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Day 72 - 12/17/23 - At Sea to FLL - Day 1

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 All good things must come to an end.  It's now the first of two sea days before reaching Fort Lauderdale and the end of our 73 day cruise.  Given that it's Sunday, our first activity was to attend the final interdenominational church service.  It was good and we celebrated the 3rd Sunday in Advent. A light breakfast followed before we attended the well attended. ASK THE CAPTAIN session.  Captain Smit was his usual charming self and answered many questions from the audience.  A few key questions were asked.  First was about how efficient were we in conserving water on the trip up the Amazon.  Amazingly we conserved around 100 tons of water per day which totally astonished him.  Consumption went from 350 tons to 250 tons per day.  The second question was what was his favorite ship.  Without hesitation, he responded, "MAASDAM!"  It's also one of our favorite ships.  He also added that the Zaandam is his new "Maasdam". His 3 ...
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Day 71 - 12/16/23 - San Juan, Puerto

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 For the most part, we slipped into San Juan quite early and the docking process never woke me up.  By the time we left the ship around 8:30am for the mandatory US Border Protection. Face to Passport inspection, Florin reported to me that the entire crew had been inspected in under an hour starting at 7pm.   We headed out of the port with a short stop to thank the Shore Excursions Manager, Debbie, for not cancelling the Baths excursion yesterday.  We walked towards the fort and stopped at a Subway for a breakfast omelette which was quite good.  We continued our walk until we reached Anita's Gelato where we enjoyed açaí smoothie.  We then toured the Cathedral and walked out to the Fort.   Unfortunately we didn't have our National Park Pass with us, so we had to pay $10 each to get in.  But it was also valid at the other fort about a mile away.  While we had visited the Fort previously, we still walked all over it and enjoyed the views.  W...
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Day 70 - 12/15/23 - Road Town, Tortola, British West Indies

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 This is another port and the last this voyage  that is a first for us.  We arrived early and backed into our berth.  Guests were allowed to disembark by 8am. Our shore excursion "Virgin Gorda & the Baths" came highly recommended by our friends, Susan & Rick.  It was a 40 minute catamaran ride to Virgin Gorda on another island.  From there we boarded F-450 open air shuttles for the 10 minute ride to the starting point for the "walk".   Devil's Bay Beach The caves A lone crab There were two options:  Walk the entire loop, or just go down to the Bath beach. We elected to do the entire loop and it was a wise choice as we really enjoyed it.  We walked down a gently sloping but twisty trail that threads its way down through the rock formations and ends up a Devil's Bay beach.  Many elected to go swimming, but I chose to photograph the scenery. From there we hiked over to the Caves where we waded through huge rock formations and ended ...
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