Mike in the Wild

Half Moon Cay is popular with cruisers that sail on Holland America Line's ships.  The long beach on Little San Salvador Island in the Bahamas is the beach most people dream of when escaping to the Caribbean: sugary sand, mostly uncrowded, and rum drinks easy to order.  The destination is also private, only hosting passengers from the line's cruise ships, usually just one ship at any given time.  Sometimes an additional ship might stop, as the Rotterdam did when I visited off of the Nieuw Statendam early in April. My ship offered a guided snorkeling excursion off the island, however the tour was cancelled when the boat that was supposed to take passengers experienced some problems.  But there was a solution for many of the disappointed tourists; join me on a mile hike down the beach to the western end of Half Moon Cay.  From this uncrowded corner of the isle, it was an easy swim to where the tour boat was originally headed.     Like most of a ship's stops in the Caribbean,

Most people with a limited amount of time on St. Thomas head immediately to Magens Bay Beach.  Cruise ship passengers by the hundreds include at least a short stop at the longest and, possibly, most beautiful beach on the island.  While undeveloped and protected as a park, I've always understood that it's not known for its snorkeling, lacking easily swimmable coral reefs.  As a result, on my recent visit to the Virgin Islands, I headed to Coki Bay at the northeastern end of the island.  As the taxi driver reminded me in the cruise port about my favorite pastime, "I've lived on St. Thomas for forty years; believe me, it's the best!" I actually had a list of several other snorkeling spots to consider: Secret Harbor, Lindquist, Brewers Bay, and Sapphire.  Each was off of a sandy beach, and each had its own attractions.  However I was familiar with Coki already, having snorkeled there just over six years ago.  It was a pretty beach with the requisite Virgin Island

A stop in Old San Juan is often the highlight of any cruise to the Eastern Caribbean.  Founded in 1521, the capital city of Puerto Rica is the second oldest European-established capital in the Americas. Well-preserved Spanish colonial buildings and streets crowd an easily-walkable area, making for a colorful and history-filled visit.  While I've been to San Juan several times, I've never ventured any further away from the city than the international airport.  As a result, I never witnessed any of the tropical island's countryside until my latest cruise, when I booked a tour to El Yunque National Forest in the east.   About an hour-long drive from the Old San Juan cruise port, the protected area is the only tropical rainforest in the national forest system.  While it's one of the smallest in size - not even 29,000 acres - it's one of the most biologically diverse.  My tour, called an El Yunque Rain Forest Drive, promised me a brief look at the landscape from a small

On my nature walk through the Damajagua Forest in the Dominican Republic, I wasn't surprised to see a wooden sign that said the forest supported more than 200 jobs. There had to be over a thousand tourists on the trail, nearly every one of them wearing a helmet, life preserver, and rubber water-shoes rented at the very busy visitor center at the trailhead.  In fact, many of the visitors were off of my own cruise ship, on a separate excursion described as "an adrenaline-filled adventure" on seven of the Damajagua River's waterfalls.  Whooping it up on a birding tour?  Fortunately I soon discovered that the noisy crowds belied the fact that the forest was home to an interesting variety of native flora and fauna.   Damajagua is more of a wide stream than a river, cascading down the forested southern slope of a verdant mountain range defining the  northern coast of the Dominican Republic.  The water apparently flows into the Rio Bajabonico which the guided tour groups cro