Travel: Caribbean Cruising

My first ocean voyage was aboard one of Uncle Sam’s luxurious yachts, a wallowing troop ship that hauled me from a raging snowstorm in New York to the balmy breezes of Panama.

We stopped at Puerto Rico and pre-Castro Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay, and along the way, I fell in love with the tropics. That love affair has never faded, and I’ve been back to the Caribbean many times; the last time was a few weeks ago on a gleaming cruise ship offering practically every delight known to seafaring pleasure-seekers.

By day my fellow passengers on the Celebrity Silhouette splashed in the pool, played volleyball, got acquainted in the hot tubs, slathered themselves with oil, risked skin cancer, and downed drinks with odd names and festooned with tiny umbrellas.