Aboard The Sick Ship

We picked a cruise itinerary for two weeks this February that would take us to 8 ports aboard the Caribbean Princess. We'd be able to get 8 dives in at 4 of those ports (St Maarten, Barbados, Bonaire, Aruba).

Oh right, it was also Superbowl weekend in south Florida.

The ship had the game on every screen available and even had ice carvings to celebrate.

Our weather forecast did not look very good but we were planning on spending a lot of time in the water anyway.

Our first port was St. Maarten. We booked a two tank scuba dive with Dive Adventures who were located just a short walk from where our cruise ship docked.

These dives (Teigland and Big Mama) were filled with things to look at. Lots of fish, lobsters, a green moray eel, a sting ray, a green sea turtle and a couple of big black tipped reef sharks who kept an eye on us divers.

Our dives were over by noon so we headed downtown via watertaxi.

We stopped by the Guavaberry Emporium for a few tastings.

Our second port was St. Thomas. We took a ferry over to St John to hike in the national park.

Our ferry docked right next to this visitor's center.

Behind this building is a trail called Lind Point Trail that leads to several beaches. We headed to find the closest to us as we were crunched for time. 

We followed signs to Solomon beach and headed down to snorkel in the beautiful warm water.

We booked this excursion, St. John on your own, through the cruise. It was way too short and only gave us 2 hours on St John. The next time we plan to taxi over to the red hook ferry dock on our own so we have more hours to enjoy St. John.

This is where things on our ship start to take a turn for the worse. The captain announced on day 3 of our cruise that we had a significant number of people who are sick with noro virus. Due to this St. Kitts had denied us entry to dock.
Super bummed as we had booked an excursion to visit the island of Nevis on this day.

They changed procedures on board the ship so getting food at the buffet was a hassle and selection was greatly diminished.

Even getting a glass of water meant spending a lot of time standing in lines.

After the unexpected sea day we were off to Martinique. (This picture was at the end of this day after the rain had ended)

Because the weather was so rainy we booked a snorkel excursion since being in the water gave us something to look at.

Lots of beautiful sunflower coral.

Look at this cute cuttlefish.

After our snorkeling adventure the rain held off enough for a stroll downtown where we picked up a snack to eat by the shoreline.

The next day the captain announced Barbados was not going to let us dock either as the number of sick people continued to rise.
Schucks! I was looking forward to getting 2 more dives in at Barbados.

So we headed on to Trinidad.

At 11:30pm the night before Trinidad the captain made the announcement Trinidad had denied us docking and he was now heading to Ft Lauderdale and ending the cruise early.

They were going to spend 3 days sanitizing the ship without passengers for the next sailing.
What a disappointment!
We only made it to 3 ports, a shortened vacation, and now had to scramble to change flights.

All the sea days meant lots of knitting for me.

And dinner cocktails.

By the time our ship made it back to Florida I was looking forward to going home after being surrounded by sick people and not knowing if I was the next passenger to come down with this stomach bug.

Thankfully we stayed virus free!