St. Kitts

Our last Port was that of St. Kitts and Nevis. These two little islands are separated only by a relatively shallow strait. They are remnants of the old British Empire, so they drive on the wrong side of the road! This was an interesting Port as it is smaller than Martinique, but the Port itself is larger and routinely has FOUR(!) cruise ships pulled in on any given day.

We had no plans to do anything of importance and with the Port just a piers-walk away, we could disembark and walk around at our leisure. One thing that we did want to do was get a few items for our crew fav’s. They all like snacks like potato chips and cookies and one of our really nice guys likes beers, so we found a grocery store and did a bit of shopping. They use something called a Caribbean dollar here which trades out at one C.D. equals about $.37 cents US. It all works out fine in the end. We were unable to get some KFC for Grace, one of our Security Officers because the line there was well over an hour long!

This entire Port was crazy because there were three ships in for the day so with all of the passengers and at least some of the crew (since it is in walking distance it’s good for the crew who has less time). In port were the NCL Viva, the Carnival Dream, and us. Our sizes and passenger manifests were comparable so that meant that there were a potential 12,000 plus passengers and crew available to clog up the place!

One of the best parts of this particular day was that we were scheduled to leave the Port first. You know what this means!

Yes! We get to blow our horn (for ALL to hear) while everyone else is getting themselves ready to go. What made this even better was that our Captain “gets it.” We were pulled in next to the NCL Ugly and it was like a canyon between us. They had a rather annoying DJ down on the pier between us blasting Reggae music along with his unintelligible banter all afternoon long.

To say it was annoying is a giant understatement. Everyone was hoping that we could blow them out of the water when it came to departure, but we really didn’t know how to get a message to the Captain pleading our case. It turns out that this was unnecessary. Right before Departure the Captain gets on the announcements and says something (in his best Italian accent) like this: “Ahh Ladies and Gentlemen, I sincerely hope that you have had a nice day in our last port of call, St. Kitts…. we will be leaving in a few minutes, and I hope that I can count on all of you to help me out here. We are going to use our Love Boat theme on our horn and blast that NCL ship away. I need you all up on the rails screaming and shouting and waving your arms as we depart. As usual… chiao for now.”

He played it ten times!

How much do we love this guy!

Well, that was our last Port of Call 😢

I’ve got a few more “Fun” posts for your hopeful enjoyment over the next few days!