Rewind to Destiny

I like this title.

Wes in Guadeloupe

It sounds like an epic movie I would want to see, but in fact it is a reference to my first Southern Caribbean cruise taken almost 17 years ago.

How time flies.

As I wrote in my new blog ten years ago, "Julie and I went hurricane hunting in the southern Caribbean in October, 2000, and the trip turned out to be a disaster.....if finding a hurricane would have been the measure of success for our venture. Instead of focusing on what we didn't find, we decided to look at our trip for what it turnend out to be: a relaxing adventure in a sun drenched paradise."

Now if I had at my fingertips the technology we have now, I would have linked a video from the movie, "Semi-Tough," to tie in my reference to that 1977 movie that few people probably recognized even back then but which made sense to me.

Years later, I know the movie clip I want but it's not available on youtube, so I will summarize.

Barbra Jane (Jill Clayburgh) comes back from a safari where her photos of wild animals turned out to be nothing but foliage, and she laments how bad her pictures are.  Fresh from EST-like training, Shake (Kris Kristopherson) --- or was it Billy Clyde (Burt Reynolds)? --- advises that she needs to stop focusing on what she didn't do (take pictures of elephants) and focus on what she did do (take lovely pictures of bushes).

On the other hand, I can now use this not-quite-right trailer to mention that in my blog summarizing our 2016 Southern Caribbean cruise aboard Celebrity Eclipse begins by talking about the Super Bowl, which we had watched aboard Eclipse the prior year.

Photo of large purple jelly fish which 2017 photo editing now makes visible.

Can you see how my mind must suconsciously tie all this stuff together?

Anyway, I found these early posts originally written for my weekly CruisePlanners1.com newsletter right after the trip to be interesting in terms of how I observed and wrote about things back then versus my current approach.

Of particular interest is how I actually managed to include details on all of my meals, having taken careful notes, versus my tendency now to re-interpret my trips through a much more abstract prism.

In any case, it makes me wonder how I always lose weight on a cruise and raises the question, how much do I eat when I'm at home?

Elysian Beach in St. Thomas

Anyway, you can follow these links to my Southern Caribbean cruise long ago.

Starting in San Juan

Embarking Destiny

St. Thomas

Antigua

Guadeloupe

Destiny at Sea

Aruba

Completing Destiny

By the way, Destiny has been totally re-imagined, refurbished and re-named Sunshine.