We're cruising to the Caribbean!

While we couldn't travel around the country in our RV, we were glad that we had an opportunity to cruise around the Caribbean. Our nephew and niece invited us on a spring break cruise, and we jumped at the chance to travel with them again. This is the same family of six that we traveled to Europe with last summer, so we knew they were fun travelers!

But we had a wonderful bonus this trip, because we got to enjoy eight other family members as well. A total of 16 cruised together, and it was great fun running into members of our group on the ship--and on land as well. We never did get a picture with all of us together, but just take our word that it was a good-looking group.

We sailed on the Norwegian Cruise Line's ship Encore. We stopped at four different ports on this seven day cruise, and these places will sound familiar from our NCL cruise from Miami last March. But it was fun to find new things to do at ports we have already visited.

For example: Our first stop was Puerta Plata in the Dominican Republic. 

We got to be tour guides as we showed part of the group some of the things we walked to last time. But the cable car to the top of the mountain was broken, so it wasn't an option this year. Another change was that classic cars were lining up on umbrella street.

We also led them to the Paseo de Lona Blanca--better known as the "pink alley."

The pink alley was less pink because it was in the middle of a repaint job.

We had a fun group, who were up for spelling out "CRUISE" in the mirrored building on the shores of Puerta Plata.

After heating up on a walk around town, we headed back to the water.

We were all a little sweaty after walking along the road closest to the shore, but we eventually could see our ship.

Then it was time to cool off at the water park right beside our cruise dock. We had walked right past this touristy collection of shops and restaurants on our trip last year. But that meant we didn't get to enjoy the lazy river that runs through it. Limited to only cruise passengers, this was a safe and fun place for a large group of family members to form a big chain of tubes. Did anyone else notice that Mark and Denisa were the only adults in this chain?

They also had a surf rider pool where cruisers can try their luck at hanging ten. While the lines were long in the middle of the day, we found they were quite short as we got closer to our ship departure time. If you didn't mind sprinting to the gang plank close to the deadline, you could have the surf rider all to yourself.

Our second port was St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. This was home to the blue Caribbean Ocean and four other ships that were visiting this island on the same day.

So we quickly boarded a ferry for a trip over to Water Island.

No cars were allowed on this island, and that's because the few roads were in a terrible state of disrepair.

But we had these bumpy roads all to ourselves on our rented golf carts.

We drove those golf carts straight to the main beach on Water Island. Because all the cruise ship passengers were still over on St. Thomas, we had this beach almost to ourselves.

We spent time snorkeling from the main beach, where we were delighted to find a number of sea turtles. We didn't take an underwater camera, so we have no pictures. But it sure was fun finding sea turtles, and the sucker fish that like to hitch a ride on their oversized shells.

The kids were delighted to also find island snow cones. Let's be honest, the adults were delighted as well.

We drove the winding roads all the way to the top of the island. There we found the remains of a military fort, with its watch towers overlooking the Caribbean. We found the underground tunnels and climbed up and down the ladders to find the secret areas inside.

We stopped back on the beach to pick up the rest of our group that weren't interested in the fort adventure.

Then we had to catch the ferry back to St. Thomas in plenty of time to catch the Encore. Several members of our group captained the ferry boat to get us back in time.

Our next stop was Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands. When we visited Tortola last year, we took a ship excursion to another island. This year we wanted to get a ride to one of this island's beautiful beaches. While most of our group took a bus tour to a popular beach, Denisa and Mark opted to wing it on this stop. We hired a driver to take us to a beach that we had read about. We can recommend "Mr. Taxi" in Taxi 1404 in Tortola.

It's a beautiful drive across Tortola to get to the east end of the island.

While it's hard to see from the top of the hill, this is a favorite place for flamingoes to nest. The tiny pink dots in the water far below are the adult flamingoes. The babies actually hatch as downy white.

Part of our group was beaching on the west side of the island where the tourists usually go, and the pounding surf literally knocked them off their feet. They enjoyed playing in the heavy surf, but we had a completely different beach day. We had read that the snorkeling was better at Long Bay Beach, and our water was placid.

The main reason we wanted to go here was for the snorkeling. While it took a long time to swim out to the rocky reefs, we found some of the best marine life that we have ever experienced.  We saw big schools of colorful fish, and some healthy coral and purple sea fans. This little beach was remote and doesn't have the services and amenities of the other beach. But it also doesn't have the crowds.

Long Bay Beach was actually on an adjoining bit of land called Beef Island. But the bridge we crossed to get to this separate island was so small that we literally didn't notice it.

We were glad that our driver returned as promised, as it would have been tricky to get ourselves back to the ship dock so far away. Once back to Road Town, we enjoyed a little dancing to a very good musician close to the dock. It was a great finish to a good port day in Tortola.

Our last stop of the cruise was at the NCL private island in the Bahamas. Most of the large cruise companies own islands that only their customers can visit. The tiny island of Great Stirrup Cay doesn't have a dock, so we tendered there on smaller boats.

We walked the beaches, and again snorkeling was our favorite thing to do. It was quite a swim out to the reefs where the best fish were hanging out. We always take our old snorkeling gear that has made many trips. But we were especially glad we had it with us this trip, since we used it at so many port stop. NCL hosts a beach barbecue for the passengers, and we all ate lunch on the island. But after days in the sun and the sea, we returned to the boat early. We realized that we didn't take many pictures on this final port day, but we were blessed with good weather once again. As the moon rose over the Eastern Caribbean, we counted our blessings for a great cruise with great cruise-mates!