Adventure June 4 Review - LOTS of port pics

[bobmacliberty]

After passing by Basseterre, we starting driving through the more developed part of the island...past the fairly newly renovated airport, a few condos and residential areas, the Marriott resort, and the nice looking Royal St. Kitts Golf Course. We drove up Timothy Hill and stopped at the top for some more nice views.

 

Atlantic Ocean on the left, Caribbean Sea on the right

 

North Friars Bay

 

Note the newly paved road leading down from Timothy Hill. They have apparently just recently finished construction on the tunnel through which this road runs. Calvin showed us the temporary road that they would use while the tunnel was being built. Yikes.

 

There were a few people selling things at Timothy Hill lookout, since this is a common stop for tours. This included a guy with a monkey who was riding a donkey (they guy, not the monkey). St. Kitts has developed the nickname "Monkey Island" because of the number of wild monkeys on the island. They like to come down out of the hills to get mangos or other food. DD18 desperately wanted to hold a monkey. This was on her bucket list (really? a bucket list at 18?). Calvin told us to wait until we got to South Friars Beach before looking for monkeys.

 

At this point, we needed to make a decision about where to eat lunch. We could either eat at the Carombola Beach Club at the north end of South Friars Beach, or at Shipwreck Beach Bar & Grill at the south end of South Friars Beach. Shipwreck Beach is known for its monkeys, but we opted for the Carombola Beach Club as Shipwreck Beach is kind of "rustic".

 

The Carambola Beach Club bar from the lobby area, with the dining room in the distance

 

 

 

We enjoyed lunch. The restaurant was nice and had good views of the beach. Lunch cost about $15-20 per person. I had a really good grouper sandwich and DD18 said that her tuna sushi was very good. They were actually cutting up a fresh tuna in the sushi prep area. Can't get much fresher than that. DD21 had a burger and DW had a salad, and they both liked their meals as well.

[bobmacliberty]

At that point, it was about 2:00. I think I read here that lounge chairs and umbrellas were free at Carambola Beach at some point, since you would likely be buying food and drinks. That's not the case now. I don't recall the price (maybe $20 for 2 chairs and an umbrella), but we decided to pass. I asked if they offered a discount price since we were only going to be there for another hour. Nope. It was a moot point anywhere because DD18 had her mind set on monkeys. We therefore decided to walk to Shipwreck Beach.

 

Leaving the Carambola Beach Club area

 

Looking back at Carambola Beach Club

 

Almost there!

 

 

 

The walk took 10-15 minutes. When we reached Shipwreck Beach, there were no monkeys in sight. We saw a few mongoose, but that was it. We looked around for a few minutes and then headed back to Carambola Beach Club. I did take a quick look at the menu at Shipwreck Beach (should have taken a picture) and it looked good, but almost the same price as Carambola

 

Calvin had told us that worst case, there would be guys with monkeys at the pier when we got back. DD18 had just resigned herself to needing to wait until we got back to the pier, when we walked past a small area with a few beach chairs about half way between Carambola and Shipwreck. There was a guy there with a monkey! He said he'd charge us $5. I don't know if that's a good deal or not but my daughters played with the monkey for about 15 minutes and I probably shot more pictures in those 15 minutes than I did all day. It was well worth $5. The guy with the monkey told us to make sure that when we post any pictures, that we should use the hashtag #edwardthemonkey.

 

Edward the Monkey

[bobmacliberty]

Ladies and Gentlemen...Edward the Monkey

 

Monkey Selfies

 

 

 

 

 

[jlszarejko]

Following thanks for all the pictures

[bobmacliberty]

We met up with Calvin again at Carambola Beach Club and headed back to the pier. Calvin said that Mr. Grey (owner of Grey's Tours) had a special gift for us. He parked and walked us to one of the jewelry stores by the pier and told us that Mr. Grey was giving the ladies a set of earings. Obviously, they were cheap earings, and this was really just a ploy to get us in the store. Look...I understand the need to make money, but this just felt like a cheap way to end what overall was a very good tour.

 

While the rest of my family checked out a few stores (again), I decided to board the ship ahead of them and spend some quality time at the Solarium pool (again). I asked everyone at the end of the cruise and it was unanimously agreed that this was our least favorite island. Many islands, I decide that I'd like to spend a full week there on a land vacation. Not so much for St. Kitts. Still, it was an enjoyable day, and Calvin was a good tour goude.

 

 

By the way...there were 2 more people at the pier with monkeys. :)

[EMED2010]

I love the pictures of your daughters with the monkey. You could tell how much they enjoyed it.:)

[bobmacliberty]

 

Day 4, Port of Call: St.Johns, Antigua

Arrival 8:00am, Departure 5:00pm

 

I didn't mention it when talking about St. Kitts, but it was an overcast day. That wasn't too bad as it kept the heat and humidity under control (at least a little). We awoke on Tuesday however to certain rain. Our plan for Antigua (pronounced Antiga, not Antigwa), was to get a day pass at the all inclusive Grand Pineapple Beach Resort. We ended up choosing Scenic Tours of Antigua's Pineapple East tour which included round trip transportation to the resort plus a stop at Devil's Bridge.

 

About a week before we sailed, I read that the Grand Pineapple Beach Resort had changed ownership. I went to the resort web site that I had saved, only to find that the web site no longer existed. :eek: I was a little concerned, having paid 50% of the tour cost up front, but was reassured by Scenic Tours of Antigua that there are no problems. The hotel is still open, and the tour was still on. According to our driver, the resort had been purchased a while back by Sandals. Sandals wanted to make changes, like keep the local merchants off the beach, which they were not able to do. Sandals then sold the resort back to the original owner. I'm not sure if merchants on the beach is the true reason for Sandals to sell one of it's properties, but's that's our driver's point of view. He also believed that the resort is better off with the old owner, who may invest more in the properly. Sounds like local politics to me...something that's not part of my vacation plans. Just point me to the beach and the all inclusive food/drinks. Interestingly, this tour is no longer listed on the Scenic Tours of Antigua web site. Hmmm.

 

We got off the ship at the required time and headed to the building where we were supposed to meet our driver at the Exotic Antigua building (in the picture below)

 

 

Several tours were meeting here and because of the rain, there was a little bit of confusion. Groups of people were eventually getting matched up with their driver. There were a couple of groups of people for Scenic Tours of Antigua with no drivers. As we talked to each other, we found that we were on different tours. Eventually, someone showed up and got us organized. He apologized for being late and blamed the rain. It must not rain much in the tropics. :rolleyes:

 

We found our driver, who it turns out was one of the local taxi drivers named Larry. We were the only people headed to Grand Pineapple Beach Resort so either Scenic Tours hired Larry to drive us since there were only 4 of us, or maybe the rain caused a problem with our Scenic Tours driver and Larry was a last minute substitute?? Whatever, Larry worked out well for us. It took us about 25 minutes to drive to the resort. Larry added some commentary here and there but I wouldn't exactly call him a tour guide. To be fair, the Scenic Tours web site never really described this as a tour, but rather transportation with a stop at Devil's Bridge.

 

Check in at the resort was a little odd. We've never done an all inclusive day pass on a cruise so maybe our experience was normal. I signed a form and we were given 4 wrist bands to wear, which was fine. The odd part was that Larry had to pay for us, right in front of me. As I said above, I had paid 50% up front, and I had the other 50% with me in cash. Larry had not yet asked me for the cash (thought maybe we'd pay at the end like some other tours), but he needed to get the money from me when the receptionist asked for payment. I gave my money to Larry, who then had to fish through his wallet to find enough additional money to cover the resort cost. At one point, I wasn't sure he had enough cash on him. A little strange, but no problems.

 

We were then escorted through the property to the beach, and shown where the restaurant, bar, and restrooms were located. It's a very pretty property, even with a little bit of rain drizzle happening. When we reached the beach, the rain had more or less stopped for a while. There was no one on the beach, so we grabbed some prime location lounge chairs under palapas and just relaxed. It started raining again after about an hour, hard enough for us to collect our stuff and move under larger cover, but it didn't last too long. While it rained, we joined some of the people staying at the resort in the main gathering area for some trivia and some Bingo, before getting some lunch. It's amazing how much fun a family can have with no electronics. Lunch was good...maybe a slight bit better than the Windjammer, and had a decent selection from which to chose.

 

After lunch, we were able to enjoy a few hours on the beach and in the water with some occasional sun (mostly clouds). I didn't take as many pictures of the property as I would have liked, but did get these pictures of the main pool area.

 

 

[bobmacliberty]

The beach area was very nice. They had a few round floating mats in the water, and some other things like sailboats that I think we could have used (although we never tried). Here are a few beach pics:

 

 

 

 

Our seats under the Palapas. Recognize the towels?

 

 

 

Overall, we were very impressed by the Grand Pineapple Beach Resort. I think that everyone we met was from the UK, so they must do a lot of marketing there. We agreed that this would be a good place for a land vacation.

[bobmacliberty]

Normally, this tour stops at Devil's Bridge before going to the resort. Because it was raining in the morning, Larry said we'd be better off if we went to Devil's Bridge after the resort. Larry knows best. He picked us up at the agreed time and made the 5 minute drive (well actually, 5 minutes to get to the road that leads out to Devil's Bridge, and 5 minutes to drive on the bumpy dirt road to get to the point). It was worth the effort though.

 

If you aren't familiar with Devil's Bridge, it's a natural rock arch that has been formed by erosion from Atlantic Ocean waves. Waves crash against the rocks below/behind the bridge and water often shoots up in the air, like a blow hole. Most of the area is rock and there were still several very slippery spots from earlier in the morning. Good call by Larry to wait. I wanted to walk across the bridge but was once again outvoted by my wife and daughters. Probably the right decision on their part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I wouldn't have minded staying a little while and waiting for the perfect wave crashing picture, but we were starting to cut it a little close on timing and decided to head back to the ship. This time, we managed to board the ship without stopping for any shopping. :D

 

Overall, Antigua was a good day, even if it did rain a bit. If you're looking for a nice beach at an all-inclusive resort, I would definitely recommend the Grand Pineapple Beach Resort (assuming it keeps that name).

 

UPDATE: I did a Google seach before clicking on the submit reply button, and found that the resort has a new name and a new web site:

http://www.pineapplebeachclub.com/

Looks like they have also become an Adults only resort. It's not clear if they will continue to offer day passes.

[prekteacher]

Still enjoying your review and especially enjoyed the posts about Antigua. My DH and I will be there in August for our 21st anniversary trip back to Sandals where we honeymooned and on 2 upcoming cruises. You are making the wait that much more exciting.

 

Thanks again,

Barbara

[bobmacliberty]

Sorry, but I'll need to take a short break from posting. DD18 has her graduation party tonight and I still have a long list of chores to do. I'll come back tomorrow with a lot of pictures of St. Lucia. Spoiler alert...St. Lucia was out favorite island. Just an absolutely gorgeous place.

[viper88]

We were there that same Sunday, the KLM was over an hour late... we were on a tour and didn't end up getting to see it since we went to Maho early :(

We were there that Sunday as well. It was a bucket list thing to see the 747 land and take off from St. Maaten. We went early and set up shop on a lounger and watch planes all day. We shared a taxi from the port and it was $8 since the taxi had more than 2 people in it. It was $10 a person on the way back since it was just the 2 of us.

[SDQTraveler]

Great report! We were in the same cruise and loved it.

[SDQTraveler]

BTW, we are in the background in our of your pictures :)

[bobmacliberty]

BTW, we are in the background in our of your pictures :)

 

That's one of the fun parts of reading someone else's review of a cruise that you were on...seeing if you're in their pictures. :D

[cyntil8ing]

That's one of the fun parts of reading someone else's review of a cruise that you were on...seeing if you're in their pictures. :D

 

I've had that happen. It was a past guest party on a Carnival ship. We must have been sitting less than 10 feet away from the photographer. We were in half a dozen shots. When I posted about it, he told me he had video with me dancing the Cupid Shuffle. I thanked him for not posting that! :eek:

Edited June 26, 2016 by cyntil8ing

[bobmacliberty]

 

Day 5, Port of Call: Castries, St. Lucia

Arrival 9:00am, Departure 6:00pm

 

As I noted in a previous post, St. Lucia was our favorite stop. We received equally positive reviews for both Spencer Ambrose tours and Cosol Tours. I sent email messages to both with a few questions and Cosol responded almost immediately. I'm not sure if he was just lucky and happened to be checking email when my message hit his inbox, or he takes his business seriously and checks email regularly (or both), but he won our business. We made a great choice.

 

One of the popular tours is a boat ride to Sugar beach. DD18 has had a history of occasional sea sickness in smaller boats on rough seas, and we had never been to the island before, so we opted for their land tour. Again, a private tour was not that much more expensive than a regular tour, so we went the private route. Our driver, Livingston, met us at the dock and we were off. We really enjoyed Livingston. He was very knowledgable and personable. He offered a good amount of commentary, answered all of our questions, but also let us enjoy the island beauty at times without talking.

 

It seemed that we had no sooner left the downtown Castries area, that we started climbing. Man is St. Lucia ever mountainous. We stopped at a lookout for a nice view of the ship.

 

 

We found the locals selling things at the various stops to not be overly aggressive. They would approach us and try to get us to buy something, but readily accepted a "no thank you" answer. One of our first stops was at a banana plantation, which really meant that we just pulled over to the side of the road. None of us had given much thought to growing bananas, and it was interesting.

 

Livingston telling us all about bananas

 

 

The blue bag around the banana bunch protects the fruit from insects (I think).

 

Lots of different sauces made from bananas. The banana ketchup was surpisingly good

[Nonna50]

Great review.. I love picture reviews. We have done the same itinerary twice before and will be doing the 10 night on Adventure of the Seas in March 2017.

[bobmacliberty]

This review really is taking me too long to finish. I'll see if I can make a push and wrap it up in the next couple of days. Picking up where I left off on the Cosol Tour in the banana plantation...

 

We continued driving toward Soufriere, and had our next stop at a viewing area looking down on the fishing village of Anse La Raye.

 

 

At this stop, we met Cosol. He introduced himself and thanked us for choosing his company. He also told us that, because we had booked a private tour, we would be enjoying breakfast at his personal home. All of the other Cosol Tour buses stop and have breakfast at a building that is roughly across the street from Cosol's home...the same location where all of the Cosol Tours (including us) stop on the way back for cheese and fresh baked bread. I assume that this is true for all private tours with Cosol, but would be interested in hearing if others also had breakfast at his home.

 

Cosol's home was beautiful and had some spectacular views from his balcony:

 

 

 

 

I could definitely see myself living there and staring out at the ocean with a cup of coffee every morning. Breakfast was tasty. I believe it was the same food that all of the other tour groups ate as it was cooked elsewhere and brought to Cosol's home. There was 4 each of variety of local items...one for each of us. I don't recall what each item was but I liked everything that I ate, and I ate it all.

 

[bobmacliberty]

We had several other stops with great views. I was reminded a little of Maui (especially the Road to Hana), but with more elevation changes. Lots of twisty turning roads, lush foliage, and the occasional stream. We climbed way up into the mountains, before coming back down again toward Soufriere.

 

On the way up the mountain looking over the valleys.

 

Our first view of the Pitons...pretty awesome

 

The town of Soufriere with the Pitons in the distance

 

Another stop at a viewing location. They are building a new structure here which should be great when finished

 

The Pitons are a World Heritage Site

[bobmacliberty]

Next stop was at the Caribbean's only "drive in volcano". This is an extinct volcano with a sulphur spring. We arrived shortly before several large tour buses, so things got pretty crowded as we were leaving. Both of my daughters thought that this would be one of the more boring parts of the tour, but both later said that it was one of their favorites.

 

You walk down to a small area with some tables and benches where you can drop your towels or other belongings. You then get into a concrete pool that is continuously filled with hot, muddy spring water. Once you've enjoyed the hot water (and it was hot!) for a few minutes, you walk upstream and cover your body with mud. You let the mud dry for a few minutes in the sun, and then get back into the concrete pool to rinse.

 

Area to drop your stuff

 

Part of the concrete pool in the lower left

 

The "hot tub" concrete pool. Note people applying mud on the left

 

Once some lighter covered mud had dried on us, Livingston decorated us with some strategically placed darker mud. It was then back into the pool to rinse off.

 

 

 

DW swears that the mud treatment made her skin softer for days! Normally, I think the next step would be a waterfall to make sure that you get all the mud off. We needed to link up however with other Cosol Tours groups to take the water taxi from Soufriere to Sugar Beach. We rinsed as best we could.

[bobmacliberty]

I don't remember exactly where I took this picture, but it's of the Jade Mountain Resort in the distance. If you've never heard of the Jade Mountain Resort, definitely click the link and check out their web site. It was voted the top resort in the Caribbean for the last 3 years. I think the cheapest room is $2600 per night. Ouch.

 

 

We made our way to a local beach in Soufriere where there was a bee hive of water taxis coming and going...mostly I think for tour groups. We joined up with other Cosol Tours guests and took about a 5 minute high speed ride to Sugar Beach, aka Jaluosie Beach, which is situated between the 2 Pitons.

 

The town of Soufriere in the background

 

Enjoying the water taxi!

 

One of the Pitons from the boat

 

Approaching Sugar Beach, with Sugar Beach Resort structures visible at the beach and on the hillside

 

The resort side of the beach. Accessible to us commoners, but you must pay for chairs/umbrellas

[bobmacliberty]

We had a little more than an hour to spend at Sugar Beach. We had not had any lunch at this point, and decided to eat at the shaded outdoor café area (part of the resort, but no problem eating there), rather than sitting in the sun. The view from our table was great.

 

Enjoying a light lunch at Sugar Beach. Note DD18 taking advantage of the free internet.

 

I was very impressed with Sugar Beach. I'm not exactly clear on the resort itself, but I believe that it may be privately owned villas that are available for rent, as opposed to hotel rooms, with common restaurant and pool areas. In any case, the beach was gorgeous and it's worth looking at for a land vacation, assuming that it's affordable.

 

 

 

 

 

As I noted in my last post, the facilities in the pictures above are available to tour guests, but at a fee (I think...someone please correct me if this is wrong...we didn't actually try to use any). There is a small section of beach on the other side of the dock in the last photo above (far right as you are facing the water). There are a few free lounge chairs there, but they were all taken when we arrived.

 

The free section of Sugar Beach

[bobmacliberty]

While waiting for the water taxi to take us from Sugar Beach back to Soufriere, I decided to stick my GoPro in the water by the snorkeling area to see what it was like. Here's the brief video:

 

[YOUTUBE]CqZwinph5M8[/YOUTUBE]

 

Looking back at the Petit Piton from the beach at Soufriere

 

Next stop was the Toraille waterfall. We were running a little late and never made it to the botanical garden that is there, but we enjoyed the waterfall for a few minutes. It was definitely "refreshing", and the water fell with enough force to definitely get rid of any remaining mud.

 

 

 

[YOUTUBE]KhKxxhg3MHw[/YOUTUBE]

[bobmacliberty]

We then headed back to Castries. As we drove through Soufriere on the way back, we passed the local secondary school as the students were being let out for the day. I don't think it matters what country you are in. Put teenaged boys and teenaged girls together and you always seem to get the same behavior. Several clusters of boys, several clusters of girls, and a few brave souls who were mingling/flirting with the opposite sex. We followed a minivan that was serving as a school bus, back up over the mountain and down to Canaries. That's a long bus ride to get to the nearest school!

 

After passing through Canaries, we stopped for some fresh bread and cheese. The bread was piping hot and tasted great. We then had about another hour to drive before getting back to the ship. Since we were returning by the same road that we traveled in the morning, Livingston had already explained what we were seeing, and we just enjoyed the view.

 

One question that I did ask was about the colored flags that seemed to be nailed to every telephone or light pole that we saw. Livingston explained that St. Lucia just had their national elections a couple of days earlier. The red and yellow flags represented the 2 different political parties. The Labour Party is red, and the United Workers Party is yellow. Yellow won. I hope I got that right because St. Lucians take their politics seriously.

 

 

We hit nearly grid locked, rush hour traffic in Castries that had us go about 100 yards in 10 minutes. I was starting to get a little worried about making it to the ship on time. I did not want us to be the next YouTube video of people waving madly at a departing ship. Livingston made a few detours and we were able to get by the congested area. We got to the ship with plenty of time to spare...about 30 minutes. :D

 

Driving back to the ship

 

We really enjoyed St. Lucia. As I've said numerous times, the island is simply beautiful. Livingston and Cosol Tours also did a great job for us.