Sunday 9 January - Our First Full Day in the Caribbean

I do promise to be more positive tomorrow, but here goes for the record of our second day. 

And so we awoke to Sunday and our first full day in the Caribbean. There was only one problem.  It was 3am and pitch black outside as we were out at sea where it does get truly dark!  We delayed a while to see if we could get back to sleep, but eventually gave in and decided to make good use of the time to get shipshape in our cabin and prepare for the day ahead. 

First task of the day – when did breakfast begin?  Well, being P&O, there are always tea and coffee-making facilities in our cabin, so we made ourselves an early drink.  As for the ship itself, we could have a continental breakfast from 6.30am and a full English from 7am, so soon after 7am we ventured up to the cafeteria to see how that worked during a pandemic. 

Of course, it was ‘masks on’ from our cabin until we had found a table then it was masks on again to go around the servery. A strict one-way system was in place with food items in groups and someone to serve you with whatever you wanted at each stage. You do not touch anything until it is given to you. Once you have left that area you can get breakfast cereals separately where again you are served. Tea, coffee, juices (limited choice of orange, apple or pineapple) etc are served at your table and waiting staff pass by all the time to collect any items as soon as you have finished with them. 

I can imagine that some of these measures may well survive the pandemic as they can only help to reduce the outbreaks of norovirus on board cruise ships. Staff are to be seen everywhere on board with cloths and spray canisters in hand as they wipe down surfaces with anti-bacterial spray. 

We had found a table by the window so that we could enjoy the view when a sudden rain shower descended on us, leaving behind a beautiful rainbow. 

Second task of the day – to get some wifi access. They offer 3 packages - they are ‘pretty awful’, ‘sort of passable’ and ‘just about OK’, although they aren’t described as that in their promotional literature. We decided to push the boat out.  I would need enough capability to be able to do the blog – so, the middle one for me – and I persuaded Elizabeth to have the ‘all singing, all dancing bells and whistles’ top notch service so that she could have video calls with Catherine and Sarah.  We duly took the plunge and our credit cards groaned! But it would be a while before we could even get in. 

We spent some time trying and failing to use quite a few of the apps we’re used to using, some successfully, others definitely not.  After a good deal of time had passed trying we decided to leave it all till later. 

Now we had had a choice of arrival days on this cruise.  We could have joined the ship on either the Friday or the Saturday. We chose the Saturday so that we would have a full day in Barbados on our return there rather than a full day there at the start of the cruise. 

With hindsight that was a mistake. I’ll elaborate. We had it in our heads that our first full day on board was to be a sea day, but no, it was just an overnight run from Barbados to St Vincent and the Grenadines. Now I’ve always thought that, with a name like that, it should be a pop/rock band, but it’s actually a Commonwealth sovereign state consisting of the main island of St. Vincent plus a string of islands running from there southwards towards Grenada and including the island of Mustique -  playground of the rich and famous, including Princess Margaret and Mick Jagger – now that’s quite a celebrity spectrum in itself! 

I was getting excited. My guide book described St Vincent, a port stop we had never come to before, as ‘considered by some to be the most beautiful and pristine island in the whole Caribbean’. We knew that we could only go ashore if on a P&O shore excursion, so what could we do from the selection on offer? Well, the answer was a big, fat zero. The few excursions that were on offer were fully booked but, as we were fully vaccinated, we were at least allowed to step ashore and explore the terminal building with its shops, bars and free wifi, so perhaps all was not lost. 

We ventured ashore. It turned out it was raining again, not much, but just enough to be a nuisance.  We skipped along to the terminal building. Now please don’t let your imagination run riot. The term ‘terminal building’ in this part of the world doesn’t have the grand connotations you might have come to expect from living in Europe. 

It consisted of a number of small shop units in a square, being a mix of bars and touristy shops.  So, with the torrid time we had been having on board trying to get ourselves connected to the wonderful worldwide web, I just had to find this free wifi to catch up with my life. A quick scan on the phone showed nothing that was likely to fit the bill, so we had a general mooch around, reminding ourselves at all times that it was by now raining heavily and that the central parts of this group of shops etc were in the open, so do not stray off piste. 

The bars were packed with typical P&O clientele who were gathered in large groups around the tables where buckets of beer were flowing and the voices were getting louder. 

I got into conversation with the local woman on the entrance desk and I talked to her about the fact that we couldn’t go beyond the port gates unless we were on a ship’s excursion. I said I suspected that this was because the vaccination rate (23% fully vaccinated) was so low and she confirmed that this was the case. I asked if there was a shortage of vaccine supplies. She said there wasn’t at all, but rather the usual old ‘vaccine hesitancy’ as people were put off by what they were reading on social media and because they ‘didn’t know what was in it’. I gave the usual retort that I bet they didn’t know exactly what was in their last McDonald’s meal and she readily agreed. She said she had needed no persuading to get her vaccinations and that she had already had her 3 doses. 

We returned to the ship for the excitement of a hot chocolate, but only to be accompanied by the loud tones of a gang of people nearby putting things to rights.  This is our 4^th P&O cruise and we feel that it may well be our last. Have we moved on over the years?  Have we become snobs in our old age or have we been on so many cruises now that we’re getting a bit more experienced and a bit more picky as a result? 

This cruise is certainly like no other we’ve been on. The restrictions in place (but with no price reductions on offer to us), with the knowledge too that some people on board will have paid a fraction of what we have as last-minute bookers, somehow a lot of the wow factor has gone. There are no dance night gatherings in the atrium and no dance classes. There is not sitting up at bars and there's no free drinks loyalty night for previous cruisers.

Serious cost-cutting is evident. Love them or loathe them, there is no cruise director, no welcome on board drink was on offer. The activities are limited, they tell us because of covid, although of course covid can be a useful cover for not needing to pay staff for those activities.  Some room service is now chargeable and there are no bath robes on offer.  There are no nibbles out in dishes in the bar areas. And the photography studio area is totally deserted and there are no photographers around. The hot tubs are closed off. 

I think the main reason for me not looking to book with P&O again is based on two things – the last cruise we had booked with them was on their smaller, adults-only ship Adonia. They sold that ship and we only found out 3 months later when I read about it on the web. Only then did they offer to refund our deposits. 

Then this time it turned out that, once we had paid the final balance (11 September 2021) there would be no turning back and, at that time, covid infection rates in the UK were less than a third of the rates when we left the UK, so we had been happy to go ahead. 

Trying to stand back a little, I get the feeling that, yes, lots of health restrictions are in place in order to protect everyone’s health and that’s one reason why we wanted to postpone to a better time.  But the bottom line for P&O is that they want to go ahead at all costs.  Suspending operations would be expensive as their staff on board are almost exclusively from the sub-continent and other parts of Asia and they would be expensive to send back home and P&O would have ships stuck at anchor in the Caribbean. So, while they will happily put all the health-related restrictions in place that anyone in authority asks them to do, they’re quite willing to go beyond to protect their ability to cruise, even if it is at the expense of the passenger experience. 

We were sitting near a couple at breakfast – an elderly lady and perhaps a daughter - and the younger one said that it was her first and would be her last cruise, so not only has she been put off P&O, she has been put off cruising altogether. They had been the delayed passengers, set to arrive as were going to sleep on our first night and delayed setting off from Gatwick by 3.5 hours. 

But back to our internet access. Now I know that internet access at sea can be a variable experience and when it’s included in the fare as with such as Celebrity cruises, we’re happy to accept the odd glitch. But when you’re paying over £26 a day between you for the privilege, you do expect at least to be able to get in and do things! 

After a very slow start, we did realise that we were connected at last.  However, it soon became clear that being connected wasn’t necessarily linked to being able to do anything. General web browsing was just about possible and Elizabeth did manage eventually to have a video conversation with the girls. 

But overall the connectivity was nothing like as described so down to Reception it was to ask for help. The woman we spoke to was a good listener but said that they didn’t have an IT manager any longer, but that she would see if she could schedule an appointment with someone in IT for after lunch. Once arranged she would leave us a voicemail. 

No voicemail came so, after lunch, it was back to Reception to try again. The woman – a different one – told me they only had IT staff to support the ship’s own IT systems and that there wasn’t anyone who could help us as it was all automated. She said we could have our money back. We told her that we didn’t want to be without anything at all and that we were able to get some things. At this point he said she would refund us 25% each, so it was better than nothing and we were able to hobble along. 

And so the day passed, with those lovely warm breezes wafting across us as we sat out on the balcony. We were out on one of the top decks for the ‘sail away’ to their resident steel band and a beautiful evening was upon us. 

As in many parts of the world, it gets dark quickly and by 6pm it is indeed night.  We had a quiet spell for a while and then set off to explore the bars and the entertainment and to have a pre-meal drink. We settled for the Malibar with its own vocalist and a small backing band and she treated us to a series of diva hits.

We set off for dinner. Now we hadn’t booked anything and it was to our cost as it turned out. ‘Our Time’ dining turned out to be ‘Wait a long time’ dining and we idled around in the casino with our pager until the time came to eat.  The food was up to the usual standard, but we think there’s now a course missing, although we can’t be sure.

By the time we got to coffee and small chocs it was coming up to 10pm, so another day was done.