10-day Cuba trip

We'd received an assignment for this cruise with a Caribbean itinerary that included two ports in Cuba. This also included the final event of my 52-event Fall book tour. I had two new books, which had been published the previous spring. As usual, it was jammed packed with events and travel throughout Florida, but we'd received the assignment in the summer, so there had been enough time to work on the three presentations that would be centered around Cuba. The cruise left on November 30th. As usual, we spent the night with Dori's family on the way down to Ft. Lauderdale.

We left early to get from Lake Worth to Ft. Lauderdale well before rush hour and even though the rental car office has changed locations, we started the day using the free wi-fi of a restaurant at the old location and enjoyed the dawning of the day.

  
The ship was the Veendam, which is a little smaller than the Amsterdam, but the same class of ships. We cruised on the Veendam on the Voyage of the Vikings in 2013. On this cruise they welcomed us the first night with free beer and had a Latin band to get us in the mood for Cuba.

 
Our first sunset at sea...

I gave four presentations. One was a surprise because we missed our second port in Cuba because of high winds.

 
Each morning of sea days when I'll be giving a presentation, I do a run though in the game room at 6am so it's familiar for later in the day. Dean is the ever patient audience of one and this is on top of going through presentations at home before we leave. The shops sell my books usually just my Climate-Wise Landscaping books, but this time I had my Florida books as well because of my book tour stop in Key West.

The last day there was a coffee chat with Cisco, the EXC location guide, and the other lecturer, a historian who told stories of his scuba diving adventures.

Key West, Florida

Sunrise as we arrive in Key West, Florida.

 
A new view of Mallory Square. We've been to Key West a number of times, but probably the best photos of Mallory Square are on the trek page from our first anniversary trip in 2003.

 
Susie Reutling a Master Gardener, a Master Naturalist, and manager of the Key West Botanical Garden Nursery attended a two-day native nursery trade show near Tampa in late October. She attended my 3-hour workshop that was part of that trade show and lamented that my book tour did not include Key West. I told her that I would be in Key West on Saturday Dec. 1, so she worked with the local agricultural agent and organized a last-minute book tour event there. She was waiting for us as the ship docked and took us to the Key West Botanical Garden for a tour before taking us to to the Monroe County building for the Climate-Wise presentation. We had stopped by this place in 2003, but never went back on subsequent visits, because nothing much was happening. Well, many things have changed in then.

 
Growing native plants, so that Key West can look more like Florida's supposed to look.

A volunteer workforce from the local community.

They have a collection of boats had been used by Cubans to gain entry in to our country.

 
Some interesting Cuban palms...

Limestone karst underlies everything in Key West. Actually, the botanical garden is on Stock Island and was so called because this is where the live stock were kept in earlier days of Key West.

Okay, now it was time to head back to Key West proper to the Monroe County building for my book tour event. The building, as shown in this drawing, is an old cigar factory. There were many of them at one time, but then most of those companies relocated to Ybor City north of Tampa for more room and for access to trains to the northern US for better access to markets. I covered cigars in one of my lectures on the ship, but on this day I was talking about climate-wise landscaping.

 
About 20 people showed up for the event. Not too bad given the size of the community and last minute organization of the event. What was surprising though is that two women from the ship came to this event. It turns out that I mentioned that I was going to be giving presentations on this cruise at a 3-hour workshop I gave in Broward County, which includes Ft. Lauderdale. These women signed up for the cruise after that. When they showed up here was the first that I'd heard what they'd done. Dean decided that they were my groupies. Very cool.

After the presentation, Susie took us back to the the ship. We called it a day.

The shadow of the ship as people gather for the sunset celebration.

 
The sunset gazers and the sunset performers come out to Mallory Square every day. All cruise ships must be gone well before sunset so not to ruin this celebration.

We celebrated the sunset from the ship!