I’m thinking that the advertising director at Morton’s Salt was inspired by a visit to Puerto Rico when he came up with “When It Rains it Pours” slogan. During our brief visit to the island, we were treated to three ferocious thunderstorms, the last of which accompanied us as our ship departed San Juan early Saturday evening.
Eric and I arrived at the cruise terminal shortly after 11 Saturday morning and were on board the Azamara Journey within fifteen minutes. If you’ve cruised at all, you know it’s almost unprecedented for check-in to proceed so efficiently; kudos to Azamara!
Shortly before we departed San Juan, the first fat drops splattered down, followed quickly by a cascade of Biblical proportions. I bid Puerto Rico a fond if soggy farewell, ate dinner, and called it a night.
One of the reasons I took this cruise is that it will get me six new countries/territories to add to my life list. (Note to any bird-watching readers: I count countries because they’re much easier to spot and identify than birds; they generally stay put, excepting Poland, whose borders have shifted twenty or so times in the past two-and-a-half centuries.)
Virgin Gorda, our first port of call, is one of the British Virgin Islands. Being a BVI virgin, I can now add country/territory number 110 to my list after taking a three-hour sailing and land tour earlier today.
Virgin Gorda is a beautiful island. Steep, lush, resort-dotted hills plunge down to impossibly blue, yacht-dotted water. (There’s a lot of money here; Richard Branson owns two nearby islands, Necker and Mosquito.)
While I was sipping a rum punch and gliding around the neighboring cays, my far more adventurous brother hiked three kilometers from the dock to The Baths, a national park containing spectacular boulders and caves. Navigating one’s way through The Baths requires clambering, duck-walking, squeezing through fissures, and chest-deep wading, but as Eric’s picture shows, the effort was worth the candle, to use an expression even older than I am.
Tomorrow we visit Antigua. Until then, peace out:
