Bahamas

2/9/11: Six posts of our cruise pictures and commentary are now completed below.

We went on a PANAMA CANAL CRUISE for our 40th Wedding Anniversary, thus enabling me to cross off another special experience on my 'bucket list.' Along the way we made stops in the southern Caribbean. We flew to Ft. Lauderdale on Friday, January 21st and returned home at night on Tuesday, February 1st.

Arriving at Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

Private island owned by Holland America Lines

The 'ship' on the beach is a bar.

The water almost looks fake!

Get a load of that gorgeous Caribbean blue water!

We took a tender to shore

Looking back at our dam ship...the Zuiderdam. The last time we cruised (from San Diego to Hawaii, all around the islands, then back to San Diego) we were on the Zaandam.

Para-sailing. We didn't feel a need to purchase a shore excursion in the Bahamas as we've already experienced most of what they offered and they are expensive.

We enjoyed the wonderful hot temperatures, walked along the beach in the nice, clean, soft sand, then relaxed a while in the peaceful and beautiful surroundings.

Our ship anchored in the bay

Reed on the beautiful sandy beach

After we left the Bahamas we sailed between Cuba and Haiti. We saw hundreds of small one man boats way out in the water, many miles off the coast of Haiti. I suppose they were fishing. I thought the ship was going to run right over the top of them. Many of the boats were more like crude rafts and sails appeared to be no more than a piece of visqueen-like plastic rigged up to catch the wind. In some cases there were several persons crammed onto one little boat and of course, no life vests were to be seen. The following pictures are of the coastline of Haiti.