A Caribbean interlude aboard the Oasis of the Seas

We’re just getting back to Ice Station Zebra Bennington following a pleasant interlude in the eastern Caribbean aboard the Hemmings Cruise, with about 400 of our Hemmings Nation friends doing the yo-ho-ho’ing. We were aboard Royal Caribbean’s staggeringly huge Oasis of the Seas (1,187 feet long, more than 225,000 deadweight tons, more than 7,500 passengers and crew). Here are some shots of what happened

You can’t discuss this cruise without trying to express the sheer size of the Oasis. Here’s a partial view of the ship tied up in Nassau, Bahamas, next to a more conventionally sized Royal Caribbean ship. Honestly, about the only way to capture the Oasis in a single frame is to take the photo on the open sea or from the air.

A few more Middle East uprisings may make gasoline so expensive that we’re all driving things like this. It’s a Daihatsu Hijet Cargo, a tiny van used by the Bahamas phone company.

Nassau has an architecturally lovely downtown shopping and dining district. That blacked-out Toyota Windom (to us, the 1991-1993 Lexus ES) is an undercover Royal Bahamas Police Force car, which we learned when it parked and two large gentlemen wearing RBPF raid gear, instead of the standard white uniform tunics, emerged from it.

Acceleration contest, Nassau style.

Here’s how mass transit takes place in Saint Thomas, capital of the U.S. Virgin Islands. Countless pickup trucks, American or Japanese, are converted into open-air buses or taxis. Most of them aren’t as elaborately finished as this Ford F-series, though.

The Caribbean island of Saint Maarten is divided into Dutch- and French-controlled zones, despite encompassing only 37 square miles of total land area. On the Dutch side, we snapped this photo of an oncoming beater Beetle while our main man, Captain Midnight, was taking us on a loop around this arid island.

Here’s an accidental image that I shot on the French side after leaving its largest town, Marigot. I intended to get only the ridge in the background but also caught the route sign and the burned out Hyundai. Check the plate on this car. It’s standard French, commonly used on this side of Saint Maarten along with the even more common EU license plate. The Volkswagen in the earlier image has a Dutch Sint Maartens plate, as it’s spelled out.

Not bad, huh? Hills, curves, European road markings and dazzling views, here of Baie Orientale, before you return to Dutch territory. Obey the speed limit on Saint Maarten. The next two vehicles following those scooters were operated by the Gendarmerie: a Land Rover and a Mercedes-Benz van.