Peter and Kay Snowed-in In Newfoundland

The outdoor bar in the center of the cruise terminal in St Kitts

You might remember the cruising friends Peter and Kay, we met on a Celebrity cruise out of Miami three years ago. They hail from St. John's Newfoundland so that inspired me to drop them a note after hearing about the recent blizzard which hit their island.

Here's what Peter wrote back:

"Thanks for reaching out to us.   We survived unscathed but had quite a few hours of shovelling over 3 days – luckily the good NL’ers came through as usual – our “younger” next door neighbour helped shovel the first day and the second day he got his brother to use his Kubota snowblower to get rid of most of the drifted snow that we had left after the first day of shovelling (picture with shovel against the bank).  The first picture gives an idea of what we were dealing with when we started – there was no snow along the side of the house and at the back of the driveway yet the 3 vehicles, our 2 and our neighbours, the white lump to the right of the truck, were encased in snow and the drift went to the road – about another 20 feet from the shovel, 15 feet from where Kay is standing – probably 8-10 feet out into the road which still hasn’t been pushed back.   The most terrifying part of the whole ordeal was that the wind had sustained strength of 100 km plus for 15 hours – that is a lot of wind – the house shook.    Highest wind in St. John’s was about 135 km while some areas had gusts to over 170 km so we were lucky."

 "Anyway we were home and it is probably good that we were – would have been hard to be away and not know what was going on.    We were supposed to be in Vancouver all week at the conference and then go to the interior on Thursday for skiing with our son, DIL and grandsons (supposed to leave Sat AM, then Sunday AM, then Tuesday AM and now we are going to Kelowna on Thursday for Kay and Friday for me) – the airport remains closed – supposed to open again as long as the State of Emergency is lifted, tomorrow, Wed at 5 AM.     It has been a tough weekend and into the week – they are allowing grocery stores to open today as people are starting to run out of things – we are OK although we are running out of coffee cream – not that important for sure."

"Hope that your winter goes better than ours has to date."

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Celebrity Eclipse - St Kitts

Two other ships are in port today (Grandeur Of The Seas,  Freedom Of The Seas) all of us arriving at 7 am, so there are 8900+ people all needing a cab. Better get to the dock quickly today.

While waiting at the dock for a taxi we met two people from our ship Peter and Kay where we found our old cab driver Duke Ellington (Ellington Adams) and took his cab to Cockleshell Beach and Loxeen Beach Bar and my girlfriend owner Debibie.

Our driver Duke Ellington used to be a weight lifter. (bench press 350 lb.) He was born on a sugar plantation here on the island.

We got him to stop at our favorite look-out spot on the way to Cockleshell Beach.

Peter is a geologist so he is always examining the sand and rocks. Back home he looks for gold.

Always good to see my friend Debbie.

Mother and daughter at work.

The ubiquitous tiki barge has found Cockleshell Beach. There goes the neighbourhood!

Happy now cause as a family we enjoyed free chairs and umbrella and drank lots of rum.

Rich from Kentucky has lots of good smoked pork recipes. He and his wife came from the Oasis.

Peter and Kay from Newfoundland. We were lucky to meet up with them today.

Back to the ship early since we have a 2:30  all aboard.

Celebrity Eclipse - St Maarten

We are meeting up with Cliff and Abi who are on the Koningsdam. We communicated by email a couple weeks ago when Abi realized we would be at the same port.

We told them we'd meet them at Sharky's Bar on the pier. No, Wendy isn't drinking beer at 9:30 am. The picture was taken last time we were here.

The Eclipse flies the Maltese Flag of Convenience.

We docked at about 9 am, right beside the Koningsdam. Cliff and Abi met us on the pier as we disembarked and we met Peter and Kay at Sharkey's

That makes six of us so we had no trouble getting a taxi outside the gates. Edward Arrindel took us to Mullet Bay after we determined that Baie Rouge in the French side was too rough. We negotiated $9 ea. instead of $10 and I think that was fair. He got it all back and more in tips anyway.

We took our chairs in the back row because the waves would occasionally sweep right up to the front row.

Kay lost her beach bag (and I-pad)  so that was a major disappointment. We're not sure exactly when, but the bag was hanging on the umbrella where the shoe is now. Cliff thought he saw a black man hanging around nearby but he was long gone when we noticed the beach bag was missing.

The water was amazingly beautiful but I chickened out and didn't go in.

Just so I won't forget, this is Edward's card. He was a very nice young man with a brand new taxi. He was very accommodating. Look for him outside the cruise terminal gates to bypass the line-ups and save a buck or two.

We used Joey (Rasta man) and found him reliable in the past.
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