New news and Dominica

Plans have changed in the last two days folks! I’ve been offered (out-of-the-blue) an opportunity which I cannot refuse. I will be cutting my contract on the Ryndam short and will be transferred to the position of Hostess on the Prinsendam Grand World Voyage. As much as I am just settling in to Ryndam life and will miss the people I’ve met, the juicy carrot that is a single cabin and about double the pay with a lot more responsibility and one of the two most coveted ships, is quite an offer. Also, I will be coming home for a week for Christmas. I leave on the world cruises Jan 5th, but will be starting early (Dec. 31st) for training.

The last week few days have been much nicer than the last few weeks. We’ve been missing a staff member which makes a huge difference in our jobs since they have to stretch our responsibilities as it is. We now have a new EC manager onboard (from Vancouver) and also a new cruise director, Steven (also from Vancouver). In St. Thomas I bought a new digital camera and wandered around, but as much as everyone talks about it being such a great port – it’s not at all my favorite. I suppose people have different rating scales than I do in order to make it into their top ports. I, for one look for somewhere that is beautiful, not too touristy and friendly. It seems that once you’ve worked on ships for a few years you get jaded and those people’s favorite ports are the ones that are most like American cities and that have good places to shop.

For this reason I was frothing at the bit to get off the ship in Dominica (pronounced Dom-en-eek-ah) because when we were in port two weeks ago it looked so lush and interesting from the ship. As it was, Lucy, Rob and Eric had met a local, Fitzroy, that week and he took them all over the island for a very cheap rate. We happened to run into him on our way to visit some friends’ of Rob and Eric’s on the Volendam. We had lunch with the Cruise Director, Scotty and his senior, Jason. A cruise staffer from their ship and also our Cruise Director completed the bunch. We found Fitzroy waiting outside the restaurant and he took us to Trafalgar Falls. We hiked a short ways up to the falls, quickly realizing how wet we were getting due to the fact that we were in a rainforest. I was the only person with foresight to bring a swimsuit, but it didn’t really matter as the spray from the falls and the rain itself was enough to completely soak everything we had on. A cool swim under the waterfall, followed by a dip in the Sulfur Springs to warm us up topped off a great day. We got back to the ship only to find out that our soccer game against the Volendam had ended with huge disappointment and our engine wouldn’t start so we were late in sailing to Barbados.