Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Caribbean Cruising Part 2 Isla Roatan

Today we visit Isla Roatan. It's an island off of the coast of Honduras.





The tourism trade here is fairly new so they only have a small area for tourists.
There is some bartering here on the island outside of the touristy port area but its very
easy to barter. They practically drop the prices for you just so you will buy something.

Roatan has two shipwrecked ships here. One from the 1960's and one from 1980's.



This one was from the 60's.





This one was from the 80's.

The first shop we walked into off of the pier welcomed us with HUGE bottles
of booze!!!!



YUMMMMM!!!!!




Liquor is cheap here. Most of those huge bottles didn't even hit $100.



I had more pictures to share of Roatan but the uploader for blogger is not letting me
put up anymore pics today. I will have to try later.
When we came back from our day trip we were welcomed with towel animals. We found out that we had to hide the previous animals for them to make new ones.



Another half eaten meal. Sorry :(
I practically ate this everyday since there really wasnt much else for lunch
on the ship. Veggie burgers, fries, salsa/chips, and salads.



When I can get more pics up I can show you what most of my dinners looked like.

Thursday, September 9, 2010

Cruising the Caribbean Part 1 Grand Cayman

A month ago I took a cruise on Carnival Cruise Lines to the Western Caribbean. The trip as a whole was great but the food was not so great. I knew going in I was going to have some issues with the food portion of the trip but I will get to that soon enough. For now. Pictures!!

Grand Cayman



It occured to me after I came home that I really should have taken a picture of the whole plaque. Oops.


Me with Big Black Dick :D He is the reason for great Caribbean Rum. Yummm!
I won't tell you how many bottles we brought home of that stuff.




These are some of the turtles at the Turtle Farm of Grand Cayman. These particular turtles are in the mating pond. Turtles (unfortunately) are a main part of cuisine at Grand Cayman. But the good news is that at this farm they raise turtles and let some of them out into the ocean.




This one is child size. They have separate ponds for adults, "teenagers", "children", and babies.
This little guy was hamming it up for us.




The chickens and roosters just run around free as a bird (haha) on this island.
A hurricane several years ago took out a chicken farm and they just never built a new
one.




Wild Chickens




This house is the oldest house on the island at 100 years old. It's called the Gingerbread house.




Yes, the water really is this blue and clear. I was awed by it the whole time I was in the Caribbean. And its so warm! You get different colours of blue depending on how deep the water is. The light reflecting back gives you a deeper colour the further down you go. It's absolutely beautiful.






All along the Caribbean there are coconut trees and vendors who cut down the coconuts, shuck them, put them in ice cold water and then for a nominal fee will open a hole for you, put in a straw and you get to drink ice cold coconut water. Some vendors will even break open the coconut for you when you're done so you can eat the coconut.




Coconut Tree




Almond Tree

As for food, like I said. It wasn't all that great. This was my very first meal on the ship.





A lettuce, tomato and grilled pepper sandwich on rye bread. Pathetic. But I was sooooo
hungry that I ate half of it before I remembered to take a picture. This unfortunately had
to keep me going until dinner.




This is part of the salad bar that they have every night on the Lido deck. I made a huge salad and it tasted great but I could not go on dinky sandwiches and a salad everyday.

One thing you should know about the dining room is if you have assigned dining then you can talk to your waiter about your food preferences and they can accomodate you.
If you have anytime dining you will need to talk to the Maitre D, since you may not be in the same seating area everynight or have the same waiter. They will work with you to make out a meal plan for the whole week and check on you every night to make sure everything is okay.
When you walk into the dining room tell the person at the counter that you would like to talk to the Maitre D. It may be a wait though.

One thing I did find out while talking to the Maitre D is that they cook some of their vegetarian foods in chicken stock and I would almost guess that they would use beef stock as well. I told her that cooking vegetarian foods in chicken stock no longer make the food vegetarian. She was unmoved by this comment. I feared for my vegan food. I opted for Indian, since that is one of the easiest foods to make vegan. I'm not entirely sure that my dinners were vegan but my breakfasts were. She was specific about using soy milk in my pancakes and gave me other options for foods that did not have animal products. The oatmeal by default is cooked with water. It is a bit watered down though.

There is also plenty of fruit on the ship. Lunches are all on the Lido deck. They have veggie burgers ( not sure how vegan they were), fries, salads, burritos, and tacos. I did okay on the ship but most of my foods were based on starches. Just about everyone on the ship that is staff is from another country. They speak English but really trying to grill someone on info about vegan products is sometimes like talking to a wall so be careful and use your own judgement.


Coming up, Isla Roatan, Belize and Cozumel