Saturday 28th Nov. Aruba

Aruba is a small island with not much on it except a lighthouse, a natural rock bridge, an ostrich farm and lots and lots of jewellery stores, diamonds, emeralds seem to be the main choice.  As we were not in the market for these we decided on a walk through the town. I was getting fed up of Sandra looking me up and down and saying Avast behind.  It's a very pretty little harbour and our ship dwarfs it.

There is a little market and one shopping street and not much else. The architecture harks back to Dutch Colonial times with palm trees of course and it is extremely HOT.

Saw this pelican chilling on the dock

Off now to try to find  a cafe with wifi.

Bags and hats bought,Facebook checked, blog posted and beer drunk. Now back on board now and the Captain has made his lunchtime broadcast.  By the way, the Captain and most of the officers are English which I find odd on an American cruise liner but quite reassuring, playing fields of Eton, stiff upper lip, cucumber sandwiches and all that.  The trade winds are blowing at 30 knots. But this is normal for Aruba, resulting in most of the palm trees being bent. So the Island Princess will need all three engines to sail out. It's 360 miles to our next port of call, Cartagena in Colombia and we will be sailing by the coast of Venezuela this evening and arriving at 9am tomorrow. It will be 27 degrees tomorrow.  And the wind has dropped completely now we are out at sea and it must be that temperature here too.

Information talk on Costa Rica, lunch and a well deserved rest in the sun. The Sound of Music was playing at the open air cinema and we sang along with all the tunes. I then felt moved to do a re enactment of the title song. I think you can see a resemblance to Julie Andrews on top of the hill

In the evening to show was a ventriloquist with a Jamaican doll. He was actually quite funny but not PC at all, wouldn't have got away with some of the things he said about Jamaica in UK but no one seemed to take offence. Oh no, more cocktails

 After dinner we stationed ourselves on the Lido deck for the Love Boat Party which didn't happen due to an earlier shower. We didn't even know it had been raining so we're a tad disappointed. So this was an ideal opportunity to crack open the gin Sandra had smuggled aboard in. Listerine bottle. We have been cruising before.