I’m sure it’ll come as a shock to all, that I was, once again, awake pretty early. Since I was awake so early, I did some picture taking as we sailed toward St. Thomas.
Then, since I was awake considerably earlier than our excursion, I got dressed, and headed to Cabanas for breakfast, letting Nick sleep a bit longer. We were still sailing into St. Thomas, so I had a nice view at breakfast.
When I got back to the room, I packed up a day bag for our excursion, watched docking, and sent Nick off to breakfast.
At 8:15, we checked in for our excursion, Coral World by Land and Sea in the D Lounge. We were in the Timon group for this excursion. We received a few instructions about what time to be back on the ship, and then were sent on our way, following some cast member down to the forward gangway.
I didn’t really understand why we were being sent to the forward gangway from midship, until we got down on the pier. There were several excursion groups gathered just off the midship gangway. We were lined up in relative peace, and within minutes, were being directed towards waiting taxis. The atmosphere right outside the security tent was downright festive, with stiltwalkers and steel drum music.
We were directed into a taxi van (think Ford Transit van) with the taxi driver, Tony, aka Spice, with 2 families. It was an interesting and eye opening ride to Coral World, over the hills and winding roads, with us realizing very quickly exactly why it appeared every car on the island is damaged, and past lots of hurricane damage. The ride passed pretty quickly, but I think it was at least 20 minutes.
As we approached Coral World, we got the “be back here at exactly noon, and this is why you need to make sure you use the exact same taxi driver” lecture from Tony. Then he opened the doors and let us out. We gathered as a group of about 40, and were split between 2 tour guides, Austin, and Wendy. Wendy’s group would be going out on the semi sub boat first. We were with Austin.
Austin led us through the gates of Coral World, gave us a few minutes to use the restrooms as needed, picked a 5 year old assistant, and led us all to the touch tank for our first Coral World exhibit. The kids loved this. Nick and I enjoyed looking at the starfish in the lower pool, and watching the kids. We might have wandered a bit too.
From the touch tank, we then went indoors. Here we got to see lots of fish, barracuda, rays, etc. And a diver came through to do her daily routine training the sharks for the sake of transition to any potential medical procedures. Here we also learned that Coral World partners with the marine biology program at the University of the Virgin Islands, so a lot of research is being done at Coral World by those students, including research into how to grow new coral.
Once they finished talking to us at this location, Austin told us we were going to the turtle feeding, and then to see the dolphins. Once the dolphin stuff was done, our group would stay there, to get on the boat. So...off to see some turtles...and some iguanas...
The location of the turtle pool was absolutely stunning. Ok, the whole facility was, but that really was.
After we watched the turtle feeding, it was off to see some dolphins! One of my favorites! We enjoyed watching the dolphins and checking out the view.
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