Our next stop was in Amber Cove, Dominican Republic. When we were here several years ago we were disheartened by all of the children that were begging and scamming the tourists.
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| Full Moon Over Amber Cove |
Fortunately, that problem has been resolved by the development of a new resort area with self-contained entertainment. One can zip line, do water activities such as swimming with the stingrays, and even off-road adventuring all within sight of the ship. And of course there’s the duty-free shop! Little exploring or sightseeing of the Dominican Republic can be done outside of this resort. It’s pretty much a one-pony show.
We decided that we would walk off the ship later and avoid the rush. We hadn’t signed up for any shore excursions here so we would just spend our time looking at the shops adjacent to the DUFRY area and take in some of the historic and cultural information points.
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| Mountain Sunrise in Amber Cove |
We came upon a little rest area that had some interesting orchids and tropical flowers growing in it as well as a waterfall. We made our way back to the ship, had lunch, and spent the afternoon relaxing and chilling out by the pool.
That evening, upon returning to our cabin after dinner, we had a letter from the captain stating that we would not be going to our next stop, Bonaire.
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| Need Ride to DUFRY, mon? |
It seems that just within the past couple of weeks the people of Bonaire voted to allow only one cruiseship into their port daily. The captain said that he looked at all the options to try to get us into port, but nothing viable emerged. After consulting with corporate headquarters he announced that our next port of call would be San Juan, Puerto Rico. We would have a day in San Juan and then a sea day as we made our way to our next port, Curaçao.
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| Pretty Waterfall |
We were disappointed with this news because we would be going to Puerto Rico on the next leg of the cruise.
We arrived in San Juan and decided not to go on shore as we had been here before and we would be visiting this port again during the second leg of our cruise. We had breakfast and then did our usual one-hour morning walk and then spent the rest of the morning reading and lounging around the pool.
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| Jane;s San Juan Workout |
After lunch, Jane returned to the pool to finish her lounging exercises and Capt. Larry headed back to the cabin to work on the blog.
The next day was our sea day on our way to Curaçao. We did our usual morning activities and then decided to make our reservations in the specialty restaurants for the second leg of our cruise that were part of our sail-away package. We were talking with the reservation receptionist and mentioned that we had not gone ashore in San Juan because we would be doing that port again on the second leg of our cruise. The receptionist said that she didn’t think that we would be going back to San Juan, but Capt. Larry was sure that that would be our second port of call. Well, we got back to our cabin and checked the itinerary and sure enough, our second port is St. Thomas and not San Juan. Phooey! It would have been fun to revisit there.
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