Toonjie's AOS Review

[twinlges]

Well worth the wait for the next installment. Your pictures are beautiful. Now I'll just savor for a little!

Thanks,

Katie

[recgirl]

What days were the formal nights? I am going on the AOS on 8/31 with friends and am trying to figure out when to book at the Portofino. This will be my 2nd time on AOS but their first.

[toonjie]

What days were the formal nights? I am going on the AOS on 8/31 with friends and am trying to figure out when to book at the Portofino. This will be my 2nd time on AOS but their first.

 

Monday and Thursday. Wednesday is the weakest menu and is a popular night for Portofino.

[elkaybee]

Am so glad-I can finally view the pics everyone has been talking about! They are awesome. Great job. I am drooling over this cruise.

Thanks,

Laura

[recgirl]

Thanks! I have enjoyed your review.....can't wait to read the rest!

[mowerman]

Thanks Toonjie This Is A Great Review Your Making Our Wait More Painful But Let Me Say I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way.:d

[toonjie]

Thanks Toonjie This Is A Great Review Your Making Our Wait More Painful But Let Me Say I Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way.:d

 

Thanks so much! The next 2 installments are some our best days ever! "Herod the Great" An Incredible Day in St. Lucia" and "The Sought of the Seekers," The Adventure Seekers Adventures in Antigua"

 

Stay tuned! DW is heading home to Vermont for a few days with the family-last time she can fly up before her due date, so that will leave lots of peace and quiet for writing! :)

[Wags67]

Toonjie...A great big Bravo!!! :) I found your review last night about 11:00pm...Stayed up till 11:30 reading it....I wanted to finish reading it today but couldn't find it:( I had to look you up in the member list...good thing I remembered your sn...That is how captivating your review is...I love to read reviews and have read tons of them...I wanted you to know that yours is incredible! Love the way you are talking, love your pictures & I'd like to say thanks for taking the time to do this for everyone:)

Good Luck with lil' Tonnjie...I'm sure he'll be a cutie;)

[Linda74]

Thank you so much for the awesome review. If you ever get tired of teaching, you surely will have a career as a travel writer. We live in Ct. also!!! God Bless you both with your upcoming parenthood. It is the best thing!!!!! And we can still say that after 29 years!!!! Your San Juan advice was invaluable for our upcoming Princess Cruise. Thanks also for the pictures of the El San Juan which we got on Priceline because I was an impatient bidder but not sweating it so much after your report.

[roe2ship]

Thanks so much for taking the time to post a review......it has been wonderful. Great photos too!

[toonjie]

Toonjie...A great big Bravo!!! :) I found your review last night about 11:00pm...Stayed up till 11:30 reading it....I wanted to finish reading it today but couldn't find it:( I had to look you up in the member list...good thing I remembered your sn...That is how captivating your review is...I love to read reviews and have read tons of them...I wanted you to know that yours is incredible! Love the way you are talking, love your pictures & I'd like to say thanks for taking the time to do this for everyone:)

Good Luck with lil' Tonnjie...I'm sure he'll be a cutie;)

 

Thanks so much! I should be cranking it up now because DW is in VT for a last visit with the family before baby time. :) Hoping to write a lot while she's gone and just pray I get the chores done before she gets home! ;)

[toonjie]

Thank you so much for the awesome review. If you ever get tired of teaching, you surely will have a career as a travel writer. We live in Ct. also!!! God Bless you both with your upcoming parenthood. It is the best thing!!!!! And we can still say that after 29 years!!!! Your San Juan advice was invaluable for our upcoming Princess Cruise. Thanks also for the pictures of the El San Juan which we got on Priceline because I was an impatient bidder but not sweating it so much after your report.

 

Thanks! I'd love to be a travel writer! With the time it takes to write up a report, I'd be rich if I was on the clock! Imagine tax deductible cruising! I'll post more pics of the ESJ when we get to that part. I wouldn't mind staying there at all from what I saw, it looked great and seemed really well run with a friendly and helpful staff. Stay tuned!

[TxAllieGrl]

I'll add my THANKS to the thread now - this is a great write up! looking forward to the next installments.

 

I'm on the AOS next March..yipee!

[bambam2972]

I've wanted to cruise on the Adventure so bad, and now after reading your review I want to go now! :p But in the meantime I'm enjoying living vicariously through your awesome review.

 

Thanks for taking the time to post, and hurry up with the rest. :D

[toonjie]

“Herod the Great”

Wednesday, May 14th Antigua

 

 

We sleep in as much as possible, but we’re in St. Lucia from 8:00am to 4:30pm and we have loads planned so it’s an early riser. As soon as we got up, around 6:45am, we opened the shades and were able to see the Pitons off in the distance..yeah aft balcony! The Pitons are one of our favorite sites. DW and I spent a week in St. Lucia and it is one of our favorite places in the world.

 

 

 

Room service breakfast comes shortly after 7:00am and there’s nothing like eating breakfast on your balcony while watching the gorgeous coastline of St. Lucia go by. We’re ready to get off the ship around 7:45am. The plan: Since we’ve all been to St. Lucia before, (mom and I did the catamaran sailing tour 2 years ago), and DW and I covered most of the main sites on our weeklong trip, we wanted to see as much as possible, but also relax.

Since DW is pregers and can’t dive with me this trip, I was given the green light to dive alone a couple of times and I thought St. Lucia would be the perfect place to leave mom and DW alone for a bit with the gorgeous scenery and beautiful beaches. So time was of the essence if I was going to dive and I also knew St. Lucia’s winding, hilly roads take much longer to traverse than you would think just going by the mileage involved. The good diving is also at the southern end of the island, around and hour 15 minute drive from Castries, where the ship is docked. So renting a car was out and a guide was needed and so it was off to the St. Lucia board for some suggestions. Enter Herod…St. Lucia is one of those islands that has a bevy of what I call “superstar tourguides,” these are the guides that have a rockstar-like following among CCers and everyone has their favorite they swear is the best guide ever. Cosol is a great example in St. Lucia, at least 30 CCers were on his tour this day led there by tons of rave reviews. What I do in these cases is I read all the reviews and check out each website and I try to pick up and coming stars that do or go to places I know are great from what I already know of the island. What happens a lot is that these superstar tour guides get too big too fast from all the internet buzz and you can end up on a tour with one of their drivers, but not get much attention from the superstar themselves. You get their “production number” of a tour, but you don’t always get the star themselves touring with you the whole day, their time is often split between several van loads sometimes doing different tours. Herod caught my eye as one who had stellar reviews, but who wasn’t quite as well known. He also fit my evaluation criteria because he had a good website and took people to places I knew were great, in this case Jalousie Plantation Resort. Herod lives near the resort in Soufriere and he is one of a few guides that has full access to bring guests right on to the property without having to transfer them to the resort’s vehicles. Perfect for us! I needed to get to the dive asap and no need to transfer mom to a different van. Herod also returned my emails promptly, another one of my evaluation criteria and he answered all my questions and we set up a custom tour just for us that would bring us by land to the resort and bring us back by sea, that was the kicker, Herod has a friend with a 27 foot boat that he uses to give tours along the coast. This way we could enjoy the resort as much as possible and be wisked right back to the ship in 40 minutes and enjoy the gorgeous coastline to boot! When I called Jalousie Plantation Resort to arrange the diving, the lady said she knew Herod and said what a nice guy he was, they were both from Soufriere. After being the guide in Barbados, I was looking forward to being driven around by a native and not having to worry about directions! So that’s how the plan came about.

We take mom off the ship in her Serenade of the Seas wheelchair and we’re off the ship around 8:15 am. Herod is waiting for us with a sign and takes us right to his van as we introduce each other and review plans for the day. By 8:30am we arrive at our first stop, the market in Castries to buy spices. DW and I learned about this place on our week-long trip and it is a must-do for everyone visiting the island! (It is within walking distance of the ship for healthy people and I’ll post a supplement with pics and directions on how to get there.) We buy a liter bottle of vanilla for $8! We get cinnamon, paprika, saffron, fresh cloves, nutmeg, some arrowroot to thicken gravy with no lumps and a few other spices. The market is a place where you bargain and our extensive travel in the Middle East comes in handy as we negotiate prices with the different sellers. We get everything for under $20! We have been enjoying these spices ever since we got home and you can taste the difference between them and store-bought big time! Herod swung the van around the block and met us on a side street. When we got back he and my mom were chatting about the city and he had already bought us a bunch of bananas. You have to try St. Lucian bananas, they are smaller and sweeter than the bananas we get here in the States, which come from South America. Unfortunately, the St. Lucian bananas are only exported to the UK. Our first stop took only around 10 minutes and we’re on our way. We stop at Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and Derrick Walcott Square. I’m already convinced Herod is the greatest! He’s super-knowledgeable and knows how to get things done efficiently. Within a few minutes and a few tiny back streets of Castries we are on our way up the hill for a great overview of Castries and the ship before the road turns South. Herod points of the Brigand Unicorn, which was used in both the mini-series Roots and the Movie Pirates of the Caribbean.

 

AOS and Brigand Unicorn:

 

Next up at the top of the hill is the governor’s mansion, Herod explains the governor is a woman, and the position is really just a figure-head type one with no real power, but she has a really nice house with a killer view!

We head South and Herod is pointing out things as we go along and we are comparing St. Lucia to other islands we have visited, our rapport is already like friends rather than tourguide-tourists. We pass Marigot, one of the most beautiful Harbors in the Caribbean, and I ask if George Foreman still lives there, Herod said he sold it. (I’ll post a pic of his former house from our other trip to St. Lucia in a supplement so you can see what all those Foreman Grills can buy!) We pass the Hess transfer station, which is the only unsightly thing on the West coast of St. Lucia. It is used by ships coming from South America who offload their fuel and it is then stored there until it is picked up by other ships and also used on the island as well. Herod has a gorgeous new van and is a smooth driver, DW didn’t get sick from the winding hills and that is saying something because loads of CCers got sick on other tours. From the Hess refinery South DW have only been by water since when we flew in to the airport at the southern end of the island, we took a thrilling helicopter tour up to Castries landing at Vigie Field and flying over the Radiance of the Seas, docked there that day. That helicopter tour was one of the best things we have ever done and it was amazing to circle the Pitons that close and then fly over the mountainous rainforest. So this was our first time exploring some of the little fishing villages that we just had viewed from the coast on our catamaran tour. One thing that we really appreciated is that Herod always picked overlooks that were away from the trinket selling vendors, he knew the only shopping we wanted to do was for spices and he avoided the peddlers as much as possible. We tour the villages of Anse La Raye and Canaries and Herod talks about the meager subsistence economy that exists for much of the island.

 

Gorgeous overlooks abound:

 

 

We see a man making charcoal by burning wood slowly in a smoldering fire under tons of green leaves, women wash clothes in small streams. We stop at a local bakery and Herod comes back with some piping hot bread that is just the best ever! We enjoy it all the way to a scenic overlook of Soufriere and the Pitons.

 

 

We descend into Herod’s home town and explore around, the children are just getting out of school for morning recess and Herod recites a typical school day and tells us what life is like in Soufriere. It’s only around 10:30am and we have already seen so much! Our final stop before Jalousie is Toraille Waterfall. It’s only a short walk so we can see it quickly and (DW and I have been to the larger falls in the botanical gardens and we also did a jungle bike hike to some great falls as well. We had also all been to the drive-in volcano, so we skipped that this time.)

Herod wisks us into Jalousie Plantation Resort, which is located right between the 2 Pitons, and he was able to drive us all the way down to the beach. We find out the dive boat is running late and so the 11:00am dive I was trying to make would be delayed a little, perfect! I have time to get mom and DW settled and to fill out the paper work for the dive. Herod says he’ll return for us a 3:00pm and go with us on the boat ride back. I was really surprised at this since he lives in Soufriere, I thought at best he’d get us on the boat and wave goodbye. Herod is Da Man! My dive was in the Anse Chastenet Marine Reserve at a site called Piton Wall and it was just great, the best way to describe it is that it is the same kind of terrain as the Pitons themselves only underwater. We planned a depth of 70 feet max, but encounter a large Hawksbill turtle and follow him down to 90 feet. We saw another one hiding in a cavern sleeping as we ascended. There were tons of colorful fish, including 2 of my favorites, the Stoplight Parrotfish and the French Angel. I’m back in around an hour to find a much relaxed and content DW & mom and by this time all the Adventure Seekers form the Meet & Mingle who are on Cosol’s tour have arrived and we spend around 20 minutes comparing stories. Many of them got sick on the winding roads and are jealous we get to return by boat! Everyone is having a blast though and they really loved Cosol. They spent about 45 minutes at Jalousie and when they departed, we ordered burgers for lunch from the restaurant and the servers brought it right to our chairs on the beach and set up a table for us. Food was scrumptious and we forgot that we had an earlier than normal dinner since our Portofino reservation was for 6:30pm. There were a few times that we had maybe 30 seconds of rain, tops and otherwise the weather was perfect all day.

 

Herod is Da Man!

 

At 3:00pm Herod arrived with his friend and his boat and docked right at the pier. He even had a friend come by land, Simon, of Simon Says tours, to help get my mom in the boat. Simon seemed like a really great guy as well from what we saw of him. We got my mom down into the boat surprisingly easily and were off. The first stop on our sea tour was near Soufriere and it was a cleft in the rock where there were thousands of fruit bats. You could see some of them, but you could hear that there were thousands more deeper in that you couldn’t see, it was a neat sight that we hadn’t seen on any of our other tours. We continued up the coast and Herod pointed out many of the sites we had visited by land that morning. There was the occasional cell phone tower tucked away in a ravine and our T-Mobile phones worked all day, even in the boat!

We were sad to see the ship as we entered the harbor because it meant that our wonderful day was coming to an end.

 

AOS docked at Pointe Seraphine, Castries

 

We said our fond farewells to Herod and since we arrived at Point Seraphine at around 3:45pm and all aboard wasn’t until 4:30 so we spent some time shopping for gifts and bought some of that famous St. Lucian banana ketchup, you have to try it, it’s really good even though the yellow color is weird since it tastes just like ketchup. They basically use banana instead of some of the sugar in regular ketchup. We also got some mango jelly that is just great on English muffins. We bought a few exotic soaps for my mom to give as gifts and got onboard around 4:25pm, hate to leave a second early!

We watch sailaway from the balcony, take a short nap and then get ready for Portofino. Dinner and service were fantastic as always and we all have the Filet Mignon with mashed potatoes as an entree, which is excellent. We finish around 8:30pm and mom retires early and DW and I drop off our internet coupons at the purser’s desk and use the internet café. It’s slow as usual, they must have a better system on the Mariner, because when we were on her that internet service was much faster. Anyway, the coupons just about cover checking our email 3 times during the cruise, but that would have been about $20 if we have to pay out of pocket! We take a romantic stroll to the front of the ship hoping to find dolphins like we have in the past, but no luck. Two years ago on the AOS as we passed between St. Lucia, and Martinique a pod of dolphins caught up to us and rode the bow wake and you could even here their blowholes open as they took a breath! It was an amazing experience! We headed back to the cabin for a much needed good night’s sleep! Definitely one of our best days ever!

 

Continue on for posts with more pics!

[toonjie]

The AOS actually gets clearance from the control tower of Vigie Field before entering the harbor as we cross the approach to this small airfield used for inter-island "puddle-jumpers."

 

Approaching Pointe Seraphine with its shops:

 

Church of the Immaculate Conception:

 

Derek Walcott Square:

 

 

Governor's House:

 

Man making charcoal:

[toonjie]

Woman doing laundry:

 

Small fishing villages abound:

 

 

Soufriere with Pitons in background:

 

Herod & DW

 

Those amazing Pitons!

[toonjie]

Toonjie @ Toraille Falls:

 

 

Flowers at the falls:

 

 

 

[toonjie]

Jungle canopy & Sky at Toraille Falls:

 

 

 

 

Beach at Jalousie Plantation Resort in the middle of the Pitons:

 

[toonjie]

Mom Settles in on beach:

 

Boat trip back:

 

Soufriere from the water:

 

The Batcave: Thousands of fruit bats sleep until nightfall in the rainforest:

 

Pitons from the water near Soufriere:

 

Second guy from the front was fishing totally nude!

 

I told you I needed more zoom lens!

[toonjie]

Hess Transfer Station:

 

The only bad view in St. Lucia:

 

AOS from mouth of harbor:

 

Sad sight, only because a great day is almost over:

 

[BILL-WI]

Wonderful...The photos are magnificent!

 

BILL

[toonjie]

Debark the ship and head right and go out of the gate to the port:

Follow this road left at the stern of the ship and make a right near the blue building in the background.

 

Follow the road around the inlet in this pic:

You'll cross the bridge at the extreme left and just follow this main road along the water into town.

 

It leads right to the market:

The building with the red roof is the market and this shot is from my aft balcony, so it is straight at the back of the ship. It is around a 10-15 minute walk from the ship.

 

It's that simple, have fun bargaining and you will have the freshest spices known to man! :)

 

Oh, and funny story, security thought my pint of vanilla was a pint of booze from the xray, so I took it out to show him and he laughed!

[green eyed lady]

Your pics have me very anxious for August to get here :D Great review...I feel like I'm there already! ;)

[toonjie]

Your pics have me very anxious for August to get here :D Great review...I feel like I'm there already! ;)

 

Thanks! And you hang on 'til we get to the part you're interested in, I'll have more pics of the El San Juan Hotel for you.