Wednesday, December 20, 2006

December 2006, Golden Princess Cruise -- Day 5

Wednesday, Grand Cayman

Cayman Parrot (Official Bird of the Cayman Islands)When we woke up this morning the Golden Princess had anchored close to the shore of Grand Cayman Island. Our life boats were going into the water to serve as tenders. The process of lowering the boats off our ship is complicated and fun to watch.

As is often the case we had little interest in going ashore and taking part in "activities." Been there, did that. Or to be a little more precise: Been somewhere very much like there, did something very much like that. We stayed on the ship and had a wonderful time.

There were seven other reasons to stay on the ship. Other cruise ships in port were: Carnival's Imagination, Inspiration and Carnival Liberty, Celebrity's Constellation, Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas, Radiance of the Seas and Voyager of the Seas and, of course, our own Golden Princess. That's a lot of tourists (at least 12,000) all trying to snorkel on the same beach. Yesterday the Golden Princess was the only cruise ship visiting Montego Bay.

In the weeks just before we left on our cruise there were reports of the Norwalk virus on several cruise ships. We decided to be extra safe and took Dial liquid soap, packets of Wet Ones, and bottles of Purell. The ship had dispensers of hand sanitizers at the entrances to all the eating areas and there were signs up on how to avoid contamination. Of course I am not sure how effective the anti-bacterial stuff is in fighting viruses, but washing your hands a lot can't hurt. We heard of no cases of illness on the ship.

At 5:00 P.M. we were on our way to Cozumel, 326 nautical miles to the northwest.

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