Jamaica and shopping, Mon

We were scheduled for an excursion to Dunns River Falls and Coyaba Gardens, but were both feeling queasy.  Instead, we laid around the spa all day, from the thermal bath to the steam room to the snow grotto back to the thermal bath, and so on….lounging and reading and generally relaxing while most of the passengers were away from the ship.  We learned later that the guides were inattentive and left too much free time for shopping (aka fending off vendors.)

Jamaica wasn’t high on my list to visit, anyway.  Originally, we had been scheduled to dock at Havana, instead of Cienfuegos in Cuba.  For some reason our itinerary was changed, adding days to Cuba, eliminating Belize, and adding Jamaica.  Weather was not a factor.  This modification came down before all the hurricane activity this fall.  Word around the ship is that the reason was that Viking had never been into Cuba before and wouldn’t be there regularly.  Also, we saw a huge Carnival ship docked at Havana.  It was probably more lucrative for Cuba to make space for them and shuffle us off to a lesser port.