jacob of the caribbean

Eggs of the Caribbean

So it’s time for a new family vacation and another cruise. This time we were doing a cruise through the southern Caribbean. If you remember two years ago we did the Mexican Riviera, ooooh I know so fancy. I was very excited about this new trip because it was going to be all new destinations. We were flying to Puerto Rico, which was awesome, because I had only been to the airport previous. Please see the Grenada blog for details of how I watched a women die in first class.

Saturday

Wake up ass early and fly to DFW and then chill in general pop because when I’m not flying international I don’t have rights; and they don’t consider the Caribbean international. So I was delayed getting to San Juan, most vacation destinations are never on time it seems. I was upgraded the whole way, but I can’t remember anything special about the flights. Also it was almost three months ago. So I got to Puerto Rico and made it to my hotel. I met with everyone and then we headed to Outback steakhouse which is probably my least favorite restaurant and my downright least favorite when I’m not in America. I know Puerto Rico is a territory but it’s not America. I wanted some Puerto Rican food and rum. I had neither. So my parents are old and go to bed early and get up early. My sister is not old, but she’s tired, and my little brother is too young, at least we thought he was. So drewski and I went out and met our best friends, who just so happened to be going on a cruise from Puerto Rico and to the same destinations, just not at the same time or the same ship. It would have been epic had we all been on the same ship for a week drinking and eating, but alas, no such luck. So they were having a street party that night at the hotel near their hotel. They had mojito making contests and lots of fresas hocking Bacardi in tight tight Bacardi dresses. And just in case you were curious, Puerto Ricans as a species are some really hot ass chicks. If you like short and cute its paradise. We had Cuba Libres all night, which is rum and coke and lime and we had a lot of them. Then we went to the casino and taught the youngest girl in the group how to drink and gamble!! I won nothing at the crap table. We drank some more and then took off back home.

Sunday

Woke up and I think headed to breakfast with my sister. Breakfast was okay, it was even better that I didn’t have to wait thanks to my parents having super duper status at Hilton. The line for breakfast was ridiculous. The line for diamond members was pretty awesome actually…..no one was in that line. So after we went to breakfast we went to the grocery store because I needed to buy some rum for the cruise. You can’t officially take alcohol on the ship, but certain rules apply to some and to others….not so much. So I bought 4 bottles of rum and an 8-pack of coke. The bottles weren’t for consumption on the boat, well one was, but the others were for home or for gifts. Truthfully though, the bottles were there as a decoy so I could get at least one bottle aboard the ship. My suitcase is designed with lots of pockets and the way many of them overlap lends itself too nicely to clandestine rum smuggling!!! We went to the ship and got settled in, but it was still like 6 hours until we departed. So we went to the old fort and walked around. We stopped in a bar and watch the US women lose to Japan in the world cup, that sucked, but a lot of times in life, the team that comes from a place of tragedy usually wins. New Orleans Saints or Marshall University, that sort of thing, because they normally suck and will always suck, but they get to win once. So Japan was victorious. We ended up seeing our favorite family again on the streets walking around the fort. We recanted about the night before, we told them how we taught the girl how to drink and gamble, the parents were not overly thrilled with us. I thought it was all good, but I later heard that, the parents thought we were joking and just laughed it off. So I was told never to bring up the incident of our night in Puerto Rico again, fair enough. After an hour or so of sightseeing we went back to the ship. Walked around checking out what was there and then I got a call to come see ship security about some contraband. Now contraband can be anything: irons, cooking utensils, play toys and knives, or multiple bottles of alcohol in my case. The security guard was super apologetic and asked to go through my stuff. I said sure here is one bottle in this compartment. Thank you, may I look in this slot, looking nervously….sure I said. I had over the next bottle. Then he said can I move your clothes around, so I showed him nothing else to see here and he said sorry for the inconvenience, made a record of my stuff and said I could get it back in a week. I said thank you and walked away with my other bottles intact. Holla holla holla to me!!! Went to our first of fancy meals and then headed to the casino afterwards. I really like eating at cruise ships because everything is already paid for in terms of food. You just go through the menu and say Ill have this that and the other and one more of those and the maître d’ just says, mmmmm good choice sir. I didn’t win anything at the casino, which is normally my luck. So that was my last chance for the trip.

Monday

Wake up in St. Thomas which is still considered America. Walked around because the girls wanted to look at diamonds and shit. Every Caribbean stop has diamonds international or some other jewelry store and it’s the same shit and every stop. Duty free rums, duty free cigarettes, and crappy Caribbean souvenirs. I did pick up some red sunglasses because mine broke earlier in transit. We headed out to Meghan’s Bay. It’s a nice place and the bartender ended up being from El Paso and went to my high school, so we talked a lot about Chico’s mostly. I went for a swim and for a walk around the cove. It was nice, it was overcast too. I was hoping to get one shade darker pale, but I’m not sure if it worked out. I apply sun screen like a son of bitch. Gotsta keep the money maker free of moles, wrinkles, and freckles. That night was the first of our formal evening wear. Most people on the ship wear suits or sports jackets or just tuck their shirt in and think that that is good enough. Well not us; all four guys were in tuxedos and looking smashing if I do say so myself. It actually looks pretty cool to see a bunch of 6’+ people walking around trumping the other families. Some jaws dropped, I’m not going to lie. Some wives and girlfriends took longer glances than usual. AS THEY SHOULD!!! Fancy clothes also mean fancy meals on the ship. Lobster, prime rib, filet mignon, yadda yadda yadda. I think that night I walked around every floor and level of the ship just looking to get stared upon. Yes I need that much validation in my life.

Tuesday

Was our first day at sea and I absolutely love days at sea, because you don’t have to wake up early, there’s no place to go, nothing to see, its total lounging. It also means we go to every single trivia challenge and run a train on our competition. All the challenges except sports, man alive we suck at sports. And when I say we suck I don’t really mean that, we could probably beat you, it’s just that in order to win trivia you need to get about 90% right and we are somewhere in the 75% range. It’s not that we don’t know sports, (we really don’t), and it’s that we don’t know sports from anything before 1990 really. So my dad can help out, especially with years, but still he doesn’t know enough. So I think we only walked away with one medal because some of the questions get recycled and we can remember very well. So we just knew enough of the answers later on in the week. On days at sea we also played major miniature golf, someone different always wins; my dad isn’t THAT good at golf. I think we went to about 3 or 4 trivia’s a day. More rum and coke and more dinner. We had a really good comedian on the ship; we had a not so good comedian on the ship. I think it’s always a challenge to be a comedian without cursing or speaking dirty. Now I like dirty profane comics, but if that’s all you got, I’m probably making more than you are as a comic. The one guy who only relied on profanity made dirty Puerto Rican jokes, which were funny because he was also Puerto Rican, but they get old fast. The funny guy was just plain funny and that’s all she wrote.

Wednesday

I think this was our day in Barbados and that equals one thing. New country!!!!!! New tick mark, one less country to see. Holla holla holla to me! We got off and if you have ever been to a cruise stop you know that there are going to be hockers for all types of tours, adventures, excursions and whatever else you can imagine. So you should just skip those and go for a walk until you find something away from the ship, because the further you walk the cheaper things get. We found some guy and thought, ehh, he’ll do. We went on a tour around the island, where different countries fought for the Barbadians, went to the tallest hill in the country, went and saw where Richard Branson likes to stay and where Tiger Woods got married. Then we stopped off at some hole in the wall and had lunch. It was a very good lunch, I actually had marlin and it was tasty tasty fish. It’s more like meat than fish, not like cartilage at all. Made it back to the ship and that is where I saw here. The beautiful goddess of Romania. All of the people who work on the ship are foreigners. Most speak English, but not all. The entertainment staff generally speaks English. So the girl, Maria, speaks Romanian, but she also speaks Spanish, be still my heart. She is our trivia challenge girl asker of questions. We totally dominate and I strike up a conversation with her about where she’s been and where she’s from. For some reason I have a hard time talking to American girls, but a foreigner, that’s no big deal. Blah blah Ive been to your country, blah blah yes I am cultured. American girl: ughhh, don’t talk to me your pretentious prick. Sad face. But back to the cute foreigner. Shes got a nice toosh, nice black hair, blue eyes, holla holla holla. We’ll talk more.

Thursday

I don’t even know where we are this day. I think St. Lucia. Which as I later found out is a sovereign country, boom new country, new tick mark. I think St. Lucia we just went to the beach and drank beer. My brother and I fought a lot, like wrestle in the water, fight on the beach fighting. I got sun burned and a little drunk. We went back to the ship to have some lunch, then we proceeded to have a royal rumble in the room. If you can remember that seen from How I Met your Mother where everyone goes outside to fight that guy. Everyone loose except Marshall, because he grew up with his three brother who were all bigger than him. In the episode everyone makes fun of him for play fighting in Minnesota, but as it turns out, they have dungeon cage mma matches. Well we kind of did that in our cabin. The three brothers, all of various heights and weights, Im also kind of the smallest if you can imagine. The two younger ones wanted a shot at the title to be the number one son or the king of awesome, who knows, but they won, they beat the shit out of me, but not before I bruised my hand with my super knuckles. I think we fought about 5 or 6 times, I think I won two of the fights. That day we did some more trivia and I don’t know what else.

Friday

St Kitts, not even sure what I did. So we made it back to the ship and it was another formal night,…..our last formal night. The food was excellent, the wait staff and cooks all sang for us. I walked around like a pimp all over the ship, with none a girl giving me a second look. Ho hum, such is life. My younger brother and I just grabbed some buckets of beer and talked up in the adult serenity section. It’s a place for crappy rich white people. We aren’t them, but that’s where we drank.

Satruday

Welcome to the Netherland Antilles. Specifically St. Maarten, more specifically, new hard rock café pin, w00t w00t. I have now been, OFFICIALLY, to 36 hard rock cafes, ive been to more than that, but it was before the passport program began. So this was the day where we actually had a shore excursion, but it was raining and there were no cancellations. So we went on a rainy snorkeling adventure. I went to get drunk, because there was so much rum punch and rum and coke to be drank. I don’t really like snorkeling, I have a hard time breathing under water and I don’t really care to get good at it. Ive seen turtles and fish and other cool things, but it didn’t excite that much that I need to do it more. Its mostly just a check mark. So im all for sunning myself and drinking rum. One of the coolest things about the excursion is we went past the airport. For those of you who are up to date on interweb videos you have probably seen the video of planes practically landing on the beach, the water ends and the runway starts about 50 feet away. Well that is here, its in St. Maarten. Giant 747s land here. We parked the catamaran right in front of the runway and watched as a decent sized us airways plane landed over us it was pretty sweet. Next we went to the bay where they would be swimming and my brother and I would be fighting. We fought for awhile and then went back to the boat to start drinking, rum after swimming not before. They also made us sandwiches and in the process of flock of seagulls followed, they ran, they ran so far away, j/k not those ones. But they did follow us because I guess everyday this boat makes the same journey and the birds know to follow because they will get fed. Got back to the boat and proceeded to finish off my rum and watched some harry potter. Went to the going away show, went to our last dinner on the boat and that was about it.

Sunday

Went to the airport and I was denied access to the Admirals Lounge because I wasn’t flying international. I did get to the airport with plenty of time to spare so I told the TSA to feel me up. He was very displeased with this. Since Im used to getting felt up in Germany I let the TSA do it just to buck the system. When I got to the gate I began to read a book and then the Clarks showed up. So we shared stories of the cruise and talked about other things. Then we played a card game that involved dwarves and mining. Then we said goodbye to the older boys and the El Paso Clarks and I boarded the plane. They went right to coach and I went left to first. We hung out in Dallas for a while and chatted about different things. It was really nice. Said some more goodbyes and my vacation was over. Made it home safe.

Thanks for reading,

jacob