Royal Clipper Trip Report -- Day 3

Day 3 -- Barbados and Embarkation
Sunny, 80°

We were going to meet our driver/tour guide at 9, so we were up and packed fairly early. We had a quick breakfast of inferior baked goods that were purchased from the grocery store. (The Cake Lady shop was closed on Saturday morning ) We checkout of the Meridian and then waited to get picked up for our tour. One nice thing about this tour is that our guide, Sanjay, said that we could bring all our luggage with us and he would end the tour by dropping us at the cruise port. Very helpful!

Our first stop on the tour was the St. Nicholas Abbey. This is a privately owned former plantation that now produces high-end rum. It was never actually an abbey, but the original owner had visited an abbey in Europe and just liked the sound of the name. We toured the house, the distillery facilities, and there's a train on property, which we rode to a beautiful scenic overlook spot called Cherry Tree Hill.

Just one interesting fact about the railroad system on Barbados: in the early days, the engines weren't all powerful enough to get all the way up some of the hills on the island. So when they came to one of these hills, the 1st Class passengers remained seated on the train, but the 2nd Class passengers had to get out and walk next to the train -- and the 3rd Class passengers had to help PUSH THE TRAIN up the hill!!! Those passengers were actually compensated with food and drink afterward, but that just was amazing to me.

Some pics of the Abbey grounds:

Here are some pictures of the train experience:

And the view from Cherry Tree Hill:

Another cool thing about the train ride is that there's only one track on the grounds and it comes to a dead end at Cherry Tree Hill. So they disconnect the engine, turn it around on a turntable, then attach it to the other end of the train. I got to help turn the engine around.

After leaving the Abbey, we had lunch at a local restaurant that served burgers, fish, macaroni pie, etc. It was good, but nothing special. They also had free wifi, which allowed me to check my email to make sure that our Covid test results had arrived so that we'd be allowed to board the ship at 4 pm. Um, still no results. Ok, ok. They said it could be up to 72 hours and it's still not quite 72 hours. It'll get here. I'm sure it'll get here.

After lunch, Sanjay took us to a wildlife preserve because one of the people in our group wanted to see them feed the monkeys. I guess it's kind of an event and a few people thought it would be fun. We were only going to have an hour or so here, and Kathryn and I weren't interested in paying the entrance fee to see monkeys being fed. So we hiked the surrounding nature trails, which was really pretty and we sort of stumbled upon a historic lookout tower on the property. It had undergone a rehabilitation and had some interesting historical information and artifacts inside. We climbed up to the top and enjoyed the lookout's view. Here's "Grenade Tower":

And the view from the top. The next lookout tower should have been visible from this one, because they would have sent visual signals back and forth, but apparently the next tower was destroyed long ago.

After the wildlife sanctuary, Sanjay took us to the port. The entire time we're driving to the port, I was trying to check my email to confirm that we had our required test results. We stopped for a quick drink and I used the shop's wifi to check my email and the results still hadn't come. At this point, we only have about a half hour until boarding time, and I honestly had started thinking about finding a hotel for the week because I was pretty sure they were going to deny us from boarding. But we decided that we would just keep going as far as they'd let us and just try to figure it out as we went along.

Port security checked our passports and our cruise documents to ensure that we were really booked to sail today and didn't ask for our test results, so they let us through. So we went to the terminal to meet the Star Clippers embarkation staff. Here's where we were going to have a problem. We showed them all our paperwork, which was perfect. Then they asked for the test results and we explained that we had negative test results from Tuesday and Wednesday morning, but our test within 72 hours hadn't come back yet. They said those were no good, which we already knew. They asked if we had any other test at all. And I said that they tested us at the airport when we arrived on Thursday. I didn't think that would be good because it was an antigen test, not PCR. (Although I didn't tell them that.) But after looking at the test results, they decided it was good enough. We were going to be allowed to sail!! Everybody also had to test negative at the port before boarding, so we got in line for that. We took the test and 15 minutes later, we were cleared to board. A quick shuttle bus ride to the ship, and we were actually on an actual cruise ship to take an actual cruise!!! It was almost impossible to believe.

Here we are in the terminal. We're smiling because they accepted the test result from the airport. LOL

And here's the Captain, welcoming us aboard:

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