December 19, 2024

The sail away from Miami was beautiful.

We had a casual dinner on the terrace at sailaway.

After leaving from Miami on Tuesday, we had a sea day yesterday and enjoyed it! The weather was just a bit windy but it didn’t affect us at all. Ramsay and I had massages and we assembled our trivia team – the Peanut Gallery – and finished in third place. We had a lovely dinner in Toscana and enjoyed the first of the entertainment team shows – “Into the Night”. We saw that one with a different team last year and it was just as spectacular with this talented team.

The ship is beautifully decorated for the holidays and there is a very impressive gingerbread village in the main atrium.

Our cruise director is Silas Cook. He is relatively new to Oceania and we had never met him before. He’s doing a great job.

Today, our port was Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. It has been a long time since we were here, and we had never been to this city. Puerto Plata is on the north side of the island on the Atlantic Ocean. There are 62 miles of beaches on this side alone. Columbus was one of the early explorers of the area. He called the shoreline “the Silver Port” and settled at La Isabela with a mixed community of Taino’s (original inhabitants) and Spaniards. They built the first church and his first home in the Americas. Eventually gold deposits were found here. The area where the ship docks is called Taino Bay. It can accommodate 3 cruise ships and the port in the north can accommodate 2. Our guide said that 4 ships are here today. We shared the dock with the Celebrity Apex.

The Dominican Republic shares the island with Haiti and our guide mentioned what a terrible time they are having in that country right now.

Our tour today was to Ocean World. It was a short bus ride away. We noticed many of our ship tours were headed there with various options to choose from so we anticipated a very crowded place. We were delightfully surprised.

The park offers a snorkeling area (we were prepared to do it but it was a very underwhelming manmade pool and you could see all of the fish from the glass sides). There are dolphin, sea lion and shark shows and a nice bird sanctuary. The dance here is the meringue and some dancers performed on an outdoor stage.

We enjoyed all of the shows and then relaxed at the buffet lunch which featured Dominican food. After lunch we went to the beach (it is a manmade beach because the waves are so rough here that you cannot access the beach over the rock walls that protect the land.)

Here are some pictures of the shows. The trainers were funny and just amazing with the way they work with the animals and they treat them very well.

We really enjoyed the bird sanctuary, especially the lovebirds who ate out of our hands and landed on our hats!

Mark, Ramsay and Adam had a trip to a coffee plantation, which they enjoyed.

Norm and I were invited to a Moet and Chandon champagne tasting which we enjoyed very much. Our entertainer tonight is Linda Gentille. We have seen her many times but as always, I will go to the show again.

Tomorrow we will be in San Juan. We arrive at 11 and don’t have tours scheduled so will be doing some walks around town.