I picked up the receiver and heard a recording say, “This is the bridge. A fire alarm has been sounded in your section. Proceed at once to your muster station.”
I threw on clothes and opened our door. No one was moving (not even a mouse – on Dancer, on Prancer, on Comet and Vixen – oops, sorry). But I walked down to our muster station, and there was no one there. When I returned to our stateroom, the phone rang again, and this time a live voice said, “This is the bridge. A fire alarm has been activated in your stateroom. Are you all right?”
I replied, “We’re fine. We’re all fine here” (Luke, we’re going to have company!).
She thanked me, and hung up. We never did find out what that was all about.
We toodled off to breakfast at the DaVinci, where I ordered the offered “English Breakfast” – two eggs, English sausage, baked beans, mushrooms, and toast. I don’t remember mushrooms with an English breakfast when I was in England, but oh well. Next time I must remember to be specific about the eggs. They were beyond dippy. If they had been steak, they would have been rare (steak if it wasn’t dead, was at least hurting a great deal). As it was, it looked like they had just escaped from the chicken without benefit of fire. But, in the best British tradition, I kept a stiff upper lip and muddled through.
We had booked an onshore trip to visit the “Cave of Wonders.” The tour also featured some general sightseeing out the bus window.
We drove east away from the capital to the far side of the island. Hispanola is actually two nations on one island. The western part, the poorest part, and one of the poorest nations on earth, is Haiti. A mountain range separates Haiti from the Dominican Republic. The main part of the capital, Santo Domingo, looks very cosmopolitan and prosperous, but as we drove further east it was clear that we were driving out wealth into poverty. The streets were dirty, the buildings unkept, and new construction reminded me very much of what we saw in Russia in 1993 – modules constructed of concrete and stacked on each other, and with less evident care than those of the Russian contractors.
The Cave of Wonders has been known for 90 years, but was only officially explored in the last two decades. The government of the Dominican Republic has opened it as a major tourist attraction, and they did a good job.
My only complaint is they did not allow us to take pictures in the caverns. The reasoning behind this is two-fold. First the cave is filled with cave paintings from the islands original inhabitants. There are more than 400 paintings scattered through out, some 1000 years old, representing their deities, village life, family life, etc., and they are afraid that flash photography will eventually damage the paintings. While that is probably true, and I accept their word for it, our guide told me what I believe to be the real reason, and I applaud them for it. She said that when people are allowed to take pictures, and they were in the past, the guests become unruly, looking for the best spots, holding up the whole tour, and being general pests.
Driving back we stopped at the Don Juan Resort, a sprawling affair that features typical tourist stuff. Over priced everything. Fortunately our lunch was included in the price of the tour, but it was a slim offering indeed – mixed fruit and sandwich wraps. No, not Great Wraps. Not even close. But we consumed them. Our guide gave us an hour at the resort which features, he said, the most popular beach in the Dominican Republic. Several of our group – the younger members – had brought swimming gear and they played in the water while we oldsters stayed in the shade and hunted for the bathroom facilities.
We are now sailing for Princess Cays in the Bahamas. Tomorrow will be a day at sea, and I will give my final talk. We will reach the Cays, our last port of call, on Sunday. Then we will steam overnight and dock in Fort Lauderdale at 7 a.m. on Monday.
TTFN!
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