Welcome to our Caribbean Cruise.  We had a good time.  Gary and Vicki  left Houston in the middle of a torrential downpour headed to Miami, Florida in July of 1999.  Rob and Melinda headed out from College Station an hour earlier, and were to arrive in Miami just a few minutes before us.  However, because of the rain, we were stuck in our airplane on the runway in Houston for over two hours.  Finally, we got to Miami and were met at the gate by Rob.  They had already gone to the hotel and he came back to collect us.

Once in Miami, we jumped in a cab and headed to CocoWalk in Coconut Grove.  We spent the whole night wandering through the stores and checking-out the local scene.  We finally stopped at a little restaurant called CAFE TU TU TANGO.  If you ever find yourself at CocoWalk, this is definitely the place to eat.  Their menu is all appetizer sized finger foods.  We would order four different items, split them between us and then order four more items.  We ate until we simply could not eat any more.  It was wonderful.

The next morning we were up bright and early and headed to the docks.  We arrived at the Carnival Destiny about an hour before she was to board.  She is truly a magnificent ship.  Looking at her sitting in port, we could not wait to get on board.

After we made it on board, we found our staterooms and crashed for a few minutes.  Just after getting comfortable, there was a jiggle on the door of Gary and Vicki's room.   Assuming that it was Rob and Melinda trying to get in, Gary approached the door quietly and threw it open yelling, "Boo."  It was not Rob and Melinda, and the lady at the door screeched like a cat with its tail caught in a rocker.  The funny part was, we knew her.  It was some people we go to church with.  In fact, the lady used to baby-sit Vicki when she was a little girl.   They had flown from Houston to Miami that morning.   Neither of us knew that the other was going on vacation, much less where they were going on vacation.  As for why she was jiggling our door... she thought it was her door.  Their room number was just slightly different then ours.

As for our days on the ship, most days started with Rob and Gary going to breakfast.   The girls usually slept in till later in the morning.  Once they did get up, they were off to the deck to sit in the sun and lounge by the pool.  As for Rob and Gary, we have way to fair of a complexion to sit under the sun.  We spent our time traveling from bow to stern and from port to starboard.   We investigated everything that there was to see and sat in on shows and ship briefings.  Essentially, we were bored stiff.  The four of us would always gather for lunch and eat at one of the little specialty restaurants.  Our favorite was the Chinese food restaurant. 

One day while we were standing in line to get the dish of the day, a Chicken and Shrimp dish, we observed a woman that unknown to us at the time, would become our comic relief for the rest of trip.  She was a nasty old lady with a strong NY accent and was rude to everyone.  She butted in line in front of us and then began to order the little oriental cook around.  Her food was not right.  She had requested the special.  However, she did not want chicken in hers, and her husband did not want shrimp in his.  Remember now, that it was a Chicken and Shrimp special.  There was one big pot of the stuff on a burner.  The cook would just place a scoop of rice on the plate and pour a ladle of the special over it.  He had no control over what your chicken to shrimp ratio would be.  To make matters even funnier to us, the cook did not speak English.  This just infuriated the nasty woman who began yelling at the little cook, "No chicken... I told you no chicken."  Apparently, she figured that although he did not understand English at a normal tone of voice, that he must understand it if you stand in front of him and yell the same words repetitively.  From that day forward, we ran into her several times a day.  Whoever saw her first would yell out , "No chicken."  The people around us never new what we were talking about, but the four of us would just die laughing.

As for the days and nights on the ship, they were enjoyable, although we found them somewhat slow moving.  The dinners were always wonderful and they recognized immediately that Rob and Gary could eat a lot of food.  After the second dinner they just automatically began bring the boys a second plate a few minutes into the meal, and quiet often a third plate a few minutes latter. 

The real thrill of the trip was the diving.  We arrived at St Croix at about 10:00am in the morning.  We were to set sail again at about 11:00pm that night.  We had arranged through the ship to dive with a local operation, Scuba West.  We walked to their shop just off of the pier and  prepared for our dive.  About an hour later we were on a rubber raft heading out into the Caribbean Sea.  Our morning dive was wonderful.  The water was a perfect 84 degrees and clear as could be.  We saw very little coral, but some amazing tropical fish and a sting ray.

The second dive of the trip was a night dive that we arranged in person with Scuba West.  Their owner and dive master, Steve, was an electrical engineer in the US who woke up one day and said, "Forget this... I want to be diving."  He sold all of his possessions and flew to St Croix to live.  He was a hoot to be around.

For the night dive, we met at the pier and dove directly in front of the docked ship.  It was impressive from under the sea as well as from on the land.  We immediately veered off to the rocky shoal and followed the gentle slope down to a maximum depth of about 25 feet.  Steve was great at finding lobster, eel and even octopus to show us. We saw the most beautiful school of Powder Blue Tangs and just soaked in every minute of our time underwater.

Our next stop was St Thomas.  If you ever want to go shopping, this is the place for you.  They have small stores lined up on the docks.  If you take a taxi into downtown it is just lined with little shops.  We dove with a company out of Commo Beach.  To date, they are the worst dive operation I have ever seen.  They were rude and would not give us enough weight.  Rob had to float at the surface before the dive master would finally give him the same amount of weight that he always uses. 

As for sea life, it was mostly gaming fish and Yellow Snapper.  We did see one Nurse Shark in the distance.  That was really the only outstanding thing about this dive.  However, please keep in mind that even the worst day of diving is better than the best day of working.

All in all, we had a good trip.  We learned that for divers, a cruise is not the best vacation.  However, if you want to eat until you can't walk, it is the perfect place.  We ate and ate and ate.  "No chicken!"  Yes... we even ate the chicken.

We hopped back on the airplane the same day the boat came to port in Miami.  We were home in the early afternoon and in bed by 9:00pm.  This was a good trip.  Please click on the pictures to see larger versions with a brief description. 

I hope you all enjoy this site.  We can show more pictures when we come together, and tell more stories. As always, it is amazing to see how beautiful our Heavenly Father made the world both above the water and below.