The cast:

Adam and Alice Alpha,
Bob and Betty Bravo,
Chuck and Carol Charlie, and
Dave and Dolores Delta.

The plan:

The intrepid eightsome went on another cruise. This one was to leave from and return to Puerto Rico and visit Bonaire, Curaçao, Aruba, and St. Maarten.

The new plan:

A few hurricanes breezed through the Caribbean, flattening Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, and a few other islands. The intrepid eightsome went on the same cruise but swapped out St. Maarten and swapped in St. Kitts.

10/19 – 10/20

These days were special. Details are in luxury camping.

10/21 – Embarking

The eightsome made their way to the port where the Adventure of the Seas was waiting for them. Since Bob had a gimpy leg, they decided to play it up to get him a wheelchair and reduce some of the sitting and waiting. They even got a picture of Bob in his wheelchair, surrounded by the rest of the group like an elderly patriarch.

In the past, the first day on the ship had been devoted to champagne and fancy drinks-of-the-day, usually ending in “< Scene missing >“. That didn’t happen this time. Maybe the kids are growing up. Or getting tired and boring. There’s a lot of overlap.

10/22 – Day at sea

This day was devoted to exploring the ship, lying in the sun, working out, and drinking.

The ship had something called a FlowRider™. It was about 10 yards wide and 16 or 17 yards deep. At the front were a bunch of water cannons that allowed you to simulate surfing. Some of the gang watched folks on this throughout the day. The would-be surfer would lay in the water with his/her board, try to go from laying flat on the water to kneeling on the board to standing on it and then other tricks. At any point in all of this, the surfer could lose control, the water would slam the board into the back of the FlowRider™, then slam the surfer into the back of the FlowRider™. The surfers claimed to enjoy this. A number of the gang vowed to try this on the next sea day. Preferably before drinking instead of after.

After dinner, their waiter, Ida (pronounced EEda), and a bunch of the dining room staff came by with a cake and started singing “Happy Anniversary” to Carol and Chuck. No one was more surprised than Chuck since their anniversary was a month away. Carol was a bit less surprised after she remembered that she and the rest of the ladies had discussed altering the calendar to get some special dinner events. Good cake, though.

10/23 Bonaire

Chuck started the day by forgetting how to walk down steps. There was a landing with a single step in front of a staircase. Apparently, Chuck forgot that one side of a step is lower that the other side of the step and wound up ass over teakettle on the landing. Uncharacteristically, Chuck didn’t hurt himself doing this.

More characteristically, Chuck did have troubles with snorkeling. He had no initial difficulties with the flippers – he was able to keep up with the group and was able to observe natural wonders. There were long skinny fish, short fat fish, fish with blue and black stripes, fish with yellow and black stripes. There was even a fish with a hemispheric shell, four legs and a head.

There was a rude awakening for Chuck when it was time to swim back to the boat. His flippering was suddenly as useless as it always was. It turns out that the only reason that he’d made progress before was that he’d been swimming with the current. Now that he was going the other way, his flippering was less effective. Adding insult to injury, Chuck’s mask started leaking sea water onto his face. One of the staff, Marco, helped Chuck with the mask and gave a couple of tips so that Chuck’s flippering was less copmpletely ineffective. Chuck was still moving faster with the breaststroke (insert inappropriate joke here) than with his flippers.

In an unusual turn of events, Adam injured himself. He’d made a minor misstep and hurt his ankle. He had a rough couple of days wondering if he’d broken the darn thing. The reason that this was unusual is that he’d already been scampering up 12 floors with luggage and 5 gallon buckets of water with a hernia. Some of the gang were wondering what it took to slow Adam down. (Spoiler: he didn’t break his ankle.)

10/24 Curaçao

Apparently, Carol had given Betty her sea pass for safekeeping. Unfortunately, this was after she’d given it to Chuck for safekeeping. Carol and Chuck only remembered that she’d given it to Chuck. They couldn’t find the damn thing so they rushed down to cancel the old sea pass, print off a new one, and then check that there were no new charges.
Then Carol remembered the Betty thing.
This is what happens when you get old. Don’t get old.

Today, they went on a tour of some caves and then downtown Curaçao. After that, the girls got in some much needed shopping.

10/25 Aruba

Over breakfast, Carol and Chuck chatted with a couple who were quite experienced with cruises. Chuck had been complaining to anyone who’d listen, and anyone who wouldn’t, that it was ridiculous to spend more money on the extra expensive shipboard restaurants when you’d already paid thru the nose for the regular meals.
Before Chuck had fully launched his diatribe, this couple started extolling the virtues of the Italian extra expensive restaurant. Chuck shut his mouth before his foot made it all the way in. This is where Chuck’s foot grazed his cheek.

The morning was spent at a beach. Nearby, a bevy of bodybuilders stopped to do some suntanning. Even the women in this bunch were very muscular. One woman lay down on her beach lounger and removed more of her already deficient allotment of fabric so that another couple of square inches of skin could get tanned.
Coincidentally, any men who were walking by started to trip over and walk into things. A couple of others just stopped, stared, and said things like “Good Gosh.”

Later, the troop went on an excursion that involved sailing out to sea on a  party catamaran with 40+ people to see sunset on the ocean, followed with dinner on the ship’s pier.
On the catamaran, there was drinking, loud music, and dancing, Some of the ladies did a bunch of line dancing. Carol and Chuck did a couple of cha-chas. The crowd went wild when they did some locksteps across the floor.

10/26 Another day at sea

Adam, Alice, and Carol went on the FlowRider™ a couple of times. They stayed on better than most and hardly ever slammed into the back of the FlowRider™ or lost their swimsuits.
They also went down the water slides. One of the slides had a section that was past the edge of the boat and was transparent so that you could get a good view of the certain death that lay 13 decks below.

10/27 St. Kitts

This day’s excursion was for snorkeling and laying on a beach. The gang went with a group of 20 or 30 others on a catamaran to the snorkeling site. The catamaran had a stepladdery thing in the middle of it to get in and out of the water. While Betty was looking back at the boat, someone flushed the boat’s toilet. Betty was far enough away to be unconcerned about “splatter” but resolved to never ever swim under a catamaran. Never!

After snorkeling, the catamaran took everyone to a beach. There was a lot of confusion about which beach loungers they could use. Most of the confusion was from the beach lounger manager guy who got upset if anyone but him touched the loungers. He was getting pretty shirty after a while. It eventually became apparent that he wanted $5 for each lounger and only he was allowed to move the darn things.
Dave gave him $40 to shut him up and the gang got back to beaching.

When the gang got back to the port, they found some guys with itty bitty monkeys. St. Kitts is famous for its itty bitty monkeys. The scam was to let you take a picture of you with the monkey and then charge you for the privilege. Some of the women really wanted the pictures and wanted to pay for the pictures. Some of the men made strangling noises as they struggled to not say “You wanna pay for a picture of a stupid <naughty word> monkey?!?”

After dinner, Ida and a bunch of the dining room staff came by with a cake and started singing “Happy Birthday” to Dolores. No one was surprised since they all knew that it was Dolores’ birthday. There were party hats and noisy things and little signs that said “woohoo” and “happy birthday”.

10/28 Puerto Rico

There were no unpleasant surprises getting home. They quickly got thru customs. There was no fuss getting to the airport. The airport was fully functional and there were no signs of the struggles of a week ago. The flights were (pretty much) on time. Their houses were fully powered and functional.

Historically, something inconvenient happens when returning from these cruises. This usually gives the narrator something useful to wrap up the story with.

Maybe all of that karma was used up in the first couple of days in Puerto Rico.