A surprise look at Grand Turk, BWI
November 11: We were supposed to be at sea all day today, but had to make a short stop at Grand Turk to air-evacuate a sick passenger.
The Lido pool area on the Noordam is lovely but on nice days (which in the Caribbean means most days) it gets very crowded, so we’ve spent very little time there. When we just want to lay around, our balcony offers the peace and quiet we want, even though it doesn’t have loungers.
This dolphin sculpture keeps reminding me that I want to do the audio tour of the ship’s art collection. Some day when I’m not “busy”… 🙂
This was our planned route today, but at about noon the captain announced that we had to detour to Grand Turk to disembark a sick passenger who needed to be air-evacuated to Miami as soon as possible.
At 2:33, an ambulance and police truck arrived at the dock.
The patient is transferred to the ambulance. The ship’s medical team went to the airport to complete the transfer to the air ambulance.
The island itself looks quite bleak, but the water and beach are gorgeous. Cathy and I will be back here next week during a 5-day cruise on the Carnival Destiny – Cathy for a day on the beach, me for a couple of scuba dives.
The air ambulance, which had to come down from Miami, didn’t arrive until 3:13 – in this photo it’s taxiing to the terminal to meet the Grand Turk ambulance.
There were 4 men at work cleaning up the beach. In this photo seaweed and trash tossed up by Tropical Storm Tomas is being raked up and carted away.
The seaweed guys were moving slow, but the guy straightening the loungers may be the slowest-moving person we’ve ever seen! He’d align them, step back for a look, come back and move some loungers a few inches, stand back again – this went on for the entire hour we were there 🙂
As we were backing away from the dock at 3:47, the jet took off. We hope that he’s okay.
Tomorrow morning at 07:00 am the Noordam docks at Fort Lauderdale, and at 10:00 am we have to get off 🙁
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