In the afternoon I joined Linda at the Boatyard resort in Carlisle Bay before we went back to Azura to pack.
Bridgetown, Barbados Friday 2nd November
Looking out of our balcony we had a splendid view of the docks as Azura arrived. The docks were a hive of activity and containers were being manoeuvred ready to load up the ship with stores.
We had not received our Horizon magazine overnight so it was only a guess as to when the restaurants opened. It turned out that I was 30 minutes out on my guess. The buffet was already busy as I went up to grab a simple breakfast of cornflakes and fruit.
Immigration
Back down on Deck 7 I was a little early for immigration at 7.30 am. Our instructions were that only passengers with trips should present themselves at this time. No one seem to be bothered and I joined a long queue of passengers waiting their turn.
None of the passengers immediately in front of me had excursion tickets. However, as we move forward in the queue all passengers were having their forms checked and most were failing and having to start again.
When I reach the checkpoint I asked to go through to the Manhattan rather than be delayed any more. Once in the Manhattan both our cruise card were scanned and I went straight to an immigration officer. Almost all of the immigration officers had no passengers to process so the hold up was the checking and filling in of the forms.
My forms needed correcting (!) to we were on the island for an extra night. The officer scanned through both our passports and commented on our earlier visits to Barbados.
As I picked up our passports I noticed airline tickets on the officer’s desk. These must have been left by passengers processed earlier. The immigration officer just shrugged about them, so I pick them up to take them to a member of the ship’s crew.
I had to walk back to try and reach one of the officers which elicited shouts of “wrong way, wrong way, go out there”. I ignored all the shouts and presented the officer who had shouted at me the most with the lost tickets before I walked out.
Getting off the ship
At 8.15 am we heard announcements pleading with passengers to “stick to their allotted times” for processing. Linda left for her more leisurely breakfast as I packed up my camera bag ready for my photography tour.
Leaving the ship was harder than I expected. I had missed the instructions as to which gangplank was in use. I walked down to get to the gangplank on Deck 4 below the Atrium. This was closed and I found myself running back up to Deck 5, and going forward to the open gangplank. I was then getting anxious about missing my tour.
Once in the cruise terminal I followed the painted line to the coaches waiting to start the tours. The blog post below describes my time on the photography tour.