TR: Caribbean Princess Cruise to the ABCs Pt. 2 – Curacao (11/8/16)

There were two things that we did on Curacao which would be repeated again in Aruba: 1) Rent a car. 2) Find us sharing the port with the Freewinds, the infamous Scientology cruise vessel. We rented from the Avis location at the Megapier, which was grossly under prepared for basic functionality. There was no power, forcing them to use carbon copies for credit cards. There weren’t any keys to get into the locked cars, which meant we had to wait until the parent location at the airport brought them. After waiting for somewhere in the zone of 30 minutes, we finally got our keys, but not the GPS unit I had requested.

TR: Caribbean Princess Cruise to the ABCs Pt. 1 – Ship Review (11/5-11/13/16)

In the past, I’ve done large multi-part trip reports of our cruises focusing on the boats, the ports, and all the cruise day activities. But my time is increasingly sparse, and it just seems wise to try to cut this down as best I can. This, our 12th cruise, was to an assortment of all new ports in the Americas. That’s quite the challenge, if I may be brutally honest with you. The ports of call were once the all part of the Netherlands Antilles, and have since split apart into a pair of constituent countries (Aruba and Curaçao) and a special municipality (Bonaire) of the Netherlands. Due to their close proximity to one another shared Dutch heritage, they are often called the “ABCs.” They are also geographically quite similar, being largely arid volcanic islands on the far northern edge of the South American plate with extensive reef systems close to shore. The biggest differences come in the degree to which each has been developed.

TR: Veendam Caribbean Cruise 2016: Pt. 6 – Costa Maya/At Sea (3/18 & 3/19/16)

Arriving into our final port of the cruise, we were welcomed by a slightly different sight than what was present the first two days: flat earth. The small town of Mahahual is barely visible when compared to the enormous cruise port facility that’s been constructed along the water front. We also weren’t alone here: two other ships had docked, one larger, one significantly smaller (NCL’s Dawn and the Swan Hellenic MV Minerva). There would be something akin to a “crowd” around us, though not much so much of one as to radically change our viewpoint. Like with our stop in Honduras, there are natural limits on the number of potential shore excursions one might be able to take, as most tour companies book through the cruise lines. Prices were anything but low: most trips towards the ruins were in the range of $120/person. Not exactly ideal.

2016 Veendam Cruise Trip Report Series

I’m very late in doing these, but here’s the Veendam Cruise Trip Report Series from our trip way back in March. I’ll update this as I go.

Pt. 1: Preface/Travel Day

Pt. 2: Ship Review

Pt. 3: Departure from Tampa and Key West

Pt. 4: At Sea 1/Trujillo/Banana Coast, Honduras

Pt. 5: Santo Tomas De Castilla, Guatemala

Pt. 6: Costa Maya/Mahahual, Mexico/At Sea 2

Pt. 7: Return to Tampa, Florida Aquarium

TR: Veendam Caribbean Cruise 2016: Pt. 3 – Departure & Key West (3/13-14/16)

Having boarded the vessel, we took to exploring the ship. Being under 60,000 tons, that reduces the number of venues that one has to walk through, but if I have to be honest, it doesn’t do so to that great a degree. Yes: there is no climbing wall, no water slide complex, no parades. And that’s perfectly OK sometimes. Actually, a lot of times. We sat down to an early dinner in the main dining room, and were able to consume dessert and run out to the promenade as we went under the Sunshine Bridge. Having noted the kinda lousy sight lines in the theater when we walked around earlier, we made the obscenely wise choice to skip the Sail Away variety show. Random lounge performers seemed more our speed now that we had the drink package and free alcohol (a bonus thrown in with our fare).

TR: Veendam Caribbean Cruise 2016: Pt. 2 – MS Veendam Ship Review

The MS Veendam is a ship from Holland America line, and is by far the oldest vessel I’ve ever been on. In service now for 20 years, Veendam is also the smallest ship I’ve ever taken at a measly 57,000 tons. Now, at the time it was constructed, that was a whole lot of ship. Honestly, it still is. But these days, the Oasis class ships displace roughly 4 times as much in the ocean as little ‘ol Veendam. 57,000 tons is a “midsize” ship, not a megaboat, and that means it lacks some amenities like water slides or interactive video characters. This could be problematic for you if those are things that make or break your vacation experience. Us: not so much.

TR: Veendam Caribbean Cruise 2016: Pt. 1 – Preface/Travel Day (3/12/16)

I’ve written many trip reports, and many of them were about cruises. This, I am proud/regret (?) to tell you is yet another in that series. In fact, this is my 11th such trip report of a cruise. 11. That seems an astronomical number for me given that I started cruising back in 2007. This particular one was itinerary and ship driven: I like new cruise lines and cruise ports, and this was all of that. And it was pretty cheap. We’d have been hard pressed to find a comparable Royal Caribbean or Carnival cruise at a similar price, and it would have had lots of ports that we didn’t find terribly exciting. We also got to leave from Tampa, and Tampa’s always convenient and cheap.

Well, OK, not always. This was booked around spring break week because we had the time off requested long before choosing the cruise. The cruise, more or less, was a replacement when a bigger family trip fell through. And since we were planning around a specific week that has high traffic, the hopes of getting cheap airfare kinda went out the window. Delta was demanding over $500 round trip to Tampa for lousy times, and exceeded $600 for flights that provided more time. That was lousy. Airtran being consumed by Southwest doesn’t help anything for us, as they’ve largely removed service from Flint and Grand Rapids so as to not compete with their Detroit offerings. Oh, consolidation, aren’t you just wonderful!

TR: Asia Trip 2015 – Part 12: At Sea/Cruise Conclusion (10/27-10/29/2015)

As the ship headed away from Phuket on our final leg of the journey, most of our on board activity actually lie ahead. We were forecast to see some haze and rain heading back, but soon enough the weather would clear up and we’d be in as good of shape as anyone can expect at the start of rainy season in the tropics. Indeed, the rain issues forced Royal Caribbean to twice postpone the Dreamworks Character Sailaway thing on the top deck, a fact that had absolutely no real effect on our trip whatsoever.

TR: Asia Trip 2015 – Part 11: Phuket, Thailand (10/26-10/27/2015)

The final port of the cruise would be at a place I had mixed feelings about. Phuket was a rarity as both a tender port and overnight stop, which gave us tons of time to do all sorts of things ashore. And to be very fair, Phuket has a large number of options for entertainment. One could argue that it occupies a space for Australians kinda similar to something like Cancun or Montego Bay does to Americans. And to that end, the combination of Europeans, Aussies, and backpacking Americans that have been coming here in droves have led to massive amounts of construction and development. As is often the case in the developing world, this development has been haphazard and led to a number of unintended consequences. Indeed, Phuket might be best called “the land of unintended consequences.”

TR: Asia Trip 2015 – Part 10: Langkawi (10/25/2015)

The next stop for our cruise was the port of Langkawi in Malaysia. Only a smidge north of our previous port of Penang, there was a noticeable reduction in haze present here upon waking up. Unlike Penang, you aren’t in the middle of the action when you disembark. Instead, the port of Langkawi is a few minutes from the center of town at a pier set up over by the Resorts World Langkawi Hotel. Given that most of the tour options from Langkawi were based more around ecotourism, that was the direction we chose to take.