celebrate our birthdays in the middle of nowhere, hoping it will be relaxing and knowing it will be interesting and fun!
More to come...

Final sea days and home!

Saturday, March 10, 2012 – at sea

Fabulous weather for a BBQ on deck so who wants to pack! But when you to pack up 3 staterooms, you have to make choices. The BBQ won! Packing will be accomplished…it always is. HAS to be.

So it was glorious to sit out and the pig roast was delicious!

The Texas Tenors were the entertainment and I found out they won the America’s Got Talent contest a few years ago - -wonderful voices and we hear them tomorrow night again. I bought the CD.

Sunday, March 11, 2012 – at sea

“Nowhere else is the term United Nations better served than onboard a Holland America Line ship. Onboard the ms Prinsendam, we prove that people of many nations, religions and beliefs can work and live together, not only adequately but very well indeed. We celebrate the national holidays of the Netherlands, the UK, the Philippines, Indonesia, USA, Canada and India. The religions onboard include: Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, Protestant and Jewish. We hope you will enjoy and explore the rich heritage that all of us onboard the ms Prinsendam bring to you.”

Well written. We had a very nice closing ceremony with all the crew, staff and officers singing LOVE IN ANY LANGUAGE. Entertainment was Den West and The Texas Tenors! Spent most of the day PACKING - -three staterooms. I’ve found quite a few forgotten items!

Monday, March 12, 2012 – arrive Ft. Lauderdale

Packed the final belongings, ate our last room service breakfast and we were off the ship by 9:30 and in the rental car headed home. Quite a voyage and it will take me some time to digest it all. We traveled 17,657 nautical miles! The places are incredible and inviting; the people make the journey that much more memorable.

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.” - Homer

St. Maarten

We woke to a beautiful morning with clear skies and 80 degrees. We were docking on the Dutch side of this French/Dutch island. St. Maarten/St. Martin is the world’s smallest divided land mass – Dutch has 16 sq miles and the French has 21 sq miles. There is no obvious boundary between the sides other than a welcoming sign along the road. Columbus sighted St. Maarten in 1493 but it was only settled in 1631.

“Pretty St. Maarten shares familiar elements of paradise with other sophisticated Caribbean vacation spots.” No matter how pretty a place is, if their people are not welcoming, your image is jaded. We’ve been here several times and enjoyed it. This time, we had major hassles with taxi drivers on a price (always discuss before you get in), and decided not to use their services. If they have an attitude, I can have one too! We ended up using the water taxi to the beachfront of Philipsburg, passing several huge yachts with topless sunbathers clearly willing to be on display. Waded in the Caribbean Sea and enjoyed the beautiful colors of the water and seashells.

This area is for shopping; anything you can imagine is on sale, but especially jewelry.

Celebrity’s new ship, the Silhouette, was docked next to us. I was on it in November for 2 nights and just had four clients disembark from their 12 day cruise on Monday and they loved it! Stylish, elegant, classy – a destination itself instead of the islands it visits (although they can be nice also!).

Back onboard from our last port of call, Captain Roberts tooted the horn for the final farewell as set sail at 5PM. Dinner was good and the entertainment was Den and Bobbi West, Nashville musicians. We’re headed up to the Chocolate Extravaganza now!

Wednesday, March 7, 2012 – at sea

Galley tour! Total service staff is 76. Total galley staff is 68, under the Executive Chef. They wash more than 1700 appetizer plates, 1000 dinner plates, 1000 dessert plates, 1000 side plates, 2500 glasses DAILY. Average weekly consumption: Meat 6400 lbs, poultry 4000 lbs, fish 1200 lbs, seafood 2000 lbs, butter 2500 lbs, fresh vegetables 8000 lbs, potatoes 3000 lbs, watermelon 2000 lbs, eggs 12040 pieces, dairy 5500 quarts, sugar 1500 lbs, sugar packages 24,000 pieces, rice for crew 3500 lbs, caviar 18 lbs, flour 2150 lbs and ice cream 120 gallons!! 20 varieties of bread are baked daily. The butchery handles more than 1000 lbs of meat a day.

Dinner with our ship’s librarians, entertainment was our Prinsendam Orchestra playing their own arrangements and highlighting their particular strengths – wonderful concert! We enjoyed the movie “My Week with Marilyn” which is supposed to be true about one week in her life; it was better than I expected. Beautiful full moon
reflecting on the water.

Thursday, March 8, 2012 – Castries, St. Lucia

We docked at 8:00 but it took us until 10 to get off – arranging wheelchair, steep ramp to disembark, three other ships around us and also a new area to explore! The temperature is 80 and we have blue skies – although we had the few moments of sprinkling during the day also.

St. Lucia: Its beaches are golden or black sand, some with a spectacular setting of the Piton mountains in the background and many turtles favor the area as a nesting site. Offshore, there is good diving and snorkeling. The mountainous interior is outstandingly beautiful and there are several forest reserves to protect the St. Lucian parrot and other wildlife. Sightseeing opportunities include sulfur springs, colonial fortifications and plantation tours.

Prinsendam singers and dancers performed Europa.

The moon is gorgeous! Are you noticing it from where you are also??? You don’t have to be away from home to enjoy the world around you.

Devil's Island, French Guiana

Monday, March 5, 2012 – at sea

Busy day – meeting at 10AM, pre-lunch cocktails at 11:30 with friends and cocktails with the Captain in his quarters and Pinnacle Grill dinner with Hotel Manager and then the Grand Masquerade Ball! What a nice evening. This ship has the only ante-chamber at sea in the Captain’s quarters where he can entertain up to 35 people! There were memorabilia from the ports of call (all glued down so they do not move during rocky seas!) and a verandah and four full length windows – lovely room. We did not see his private quarters but I’m sure he feels the motion up there as the higher up in the ship, the more motion you feel.

We were all given masks at the Pinnacle Grill dinner so we were all stunning as we danced and did the conga line through the lobby!

Had very sad news about J’s room attendant who is from Indonesia. We have been anxiously awaiting the news of his first child’s birth; his wife is in the hospital. Today he received word that his Father passed away. He was admitted to the hospital three days ago and diagnosed with lung cancer. The poor thing was beside himself. He then found out that his wife gave birth to their son today and both were doing well. Santana will be heading home earlier than expected, leaving the ship from St. Lucia. Death and life in one day and being so far away from home; how many of us could handle such personal circumstances from such a great distance?

Tuesday, March 6, 2012 – Devil’s Island/Iles du Salut (Salvation Islands), French Guiana

Through the misty rain but we were on our way via tender at 7:20 to the Ile de Royale, the largest of the three islands we call Devil’s Island. They are eight miles off the coast of French Guiana. The islands were part of a French penal settlement in use from 1852-1946. This system was gradually phased out and has been completely shut down since 1953; they were featured in the novel by Henri Charriere, Papillon. He was imprisoned here for 9 years. The prisoners were classified as follows: habitual criminals who were permitted to work, political prisoners and criminals who were permitted limited liberty and felons who were imprisoned with hard labor. If a prisoner was sentenced to a term of less than eight years, he had to spend an equal period of time in French Giuana. If the sentence was more than eight years, he had to remain for life. After 1885, only criminals with sentences of more than eight years were sent to Devil’s Island. Those prisoners who were liberated earned their passage home by working in the colony. The climate in the settlement proved so unhealthy that many prisoners died. Up to 2000 criminals could be interred at one time. All told, 80,000 prisoners were sent to the islands, and only 30,000 lived to tell about it.

The horrors of the settlement became notorious after the French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, was sent here in 1895; he was accused of planning to deliver an anonymous document that revealed French military secrets to the Germany embassy in Paris. He was later found not guilty, his real “crime” was probably being Jewish in anti-Semitic era) and given the French Legion of Honor medal and a French order of merit and served with distinction in WWI.

Papillon was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he did not commit but was never sent to Devil’s Island – the fictional tale was based on accounts taken from others prisoners. He was at French Giuana and managed to escape twice. Henri Charriere got his nickname during his naval term of service when he had a butterfly tattooed on his chest.

There is one lower level path around the island, which takes about 40 minutes to walk, and one higher path where the buildings are located. We saw turtles, agoutis (they look like Cornish guinea hens on stilts!), peacocks, chickens, roosters and squirrel monkeys so it was an interesting walk. Everything is in ruins. We toured the ruins of the Commandant’s House (which is now the reverse osmosis water plant), the children’s cemetery, hospital, prisoners’ quarters, chapel, solitary and condemned cells, workshops and butchery. There are old photos from the early 1900s in the chapel. It was a hard place to be sentenced with a slim chance of survival, let alone escape as the waters were shark-infested.

There is even a hotel on the small island! www.iledusalut.com Rooms were about $100 a night with a view of Devil’s Island.

Another interesting fact: There is a tracking station for space shuttles on the island! A ship anchored near us ONLY works when there is activity on the mainland at the Guinea Space Center. The Russians use the launch pad for the Ariane and Soyuz 2 rocket, which launches from Kourou, French Guinea. It is 350 miles north of the equator so they are in orbit quicker, as compared to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Back for lunch and I needed a break so I went to see the mindless movie “Blackthorn” about Butch Cassidy and tonight saw the movie “Papillon”. It’s been raining and gloomy so a good day to stay inside.

Manaus and Paratins, Brazil

Friday, March 2, 2012 – Manaus, Brazil
Had an early call to host for the ship so Gene went off to see the flora and fauna – two museums and a walk. J and I went to the terminal and walked around the small shop area. One of our friends had her necklace yanked from her neck and was naturally upset. Her husband did not feel well so she decided to walk on her own, for the first time. Terrible situation and I felt so badly for her, and for him, once he finds out. I went to the post office near the dock, PAC office, and then to pick up the many photos from last night. Of course it rained while I was out and I had forgotten the umbrella – but it stopped in a rather short time and it was still as humid and suffocating as ever!

Worked for awhile – back to the terminal where there is supposedly free WIFI, when it works. It worked!! But I forgot the phone! Very nice sail-away and we passed the Meeting of the Waters, where the Rio Negro and the Rio Solimoes (Amazonas) rivers meet -- coffee color mingles with the coffee with milk waters so there is a very definite line of distinction marking each river. Beautiful clear skies.

Manaus had become a significant supply port and capital of Amazonas State by 1850. Rubber brought vast profits in the last decades of the 19th century. In 1839, Charles Goodyear patented rubber vulcanization, the automobile was invented and the industrial revolution began so rubber was a vital commodity. Rubber trees grew only in the Amazon, so Manaus boomed. Manaus was nicknamed Paris of the Tropics. Celebrities from Europe and North America entertained a handful of wealthy families at the Opera House. Fortunes might have continued to expand except that Henry Wickham smuggled 70,000 rubber tree seeds to England in 1876. The Brazilian merchants branded him “Executioner of Amazonas” but he was knighted in England. Manaus slipped into decay and economic obscurity as the stolen seeds created a productive yield in the British Asian colonies (Malaysia especially) for decades. By the 1920s, synthetics drove the final nail into the natural rubber coffin.

We passed the deepest part of the Amazon River – 360 feet. The shallowest is 36 feet. Although the Europeans may have sighted the Amazon delta region in 1500, exploration of the river did not begin under decades later. In 1541 and 1542 Spanish Explorer Francisco de Orellana and a crew of 50 men navigated the entire length of the river over a period of eight months, encountering the Omagua and other peoples. The Spaniards were lured by rumors of gold and cinnamon (almost as valuable as gold!) and moved eastward from the Andes. In the early 17th century, the Portuguese slowly settled the Amazon Basin moving westward from the eastern region of Brazil. Both the Spanish and Portuguese enslaved or coerced indigenous groups to search for gold or perform other labor. The found the Amazon peoples harder to subdue than Andean highland groups and were met with fierce resistance. Many Amazon peoples were protected by nearly impenetrable jungle and if attached, they could move their villages further into the jungle but what they could not escape were the diseased brought by the Europeans.

There are 3000 fish species, more than 100 species of New World monkeys and 5000 species of trees. Many important medicines have been developed from plants found only in the Amazon. Only a fraction fo the plant species have been catalogued.
John Lenahan, magician and comedian, was the entertainer.

“How rare and wonderful is that flash of a moment when we realize we have a discovered a friend.” - Anonymous

Saturday, March 3, 2012 –Parintins, Brazil

Early tender at 8AM and we arrived in the midst of many riverboats docking and unloading. Great town for walking so we made our way through the already hot and steamy streets to the cathedral and the cemetery behind it. The tombstones were all raised and some housed several family members and some were individual. Some of the grass was cut and kept up and some was overgrown but had lovely summer flowers blowing in the wind. Behind that, we found the arena where they seat 35,000 for 3 day June festival where the Boi-Bumba Festival takes place -- blue bull vs. red bull fight/dance. There is a mixture of theatre, drums, dancing, music and circus all combined to entertain audiences. They enact the kidnapping, death and resurrection of an ox, which is a metaphor for their agricultural cycles. Over the years, the festival has developed into a competition with the Boi teams – one red and one blue – comprising several THOUSAND members. The competing teams are judged on their music, dancing performance and costumes. We then walked to see some wide horses, resting quietly under the trees with no ropes or ownership evident. Stopped to get prices for a haircut but had no time; rode the covered carriage with the man behind us on the bike pedaling us around town and just enjoyed the day. It is a nice town for touring on foot and the people were very friendly.

Brazilian BBQ on back deck of 7 – HUGE BUGS joined us on the poles (we are in the Amazon!) but did not interrupt the “experience”! Lovely late dinner with friends and Brett Cave, piano player, from the UK, was a true entertainer with singing and piano playing. I also did session of Qi Gong, a relaxation technique, with the Lifestylist onboard. This is a new feature of Holland America – they cover tai-chi, meditation, yoga, classes for memory, eating healthy

“Remember that happiness is a way of travel…not a destination.” - Anonymous

Sunday, March 4, 2012 – Cruising Amazon River and crossing the equator

King Neptune Ceremony! Several crew of the Prinsendam were subjected to the judgment of the Sea King and his mermaid Queen. We cheered for the vile pollywogs (who have not crossed the equator before) as they had to kiss the dead fish (yes, a real one) and then were lathered in jello, sauce, lettuce, whipped cream…all kinds of gross foods. Some were allowed to clean off in the pool and some were subjected to sitting in the hot sun and baking! Yech. But in the end, they are now shellbacks and all are guaranteed a safe passage and smooth waters.

Tom Pepper, comedian, was the entertainer and the Filipino Crew Show was at 11PM (after their working hours). It was a fabulous show and they work so hard after-hours to make it come together.

Manaus, Brazil

Thursday, March 1, 2012 – Manaus, Brazil

Over two million population. The center seems small as you dock but once you get driving around the streets, you realize how large it really is. We took the free shuttle bus offered by the jeweler Amsterdam Sauer this time (as opposed to H. Stern) to the Tropical Hotel, here the H. Stern store is right near the other store! It is about 30 minutes from town but we had negotiated a deal where we could tour the Manaus Opera House, they would wait, and then take us to the store. Worked our well as had some time prior to the 20-30 minute tour to see San Sebastiao church It is a neoclassical church built around 1888 in gray colors with white Italian marble, stained glass windows and a beautiful blue and white cupola of angels. The black and white Portuguese granite patterns in the sidewalk are said to represent the meeting of the waters (rivers coming together in the two colors).

The opera house: for a theatre buff, what a sight! If I saw only one site in Manaus, it would be the theatre. An incredibly large and ornate building, it is hard to imagine it here in the middle of nowhere. Our guide said many locals don’t even visit it – even where they are free concerts! It was definitely made for a different time period, in 1896, at the peak of the rubber boom. They offer tours every ½ hour and if you are over 60, it is ½ price! 5 reales – about $3.50. The lobby is marble and inlaid tropical hardwoods, the concert hall is magnificent with rich colors and each seat has its own air vent under it for your own private central air conditioning, provided by the ceiling vents and recirculation. Ingenuous! As we entered the theatre, the symphony was rehearsing! Almost as good as the real thing! The concert hall upstairs has a magnificent floor of the dark and lighter colored woods (you have put on slippers to walk around) and a romantic mural. Too bad the event tonight is a private function! This says it all: “The Opera House is an extravagant, impressive testament to the legacy of the rubber boom.”

The private van took us to the Tropical Hotel, where many tour groups stay prior to their cruise/tour. When you visit Amsterdam Sauer, please ask for Luciana Hatoum. She was very helpful and we found out the rarest types of Imperial Topaz stones are salmon and red colors. One stone was $15,000 – no purchase there! www.amsteredamsauer.com There is also a zoo at the hotel! We walked through to see the quati, capivara (that is the one I was trying to describe from a few days ago), common woolly monkey, bare-eared squirrel monkey, razor billed currasow, festive parrot, blue and yellow macaw and collared peccary. You will have to google what you don’t know as there were far too many to describe.

Private taxi back to the ship, quick lunch and off to the Mercado Adolpho Lisboa. The iron and now-demolished glass are a copy of the market hall in Les Halles, Paris. Local fish, fruit, vegetables, there is even a small launch area where many small boats glide up to unload their goods to be sold in the market. It was dirty with trash littered all around – a real market – not a tourist attraction. Tried to find the hospital or optometrist for Gene’s glasses, took the local city bus, dropped off photos at the camera shop (315 to be printed!), toured the Court House, built in 1900, which is now the cultural center. There was a wing of sculptures of Amazonian subjects in bronze (very interesting) and a photography exhibition. The building would have been exquisite in its time. Some paint and work on the façade are needed but the interior is worth a visit – ornate entrance with four Tuscan columns, Italian chandeliers, center staircase with a clock in rosewood…

Late dinner, took a nap as I was not feeling well, went to the late show of the local Amazonia Folklorica Show/Simetria Norte.

“Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.” - Paul Theroux