Our last day at Sea- January 3, 2016

The sunset last evening was another golden one. Nothing quite like the sun setting over the water whether it is at sea or sitting at the beach on Anna Maria Island.

All the rental boats were back in the places where they had been when we sailed in in the morning. Most had made many journeys out with passengers enabling lots of different kinds of excitement and fun- from Thriller rides to snorkeling adventures. Quite a place with lots of options of activities.

It has been a glorious cruise….a grand way to celebrate Christmas and to welcome in 2016. We have shared 16 nights of sailing as we visited St John, St Barts, St Kitts, Basseterre, Guadeloupe, St Lucia, Barbados, St Vincent, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and Turks and Caicos….plus 5 days at sea.

The Prinsedam is a lovely ship and the staff is very gracious.

 Captain Dag was an ever-present force around the decks and as the “disembodied voice from the bridge” each day at noon and at sail away time when he makes his comments. He combined what I learned about the expectations of sea captains in years gone by- excellent navigator but also the chief PR person with the passengers.  Learned that reading Dead Wake by Erik Larsen while aboard this trip.

 

We boarded the ship as she was all festooned for the holidays and as we get ready to leave her tomorrow all signs of Christmas and New Year’s are gone.  Last evening when the elevator stopped at  Deck 7 for the dining room it didn’t even look like the right spot since all the trees, gingerbread houses and red flowers were gone.

All I guess is a gentle reminder that today, January 3^rd, is the packing up day. Sunrise was beautiful- even if it is the last day of cruising THIS TIME!

Sunrise-January 3

Our luggage tags are here, we’ve completed the Customs Declaration (which was easy since we didn’t buy anything), we have requested late disembarkation at 9:30 and we can remain in our stateroom until then.  Much easier and saner process than in our early years of cruising.

Now we just must decide when to stop resting and relaxing and start throwing clothes into suitcases. The reverse of packing for a trip doesn’t take nearly as much concentration or hard work for us as packing at the beginning of a trip.

We’ve met interesting folks, shared tasty meals and heard many wonderful travel stories. As we prepare to journey home tomorrow I am thankful for the opportunity to travel and to see as much of the world as we have seen. As always we remind ourselves how lucky we are…and how nice it will be to be home again for a little while. 

Even though we’ll miss the nighttime towel animals, the menus with many choices and the wonderful music we will enjoy our own bed, our neat home and our life shared together.

Grand Turk- January 2, 2016

At last fairly calm sailing away from and on to Grand Turk. We had reserved a table for an 8:00 dinner so the really funny server, Denny, could be our server. We actually were the last people to leave the dining room because we were having so much fun talk with our dining companions. We hung out in the Oceans Bar for one set of the music and then headed for bed at about 11:00.

 

This morning I was up early to watch us sail into Grand Turk. There were lots of boats anchored and most appeared to be tour, dive or other entertainment vessels waiting to be occupied. Naturally there was a little spitty rain shower.

The Turks and Caicos Islands, or TCI for short, are a British Overseas Territory consisting of the larger Caicos Islands and smaller Turks Islands, two groups of tropical islands in the Lucayan Archipelago, north of the larger Antilles island grouping. They are known primarily for tourism and as an offshore financial center. The resident population is about 31,500,of whom 23,769 live on Providenciales in the Caicos Islands. The total population on the islands including foreigners is approximately 49,000.

The Turks and Caicos Islands lie southeast of Mayaguana in the Bahamas island chain and north of the island of Hispaniola. Cockburn Town, the capital since 1766, is situated on Grand Turk Island about 647 miles east-southeast of Miami, United States. The islands have a total land area of170 square miles.

The first recorded European sighting of the islands now known as the Turks and Caicos occurred in 1512. In the subsequent centuries, the islands were claimed by several European powers with the British Empire eventually gaining control. For many years the islands were governed indirectly through Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. When the Bahamas gained independence in 1973, the islands received their own governor and have remained a separate autonomous British Overseas Territory since. In August 2009, the United Kingdom suspended the Turks and Caicos Islands' self-government after allegations of ministerial corruption. Home rule was restored in the islands after the November 2012 election. Seems politics is similar all around the world.

The first inhabitants of the islands were Arawakan-speaking Taíno people, who crossed over from Hispaniola sometime from AD 500 to 800. Together with Taino who migrated from Cuba to the southern Bahamas around the same time, these people developed as the Lucayan. Around 1200, classical Taínos from Hispaniola resettled the Turks and Caicos Islands.

Soon after the Spanish led by the conquistador Juan Ponce de Leon arrived in the islands in 1512, they began capturing the Taíno of the Turks and Caicos Islands and the Lucayan as slaves to replace the largely depleted native population of Hispaniola. The southern Bahama Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands were completely depopulated by about 1513, and remained so until the 17th century.

During the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, the islands passed from Spanish, to French, to British control, but none of the three powers ever established any settlements.

Bermudian salt collectors settled the Turks Islands around 1680. For several decades around the turn of the 18th century, the islands became popular pirate hideouts. The most famous of these pirates were Calico Jack Rackham and Anne Bonny. Calico Jack is best known for designing a flag with a skull with crossed swords, known as the Jolly Roger and now the emblem of piracy. His mistress , Anne Bonny, was a female who dressed in men’s clothing and was a famous pirate in her own right.

After the American War of Independence (1775–1783), many Loyalists fled to British Caribbean colonies; in 1783, they were the first settlers on the Caicos Islands. They developed cotton as an important cash crop, but it was superseded by the development of the salt industry.

In 1799, both the Turks and the Caicos island groups were annexed by Britain as part of the Bahamas. The processing of sea salt was developed as a highly important export product from the West Indies, with the labor done by African slaves. Salt continued to be a major export product into the nineteenth century.

In 1807, Britain prohibited the slave trade and, in 1833, abolished slavery in its colonies. British ships sometimes intercepted slave traders in the Caribbean, and some ships were wrecked off the coast of these islands. In 1837, the Esperanza, a Portuguese slaver, was wrecked off East Caicos, one of the larger islands. While the crew and 220 captive Africans survived the shipwreck, 18 Africans died before the survivors were taken to Nassau. Africans from this ship may have been among the 189 liberated Africans whom the British colonists settled in the Turks and Caicos from 1833 to 1840.

In 1841, the Trouvadore, an illegal Spanish slave ship, was wrecked off the coast of East Caicos. All the 20-man crew and 192 captive Africans survived the sinking. Officials freed the Africans and arranged for 168 persons to be apprenticed to island proprietors on Grand Turk Island for one year. They increased the small population of the colony by seven percent. Numerous descendants have come from those free Africans. The remaining 24 were resettled in Nassau. The Spanish crew were also taken there, to be turned over to the custody of the Cuban consul and taken to Cuba for prosecution. An 1878 letter documents the "Trouvadore Africans" and their descendants as constituting an essential part of the "laboring population" on the islands.

In 2004, marine archaeologists affiliated with the Turks and Caicos National Museum discovered a wreck, called the "Black Rock Ship", that subsequent research has suggested may be that of the Trouvadore. In November 2008, a cooperative marine archaeology expedition, funded by the United States NOAA, confirmed that the wreck has artifacts whose style and date of manufacture link them to the Trouvadore.

Located right along the major trae routes to Europe, these islands also became a frequent stop for seafarers. More than 200 years later, Grand Turk would become the landing site of John Glenn’s return to land after becoming the first American to orbit the earth. The last time we were here we saw the replica of his Friendship 7 space capsule. On his descent from space, spotting these coral islands, Glenn said that “it must be paradise.”

We are docked at the cruise pier which connects to lots of shopping opportunities and also to a large resort. From times before when we have been here we know the passengers and crew alike love to go ashore for a time to rest, relax and bask in the sun on one of the plentiful beach chairs. The water is so very clear and so beautifully blue…does look like paradise!

Happy 2016- January 1, 2016

Sunset leaving San Juan- last one for 2015

Last evening the sunset as we sailed from San Juan was colorful and the sun went down VERY quickly. We went to the Oceans Bar at about 6:15 and enjoyed the music of the Station Band. Most of the Christmas decorations were gone and had been replaced with New Year’s decorations.

We had accepted David and Marie’s invitation to join them for dinner at 7:30 so we met at the LaFontaine Dining Room. We couldn’t get a table with the server that we enjoy but we had a fun dinner with servers named Big Eddy and Little Eddy. Naturally the tables were decorated and hats were available for all- silly hats, which we chose not to bring back to the suite.

After dinner we went back to the Oceans Bar where the ship’s bigger band- The Band- played. The main party was in the theater but we decided to stay in the smaller venue. Champagne was poured, noisemakers were distributed and many wishes for a happy year ahed were shared.

Rainbow in the morning

This morning we as we sailed a lovely rainbow appeared. We dropped anchor at about 8:00 at the town of Samaná, originally spelled Xamaná, in full named Santa Bárbara de Samaná. It is a town and municipality in northeastern Dominican Republic and is the capital of Samaná Province. It is located on the northern coast of Samaná Bay. The town is an important tourism destination and is the main center for whale-watching tours in the Caribbean region.

Samaná is located in a small plain close to the coast but, now, most of the town is in the hills that enclose the plain.It is the largest municipality of the province. It has a total area of 240 square miles or almost 49% of the total area of the province, including the three municipal districts that are part of the municipality.

Most of the territory is occupied by the Sierra de Samaná, a short mountain range with steep slopes but no high mountains. The highest mountain is Monte Mesa which is 1975 feet tall.

The town of Santa Barbara of Samaná sits on the Samaná Peninsula which came into written history on 13 January 1493, when Christopher Columbus made his last stop of his first voyage to the New World. He landed on what today is known as the Rincon Beach, where he met the hostile Ciguayos who presented him with his only violent resistance during this visit to the Americas.

The Ciguayos had refused to trade their bows and arrows that Columbus' pathfinders desired. In the ensuing violence, two were stabbed to death. Because of this and because of the Ciguayos' use of arrows, he called the inlet where he met them the Bay of Arrows (or Gulf of Arrows). Today, the place is called the Bay of Rincón, in Samaná, the Dominican Republic. Columbus kidnapped about 10 to 25 natives and took them back with him. Only seven or eight of the native Indians arrived in Spain alive, but they made quite an impression on Seville.

The city was founded in 1756 as Santa Bárbara de Samaná during the colonial period by the Spanish governor Francisco Rubio y Peñaranda. Families from the Canary Islands were brought to live in this city and in nearby Sabana de la Mar.

It was named Santa Bárbara after the Queen Bárbara de Braganza, wife of King Ferdinand VI of Spain. In 1824, the Turtle Dove, a sailing vessel, was blown ashore at Samana. Dozens of American Slaves from the Freemen Sisters' underground railroad escaped to these shores. They settled in Samana, and today, their descendants still live on that island.

With the creation of the Samaná Maritime District (an old division similar to a province) in 1865, the city was elevated to the category of municipality.

The main economic activities of the municipality are tourism, agriculture and fishing. The largest boost to local economy takes place in Jan-March with the annual migration of thousands of North Atlantic humpback whales that come to the Samaná Bay to give birth. Samaná is the center of the country's tourism during these months.

For us on this first day in 2016 the air is warm, the breeze is fairly stiff and the tender ride to town rough. The town itself is about 20 minutes away by tender so we have decided to stay aboard the Prinsendam and not go bouncing over the white caps and waves.

Guess this will be a lazy, quiet beginning to this new year!