On The Way To The Amazon

Several weeks prior to leaving on our previous cruise, we were contacted by Regent and asked if we were still interested in the Amazon cruise we had inquired about earlier in the year.  We responded that we were interested, but it would make our schedule too tight.  We were offered some incentives that all of a sudden made the cruise fit perfectly into our schedule and would also allow us an opportunity to try out our new camera prior to our upcoming Galapagos Cruise (next September).

So, the plane was scheduled to depart O'Hare, headed for Miami, at 0645 on Saturday morning.  By the preceding Monday, ABC 7's Own Jerry Taft hit us with the first dire warning:  big snow storm coming!  Big snow storm coming Friday night!

We were due to leave home at 0430 on Saturday...oh, we weren't worried about O'Hare or the tollways, because those people know how to deal with snow.  What concerned us was our driveway. Our Mr. Plow gets going early, but not that early on a Saturday.  Ah! A stroke of genius!  Does the O'Hare Hilton have weekend rates?  You betcha.  Calling an audible, we moved to the hotel on Friday night (one can walk to the terminals, through tunnels, from the hotel) and let it snow.  Our plane left right on time.

After a night in Miami, we boarded the Seven Seas Navigator and departed for the Amazon, via the Caribbean.  First stop, Gustavia, St. Barts, for an overview of the island.  Speaking of view:

Our next stop was Castries, St. Lucia.  Again, an Island Splendor overview tour.

Then, on to St. George's, Grenada.  Looked like we were finally going to run out of Saints for a while.  Nearby, though, we stopped at a mountain rainforest area and came across St. Lizard, in a cocoa tree:

  

We also learned that the biggest export from Grenada is nutmeg, in all its forms.  The nutmeg is grown by locals, often on very small farms, and then brought to town to sell to the processors.  The product is then sorted mostly by hand and bagged for export.

Next stop was Trinidad, where we were greeted by the mandatory steel drum band.  Sorry, no pictures from Trinidad...we went to the Angostura Bitters and Rum distillery and one is not allowed to take pictures inside. Having been invented in the 1800's, the Bitters recipe is jealously guarded, hidden in a bank in New York, and known to only four people. The spices are sent individually to England, where the four secret-holders blend the spices and send the resulting mixture somehow to Trinidad, where the finished product is then extracted.  Oh, yes, they make rum, too.  Very nice rum.