Day 5: St. Maarten, N.A.
The 2005 Caribbean Cruise
Day 5: St. Maarten, N.A.
.Thursday, 22 Sept 05: St. Maarten, NA. Does anyone know what
the NA stands for??? I can't find it.. Anytime I see St. Maarten on the web, it
has the NA behind it, but I have no idea what it stands for. If any of you
find out, please email and let me know.
UPDATE: I found out what it means.. "Netherlands Antilles"
What did we ever do without "Google?"
We were in port by 0800 this morning. Of course, we were just
getting up when we pulled into port. So, we got up, showered and ate.
Finally, by 1000, we were catching a water taxi to downtown Philipsburg.
As soon as we stepped off the water taxi, we were accosted by locals wanting us
to come to their shop, ride their taxi, take their tour, etc, etc, etc, etc,
etc, etc. It was almost enough to make you want to go back to ship.
It wasn't as bad as "Voodoo Village" we had to endure in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, but
it was close. We finally made it through the throngs of locals and started
to be able to walk around without someone tugging on our shirts. We walked
up and down the street looking in shops and everything else we could. We
finally found a place called "Old Street." It had a shop of an artist
named Nick Maley. I had never heard of him, but for Star Wars
aficionados, he was one of the artists to make the Yoda dolls used in the "Star
Wars" movies. His shop was even called
YodaGuy. He had a
lot of Star Wars story boards and things like that.. He also had paintings he
had done. We ended up buying one of his paintings of the Caribbean and he
was nice enough to personalize it for us and autograph it while we stood there.
Very nice guy. Not much of a handshake, but then again, he is an artist.
After we left Yoda Guy, we headed to the beach to take some pictures of the
local area and then back to the ship to get ready for our upcoming excursion.
This was the excursion I had been anxiously awaiting since I booked it.
This was the Discover SCUBA excursion. I have always wanted to try SCUBA,
but have never had the chance to do it. This was my chance and I was VERY
excited to try it out. We met our SCUBA person at 1240 and when we were
all there, we headed on a boat to the Dive Shop around 1300. The place
doing our dive was "Dive
Safaris." When we got to the dock, we were greeted by our two
instructors and then given a place to sit. We were briefed (in the course
of about 15 minutes) about the physics of SCUBA, the SCUBA equipment, some basic
procedures; such as clearing your mask or water, clearing your regulator of
water, finding your regulator if it gets knocked out of your mouth, etc. and the
hand signals used under water. We took it all in. It was a bit of
information overload, but I figured we could muddle our way through anything.
After the quick "class", we boarded the dive boat, called a "crab" and headed to
the dive site. There were 4 of us for the trip. Heather and I and a
man named Greg and his daughter, Whitney. Heather was the first to don her
gear and jump in the water. All I saw was her jump off and then I started
to get up after putting on my gear. First thing you notice: This stuff is
HEAVY!!!! But, once you're in the water, the weight isn't noticeable.
So, I jump off the way he shows me and I hit the water. My head is under
water and I'm trying to breathe. Alright. Being under water and
trying to take a breath is NOT a natural thing. I started to
hyperventilate and take really quick rapid breaths. My Buoyancy
Compensator Device (BCD) was inflated enough for me to float, so I started
floating in just a couple seconds. After I came back up, I started second
guessing if I was gong to be able to do this. The instructor had Heather
by her BCD for some reason and was telling her to go to the Practice Area.
This was a floating square that had a bottom in it that only made the water
about 4 feet deep. So we could stand and practice all the things they
taught us. Unfortunately, this day, the seas were really rough and we were
getting pretty well slammed around in the practice cage. Heather and I got
in the practice area while Whitney and Greg were getting off the boat. I
kept putting my head under the water and trying to breath normal. It
wasn't working out too well. Heather was having even a worse time of it.
When she jumped off the boat, her BCD wasn't quite inflated enough and she
started to sink. The instructor grabbed her and held her up. When
she sank and wasn't used to trying to breathe underwater, it almost gave her a
panic attack of sorts. Then, once all the was over and we were in the
practice area, she was getting so pushed around in the cage, she couldn't spend
any time trying to learn how to breathe. By the time Whitney and Greg made
it in, Heather had decided she couldn't learn this quick enough to be
comfortable in doing the 35 foot dive, so she bailed out. She isn't turned
off on SCUBA, in fact, she's going to do the SCUBA confined water class in a
pool at the local Dive Shop here in Macon, GA in January 2006. The seas
were just too rough that day for her to feel comfortable about it. The
instructor went under water with me and had me do three drills under water to
show I could clear my mask, clear my regulator and find my regulator if it fell
from my mouth. I passed all three and got the handshake to tell me I
passed. I stood up and looked at Heather who was feeling like crap. She
felt like she let me down. I reassured her she didn't and I only wanted
her doing this when she felt she was ready. If she wasn't ready today, we'd try
again at a later date. No big deal. Greg did his drills and passed
also. Whitney did her and did good until the finding of the regulator.
It took two tries, but she passed it also. That was a great job
considering she was about 13 or so. After we all finished our drills, they made
sure Heather was ok and then we exited the practice area to do our dive.
We were to follow a thick rope to the bottom. Greg and I were side-by-side
and when we got about 10-15 feet down, the instructor told us to stop. We
did and looked back up. Whitney had some kind of problem. He went up
to check on her and we stayed where we were. I wasn't sure I could do it.
But, as we floated there waiting, I was able to steady my breathing and then the
area cleared and I could see the bottom. When I saw the bottom, I thought
to myself, "I can do this." And that was all it took. The instructor
came back down, motioned that Whitney would not be joining us and we were
heading down. We got down to 35 feet and started following the instructor
around. It was AMAZING!!!! Fish were everywhere. They would
just swim up to you. We dove around 3 wrecks. One, we actually went
through an opening and out the other side. Very cool. We saw some
very old cannons that had been on ships of the past. We also saw some big wheel.
I have no idea what it was from, but it was about 15 feet tall and standing
straight up. Greg was taking pictures of it all and promised, after the
dive, that he would email them to me. (He never did) Near the end of the
dive, the Dive Master pulled out some stuff and fed a bunch of fish in the area.
Very cool to see all that. That dive was one of the most AMAZING 30
minutes of my life. It was awesome! I have decided to take the
classes and become a certified scuba diver now. It is an amazing thing to
do. MANY thanks to Dive Safaris in St. Maarten for the dive and all the
info. They were great people to deal with. Greg took an underwater
camera down with us and took a whole roll while we were down there. He
promised me he would email me the pics after he got them developed. It's
been over a month and I haven't gotten anything. So I figured he either lost my
email address, decided not send them or they didn't turn out. Either way,
I didn't get any of the underwater pictures to post. That sucks, but I'll
just take my own next time I go diving.
Around 1630, we were back on the ship and headed to the Pizza Joint to
grab a couple pieces of pizza and then showered off the salt water. At
1700, I was sitting on the balcony of the stateroom writing the journal I kept
during the trip (You don't think I actually remembered all these details a month
later did you???) waiting to shove off. We shoved off at 1800 and Heather
I stood on the balcony watching St. Maarten being left behind, the islands pass
by and
reading until about 7:30 pm. We decided to skip the Formal Dinner and just
go to the buffet for this evening. We were pretty wiped out after the
scuba and decided to eat with just the 2 of us. After we ate, we
walked around the Royal Promenade and found some new sunburn stuff that might
actually work for my pain. We went back to the room and Heather covered me
with it. It was cold as all get-out, but it sure made everything feel
better. We fell asleep around midnight and I slept a good portion of the
night.
Next up: 2 days at sea on the way back to Port Canaveral.
Pictures from St Maarten and the Scuba trip