Here we go again : Returning to the Caribbean

April 1-2

St Georges, Grenada

Well, it’s finally happened: after 6 months of travel, we have hit our first repeat port. In order to get back to the west side of the Americas, the Odyssey needs to travel back through the Caribbean and the Panama Canal.

Now, we haven’t done all of the Caribbean ports, so there will be a few new ones mixed in with the ones we hit last November.

After seven days at sea, new or old, it was exciting to hit land. With itinerary changes and late bookings, the Odyssey wasn’t intended to dock at the cruise ship terminal. We were going to dock at the cargo port terminal. There is a cargo ship currently parked there that had delays on offloading, and this meant that we could not dock at the cargo terminal.

This is both positive and negative. The positive was that we did get to dock at the cruise ship terminal, which is better and closer to downtown. The downside is that on the second day, we had no spot and would need to leave the berth to make way for two new cruise ships arriving on April 2.

Looking towards the harbour where I plan to walk to

Rather than climbing over the hill I opted to walk through the tunnel.

With the thoughts that we would probably only be here one day and that I had done an island tour only a couple of months ago, I decided to walk to the beach. It is about an hour’s walk to get to the main beach, and it is mostly flat.

Seemed a bit sketch but legit sign so down I went

At the beach are several hotels with pools that are accessible by the beach but have security and weren’t that busy, so no sneaking in.

The beach looking back at the Odyssey. It doesn’t look that far.

I spent about an hour walking along the beach, collecting the sea glass, and watching craps and fish. I also came across what looked like an egg. It was the size of a large marble and opaque but soft.

Here is the egg. Can you see the larva inside?

After a dip in the ocean with some fellow residents, I decided to make my way back to town in order to visit a couple of stores.

No table or store needed, this gentleman is selling his produce with a shopping cart.

Let me tell you, after several days of not really walking seriously on the ship and my 16-kilometer walk, my feet and legs were pretty stiff by the time I made it back. I made it back in time for lunch on the boat and then headed back into town with Becky, Leslie, Alan, and Jeff. Their goal was a market, and I figured, why not?

Originally, I was going to visit more buildings and the chocolate factory, but all of these things were uphill, and my legs didn’t want to do it. The prices here are pretty expensive and I guess that’s because it’s an island but after Brazil I wasn’t going to pay for them.

For the second day, no tenders were available, so Villa Vie decided that people could disembark by 9:30 AM, as long as everyone was aware that they could not reembark before 7:00 PM.

For me, a 10-hour commitment to being outside in the hot sun all day wasn’t something I was ready to do. Especially considering the next 6 days are all port days where I will be outside in the sun doing stuff. So my second day was a little bit of laundry and organizing my room.