Crystal Serenity 2016 North West Passage Cruise

We cleared the Crystal North West Passage cruise wait list with a guaranteed C1 cabin! We're going. It is very expensive, so here is hoping it is a great trip. Just when I had thought we'd take some time off traveling, I am checking 2 items off my long term bucket list!

According to the Cruise Critic roll call, the people who have been booked for months are already shut out of the limited excursions Crystal offers. When you visit such remote, non-tourist spots you don't usually have a lot of capacity or choice. I have to assume that in all of the remote ports, Crystal's shore excursions are the only thing to do ashore. In fact, my understanding is that since a number of them are zodiac wet landings that if you are not booked on a Crystal shore excursion that you aren't going ashore at all. Well, hopefully at some point we'll be able to arrange something with Crystal so that we'll be able to go ashore at every opportunity. Usually on expedition type cruises, the ship's staff and crew just does this without selling extra tours but not so on here. Also, they usually build in the flexibility to go where and when it is advantageous to be, so they don't sell excursions. Anyway. Time will tell. Crystal has never done this before. No one has done this before with such a large cruise ship. There are about a half dozen complimentary community visits and fingers crossed they will have capacity on those for every passenger aboard who wants to go.

Well, stayed tuned. Although this is far from a road trip, I plan to blog about it here instead of in a stand alone blog. We are shut out of Crystal's Denali pre-cruise, but have hopes and plans to do our own version independently, so it should start out as a road trip anyway. We booked Amtrak home from New York at the end. That should be an easy day home! Knock on wood. We re-used those infamous Delta miles to book one-way First Class seats to Anchorage. Fingers crossed! After they never got us to Orlando, you can imagine my trepidation, but Clay was gung-ho to give Delta a chance to redeem themselves.

It's very exciting...

Leaving Havana

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Our final Cuban sunrise. The sun has finally returned to Cuba!



Horse cart signs

We had a final breakfast buffet about 7:45am. Bags were out by 9:45am. We loaded the bus at 10:15am. We had a stop at a group of open-air thatched-roof small buildings. There were rest rooms, bars, souvenirs and snacks and music. There were 4 or 5 other buses there so I guess it exists solely for tour bus stops.

Horse cart signs and always people waiting by the road

Old cars

Old train crossing in Matanzas

It looked like it came out of a Mad Max movie!

Our roadside rest stop

Papaya tree

Havana Club Rum factory

We arrived at Jose Marti Airport at Havana about 12:40pm. The place looked like a mob scene out of India or Saigon. Oddly enough most of the throngs were outside arrivals waiting. That worked for us with light crowds at departures. We had a pretty short wait to have our bags weighed and checked. Trish ran around exchanging CUCs to US Dollars for people who wanted and she could find Cuban citizens willing to do it at 1 to 1. Again , contrary to our pre-trip info only our checked bags were weighed against our 44 pounds allowance. We went to security around the corner but first had to exit a final time through customs/immigration. They took our last segment of visa. They had us remove our glasses for photos. The lines were short and there were several lines open. You exited directly into a very short line for security. We all got through quickly after removing our watches and shoes. Right around 1pm we were at the gates area, I guess you would call it, a large open room with rest rooms (reeking!), a small cafeteria area, some shops, duty free, money exchange, etc. In the center of the room was a lot of seating, but not really enough. It took us some time to find an area to sit with all 4 together. It took more effort later to find seats together near the gate doors and glass front to see what was happening on the tarmac. Clay bought us sandwiches and drinks to share for lunch. Clay and Judy had a parting Cuban beer, Bucanero. Judy and I went to use the restroom at about 2:40pm thinking we had about 20 minutes before we’d start boarding for our 3:40pm flight. By now we had realized that we could not hear announcements where we sat nor could we watch the departure doors or boards closely. We got moved about an hour after our flight should have departed. That was about the same time our on time status and our flight listing disappeared from the status board. We could hear announcements and see everything now. We had learned that all the flights were delayed whether the status board listed it or not. We learned that some departures were announced and some were not. Some departures were posted over the exit doors and some were not. We heard 2 AA arrivals announced and saw the planes parked on the tarmac. There were a couple of Spanish-speakers in our group and 2 of them relayed that the 2^nd arrival should be our outboard to Miami. Given that we had waited over an hour for our own luggage on arrival and having watched several arrivals unload, we knew it would be about an hour and a half before we could possibly board. I went to the restroom again about 20 minutes in advance a second time. Almost a full six hours after we arrived we thought we saw them boarding our flight with no sign or announcement. Clay and I got up with our carry-ons and got behind about 8 to 10 people. We could see the agent scanning the boarding passes and the people going out and across the tarmac to what we thought was the right plane. We asked the people in front of us what flight they were boarding and they had the same flight number as we did. I waved Mom & Judy over and we struggled to hold our positions as people crowded and surged forward. The last people to board were still complaining that there had been no announcements or signs for the flight. I honestly have no idea how the first people in line and out and boarded knew it was time to go! Several people in our group asked how we knew and I told them we’d been watching. I had learned an important lesson at the Delta gate in RDU waiting to fly to Orlando on my birthday last year! If people sitting at the gate at RDU could be left behind because of no or wrong signage and no announcements, then it was bound to happen anywhere and it did. The AA ABC charter flight seemed to be completely full so I guess everyone today did figure it out.

Farewell to Cuba

The flight was about 45 minutes with another rushed and limited pretzel and beverage service. We landed and then it took us about another 2 hours to get out of the airport! MIA is a nightmare for international arrivals! They use kiosks for customs which does not seem more efficient to me than the old paper form filled out on the plane. We had to walk a maze, ride escalators and a train to get to a long line for a kiosk. It took our photos and printed them on a receipt. Clay’s receipt had a big X across it. Then we had another long line to get through border control/immigration. As we came to the end of the line, a woman was calling American citizens with an X to come to a shorter and closer line. Clay veered over and I tried to follow him. Mom & Judy were not far behind me. She had checked Clay’s form and waved him into her line but she told me no. I pointed to Clay as he walked away. She asked if I was with him and I said yes. By this time Clay had reached a turn in the line and turned around and said I was his wife. She told me to go ahead. I did and turned back as a large family shoved Mom almost to the ground. I was shouting to the woman that my Mother was with us. She finally got the family through and asked which my mother was. I pointed and she waved Mom & Judy through. I guess the X was a random assignment but it meant a shorter and quicker line with no photos or fingerprints. After we got through that we had to go to baggage claim. Three bags were found pretty quickly on carousel 9 but not Clay’s. Everyone was desperate for a bathroom by now. I was the last to go so I volunteered to stay with the luggage. There were few bags left on the carousel by now I noticed a lot pulled off and sitting around the aisles so I started scanning for Clay’s and soon found it. It was staged to be loaded on a cart by a man with a wife and small child in a stroller! I hesitated to leave the other’s bags but ran down and grabbed it just as the man reached to pick it up. It looked like Clay’s small black hard sided 4-wheeled bag and it had the 2 ribbons I had tied on it as well as the blue Friendly Planet strap and a Tulane University tag. The man yelled at me and I kept running back as I checked that Clay’s name was on the tag. I still can’t believe he was trying to take it! Clay and then Mom came back to me before the man finished loading his cart and he had to pass right by but did not confront me again about Clay’s suitcase. I used the restroom and then it took us about 15 minutes of walking to find that the line to exit the baggage claim circled the entire room! It was probably the distance of a city block. We learned that one of Judy’s wheels had been damaged! We were getting worried now. We thought there was a gate closing deadline for the paid parking lot where we left the car. I thought it was midnight or 1am. Clay thought it was 10pm. It was not written on the printouts I had remaining. (I had to give one to the attendant before we left. Inconveniently, I think it was printed there. Clay had a digital copy of it on his phone, in the car.) So we were rushing like the deadline was 10pm and we were all anxious to get to bed tonight anyway. It is exhausting to fly anymore! We all felt better for the US public restrooms anyway! After we got out of baggage claim with our bags, we got in more slow lines to get through Customs. Fortunately, we all only answered where we’d been and turned in our photo receipts here. Now we had to go up and down through some more mazes to get to the hotel shuttles. We walked outside and in about 100 feet saw the Crowne Plaza’s bus loading. Clay and I ran and caught it so we all got our bags and seats and arrived at the hotel’s secure parking lot and packed the car and left by 9:50pm. So we never did find out when or if they lock the gate. It poured rain again as we left. We haven’t missed a rainy day since this trip started! We had some kind of GPS malfunction and after driving in circles decided a stop for a quick meal was in order. We ate a quick light meal at McDonald’s and got Clay some caffeine and started out again using his phone as a GPS this time. We had already figured it out from the Google Maps and what Mom had read on road signs while eating, but we directly got out. Mom had the $3 for the Alligator Alley toll and we went on to her home in fairly heavy traffic for midnight and after. We all got to bed around one AM. Judy had planned to drive on home originally, but not after the 4 hour or so delay. There was another Cuban guide on our shuttle bus from the airport and he said the LA flight before ours was delayed even longer and he said last week his return flight had been delayed 10 hours. We were expecting delays and we got them.

There are some real challenges to traveling in Cuba that we have not experienced anywhere else in the world in the last 20 years. Change is the only thing happening rapidly in Cuba and we wish them well. We are all glad we went and all glad to be back in the USA. We discussed it again a few times in the past few days and no one has a desire for another trip. Of course, we said that after the Canadian Maritimes and the Mississippi River too, so time will tell.

One last random observation. I don’t think I wrote about it before but Clay commented on it and I don’t know if it bothered him as well I don’t know if our experience was usual or unusual. The thing was that out of our tour group of 23, only 4 were men. The other 19 were women. There were 2 mother-daughters traveling together, and one woman traveling alone but all the rest were women friends traveling in pairs. Only 4 couples were traditional married couples. As I say, I don’t have any reason to believe this was because of Friendly Planet or Cuba but it was remarkable and I thought I should point it out.

 

A cultural exchange moment. I don't remember writing about it before so I will do so here. Our Cuban guide, Grency, had her 31st birthday on Tuesday. I usually keep some embroidered patches from North Carolina in my travel purse. They are great for traveler diplomacy. They are a one size fits all gift that is compact and easy to carry as well as being just a cool thing to give someone who is unlikely to ever visit North Carolina. I try to keep at least 1 NC flag and 1 NC Great Seal in there. When I went to get one out to give Grency for her birthday, I only found a flag. OK, I gave it to her. When we got back to the room, I got out my stash of patches and put all of them in my purse. A couple of days later, Grency came back to me on the bus and gave me a Cuban 3 peso coin from 1990. She explained that it was interesting because of the picture of Che Guevara on one side and the Shield of Cuba on the other. She proceeded to explain the meaning of the symbols. I immediately started rooting in my purse for the Great Seal of NC. I knew she'd like it, as it too is rich in symbology. I gave her one and when she asked me to explain it I am sorry to say that I drew a blank! She told me she'd Google it. I have Googled both now of course. I found an interesting common element and I hope that Grency has too by now. I hadn't ever actually noticed it on NC's seal before, but there it is.  Both symbols contain a Phrygian cap, an ancient symbol of freedom! Of course, there would be a slight difference, Cuba's cap has a single star on it. Now we have all learned something.

I can recommend Friendly Planet Tours to Cuba and I suppose anywhere else on based on this trip.

 

Despite my earlier claims to the contrary, we have already planned a couple more short trips for 2016. We've already booked the spring NC Transportation Museum trip. We are waitlisted for Crystal Cruises' Northwest Passage cruise. Fingers crossed that we will somehow clear the waitlist and take this trip. The Northwest Passage cruise is the final trip on my bucket list! Also, for our birthdays this year, we have booked a parade view room of the 2016 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. I believe this may be the most expensive per diem ever for us! It is certainly the most expensive hotel room we've ever booked. There are fewer NYC hotel rooms with a parade route view than you would expect though, so I guess when you have a high demand, limited quantity commodity you can set your price high and still sell out. Just like that Northwest Passage cruise! So, stay tuned.

Varadero, Cuba

Friday, January 15, 2016

Sunrise

Clay's sea otters

We could not get anything but instant decaf coffee to make with the kettle in the rooms, so Mom & Judy decided to go to breakfast earlier. We met them shortly after they had gotten a first cup of coffee. We had planned for 7:30am and that was about when we started eating. I don’t think any of us actually slept in since we all saw the pink sunrise. We walked around after breakfast and Mom wanted to go photograph the beach but it was pouring rain when we got outside so we just looked from a covered area and went back inside to wait for our 9:45am departure.
 

Not otters!

Melia Varadero atrium

Melia Varadero pool

Melia Varadero

Our afternoon beach sitting spot at Melia Varadero

Our bus in front of Melia Varadero

We drove through some interesting countryside and through Coliseo where we saw a bridge to and from nowhere over train tracks. We skirted around Cardenas. It is famous as the home of the Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez who was brought to the USA by his mother without his father’s permission and eventually returned to Cuba by the US government by force and he became Fidel Castro’s poster boy. There were a crazy amount of horse drawn carriages and bicycles and hitchhikers on our route. They even had street signs with graphics to warn of slow moving horse drawn carts and carriages. I never did hear any rational explanation for the number of horse drawn vehicles around the Bay of Cardenas. The land between here and Havana has hardly any cultivation or crops. There is some right around here but between here and there where the land was hillier I did not see any cultivated land. I did see miles and miles of pumping stations for oil or natural gas or something all along the coast on both sides of the road. I would guess about 1 in 5 was actually pumping. Clay said it was because of the low price of oil. Grency told us Cuba gets most of their fuel from Venezuela and it is expensive. Maybe over $4/gallon. She said their domestic production is low quality with a high sulfur content and so used only for electricity production.

Our people-to-people visit today was at the home/studio/shop of a fabric tie-dye artist/fashion designer named Mariela. She had some beautiful and interesting fabrics inspired by Frieda Kahlo. She covered a square of fabric with leaves, beads, and other things and the image of Kahlo was already basted on it with heavy thread. She used a bunch of bottles of different colored dyes and a paint brush to decorate the fabric square. She finished by sprinkling dry rice over it as it was left to dry in the sun. It was interesting. She is preparing for a fashion show in NYC later this month that she was invited to. It will be her first visit to the USA.

Coliseo's bridge to and from nowhere

Another view of Coliseo's bridge

Cuba and old cars

Cuba and horse carts

Pottery kiln

We drove to lunch at Coincidencia Farm after that. We arrived about 11:45am again for an early lunch. We walked around the house and past the pottery kiln to a thatched roof shelter where our single huge table was set and a family-style lunch was waiting. It was good. Salad, stewed bok choy, some stewed white stringy stuff, Moors and Christians (what Cubans call the dish of mixed black beans and rice) and stewed pork with plaintain chips. For dessert they served small sweet bananas with a puree of papaya and honey.  They also served bottled water and mango juice and some extraordinary coffee after.

Debbie & Margie with weird fruit

Family style lunch

Clay's lunch

3 mother-daughter groups

An injured hawk oversaw our lunch

Potter at work on wheel

After lunch they took us on a tour and demo of their pottery/ceramics workshop followed by a crowded stop at their stop. There was a large group there already having lunch when we arrived and they toured first and the shop was pretty picked over by the time we could get in it. Oh well. Good for them.

A parade of old cars at a big cemetery

We got back to Melia Veradera by about 2pm. We came back to the rooms to use the restrooms and drop bags off. Then we all walked down the street to the small shopping mall next door. There was lots to buy and we were all spending off our CUCs. I think everyone has purchased everything they wanted and we still have more opportunities after security at the Jose Marti Airport tomorrow afternoon.

Finally activity of the day before the rain blew back in was sitting outside overlooking the beach for a restful little while. It was beautiful while it lasted. We availed ourselves of the all inclusive bars around the pool and enjoyed our final afternoon fully. We tried Trish's recommended favorite Cuban drink, a Cubata. This is like a Cuba Libre which is a rum and cola with lime. Cubata is made with 7 year old rum instead of younger and lighter stuff. It was powerful. When I saw how much rum he put in the cups, I asked the barkeep for an extra cola on the side.  Mom enjoyed some more of Cuba's fresh squeezed juices. Somehow, I don't think anyone got any photos of our beverages! I suspect cameras got left in the room when we returned from our bus outing.
 

Today was our last full day in Cuba. We had a bit of a rocky start on this trip, but all in all I think it has been a pretty good trip. Cuba is changing rapidly and hopefully for the better for all so I am glad that we came and came now.

Our tour group has dinner reservations at the steak house here at Melia Veradero tonight. Tomorrow we will leave mid-morning and go straight to Jose Marti Airport at Havana by noon or so to check in for our 4pm or so charted AA flight back to Miami. We will take the Crowne Plaza shuttle back to the car from MIA. We should be back at Mom’s house in Bonita Springs by 8pm or so. I am sure it will feel like another long travel day by the time we go to bed tomorrow but it will be good to get back. It feel even better when we get back to our own home. I am looking forward to being home for a while and we don’t have any future trips planned. But, stay tuned!

Dinner was a little disappointing. First, it is a small restaurant and they do not allow large groups to take over so we were seated at 2-4 tops and 3-6 tops so it wasn’t really a group dinner. That part was fine. We sat at our own 4-top quite happily. I didn’t like dinner and it wasn’t clear anyone else loved it. Three of us started with the stir-fry vegetables. They were served cold. I didn’t like that. Soup course was universally disliked. Clay and I had beef consommé with sherry. Clay’s was served steaming hot and mine was lukewarm. Go figure. It just tasted of salt and grease. Mom and Judy had cream of turkey with green vegetables. All they tasted was salt. The main courses were served under silver domes all lifted at once with a flourish. Really. Judy had chicken as a main course and she said it was fine. Clay had beef entrecote and it was nearly raw and mostly tough. Mom and I had beef tenderloin. Mom had hers with the menu listed mushroom sauce and medium. Hers was too tough to chew. I ordered mine butterflied and well-done and without sauce. I got peppercorn sauce on the side. Mine was not as tough as Mom’s and I gave her part of mine and we both had plenty since it was not that tasty and hard to cut. Everyone had pureed potatoes. I didn’t like them because they were cold, maybe warm, but not hot. Judy thought they were the best thing on the plate. Clay tasted his and his were cold too. It’s a mystery. Mom and Judy had lemon meringue pie and liked it. Clay had strawberry ice cream. I had cheesecake with strawberry sauce. There wasn’t really sauce, it was decorative. Everyone got a scoop of vanilla ice cream on their plates. I don’t know why. I didn’t like it. The cheesecake was served warm! WTH? We were the first table to leave the restaurant.

Tomorrow we’ll go to breakfast at 7:45am. Bags out at 9:45am. Bus leaves at 10:15am.  Grency said with a bathroom stop that it would be a 3 hour drive to the airport. Check-in begins at 12:40pm. The AA charter flight leaves at 3:40pm. It is scheduled to arrive at MIA at 4:45pm.

Leaving Havana for Varadero

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Alamar

So things went pretty well as outlined at the end of yesterday’s entry. We had breakfast at 7am. A minute or 2 after 8am we had a knock at the door for our bags which we kept and brought down ourselves. We put them into the baggage corral with the other Friendly Planet bags. I may have forgotten to say that we all got matching blue luggage straps in Miami. The porters started carrying them down the front entry stairs to the bus at 8:45am where we stood in the rain and watched and waited for Dagmar to load them under the bus. We left for our 2-night stay at Varadero at 9am.

 

We drove through Alamar on the way. This is a densely populated community built in Soviet-style and it looked bleak and familiar to us. Somehow mildew and mold didn’t seem to grow rampant on the unpainted concrete though.

Juicing sugar cane and pineapple

 

Our first stop was at 10am at Finca Vigia, Hemingway’s Cuba home. It was an impressive compound with 2 houses on it. Grency told us that he bought the property from a French industrial around 1938-39 for $18,500 or so. That sounded high but it was a big place. Tourists are not allowed inside. In inclement weather they don’t even open the doors and windows for you to look in. You have to walk around the outside and press up to the glass to see inside. It was still cool. The tower room that was meant to be his writing studio was open air and for a tip you could hand your camera over the rope and the docent inside would take photos of Hemingway’s typewriter and other stuff he left in place the last time he left. It has been preserved as he left it since his death. His boat, Pilar, was on display beyond the empty swimming pool. It looked great. We had an hour there and it was just about the right amount of time. Since it was raining and we were the first bus to arrive, it was probably not too crowded and that made it OK. It was still pretty crowded. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the drink they were juicing in the first photo from Finca Vigia.

Clay bought one so we could try it. Too rummy for me!

Peeling sugar cane.

Broom leaning against guard hut.

 

Fort at Cojimar.

Clay at the fort. It was closed.

Our next stop was in Cojimar. This was a small fishing village that inspired Hemingway to write the Old Man and the Sea. There was some story about it being where the largest shark ever caught in the world was brought ashore. I forgot that we were also told at some point yesterday that Cuba is home to the world’s smallest hummingbird. Mom & Judy thought they saw one outside Hemingway’s. They said it was about the size of a dragonfly!

 

In Cojimar we had about 15 minutes in the rain to take photos of the harbor and the tiny old fort and a bronze bust of Hemingway.

 

Virgin honey daiquiri

fish balls

Then we drove a short distance to Bodega Las Brisas for lunch. It was another paladar. It was good but not as good as yesterday, I thought. It was a seafood specialty place though so I may be of a differing opinion. It was a small place with 2 busloads at lunch. They served fish appetizers, fish gumbo, followed by a choice of grilled mahi mahi, paella, pork fajitas or chicken fajitas (no tortillas!) and rice pudding for dessert. The welcome cocktail was like a daiquiri but made with honey instead of sugar. I had one without rum and it was good. I drank it! I asked for a cola as my beverage expecting the usual TuKola but she asked me if I wanted diet or regular. I got diet and liked it even better than regular. Today was our earliest lunch yet at 11:45am.

fish gumbo

Diet Tukola

Grilled mahi mahi

Fajitas

Rice pudding

 

 

 

View from Cuba's tallest bridge.

Matanzas street scene

 

Our last stop at about 3:15pm was Traditions Alleyway in the town of Matanzas. It was a community effort to preserve and celebrate Santeria and Afro-Cuban heritage. It was interesting, colorful and entertaining. Some young performers sang, drummed and danced for us. Then of course they pulled people out to dance. One guy had 2 wooden weapons he danced with and he tried to give them to Clay and Clay pointed him to me. Before I could stop it, I had a wooden weapon in either hand and was out dancing with him. The good news was that every dancer had some tourist out there. The other good news is that when Clay switched to video his battery died!

 

 

 

Our seaview corner room!

Look at all that bed!

We arrived at the Melia Varadero sometime after 4pm. We got our green bracelets attached and our keycards and found our rooms. Mom & Judy got the small room this time. Clay and I were very happy to see our large corner balcony room with beach views. Two nights here won’t make up for 3 nights in a dark and dirty closet at the Nacional but it helps. The Melia is an all-inclusive resort. If the weather weren’t so chilly, windy and rainy it would be a lovely resort at which to spend 2 nights. We were free to have dinner at either the cafeteria or buffet tonight as we wished. Tomorrow we are supposed to have a group formal farewell dinner at Fuerteventura according to the itinerary. That is one of the smaller, reservations only restaurants at the resort. Tonight’s buffet and service were far superior to the Nacional’s. Unfortunately, one after another at a table nearby there was a man who had too much alcohol today and who behaved very badly before leaving. We left before the last one left. I guess it is always something. There was a live show tonight but it started at 9:45pm today instead of 9pm. We didn’t think we could stay up past 9 for a show much less 9:45pm start time. So after dinner we went to our rooms.

Our shit bucket

Our ocean view corner balcony!

Our wonderful view!

We plan to meet for breakfast at 8am tomorrow. Bus departs at 9:45am. We were told that we’ll visit a fashion designer. Then have lunch at an organic farm/pottery studio. After lunch until dinner we are free at the resort. There is a shopping center next door. Otherwise maybe we’ll nap!

Good night.