Sand, Surf & Rum Cruise on the Regent Grandeur
1/24/25 to 2/3/25

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Page 1 – Embarkation, Ship
Page 2 – Ship Continued
Page 3 - Ports of Call: Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Gustavia, St. Barts
Page 4 - Ports of Call: Roseau, Dominca; St. Johns, Antigua; Tortola, BVI

Ports of Call (Continued)

Roseau, Dominica

This would be my first visit to Dominica. We were supposed to go there on a previous cruise after Covid, but they wouldn't let us come in. It would be the 96th country I have visited. As we approached the port, I was pleased to see that it was another mountainous island. Since we live in flat south Florida, I love seeing mountains when I travel.

When we walked off the dock, we could see that there were no large busses, only a lot of small ones. This one held about 22 passengers, and it was rather tight quarters. This is the type of bus where the seat next to the two-seat side could be put down to have 4 across. Fortunately, they spared us that.

Our guide for our tour, Dominica’s Favorites, was Jonathan. He was a character and did show us a good time.

Our first destination for the day was the Emerald Pool. It took almost an hour to get there traveling over narrow, curvy hilly roads. It was not a fun drive, but we did see a lot of the countryside. When we arrived, we took a path through the forest to an overlook where we could look down on the Emerald Pool and waterfall. People were already down there swimming in the pool. Jonathan told us that there were a lot of steps to go down to the pool, so several of us decided to just enjoy the view from above. After all, it didn’t look that emerald to us without the sun shining on it. We knew that we would see better waterfalls later.

After another long drive on the curvy roads to our next stop, Trafalgar Falls, we had a restroom-refreshment break at a brightly colored green building. They offered us some free drinks. I tried the local beer, Kubuli. I’ll bet you’ve never had one of those.

Across the way was another much larger bright green building. They must have gotten that paint color on sale.

A short drive took us to a parking lot where we took a path to see Trafalgar Falls. Now this was a nice place. Those were lovely waterfalls. I wish we could have stayed long to just look at them.

As we returned to the ship, we passed by a wooden statue of Ma Pampoo, a local who lived to be 128 years old.

We slowed down to take photos of the port area from above. The Celebrity Beyond was in a better position for a photo, but we could get a glimpse of the Grandeur.

When we got back on the ship, I took some more photos of Roseau’s port area.

As we were leaving port, I took some more photos of the island as the sun was going down. It is a pretty island, but the roads were challenging.

St. Johns, Antigua

Cathy and I previously visited Antigua a couple years ago. On that cruise we took a city walking tour and saw all the sights near the port, so we decided to take the Champagne & Pineapple Catamaran tour. Now that was a great decision! As we docked, we saw lots of catamarans coming and going.

The yellow one was the same company as we would be using, Wadadli Cats.

We walked off the ship along a wooden pier to where we saw the other cats docked.

There was a lot of room on the catamaran with lots of shaded areas. They also had netted areas for those who wanted to work on their tans.

As we cruised along the coastline, we could see fort ruins and beautiful scenery.

I liked the Antigua flag flying on the back of the boat.

We came to areas with gorgeous beaches and beautiful homes overlooking the turquoise waters.

On one beach they had a very popular floating bar. It looked like fun.

One beach was covered with a massive Sandals Resort. The below photos are just a portion of it.

They put up the sail to cruise to our next destination. We were having a great time.

They finally pulled up to a gorgeous beach where we could jump in the water from the back of the boat or walk off the front to the beach.

The water was so pretty and felt so good. We couldn’t have found a better place to chill.

The rock formations at the end of the beach along with the ruins of an old fort made the terrain even more interesting.

As we all got back on the boat and we left the beach, one of the team walked around with some cheese or tuna sandwiches. The tour description said we would have a light lunch. It was very light. But they also had lots of beer, champagne, rum punch and other drinks that kept everyone, including us, quite happy.

The music selection the captain selected was great. Everyone was dancing and having a great time. Cathy danced with one of the crew. She enjoyed the tour. We both did.

When I got back on the ship, I took a photo of the port area and the large church in the distance.

Tortola, British Virgin Islands

Our last port of the cruise would be one that I had previously been to a couple times. We arrived early enough to have the morning glow showcasing the island.

After breakfast it was time to get ready for the days tour, Sage Mountain and Beach. On my previous visits, I did tours that went to the Baths at British Virgin Gorda. It required a boat ride to get to the different island. We thought it would be nice to actually see Tortola itself on this trip. From the ship we saw the small port area at the end of the long pier.

When we exited the pier, we saw that there were no large busses for tours on this island, just mostly open trucks with five seats each holding 4 people per row. With the mild temperatures and partly cloudy skies, we didn’t mind the open vehicles.

Our driver/guide for the four-hour tour was Calvin.

Once again, we had curvy, hilly and narrow roads to get up to the Sage Mountain National Park. Fortunately, the drive was only about a half hour. With the thick vegetation, we would only get glimpses of the scenery as we quickly passed by a small open area.

When we arrived at the national park, there wasn’t much there. Other than the sign, there was a small building with a viewing platform on top.

There were a couple other trucks there with guests from the large MSC cruise ship docked next to us. Before we began our walk up the mountain, Calvin put on some hiking boots. That was the first clue that this wasn’t going to be an easy walk in the park. As we walked up the road, I thought we would be continuing up the road, but instead we headed for the concrete stairs. Notice that there are no railings on the stairs, which was not a good sign.

After carefully navigating the stairs, we walked behind the pole where there was a narrow muddy slick path. What made it worse was that it was quite steep and very difficult to keep from sliding. Calvin told us to grab onto the vegetation as we tried to get up the embankment. Tall grass isn’t something that I feel comfortable with to support me. I was slipping and almost fell to my knees but caught myself. I wasn’t going to risk falling and hurting myself. I backed away and let others try the path. Others were slipping and landing in the mud, when Calvin came back to give people a hand getting up the steepest part. If it was this bad at the start of the trail, what would it be like further up the hill. A bunch of us just returned to the truck to wait for those who did make the trek into the park. After we came down, Calvin followed us with a plan B. He said that there was an easier path up that we might want to try. We walked up the gravel road to the left of the concrete stairs, where he showed us the “easier” path. Was he kidding? He said that after the one big step, it would be easier. He didn’t get any takers for his plan B.

I went over to the park building to walk up to the viewing platform. The only park employee on site stopped me and said that there was an admission charge, $3. Since it would be the best view I would get in the park, I paid and went up. I had the small area to myself.

The view was nice but would have been better with less vegetation restricting the view.

When I came down from the platform, I asked the park employee if the path we took is the only one up the mountain. She said it was. I asked if there are a lot of people injured going up the hill. She just smiled. I asked why there weren’t some railings to make the walk safer. She said that there was no funding available. Rather sad. She was happy that the building we were in was rebuilt after Hurricane Irma in 2017. It devastated the island.

We were parked in front of the Mountain View Resaurant. Calvin gave us all tickets for a free drink from there. I wondered if they had a view since it was named Mountain View. The owner of the privately run restaurant/bar and souvenir shop, Jim, told everyone to wash off their shoes before coming into the building. He had water buckets with brushes. After cleaning our shoes, we entered the building. I asked Jim where the mountain view was. He said there isn’t one due to the vegetation. He said the best views we would get were on the road going back down the mountain. We were given a choice of a bottle of water or cup of rum punch. Since I brought water with me, I took the rum punch, which was pretty good since it wasn’t too sweet.

He told us that we were lucky that day, since they only have running water a couple days a week on the mountain. I was glad about that since I could use the restroom and wash the mud off my hands from playing in the mud on the hill.
Next door to the restaurant was a residence that had a view of the other side of the island. Since it was private property, I took the photos from the road.

After just over an hour, the group returned. They all told us that we made the right decision to not go up the mountain. It had been a miserable dangerous slippery walk. Some had large areas of mud on their clothes where they tumbled. Plus, with all the vegetation they didn’t have any views of the surrounding area. Apparently, the best views were from the building’s viewing platform I climbed. We were quite surprised that Regent would bring guests to this park where their mostly senior crowd could seriously injure themselves. Jim told us that he had never seen anyone from the cruise lines checking out the park. I did tell destination services about the place as well as putting it in the cruise survey.

Jim was right about the views going back down the mountain. They were much better. Calvin would slow down or stop so we could get photos.

The beaches looked very nice. We were glad that our next destination was to a beach after the disappointing mountain park destination.

We stopped at a popular beach where there were lots of lounge chairs and umbrellas set up.

Since we had a great swim the previous day in Antigua, we decided to just have lunch at a beach side restaurant and enjoy the scenery and relax for the hour and a half we would be there.

On the way back up the mountain to return to the ship, we had some more lovely views.

As we got closer to town, we could see the Grandeur in the harbor dwarfed by the much larger MSC ship.

It hadn’t been a great tour, but it did give us a chance to see some of the beauty of the island. We now had two sea days to enjoy the wonderful Grandeur before getting back to Miami.

Disembarkation

With us being able to drive home rather than catch a flight, it was a low stress morning before disembarking the ship. We could take our time and enjoy our breakfast. This was probably the most organized disembarkation ever. The times they said we would start and when our number was called were right on schedule. People weren’t rushing to the entrance before their numbers were called and everything went so smoothly. Looking out from our balcony, we could see the parking lot entrance in the white building behind Terminal J. With our car just inside the entrance, it was the easiest disembarkation ever.

Recap

We finally were able to cruise on what is considered a top-of-the-line luxury cruise line. We now understand much better why cruisers choose to cruise on these lines. The ship is beautiful and elegant with the best service we have experienced on any cruise. Regent Seven Seas has taken over as our favorite line from Oceania but we still love Oceania and will continue to cruise with them. We will also be looking at other luxury lines to see if we like them even more than Regent.

The main reason we booked the cruise was for the ship rather than the Caribbean ports that we have been to previously. The included tours turned out to be very good for the most part and we liked our port visits more than we expected. We met so many very nice people on this cruise. Seasoned cruisers always have lots of information and stories to share. They made every day so enjoyable.

Bottom Line: Great ship, great crew, great fellow passengers – Great Cruise!

Sand, Surf & Rum Cruise on the Regent Grandeur 1/24/25 to 2/3/25