Monday, February 13
After a rough night at sea, Monday’s weather forecast promised improvement. A little cooler than usual thanks to the cold front from the day before that had caused the winds, but in the Caribbean that means its 75° instead of 81°.
We got up early and packed for a beach day at Princess Cays, a private playground on the island of Eleuthera, Bahamas. With no dock, we had to be shuttled on smaller boats to the island. Once there, we carved out a spot, grabbed some beach chairs and enjoyed the sun for a while.
Manina and I left most our beach stuff back on the ship, but Greg and Emily brought along snorkeling gear. So, everyone took turns going out into the water swimming with the fish. I waited until after lunch, where I overheard someone saying to take out some food to feed the fish. So, I grabbed an extra banana and saved it in my pocket.
After lunch I went geocaching with Manina, Ben, and Greg. We walked off the Princess property about a half mile away in search of a cache (GC2NV7E). We were off the beaten path for sure, but as we got close to the cache, we noticed a guy putting something into a tree. He was a fellow geocacher and ended up spoiling the hide, but it wouldn’t have been too hard to find anyway. We signed the log, enjoyed the view, took a few pictures, and then headed back to our spot on the beach.
When we returned, I found it was my time to check out the snorkeling gear out with Greg. We quickly found out the fish loved the banana. I was swarmed by hundreds of fish every time I would smash the banana into little pieces in my hands. I easily could have caught several by hand. It was pretty fun.
When we swam back to our little cay, the girls were out floating in these cheap blow-up pools that we had purchased in Ft. Lauderdale for $5. I think it cost double that to rent them from Princess Cays for an hour, so definitely a good investment. We all spent an hour or so just floating, hanging out in the ocean, chatting about everything, and watching drunk people stumble over themselves on the beach.
We were having a great time on the beach, so we procrastinated our trip back to the boat as long as possible.
Like I said in our earlier post, dinner was a great time as usual, and Emily Francis planned for us all to go dancing later that night. Manina and I aren’t a dancing couple, but we went along and hung out for the evening.
Tuesday, February 14
Valentines Day was spent at sea as we cruised from Princess Cays to our next stop, St. Martin.
Manina and I got up early and went to Deck 15 Forward, the gym. They were just getting ready to start a yoga class when we got there, so we joined. The ship was still moving quite a bit, making some of the balance poses impossible, but it was still a good little workout.
While the rest of our group was doing zumba (dance/aerobics) and then a line-dancing/flash mob class, I thought it would be much more fun to play in the doubles table tennis tourney. We walked up right as they were getting started, and they needed just one more player so Manina was more than happy to step aside and let me play. The ping-pong table was in a strange corner of the ship, outside, and the winds just swirled. It made for some extremely crazy ping-pong shots that even the Taiwan national team hasn’t ever seen. My partner and I lost two straight matches, and it was over. It was pretty fun though (much better than zumba, for sure).
We didn’t have a whole lot else to do, so Manina and I found a couple lounge chairs and read while laying in the sun for much of the afternoon.
That night was a designated formal evening, so we had to get dressed up. Manina looked stunningly beautiful as we went to dinner. We ate, laughed way too much (again), and took several photos. Event planner Emily once again had plans for the evening, so we joined her for the Newlywed Game.
Tony and Emily were picked to play in the Newlywed game and now we know way too much about our next-door neighbors. We laughed and laughed, but were also quite flummoxed by some of the things we heard. I had to leave early to go reserve seats for some theater show, but later found out that they won the game.
Reserving the seats to the theater show was a bad idea. The show was beyond awful. So bad, in fact, that I won’t bother even discussing it other than by saying this: I would have to be at sea for much more than a week to find myself enjoying cruise ship entertainment.
We played cards until late, but had a big day in St. Martin coming up.
MightyJohnsons 