Naples, Florida
Naples is located on the gulf coast of Florida, giving it great beaches. This was an easy walk from my brother's home.
We got everybody but the camera man to pose. Janet with Dick and Judy.
Judy
has decorated the banyan trees along the street with
bromeliads. Naples has small banyans, only five or six
feet across.
We really enjoyed the Naples' Baker Art Museum. Inside there was
a big show of Rene Magritte, and these ladies were flying around
the atrium.
Dale Chihuly was represented, too. His ceiling inside was
not as generously lit as this Persian.
Tampa and Departure
The image above is a panoramic shot of the Tampa waterfront, as
seen from the top of our ship, the ms Ryndam, operated by Holland
America. To the right, we are standing on the upper
promenade deck of the Ryndam.
We shared a couple of ports with the Carnival Pride. With a
capacity for 2124 passengers, it is notably larger than the
Holland America Ryndam, which carries 1258 passengers. (The
Ryndam was handed off to P & O just months after our
cruise. It is now sailing around Australia as the Pacific
Aria.)
The mouth of Tampa Bay is spanned by the Sunshine Skyway
Bridge. This was pretty spectacular to drive across about
seven hours before we sailed under the bridge. The bridge is
4.14 miles long, and it connects St. Petersburg to the south of
Florida. Its vertical clearance of 180 feet is becoming a
problem because ships are getting too tall to pass under.
(Golden Gate Bridge has 220 feet of clearance, and it always looks
scary passing under the Golden Gate.)
Key West, Florida
This was our view of Key West from the ms Ryndam. The
colorful brick building turned out to house a collection of
uninteresting tourist shops. The building with a Mansard
tower is the City Hall.
This edifice opened in 1891 to serve as a center for federal
operations, particularly collecting customs. It also
included a post office and district courts. Today, it is the
Custom House Museum, still showing the Richardson Romanesque
architecture common in the Victorian era.
Everywhere you look in Key West, you find references to Ernest
Hemingway. Hemingway ate here; Hemingway drank here.
Well this is Hemingway's home, and you can see the line of
tourists. We missed going in here.
Another famous home is the "Little White House." This has
been used by presidents from William Howard Taft to William
Jefferson Clinton. Truman conducted a lot of business during
his total of 175 days here, and Eisenhower used this home to
recover from his heart attack. Originally built in 1890,
this place totals more than 8700 square feet.
Here we have Janet trying to hide a banyan tree, and not doing a
very good job of it.
Banana Coast (Trujillo), Honduras
Banana Coast is supposed to be the newest cruise
destination in the Caribbean. The first cruise ship arrived
here in October 2014, less than six months before we
arrived. The docks were still under construction, so we
anchored in the Bay of Trujillo, and took tenders in and
out. Christopher Columbus noted in 1502 that this bay was
well suited for ships. When Trujillo was capital of
Honduras, the bay was also well suited to pirates, so they moved
the capital inland.
Now that they are a full fledged cruise port, they have a stage
for a welcoming performance. On this day, our ship was
joined by the ms Riviera from Oceania Cruises.
In the old center of town, we have this building, a market place,
I believe. The town square is still a little bit
rough. Come to think of it, many of the streets are pretty
rough, too. The town has been languishing for a while.
Tourists may bring in enough money to spruce things up.
This is the interior of the San Juan Baptiste church, which faces
the town square. I found the interior to be more interesting
than the exterior.
The references say that Trujillo, because of its deep-water port,
was a shipping center for gold and silver. Our tour guide
said it was more recently a shipping center for bananas. It
is also said that O. Henry coined the term "banana republic" while
staying here.
Janet found a necklace she liked. In fact she found two,
and we brought one home as a gift. We found this at a market
set up specifically for the ships' passengers. Usually those
places are disappointing, but this was an exception.
Santo Tomas De Castilla, Guatemala
Our stop at Santo Tomas de Castilla was dominated by a tour to
Castillo de San Felipe de Lara. This fort was built by the
Spanish to protect the port of San Antonio de las Bodegas on the
south shore of Lake Izabal from frequent pirate attacks.
Parts of this fort go back to 1644, but is has been rebuilt over
the centuries.
This old cemetery was along side our long trek from the parking
lot to the shores of Lake Izabel and the Castillo.
This is on the second level of Castillo de San Felipe, with Lake
Izabel in the background.
These cannons were intended to intimidate or destroy English
pirates, trying to get to the port of San Antonio. The
people are strangers.
This is not a pirate. This is my favorite tourist.
This is the local green grocer, as seen from our motor coach.
This is a closer view of the ms Ryndam, moored at the port of Santo Tomas de Castilla. In the back of your intrepid photographer, there was a huge long shed filled with vendor booths, hoping to sell us wonderful things. None that I saw were that wonderful.
The dock at Santo Tomas de Castilla was a huge concrete plane, clearly dedicated to commercial shipping. These dancers, seen from the balcony of our stateroom, were part of the local entertainment, thanks for the dollars brought into town.
Costa Maya, Mexico
Costa Maya is adjacent to a fishing village Xcalak, which was a major Mayan trading port for dugout canoes. However, it was isolated until about 1980, and in 1995 it was designated as an ecological tourism era. That led to the construction of docks, but they were destroyed in a 2007 hurricane. New docks, shown here, were opened 2008. The big attraction is several Mayan ruins in the vicinity, some in Mexico and more in Guatamala.
Just in case you thought the Mayan theme might be lost on the
folks coming off the ship, there was a costumed dancer to meet us.
We elected to take a tour to Chacchoben, where this temple
pyramid is one of several structures from ~ 700 AD to have been
excavated. The road we took was in better shape than most
San Jose, CA streets.
This pyramid has a small shelter, and I believe that this is the
back side of the temple above.
Chacchoben was our only stop where we actually got rain. It was threatening at Banana Coast, but here there was a brief, intense shower. Janet was able to borrow an umbrella, but I was exposed on an elevated plateau.
We got back from Chacchoben too late to try out all the tourist shops. (Sob Sob) Here we are rushing down the dock to the ms Ryndam.
Scenes on the Ship
The ms Ryndam has a three-deck atrium, and this vaguely marine sculpture is in the center.
Holland America is a pretty traditional cruise line, and they have retained two formal nights for a one week cruise. This was our first formal night. My tux was rented on the ship, meaning I didn't have to lug it around.
You cannot go to the Caribbean without listening to steel drums. The artist calls himself Ravon, and it's the Banana Boat Song.
This is a shot of the show room on the Ryndam.
Every slide show has to end with a sunset. This was the
view from our veranda on the way back from Costa Maya.
