Castaway Cay

The only thing we all had planned for this morning was sleeping in! Stacey doesn't sleep well, and is coughing on and off herself. I also wake up several times, but keep trying to go back to sleep. I'm being lazy today, and finally Stacey tells me at 10:30 am that Amy had called to say that she was up at the Beach Blanket buffet for breakfast. I guess I have to get up then. Amy was proud that she was the first one up. By the time that Stacey and I get up there, around 11am, the buffet is closed and the food is put away. Doh! We take a look topside and find out that we are pulling in to Castaway Cay. An announcement lets us know that after the ship is docked, crew members will leave first to set up the island and fire up the bbq for the bbq lunch on the island.

Stacey and I find a quick snack and grab our water bottles and day bags and put on our swimsuits and get ready to go. It's just after noon by the time we get down to the pier. A short hike in, we find a crew member taking photos of people with the ship as a backdrop. Stacey and I queue for it, while Amy waits. She's done with pictures I think. We then follow the path ahead to go towards the beach areas. It's beautiful here. Clear blue waters and tropical plants abound near white and yellow sand beaches. We get to one of the main areas and find the bbq area. They aren't quite set up, so Stacey and I decide to wait for it to begin. Shouldn't be more than 10 minutes we're told. Amy's not hungry and says that she's going ahead to the adult only beach, Serenity Bay, and to meet her there.

A short time later, I can see the bbq open up, and I go over and get some…bbq ribs, chicken, fish, burgers, hotdogs, cold salads. Mmmm. Stacey had preordered her lunch last night at dinner, and was told that it would be sent to this first bbq area. I asked about it, but the chef who talks to me says that it hasn't been sent from the ship yet. So we wait…..and wait. I see a head server walking around so I flag him down to ask him, and he goes to look into it. He comes back quickly and says that it's still not arrived, but that he will get the chef to make something up for her. I had already brought her some plain grilled salmon to keep her going. It's not long later though, that Vasko, the head server I had talked to, comes back with her order, which had just arrived from the ship. He apologizes for making Stacey wait so long, but she's just happy to have food and sorry that her allergy causes them such trouble.

After lunch, we go to the tram area to pick up a ride to Serenity Bay. You can walk it, but it's 28C out there and the party cloudy skies have become mainly sunny skies. =) We also want to get there quickly, since Amy left us nearly an hour and a half ago. Serenity Bay is beautiful. Sand, blue water, and chairs and umbrellas. But no Amy. Where is she? We walk the length of the beach and set our stuff down in chairs next to what we thing is her bag and stuff. We get ourselves together and move a couple of chairs down to the water to sit for a bit with our legs dangling in the clear warm water. Stacey thinks she could live here. She'll look after the island for them!

After 15 minutes or so, we finally have an Amy sighting. She'd been in the water for about an hour already, and had gone to pick up a floaty mat, and some snorkel gear. She tells us the you can't get this stuff at Serenity Bay, but have to tram back one stop to Pelican Point where the rental place is. Might as well do it now, we've prepaid for the rental of it.

By this time, my new water shoes have started to rub on the back of my ankles, and I can feel the skin wearing off on my left side. Gonna be a blister there tonight, I'm guessing. We had left the bandages and moleskin back on the ship. I'm not going back all that way. I'll limp it out. Stacey gets a clear inner tube and I get a floaty mat, and we go back and reboard the tram back.

Amy, again, is gone. She sure blends in well. Stacey has keener sight, and spots her kicking along in the water on the water out to a sand bar not far into the bay. Well then, let's go! Oh, wait. Stacey and I both fear water. Riiiiiiighht!

Stacey decides to float close to shore in barely waist deep water, and is happy with that. I decide with manly pride that if Amy can do it, so can I, so I double up my mat, and shoving it under my arms and chest, start kicking my legs to head towards Amy.

What I don't know, is how long she's been doing the same. The tide current is against you going in that direction, and I don't seem to be making much forward progress for my efforts. In fact, it seems like I'm a little better than halfway there, when I start to feel a camp starting in my right thigh. Oh great! I slow the kicking motion, but just seem to either sink a little, not a feeling I enjoy, or am just holding position. The water below is quite clear, crystal, really, but the distortion of the waves means that I also can't tell how deep the water is below me! I really don't like open water. Need to have solid ground under me to touch.

Ok, so, I'm maybe a little panic-y now. Do I keep kicking ahead and risk cramping up and flipping my floatation device over and drowning? I swim like a brick. You'd think that if fat floats I should almost be able to walk on water, but I just can't seem to relax in water enough to float easily. I decide that I should turn around while I can and try to make it back.

What's going on? It almost seems as hard going this way too! I guess that the breeze is pushing me sideways and I'm having to kick against that as well to try to get back to where Stacey is. After a couple of minutes I hear, "Oh, look, a stingray! Wow, that's a good sized one too!" Huh? Sure enough, about 15 feet to my right, an older guy with his own floatation mat and going the opposite direction points out a black ray shaped shadow moving in behind him and right towards me.

The first thing I think is, c'mon Kim, you know stingrays are harmless, right? Why, yes, logical brain, they are harmless. Oh, wait. Wasn't that Crocodile Hunter guy, Steve Irving, killed by a stingray? Why, yes worry-panic brain, that's very true too. The worry-panic brain wins that argument and cancel's the pain receptors to my cramping right thigh and I start churning up a froth like a paddlewheel ship behind me to get away! Not to worry. The ray takes a slight turn to the left and moves away from me. I'm such a baby in the water! It's takes me a bit to figure out that I'm almost close enough to the beach to try to stand up….waist deep water again. Aaaaahhhhhhh! Logic brain is back!! Sure is hard to tell how deep the water is just floating on top of it though.

Amy eventually rejoins us and we just float along in the shallows. I try getting on the mat and laying flat, but it's harder than I looks! Ok then, how about straddling it and sitting in the middle like a chair? Also hard, but I manage it. Hey! That's not too bad. Amy is impressed and try's it too. Nope, she needs help so I go and try to pull the mat behind her. LOL, almost wipe her out, but she gets it set too. We're just chatting when I try to lean back to relax a little.

Woah! The mat's buoyancy makes it scoot out forward in front of me and launches forward. With nothing supporting me now, I fall backwards, butt first into the water. Panic brain! Welcome back! How have you been! I have no idea how deep the water I'm been floating in has been, since I haven't put my feet down in a while and my back is to the beach. I have time for a quick breath before I'm all the way underwater, arms flailing wildly! It only takes me a second or two to twist my frame around to get an appendage down to push up from the bottom of the ocean sand, but it sure seems like longer. Thanks for the slow-mo ride there, panic brain! It's another second or two for me to start trying to stand up, but my knee hits first. I stand up and realize I'm barely in knee deep water. Amy and Stacey are howling. I hate the water. LOL. Oh well. Maybe the salt water will be good for my sinuses and throat. At least my glasses and hat stayed on.

A little bit of floating later, we go back to our beach loungers, to dry off. Stacey is in the sun, and Amy and I are under the shade of beach umbrellas. It seemed like we were in the water for quite a while, but it actually was only about 25-30 minutes. We dry off a little, and get Amy to take one more picture of us sitting in beach chairs in the water before packing to go back to the ship hoping to beat the crowd. One tram back to Pelican Point and then a different tram from there past Scuttle's Cove, the kid area, and back to Kargo Handling, near where the ship is docked. A quick rinse of the sand from our shoes at the showers near the ship and we get onboard for showers and aloe gel. It's looking like Stacey got the sun she wanted. Her shoulders are looking very red. She's going to need sunscreen tomorrow.

Stacey and I get dressed and go to get some French fries from deck 9 and see the ship pull away from the pier a little after 5pm. The ship will cruise at slow speed to safe protected waters to stay overnight before returning tomorrow morning. I'm guessing this is to discourage guests from trying to sleep out overnight on the island. Tonight is Pirates in the Caribbean night, a dress up night. I'm feeling too warm to dress up this time I think, though. We've already done this before already on the first cruise. Not sure if Stacey and Amy will though. Being Pirate night also means fireworks at sea, which is always cool. Andy, the Club Host told us last night that other cruise ships tend to pull up close to where we dock at night around here so their guests can also watch from their ships, or as Andy calls it, the cheap seats. Haha.

I'm skipping the main show today. It a magic and illusion show by Scott Alexander, but the picture on the daily cruise navigator shows a spooky Halloween mansion as the backdrop to the headline, so that turns me off. Another "magician" on a previous cruise was very good and funny, very family oriented, but this one somehow feels off to me. It's probably nothing though.

While I've been trying to catch up on blogging, Stacey has been out. She finally shows up around 7:45pm. I guess she was tired. She had gone up on deck 10 near the Quiet Cove to lay on a lounge chair and play a game on her phone. At some point, she fell asleep. There was no one in the pool area and only 2 older ladies in chairs below on deck 9 when she got there. Then she woke up, and it was dark out. Haha.

I wasn't gonna get dressed for Pirate night, but Stacey does, and I guess that Amy will be too, so I quickly throw my stuff together and we go down to meet Amy in the dining room. Dinner is good, but we're having less success with Stacey's meals. She's pre-ordering the night before, for instance, jerk chicken salad with no dressing, and asks that if they can't do that, add plain grilled chicken. Well, tonight, the server comes out and says that the chef said he can't do jerk chicken with Stacey's allergy, and puts a plate of plain lettuce leaves down in front of her. Last cruise, if the chef had done that, Ismet our server would have requested the grilled chicken, or added salmon, or added tomatoes and radish and other veggies like peppers. Maybe there were less allergy orders last cruise and this one, with all the kids, the allergy chef is overwhelmed. Stacey doesn't want to complain, because the food that she has been getting is good, but that doesn't seem right. I call over the head server Deniz when he comes near and show him the plain salad and explain what happened. He takes it away immediately and comes back about a minute later with grilled chicken on the salad. Much better. She later gets a chicken dinner dish, which was her backup to a pasta dish that she had wanted. The pasta dish also arrived with the chicken dinner….plain gluten free pasta, with nothing on it. Very weird, but Stacey ate them together and was good, but I just can't help but think that this would not have gotten by Ismet like that.

After dinner we go up to deck 10 where we had sent Amy to find a spot to watch the fireworks for the Pirate party. Fireworks are great, again, and the girls go back to the cabins to sleep. I quickly change and go to catch a part of the late movie in 3D. I only last at hour into it though. I think I want the sleep to enjoy a full day on the island tomorrow.

Good night.

WYWH

Kim =) and Stacey :)