Day 18 - Tuesday - 4/1/25 - Amber Cove, Dominican Republic

 We woke up this morning at 6:30 knowing that we had a devotional time scheduled for 7 AM. While waiting for the devotional to start, I checked on my schedule and saw that we were slated to go on a snorkeling trip here at Amber Cove. I forgotten about it, but we were eager to do it. So after the devotion by Wesley Prichard ended, we quickly gathered up our snorkeling gear and were among the first to check off the boat. We easily found our excursion group inside the Amber Cove area.

Edward, our leader, then led us and we took about a 30 minute bus ride from the port through the town of Puerto Plata to a beach location to the south of there. We waded into the shallow water and boarded by wading knee deep water to a set of stairs. After all we're aboard the catamaran, the captain then backed away from shore, pivoted the boat around and headed south into the open sea. He then turned over control to his assistant while he gave a safety briefing And told us about what would be happening. 

It was about a 45 minute catamaran ride to a cove even further south from where the bus dropped us off. There we dawned our snorkle gear and went down the stairs into the water. Immediately began to see lots of fish. And the numbers of fish increased as the guides were feeding them scraps of bread. Soon literally hundreds of fish were surrounding us and it was really a good fish watching time. A guide even gave us fish food so that we could control the number of fish around us. I was able to take a lot of good pictures and it was pretty impressive. We then moved over to nearby second coral formation, and continued on with the fish feeding. After about 45 minutes, we were summoned to get back into the boat. This was the best snorkeling we've had on this adventure so far.

The Captain. then took us back a little bit to another cove where we anchored and enjoyed a really nice picnic. It was a lunch of potato salad, coleslaw, cold cuts, macaroni salad, veggies, and fruit. It was probably one of the best snorkel adventure meals that we've ever had. After lunch, the sail was hoisted on the catamaran and we began to sail back towards our starting point. While the sails were up, the captain still had motor power going. We then reached the beach that we had departed from, the captain ran the boat up on the sandy shore. They lowered the steps and we walked down the steps and into the shallow water and sandy beach. It was a short drive back through the city to the port at Amber Cove.

I should note that Amber Cove is a port that is owned by Carnival Corporation and it consists of the dock with room for two ships. There's a collection of various shops and eating places in a sort of courtyard arrangement and we shopped those for a while and watched the Carnival Breeze ship load and then depart. We then headed back to the ship and I noted that as we were approaching the gang plank that we were really close to 4:30 which was our on board time. When we scanned onto the ship, we did in fact find out that I was next to last. Angela was the last one on the ship. This is something that we frequently strive to do and it was cool to see it actually happen. Many people are nervous about that prospect, but we're pretty cool about it. in fact, while we were walking the dock there were people cheering us on from level three looking off the railing of the ship. We found those people after we boarded the ship and chatted with them a bit and had a great chat.

I quickly got ready for dinner and I was down at the main dining room slightly before 5 o'clock when it opened and was able to get a seat at our table as the first person there. Kathy then joined us and Angela came a little bit later. Pam was eating elsewhere last night so we didn't see her at all. I enjoyed the meal which my main course was jerked pork tenderloin. The service in the main dining room continues to be quite excellent and we're able to get in and out in about an hour and a quarter. After the meal, I asked the supervisor if it was easier to handle 1000 people to show up at once or 1000 people that sort of dribble in. He replied as much easier to serve 1000 people to show up at once and I am pleased with how fast the service really occurred.

For the red tag holders, it was our night to have the comedian, Taylor Mason, starting at 7:15 and we really enjoyed him . He was extremely funny and his use of his puppets and ventriloquism was really good. While waiting in line for the entry to the performance, we were next to a couple from Indiana and the husband was a retired RV designer. It was quite interesting to chat with him about RVs and the like. After the show since we would have to get up early the following morning for devotions, we elected to go back to the room and prepare for bed. 

Tomorrow's stop is at Grand Cayman and we're projected to arrive at 7 AM and a devotional is at 7 AM. We don't have anything specifically scheduled for this stop so it remains to be seen what we actually do. But we are going to make the first devotional at 7 AM and then have breakfast in the Lido before heading on out.