Part 4 of the Dark One's Caribbean jolly

[Dark Knight]

Day 9
Sea Day
Hurray, managed to sleep in till 7.30 today, which, so far is the cruise record
Up to the Lido for breakfast and bagged a sunbed, which takes some doing on a sea day, even at 8.00 people had already put towels out etc to hog the beds
After a couple of hours it got a bit misty, with some more liquid sunshine, so we headed indoors to one of the lounges to read and watch the sea, saw a lot of flying fish again, as well as frigate birds but no dolphins or anything else to be honest
Sea days are not my favourite, but we spent the day reading, snoozing, drinking and wandering about the boat, so it passed the time
Tonight was Capatain's night again, so we opted for the Grill again, tonight was the French menu, so I had Escargot, Lobster bisque, ceasar salad, Lobster thermidor and Tart Tartin, wonderful food, great service all for another £20
After dinner a couple fo drinks in the piano and off to bed

Day 10
Aruba
now to be honest this was the part of the trip I was looking forward to most and I had high expectations of the islands, which were somewhat dented, when I awoke to see a wind farm passing by our window?
We went to the MDR for breaklfast today and enjoyed eggs bendict and smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, after a quick trip back to the cabin to get the safari gear ready we set off to explore Aruba
now to say it is Americanised, is an understatement and to say it is expensive to shop here, is beyond understatement, the first shop I looked in was a watch shop, where some of he timepieces on show were $60,000......eek
after a bit of wandering and a visit to the Swarovski crystal shop, Lady D can be very persuasive, we found a bar for a couple of beers and some chicken wings, just to take the edge of, I say a couple of beers, 5 would be the truth, but hey were only small, so not that bad, really
Had another wander about and went from one end of the shopping arcade to the other and saw our first Burger King
we decided to stop off in the Mojito bar for off all things a mojito or two and found a lot of the ents team ensconced in there using the Wi-fi
at this point hurricane mojito arrived and proceeded to knock over several full glasses of drinks and blow some poor sods dinner onto the floor
luckily my mojito was so big it was impossible to move
Now it appears happy hour happened whilst we were not looking and before you knew it , we had 4 cocktails on the table, which was a surprise to say the least, after manfully finishing 2 more mojito's and half a fizzy pink thing , Lady D couldn't we decided to head back to the boat and hurricane mojito had abated a bit.
On the way back I fellinto a watch shop and came away with a nice new seiko, to add to my collection, so all in all not a bad way to spend a day
We somehow manged to fall asleep when we got back, so ate late in the MDR on our own and had a quick night cap or two, in the lounge, the show band is called Tina and the Peakles, but as Tina does sod all, we just called them the Peakles

Day 11
Bonaire
Today was avery important day, as I had to, upon pain of death, find and post a post card for Jaczs, so after another fine MDR breakfast we headed out for a walk and to locate said postcard, finding the postcard was easy, finding the post office to get a stamp was impossible, so we had no choice but to post it off ship, for the princely sum of £0.85p, only problem was it would not get sent till we reached Barbados on turn round day?
Had a nice stroll along the promanade, watching the endless numbers of tropical fish, inches from the shore, purple tangs and blue parrot fish and garfish etc
Back on board for a quick lunch before heading out on our island trip, l;ots to see on this one, slave huts, distilleries, salt flats, salt production plant, flamingo's, Iguana's, a good trip around the island but the tour guide was a bit too effusive, which after an hour was more than enough
MDR dinner tonight on a table for 6, as usual good company and good food
After dinner we wombled back to the lounge for beer, cocktails and to watch the entertainment
and then off to bed
tonight was a bit bumpy due to 40-50 knot winds hitting the boat side on, but once alseep it was fine