Monday, February 18
Today our
port is Devil’s Island off the coast of French Guiana and it is our first
tender port of the cruise. Tendering
means the ship doesn’t dock, but anchors offshore and tenders (otherwise known
as lifeboats) are lowered and we are ferried to shore.
Devil's Island is the smallest of the Salvation Islands which also include Isle Royale and Saint Joseph Island. These islands were used as a French prison from 1852 until it was closed in 1938. Due to its remote location, harsh conditions, disease and inhumane treatment of prisoners, Devil's Island will always live in infamy; over 75% of the prisoners didn't survive their sentences. Because of the harsh conditions and ten mile distance to the mainland, there were only two successful escapes from Devil's Island. The second and most famous of those escapes led to the book and subsequent movie, Papaillion.
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| Devil's Island is where that small red dot is in the lower right corner. |
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| We visited the middle of the three islands. |
Today we visited Isle
Royale, which is the largest of the three islands. The captain
had warned us that as we approached Devil’s Island the seas would be a bit
rough and he was right, but as we got close to the three island we were sheltered
from the rough seas and things calmed down.
Val and I watched our arrival from our balcony and the islands looked
very lush, but we could see signs of buildings also. We watched as the first tender was lowered
from the deck and it seemed to bob around quite a bit so it still looked a
little rough.
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| We approached the islands from the east. Devil's Island is the left most island. |
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| We circled the island and approached Isle Royale from the west. Isle Royale is the left most island and we will tender in to the dock in the middle point of the island. Devil's Island is in the middle behind the other two islands in the photo above. |
Val and I
decided not to go over to the island in the first wave of people and went
to the Neptune Lounge to get an early lunch. As soon as we finished,
we decided we wouldn’t wait around and leave right away. Another perk of staying in a suite, we
didn’t have to get a tender ticket, but could go right down and get in line.
When we got
down to the tender loading area there wasn’t much of a line, but the loading
was going very slowly and as we got closer we could see why. The seas were indeed quite rough which slowed
things down as you had to time it just right to step from the platform onto the
tender. Anyway, we made it and after
what seemed like a long wait for everyone to get loaded, we were on our way for
the ten minute ride to the tender dock on the island.
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| A tender arrives at the dock from the Veendam in the background. |
As we
walked off the pier we ran into Wally and Nancy, two of our evening trivia
team. We decided to team up and tour the
island together and started our walk around the island. Our first look at the island wasn’t of one
the most brutal and inhumane prisons there ever was, but of a tropical
paradise. It was lush, the views of the
two other island were spectacular and overall, just a beautiful place. Although it was hot with high humidity, the
first part of our walk was on the shaded side of the island with a very
pleasant breeze keeping us cool. As we
got about half way around we emerged into full sun and the breezes were behind
us and it became quite hot and we really felt the humidity.
I won’t go
into much detail as to what we saw, but will describe it in pictures
below. There are monkeys on the island
and Val was really hoping to see some, but we didn't see any until about
a half mile from the tender dock and she spotted one in the trees. We soon saw others and stopped to take many
pictures of them.
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| We start our walk around the island. |
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| Me, Nancy and Wally |
As we
continued after the monkeys, Val started to feel the effects of the heat and had
to stop and rest. We had walked over
two miles and this was by far the furthest she had walked since her knee
replacement. She drank water and we wet
a cloth so she could wipe her face and soon she felt better. There were some buildings and a small hotel
on the inland part of the island, but Val wanted to get back to the tender and
to the cool air conditioning of the ship.
Wally and Nancy decided to hike up to the hotel as Val and I continued on to
the tender.
We did see
one bizarre sight as we neared the tender; a man walking up the trail in his
Holland America bathrobe and flip-flops.
He has been the source of speculation around the ship as he is often
seen around the ship and at various shipboard activities wearing only his
robe. This is pretty unusual and very
odd, but to see that he had taken the tender from the ship and was going to
hike around the island is his robe was really strange. As the cruise continued the "robe guy" became a topic of much discussion on the ship. It was common to see him roaming the ship in just his robe.
The ride
back to the ship seemed to take forever as it was hot inside and we had to wait a while
before docking at the tender platform on the ship as they were loading
passengers. On the way back in the tender we were talking to someone and commented on how beautiful the island was. He seemed offended by the comment and asked how you could consider anything beautiful that was the place of such an example of inhumanity. We didn't argue with him, but we thought the opposite. If anything, the tropical beauty of the island was a sharp contrast to the atrocities committed and made that hit home even more.
When we finally arrived at
the ship and got off, we saw a very long line of people waiting to get to the
island. We found out later that because
of the rough seas, the loading took so long that people waited a very long time to
get on the tender. One person we talked
to said they waited over an hour and was very frustrated. At the end of the day the captain came on and
apologized several times for the delays and problems with the tenders. It really wasn’t the fault of the ship’s crew
as conditions were very difficult and safety must almost come first which we
appreciate, but I do understand the frustration of the people that had to wait
so long. We were glad we made the
decision to leave early.
It felt
really good getting back into the air conditioned ship and back to our room to
relax. It was so humid and I had sweat
so much, my clothes were soaked like I had been swimming. After cooling off, Val felt back to normal,
but the last part of her visit to the island had been unpleasant and a little
scary to her (and me to).
After a
shower, we both felt much better and spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing
and reading. I did download our pictures
we took today, but didn’t bother looking at them.
At trivia
tonight, we compared notes with Wally and Nancy on our day together. Roy and Gabriella hadn’t gone ashore as they
had visited Devil’s Island before. There
was a discussion on the man in the robe as others had also seen him on the island. After dinner it was another quick visit to the
casino before calling it a night.
Despite the
heat and humidity, we loved our visit to the island as it is a beautiful island. The beauty is startling when compared to the
brutality and inhumanity that went on there.
I was very proud of Val today, she made it the two mile walk all the way
around the island despite the heat and sometimes difficult walking
conditions. As anyone knows who has had
knee replacement surgery, the recovery is a slow process and even though she is
doing very well for less than six months out of surgery there is still pain and
swelling especially when stressed as the knee was today; well done Val.
Tomorrow is
a sea day so we will be able to relax a bit.
After tomorrow we will spend the next month at ports in Brazil where the
heat and humidity will be even worse. We
will cross the equator tomorrow so we go from winter to summer as we travel
into the Southern Hemisphere.
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