January 8 – AT SEA

we can see Cuba

Weather – 23º, overcast, one very small shower, so small we thought maybe water was coming from a higher deck

Steps – 6,094

We spent a very leisurely morning in the room with room service. Room service used to be something I’d always get on excursion mornings. I eventually realized that it was easier for me to grab a couple of yogurts for our room fridge rather than to schedule a yogurt delivery. A yogurt is all I want for breakfast, so this is so much easier.

Astern pool

However…this being our first day on Explora, plus the fact that I’m not at all familiar with how this ship works for grab and go, room service seemed like a good idea. As I mentioned yesterday, we have an espresso machine in our Explora room – (a significant weak spot for Regent’s basic room) so we don’t even have to go out for a breakfast coffee. I could never drink coffee again, and be perfectly happy, but I enjoy the ritual of it.

This ship has 4 pools! They aren’t the hugest pools but give a nice variety. None of these pools have a lot of shade (other than the indoor one), which on a sunny day would not be good for the shade loving 2 of us. However, today being mostly overcast we didn’t mind.

Asian place - kimono napkin fold

There doesn’t seem to be any ‘chair-hoggin’ on this ship (another major weak spot for Regent.) We found a lovely 2-person lounger in a bit of shade where we spent the late part of the morning before lunch. The morning shade was cool enough that Chris temporarily moved to a sunny chair for a bit of warmth.

Lunch was again at the food hall. Some food choices were the same, some were different – still an overwhelming array. We found a nice spot outside, overlooking
the pool we were just at and the sea.

After lunch we went to a different pool (the Astern Pool) where there was live music – 2 guitar players who also sang. The Astern Pool is as advertised…at the back of the boat, this means it overlooks the wake…the absolute BEST location on any ship I’ve ever been on. Again, we found a lounger for 2 (partially submerged in the shallow pool ledge which is lovely.)

organization station set up

Here the lack of shade was a problem. I am reading a book on my iPad which in the sun isn’t great, add to that needing to wear my sunglasses which I hate reading with, and I didn’t get much in the way of reading done. This is definitely not the biggest problem in the world, so instead of reading I napped a bit.

A lot of the music on this ship is familiar songs arranged differently. I love this kind of music. I prefer when musicians put their own spin on familiar songs.

love a bedside phone charger

Once the music was done, we headed back to our not-so-cool room until the
evening. Yesterday, when we arrived, it was actually chilly, so we figured the AC would be good – should be on a brand-new boat. We eventually figured that because this is one of those situations where we have to insert a card in a slot to turn on the room’s power the AC hasn’t been on since we went out. I’m all for conserving power, but I draw the line at a cool room and charged devices – how much power is charging my laptop really drawing anyway??? I know I could put my old Regent card in when we’re away, but I don’t really like doing this when the staff will be in our room. Between our evening cocktail and dinner, I popped back to the room and slotted my Regent card in.

Explora welcome gift next to our usual one

Dinner tonight was at the ship’s Asian restaurant. It was lovely with terrific service. Both last night and tonight it seemed to us that the staff was vying for tips because they were so friendly and attentive. All tips are included on Explora, so it shouldn’t be the case, and ultimately wasn’t at all, but we are constantly on a bit of an alert to this.

The after-dinner show was Broadway tunes…it was very good. There are 6 singers…3 male and 3 female. One of the female singer is excellent. We’ve

bacon in bed!!

seen many, many of these types of shows over the years on cruise ships and she is one of, if not the best singer we’ve ever heard.

The cabaret type theatre on Explora is small – maybe 300 people?? The ship’s capacity is 922. Apparently, the ship has never been full since it sailed for the first time about 18 months ago and this week
there’s about 600. Why it doesn’t sail full no one says, there are many theories, but who knows. The

grrrrr!

small theatre is nice, we’ve chosen front row each night which is good. There are 2 shows each night (at 8 and 10). I suspect the Explora Wi-Fi that I was so impressed by isn’t playing nice with my email for some reason, and I’m getting a message that my password is incorrect. Somehow this password isn’t in my phone’s list of passwords and of course I don’t know it. So…if you’re trying to email me…don’t bother. I hope when we get to Jamaica tomorrow and I get back on cell with the e-SIM I’ve been using, it’ll resolve – fingers crossed.

Diana (I think you’re the anonymous commenter with the friend Fran) I’m quite certain the Italian restaurant we went to in the Caymans was Casa Nova! The picture I posted was from there!

January 7 – Miami

Weather – 13º when we woke up – chilly, but sunny, eventually things warmed up to about º18

Steps – 7,990

We’re back in Miami for disembarkation and embarkation day - interesting. We saw our next ship from where we had breakfast on our last one…it’s an odd feeling.

The distance to the terminal where our new ship is is technically walkable (probably about 15 min) but the route didn’t seem too pedestrian friendly, especially with luggage, so we took a $10 Uber.

Of course, check in wasn’t available when we arrived at about 10, so we hung

good morning Miami!!

out in the terminal until check in started about 11:30. This was quite civilized – there was iced tea, water, and plenty of seats.

While we waited in the terminal, the Wi-Fi was BETTER from the ship than from the actual port. I expected the terminal’s Wi-Fi to be great…it wasn’t, but the ship’s was. We weren’t even ON the ship yet and the Wi-Fi was impressive. I never, ever expect ship Wi-Fi to be good - adequate, hopefully, good…no way. As long as I can upload pics to the blog relatively painlessly, I’m happy. Regent’s Wi-Fi was pretty good for this, and before we got to the new ship the Wi-Fi was impressive.

next ship, from the last ship 

Around 11:30 we were checked in and were soon wondering around the ship. On first glance this ship is very beautiful and modern. We’ve seen plenty of photos and videos while researching this trip, but it really is hip.

We have lunch as the Market Emporium. Every cruise ship seems to have its buffet. Explora’s Market Emporium is the closest thing this ship has to a buffet, but it is really more of a food hall rather than a buffet. There is no serve yourself. Everything is made to order and handed to you.

I sat while Chris checked out what he’d have – this took him a while because there are so many options. I settled on some octopus ceviche and a spicy squid stir-fry. Chris had some pasta, fish, and pizza. Dessert for me was a piece of cheesecake Chris had fruit and a cookie. All but Chris’s fish was really good.

room for the next week

Excursions are not included in Explora’s fare. Our booking promo was $1,000 shipboard credit. We thought this would cover any excursion we would want, so essentially excursions would be included. Explora doesn’t allow onboard credits to be used for excursion booking before you board, so we had to wait until we were on to book. This was our after-lunch activity. 

Laundry is also not included…we will definitely miss that!

Exploring our room and unpacking was our other after-lunch activity. The room is very similar to our last one on Regent. Both are about 300 square feet and include a balcony. This balcony and bathroom are both bigger, here, so that’s a plus. The actual room feels a bit tighter here, but when I check the specs, I found that this room is bigger – the total area is 377 sq ft, (room is 301, balcony 75), compared to Regent - total 300, (room 250, balcony 50).

Anyway…this will be lovely for the next week.

Other aspects of the room we like…bathroom has a heated floor. We were on a river cruise once with a heated bathroom floor – this is awesome.

sail away

There are also full-sized products in the bathroom. I can’t stand those tiny, what I consider old fashioned hotel sized products. Mostly I hate to use the tiny ones, but they are also use a ton of plastic and are terribly wasteful. I asked Regent about it once and was told large format isn’t lux enough

for them…BS, we’ve been in fancy-schmancy hotels with full sized products.

There’s also a Dyson hair dryer, an espresso maker and kettle.

The balcony has a day bed which depending on the weather we will make good use of.

January 6 – AT SEA

Weather – 24º, breezy on the pool deck

Steps – 6,759

When one cruise ends, another begins. We’ve done back-to-back cruises on the same ship before, but never on a DIFFERENT ship. As far as I’m concerned, the main benefit of a back-to-back cruise, besides having a longer cruise, is NO packing, NO unpacking, and NO travel day. For some reason I LOATHE packing. I tend to over think packing and need everything to be in the just the right spot.

When I’m at home, packing is a weeklong endeavour. I can’t possibly pack my toiletries (most of which stay packed from the last trip) without TOTALLY reorganizing ALL of my toiletries – even ones I’m not taking.

Packing to come home, isn’t nearly the same production. Today we basically gathered up all of our stuff without nearly as much care and attention as we would if we were getting on a plane – no liquids to consider, no wondering what might get lost in the checked luggage, etc.

We spent the morning at the pool – doing the usual…reading, blogging, quaffing a few, and chilling. Watoni, one of our fav pool bartenders, convinced us to try his frozen mojito and his frozen pomegranate. Then not 10 minutes later he arrived with 2 MORE! I’m not entirely sure they had any booze in them, so I didn’t feel so bad having had 2 of them before 11, more like a mint smoothy!

The rest of the day was spent packing, spending all but $3.85 of my shipboard credit and having our last dinner on Regent. Tomorrow we’ll have dinner on Explora!

Somehow I took NO photos today.

January 5 – Georgetown, Cayman Islands

land flag

Weather – 24º, mild, lovely

Steps – 8,234

I'm in Hell

Another day, another tender boat ride. Today it was expected and seamless. There were 4 other ships in the harbor. I didn’t realized Cayman Islands didn’t have an actual cruise port, but a series of sea-side tender boat docks. Altogether we figured there were about 9,000 passengers + probably 5,000 crew in town.

sea flag

Considering tourism is Cayman Island’s main industry, it’s probably typical.

As soon as we step foot on land it is obvious that there is money The Cayman Islands. High end shops and clean streets. I’m pretty sure I didn’t see one street person all day. I also saw lots of churches. No connection to money, just an observation.

We learned that the Cayman Islands have 2 flags…a red one and a blue flag. The red one is for use at sea, and the blue for on land as it is hard to see blue at

We're in Hell

sea.

A group of about 24 of us, hop onto a small bus for today’s tour.

making my way out

Our first stop is in Hell. Part of the Cayman Island’s landscape is low, black rock formations that resemble what we might think Hell looks like. I thought there’d be a bit of a walk around with the Carlos, our guide, hearing about the formations…nope. We saw the rocks, the Hell themed gift shop complete with a devil shopkeeper, took a couple of photos and were back on the road out of hell.

A 15-minute drive later and we were at a rum cake factory. We visited a rum cake factory last year in the Bahamas, so I was looking forward to tasting the cake again…rum cakes are the moistest cakes I’ve ever tasted. We also

4 of the 5 in today

sampled coconut and mango rum. The coconut was very tasty. The factory wasn’t operational today, so we couldn’t see any of the baking, so this was basically a shopping stop.

Lastly, we visited the 7Fathoms rum distillery. We tasted about 10 different rums, listened to an

lunch

entertaining distillery worker give us a history of their distillery and rums. Then we saw the factory for about 5 minutes (just right) bought a T-shirt and back to the port.

On the way back, Carlos explained why there are chickens roaming free everywhere. Apparently in 2004, Hurricane Ivan blew people’s chicken coops all over the place and no one claimed them after the storm. Now they are considered a pest.

Filipino stick dance

We wandered around the port area, found a charming Italian place on the water for lunch and were back on board around 3. We’ll be here again next week, so we were also scouting out other places.

Predinner entertainment was Krew Kapers. Each cruise members of the crew put on a talent show. I try to NEVER miss it. It’s amazing how great some of the singers are.

not the whole 453 - some have to work still

There is ALWAYS “Dream the Impossible Dream”, “YMCA”, the Filipino stick dance, a few hip-hop ensembles. There is also always an Elvis impersonator

whose nametag onboard is actually Elvis - this one is one of our favourite bar tenders.

I learned today that there are 453 crew onboard coming from 34 different countries – WOW!

Elvis is in the house

January 4 – Kingston, Jamaica

Weather – 25º, sunny, lovely

Steps – 7,408

I woke up around 5 this morning to what I was sure was the sound of the ship dropping anchor. I was POSITIVE we were docking today. Sure enough, there was a problem with the dock, so we would be tendering again…ugh. No problem though - I get that ‘ship’ happens; I appreciate that we were given an explanation today.

Thankfully, the tender ride was only 5 minutes and took us to a hotel right on the water. As soon as we stepped foot off the tender, the DJ was spinning Bob Marley! It was 8:00 in the morning and already the party was started.

Kingston gets very few cruise ships and is not much of a

Bob Marley

tourist destination. Only 1 ship visits in January, 2 in Feb, and 2 in March. Compare this to Ocho Rios, for example with 23 in Jan, 18 in Feb, and 15 in March.

Emancipation Park

Kingston is the capital and business centre of Jamaica. Our tour was titled ‘Kingston Sightseeing’. One other offered was about Bob Marley and the third was about coffee. Having never been here before, we thought sightseeing would give us a good feel for the city. I’m not sure if it did, or maybe it absolutely did. We definitely SAW sights, but little else. Part of the tour description was “3.5 hours of walking” There was in total about an hour of walking, but nothing to accompany the walking. 

We’ve been on MANY tours described similarly. Drive to various spots, follow the

guide as they describe what we are seeing and tells stories, and have some free time. This is what the description had us expecting.

Sports Wall of Honour

The guide shared info on the bus, but once off the bus we were pretty much abandoned. I think part of the issue, was that the guide (and maybe her tour company and Regent) didn’t want to leave us anywhere unsafe, and most places were unsafe. Who knows?? The places we did get off of the bus were enclosed and guarded – even the park we wandered a bit in…fenced with a guard. I certainly don’t want to get off anywhere unsafe.

our ship in the background

We were able to take pictures the Bob Marley statue from the bus of, the statue in Emancipation
Park (where the guide was determined to take our pic in front of) and that’s about it. She didn’t mention a word about slavery – obviously, not a pleasant subject, but we’ve been to a few places where slavery was part of its past and we heard about it.

Bob Marley playing DJ

We also drove past the sports ‘Wall of Honour”. We heard about Usain Bolt.

We stopped at Devon House, a monument to Jamaica’s first Black millionaire. Here we wandered the grounds a bit, weren’t able to go in and had an $7 ice cream. We weren’t exactly interested in the ice cream, but there wasn’t much left to do.

Lastly, we stopped at a handicrafts market that was more keychains and bikinis than handicrafts. We were at least hoping for somewhere to sit for a beer…nope, we were corralled within the fence of the market with no beer at the food stall.

Back at the hotel, before getting on the tender, we had a $5USD Red Stripe, Jamaican beer. We paid about twice what Google said a beer goes for, but we were at a hotel, and we were a captive audience.

Jamaica flag cake

All in all, Kingston was a bit of a bust. I think we picked the right tour for us, and we can’t say we didn’t SEE it but hopped for a bit more – this happens
occasionally.

Lunch was back on board before a party for anyone who has been on Regent for more than 200 days. This was nice…especially the DJ playing Shaggy, Bob Marley, and other Jamaican tunes.

The rest of the evening played out as per usual. Tonight’s show was a ‘piano 

Jamaican sky

virtuoso’ from the UK, he was good. One of the pieces he played was David Foster’s “Winter Olympics”…that one tugged at our heart strings!!

January 3 – AT SEA

enroute to Jamaica

Weather – 26º, humid-ish, still windy

Steps – 6,153

A lost hour wasn’t welcome this morning, but it as a sea day, so we had no where to be. We knew we’d have to give the one back we took a few days ago.

Today was a basic repeat of yesterday once we made it to the pool. One thing different was that we sat apart. Once one Einstein decides to sit in a lounger one (not 2) away from the next one this inevitably causes singles and breaks up pairs. Kind of like sitting at a bar – if you don’t want to sit next to a stranger, fine…but sit TWO away from that stranger. We actually were surprised to see any open chairs at all, so we put up with it. We don’t exactly talk to each other the whole time, so it was fine.

not a bad place to blog!

I read some of my first book of 2025 – “Hello Beautiful”, a novel from the ship's library. I read 24.5 books in 2024. I didn’t set out of read 24 in 24, but that’s what happened. Somewhere in the midst of 2024, I decided I should look at screens less and
read more, so that’s what I did. As I approached the end of the year, I realized I had 24 in 24. I powered through my last book “Paris”, the Paris Hilton memoir and then if my Ina book wasn’t a 7 day borrow, I’d have had 25. A goal of 25 in 25 is set!!

Our seating arrangement caused a bit of confusion for the Krystian the bar tender. Chris ordered 2 Aperol Spritzes while I went inside to listen to the

tiny lemon squeezer thingy

captain’s noon announcement. I came back, walked up to the bar, Krystian saw me coming and told me “your husband ordered 2”. Ok great!! When we brought them, he was mighty confused.

Our predinner activity was the Regent loyalty gathering. We’re not super into the gatherings, but there tends to be caviar and info on how many passengers are new to Regent and not-so-new. We are the not-so-new with about 360 days sailed, but we there was one woman there with over 4,000 days sailed with Regent!!! There was caviar, but the most interesting thing was a tiny Lucite lemon squeezer on my plate with a couple of shrimp.

So, with little else to report from today’s activities, some observations…

Kivy's magic!

1 - This cruise is definitely younger with a ton of kids. Our only Christmas cruises have been long – these aren’t appealing to families with kids in school and
parents with jobs. There are also a bunch of virgin Regent cruisers. This has been neither here nor there for us mostly, other than groups tend to be loud.

There does happen to be one particular family with older kids (late teens, early twenties) that I could do without. Last night at the show, they caused a bit of a gong show – they arrived 30 minutes into the 45 min show with a drunk grandpa who almost fell into the lap of a woman he had to climb over to get to a seat. Then they were a bit loud and boisterous and felt entitled to the first and second rows, it was as though hey had NEVER been to a theatre.

2 - I suppose I’d rather smell perfume than BO. However, if I can smell you before I can see you, I think you’re wearing too much. Occasionally, when on the balcony pre-dinner, enjoying the sea I think I’m alone, and then a sniff tells me I’m not.

first book of 25 in 25

cover of daily 'Passages'

3 – The crew, and by crew I don’t mean the ‘officers’, I mean the workers from the Philippines, Indonesia, India and many others, who can’t do enough for the passengers. Just writing about them makes me a bit emotional. These folks, a million miles and as many months from home, make our vacation fantastic. ALWAYS with a smile, a “morning ma’am”, a “what can I get you ma’am?”, a “can I get you another drink ma’am”.

Speaking of crew…Kivy, our room attendant, surprised us with a bottle of wine today. On Regent everything alcohol is included with the fare. You can basically get anything you want for booze in your room as a bit of a bar set up. We never ask for anything more than a couple of bottles of wine – we get plenty of booze on the ‘outside’. We drank our first bottle of wine a few days ago and was hoping Kivy would replace it. He never did and we didn’t see him to ask. Today he

oh, Rivy!!

showed up with a new bottle and told us he had to ask us if we wanted it –
sometimes you see a lot of your room attendant, other times not so much. This asking is a new procedure. I get it and it’s AOK with me. In fact, I was thrilled to see Kivy at our door. 

I was actually even more thrilled 2 days ago when we returned to our room to find a bowl of mixed nuts. Earlier in the cruise, I made a bowl for myself from the breakfast bar to keep in the room to add to my yogurt. Kivy must have seen it and made us a

another 3-er

more substantial bowl – I was so touched at this level of caring. Then today when bringing the wine, he asked about the nuts. I told him how much I appreciated them, but I think there was a bit lost in translation, because not 20 min later, room service showed up with ANOTHER bowl – we had barely touched the first bowl.

THEN…when we returned to our room at the end of the night we found another bottle of wine and 4 Dr. Peppers (Chris’ afternoon on the balcony bevy of choice.)

January 2 – Roatan, Honduras

Weather – 25º, windy, a few passing showers

Steps – 6,008

Today’s tour was meeting at 7:30AM!! At least it wasn’t New Year’s Day! We were sensible and were sleeping before 11 last night.

This morning it only took one look out of the window, to
be 99% sure today’s call to Honduras would be scrubbed. The sea was filled with whitecaps and what almost looked like a current. Surprisingly, the ride wasn’t at all bumpy.

We were anchoring again today, so we thought the sea conditions would almost definitely not be a go for the tenders. We’ve learned from many days cruising that what looks like minimal sea swells from the comfort of our balcony would be huge to the small tender boats. Today these DID NOT look small.

assessing the situation

The trouble too was that the port wasn’t at all protected - no harbor, or protection from a bay or even an artificial bay.

We flipped the TV to the channel where the conditions are reported and saw the wind speed was close to 40 knots. When we opened the balcony door the wind was pretty strong – this is not typical.

We were once in a tender when a storm hit while we were trying to get back to the ship…not pretty and really quite dangerous.

Anyway, I was showered, was eating my in-room yogurt, and Chris was debating getting up at all. Why rush when we could ultimately stay in bed. At this point it

choppy

wasn’t even 7:00.

I went for a wander about 7:30 when our tour was supposed scheduled.  NO
ONE was in the theatre where tours meet, not even Destinations staff to tell us to go back to bed. No real surprise, but why no announcement? People were presumably up due to their tours. Finally, the announcement came of what we had already figured.

On the way back to the room, I picked up 2 cappuccinos, the daily Mensa/crossword, a yogurt for tomorrow and a spoon. THIS is why women’s clothing should have pockets. Other than the 2 cappuccinos (which Wendy our familiar bartender from previous cruises) secured on one plate for me to carry up 2 floors all was in my pockets.

I’ve yet to figure out why our ship tenders when others are docked. Obviously, dock space is limited, but my question is why we don’t have dock space. There were 3 other ships docked in Roatan this morning – they wouldn’t have had

just a tad breezy

trouble getting people on tours.

I’m not broken

up about missing Honduras, but to me this seems to be poor planning. Yesterday was the same…one ship was docked, we were anchored. Anchoring and the accompanying tender process is charming - the first time after that, I’ll pass. Anchoring is sometimes necessary; small ports have no docking facility (I’m looking at you French Guiana) but this is rare.

I ALWAYS love a sea day, so again, I’m not broken up at all.

We actually found primo spots at the pool and hunkered down…blogging, reading, mimosa-ing. Not terrible.

I

G-Clef duo

heard a guy talking today about being able to count a country if we are in their waters or if we could SEE the country’s land, hmmm, it is worth considering, but nope not my criteria – in that case, I would consider Somalia as a country I’ve visited…nope, I haven’t been there. My criteria is if I’ve stepped foot on land considered part of that country then I add it to my list. Yesterday, we were debating how if we only stayed on the tender could we count ourselves as being there. Fortunately, we didn’t have to consider that dilemma.

This evening, we had the ship’s ‘Block Party’ – where everyone heads into the hall outside their rooms to meet neighbors, while staff pass out wine and nibbles. It’s charming, and apparently a Regent invention. We thought the Block Party wasn’t going to happen this cruise. It is always very early in the cruise, so you know your neighbors early on. The cynic in me says they weren’t going to do it at all and some people complained. Either way…we met Ed and AnneMarie from Philly, Philipe and Ana from Brazil - dancers with the show team onboard and a few others.

stuck with the good 'ol

Next, being creatures of habit it was to the Horizon Lounge for a French 75 while listening to the G-Clef duo. Tonight, our minds were blown when they played Tears for Fears and A-ha! Still not exactly current, but minds were blown.

Next was another French 75 and the mariner Lounge while Wordleing while waiting for our table by the window.

We assured Ana and Philipe that we’d be at their ‘Tuxedo’ show, so true to our work, we went. A song and dance review inspired by the Rat Pack.

following us

Tonight’s “late-night” from the 5-piece orchestra was 80s inspired. We didn’t have to get up for anything tomorrow, so we went. It was good. When the Argentinian pianist played “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” he introduced it by saying he wasn’t born yet…and we call THAT comparatively…modern.

Yes, Lori a new Wordle word…ADIEU perhaps?

Thanks for reading Diana, it’s been an interesting trip. I saw from FB that you were at BINGO on New Year’s…I hope you won!

Dear anonymous...I think I'll take torrential downpours. I don't mind the cold though...easy to say when it's +24!

January 1 – Harvest Caye Belize

Weather – 26º, RAIN, torrential RAIN,

we are here

and thunderstorms

Steps – 7,150

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

I planned to add Belize to my country count, but we thought the weather gods planned differently.

Our tour meeting time was 8AM on New Year’s Day. I’m not sure this was good planning on our part, but the tour description of “looking for wildlife in the surrounding rainforest and then enjoy a hike with a naturalist” was too good to pass up just to sleep in. We actually turned our clocks back an hour last night, so that helped.

first tender boarding - will we go?

We waited for a while in the theatre for our tour to be called, then it was time to board the tender. We are at anchor today, so need to be ferried to shore. When we went into the theatre it was raining a bit, but by the time we made it onto the tender it was TORENTIAL. The mere 5 steps from the ship to the tender got us pretty wet. Once abord the tender we wondered to each other what we were actually going to do – would we bail (some people turned right around and went back to the ship) would we at least take the tender to the island and just stay on to come back, we weren’t sure.

pelicans

Our tour was supposed to be boat ride searching for wildlife PLUS a wander through the rainforest…the RAINforest! The boat ride would probably be fine, but the wander?!? We’ve been there, done that…wandering through the Brazilian RAINforest in a downpour, and that time we were prepared-ish for the weather. We weren’t very keen but decided to take the tender in and then worst case just take it back.

Again, the weather gods had a different plan. The weather was too bad for the tender service to proceed. We were told to get back on the ship, have a coffee etc. and then we’ll be notified.

first thing in the morning

About an hour later the tenders were a go and the tours were on, until they weren’t. Once we got to harvest Cay and found the tour rep we were told our particular tour was cancelled – ugh!

There were a couple others tours avail, but neither seemed ideal. One was to a garden (OUTDOOR) and the other was to ruins, again…outdoor. Nope. We were not going on an excursion today. Oh,

as the storm rolled in

well…these things happen. I was wondering when something would go sideways with ports this cruise…something always does.

We wandered around the port a bit, got some lunch, wandered a bit more and headed back to the ship.

Harvest Caye is a private island owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines – the parent company of Regent. The port is designed exclusively for NCL passengers. We were hoping to get out of the port to see some of the actual island and Belize, but all we saw was the port. Things here are exactly as you would expect from a tourist driven port – shops, restaurants, bars, but more…pools, beaches, a zipline, a butterfly enclosure.

butterflies

hard to capture the rain, but it's there

Most of the activities and excursions were included for Regent guests (like usual), but NCL passengers had to pay – just the difference between the 2 cruise fares. Although food and drinks are also included on Regent, on the island they are not.

Even if we were beach folks, today was not an ideal beach day. By the time we were back onboard, we battled 2 downpours on the island. Our plan was to see animals and rainforest. We actually saw a bunch of pelicans divebombing fish, so that was neat.

On the way back to the ship the tender service was again halted due to lightening – a 10 min ride took over 30 – ugh.

Downpours came and went all day long. At one point, it wasn’t raining when we left our room, but by the time we climbed 3 floors to the pool bar it was torrential again. Not the end of the world, but it sure was something.

The rest of the day was spent on the balcony – napping, chilling, blogging, reading and watching the rain come and go.