You may have seen it in the news.

Our hotel was full of cruisers. On Saturday morning we found ourselves in the middle of about 200 people waiting for various cabs, shuttles and buses to take them to the cruise port to board a ship. We arrived at The Splendor at noon and were in our room at 2:00. Embarkation was a fairly long process but we had fun while waiting in line talking to all the other people. We were among the lucky ones.

Maybe you saw it on the news.

We first noticed that a Coast Guard boat was telling the small boats in the channel to turn around because the port is closed. It is almost time for departure. We thought they were clearing the area so all the cruise boats could leave without running over the small ones.
But out in the parking lot, I could see my suitcase still out there in the parking lot with lots of others and nobody loading baggage. Nobody loading supplies either. In fact there was nobody at all down there on the dock. All the baggage and supplies and trucks just sitting there with nobody around.

Over at the vacant cruise terminal next door we could see about 400 people milling around. We thought they might be the ones denied boarding because they didn't have the Brazil visa. We knew that was going to cause some kind of problem and it did for about 150 who were not allowed to board the ship because they did not have a visa for Brazil. Some may go to the Brazilian Embassy in Miami, get a visa and meet the ship in Barbados. But the people in the other terminal were not the ones needing visas. As we watched, the 400 turned into about a thousand. The next thing we heard was an announcement of a security breach. Boarding had been halted by the Coast Guard and all in Terminal 21 moved to the terminal across the way.... all 1000 of them.

We and many others watched as dogs sniffed the luggage. Five suitcases were picked out and the remote control robot handled each one. We never saw anything found and eventually the Coast Guard reopened the port and allowed other ship to set sail and The Splendor to continue boarding. There were some exasperated people finally start to board the ship at about 8:00. They had spent 5 dreadful hours in an open terminal building with almost no food and limited water.

We were glad we had made it on board to enjoy a pleasant evening. Many of our Cruise Critic friends were not so lucky. They filled us in on all the details at the Meet and Greet on Sunday.