That Ill Fated Cruise and Roatan island

What should have been a wonderful vacation, turned out to be really tragic. Not for me and my family,  thank heavens but for the family of the lady who jumped overboard. 

You know, when I heard the announcement "man overboard" I thought it was a hoax. This is because some years ago on another Carnival cruise, just outside of Dominica there was a similar announcement and not only did we spend some four hours circling and looking for the body but so did a British frigate. It had been on some training mission in Dominica and came to assist. 

After a long search, they did an inventory and found no one missing. Coincidentally, it was  the 1st April so the captain concluded that the anonymous call they had received was some idiot's idea of an April fools joke! It was no joke however, just stupid and wasteful.

View from the manually operated swing bridge

In this case it was deathly serious though as a lady who was about 65 years old I hear, did jump to her death. I never  knew her or even see when her body was being recovered, but I know the grief that comes with  losing a loved one and as her son and daughter were there, I can just imagine how traumatic it is for them. Our discomfort only came from the fact that after the boat had to circle for about three hours searching for the body, they were low on fuel so had to turn back to Cozumel and bypass the Cayman visit. 

This was  especially annoying for me at first, for my friends were waiting there to take me on  a tour of that island which I had not visited in over 30 years and was looking forward to seeing them and the developments which I hear taking place there. We were all sooooo disappointed but as I said, our loss was not as great as that of the mourning family so we would just have to arrange for a future visit.

This cruise should have taken us to Cozumel, which I had visited twice before, Belize which I had visited at least 5 times but wanted to see the developments which had taken place. The other ports of call were Mahogany Cay  on Roatan island. I had never been there before and have now put the island on my bucket list for it appears to be quite attractive with lush mountains and white sands beaches. 

It has a population of some 70,000 I hear and a rich history similar to most former slave colonies. Although they had car rental agencies at the dock there and the island is really small,  because when I tour I like to stop and take in every thing, I did not try to get a car this time as I didn't want to rush.

My curiosity about Belize city was well placed as not much has changed in that city at all except there are people on the streets harassing tourists now. One man with locks whose teeth looked like Bully Bop's told us to stay on the main street as we could assaulted by gangs. When we asked others about the crime situation there they assured us that his was not true. As we walked back, he asked us to give him money for helping us and when I told him no, he shouted that I was mean and should not return to Belize. 

This made me feel so at home!

 We arrived there on the 18th August and another man tried to sell us a flag as he said it was their Independence Day. I never believed him anyway for had it been,  it would have been a holiday and signs of celebrations. I later researched it and discovered their Independence day is September 21. 

So be warned.

My main reason for visiting the town though was to look at the Swing Bridge as I thought that by now they must have moved from manual labour to machinery to move it. I could not believe they hadn't! 

I remember the many days I was rudely aroused from my sleep while staying at a hotel nearby, for the noise from the men pushing the bridge at 6 am to let the boats through was really horrendous!  I guess it is still a pestilence to those who have to reside nearby.

 I really could not believe the country had not progressed from that point some 15 years later! 

My one regret was that I was not able to visit San Pedro. This is a town in the southern part of the  Ambergris Cay. According to 2012 mid-year estimates, the town has a population of about 13,381 as is the second largest town in the Belize District.

I hear it is beautiful there but unfortunately during all the years I used to visit that country for work, I never heard about it so did not visit. I only subsequently heard about it from a cousin who lives in Canada but who spent many years there with her ex- husband who managed a hotel there, how fabulous it was. The water taxis did not leave till 1.30 pm  though which would have me returning too late for the ship. So next time.

The place I was really looking really really forward to was Cayman but fate intervened. The experience in Cozumel made up for everything else though. We had a really fabulous guide who took us to a Mayan holy site. His name was Angel and he was a proud Mayan. He was not only extremely informative but really passionate about his culture. This is never something you see in tour guides as they normally recite what is popular for tourists to hear. This guy spoke about how his culture was being adulterated by the Mexican establishment and insisted that his native language was not Spanish but Mayan.  He did the tour in English but we were all so impressed with him.

When we returned to Cozumel to drop off the body as a result of the suicide, we just walked around the town which is pleasant and touristy.

In Miami, I really had a great time with friends Joseph and Jackie and it was a good thing Jackie dropped me off early at the airport, for it was quite a drama, but not unpleasant. 

According to the security, they detected, wait for it........explosive residue on my hand luggage! 

A nice young man with locks (which he admitted it was for style not religion!) then went through my things piece by piece, rubbing everything on a strip then testing it on the machine.

Before a lady body searched me, she wanted to know if I had any aches or pains anywhere. I told her everywhere hurt as I had chic v which is partly true since the stupid pains from that virus do come back on occasion. The entire process took about 45 minutes but I feel better that security there is thorough. It certainly isn't in Jamaica for on a Jet Blue flight the next day, two women from here got into a fight and one drew out a razor and the other had pepper spray!

Man that is really disgraceful.

Kaieteur Falls, Guyana

Absolutely awesome, is all I could think of after seeing Kaieteur Falls for the first time as our 9 seater plane flew low in the huge gorge following the Potaro river from the Pakaraima Mountains and over the 741 feet falls.

View from above (taken with a cheap camera)

Yes, I had seen the brochures and it had looked fabulous, but my friends were right when they told me that you had not seen Guyana if you had not seen the falls.

Expensive to get there yes, but worth every dollar.

All I could think of was that if Jamaica had something like that we would have 6 million tourists per year, not 3 million. 

Yet Guyana is so rich in gold, forestry, bauxite, diamonds and now oil, that they pay tourism scant regard. 

It is also amazing that a huge country like that with all its natural charm only had just over one hundred and forty thousand visitors last year and most were Guyanese who live abroad. 

To get to what must really be the 8th wonder of the world (the Guyanese call it that) we set out from the International airport in a 9 seater twin propeller plane flown by Captain Anil Ranglochan and believe it or not, I got my first flying lesson. For I had the honour of sitting with him in the cockpit where I got the opportunity to use the foot directional pedals and the steering wheel looking instrument which you pull up to get the nose of the plane up and push down to descend. 

It was quite an exhilarating experience but I didn't try it for too long, thinking I might just dump us all in the thick jungle below.😄

And thick jungle it is for it was not until we had flown about 20 minutes before we saw clearings where the mining sites at Mazaruni where they are extracting gold and diamonds at a rapid rate.

Apart from that there are few clearings before the Potaro River and the breathtaking  plateau and gorge comes into view. When we landed at the small airstrip, we were 1500 feet above sea level. Our guide was a Patamouk Amerindian (that's the tribe that discovered the falls) named Leroy. He lives in a cottage with five other guides at the national park but the nearest village to them is 20 minutes away by foot. The name of that village is Chenapaya and has a population of between 600 and 700, many of whom are Guyanese rastas.

From that village one has to walk for two more days to find another settlement. Deep, deep forest indeed.

We got our first view of the falls from Boys Scout view and that when we learnt that the width of the falls was approximately half of the 400 foot width that you see during the rainy season.

 According to Leroy at full blast, these falls dump 136,000 gallons of water per second in to the valley below. 

Boy those Amerindians were certainly right when they called Guyana the "land of many waters".
The flora around the falls are unbelievable as are the stark raw cliff

 edges.

Next we took in the view from Rainbow View and from the number of rainbows that sprung up in the prisms, the name was well selected.

Next we went to the top of the falls to see the water coming down the huge river to the edge. It was here that a young Guyanese girl on tour, ran past the guide two years ago to her death. This was actually the first suicide at that site in recent times although the legend is that it was named for Kai, a chief, or Toshao who acted to save his people by paddling over the falls in an act of self-sacrifice to

Makonaima, the great spirit.

As I am one who does not like heights, I could not even contemplate anything so dramatic but since I couldn't swim, I doused myself with some of the warm, comforting  water.

After what was a really wonderful tour, we flew over large sections of the Essequibo river and really got an opportunity to see the vastness of that magnificent river with its numerous islands.

A tour that was really worth it all the way.

 For additional photographs, see; 
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