Having problems with message search?
St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, Oct. 30, 2008
Some of you may have heard of the annual poz cruise to the Caribbean organized by Paul Stalbaum out of Fort Lauderdale. Well, this was my first time going on that cruise and my first cruise ever in fact. I had the best vacation of my life, without a doubt. We were on the Crown Princess ship which holds about 3100 passengers although I never felt crowded or lacking in space. There were about 200 of us in our group (including 40 or so heterosexuals living with HIV/AIDS), which was part of a standard cruise (not a totally gay ship like Atlantis). This had it's good and not so good points, but for the most part it was almost entirely good.
Because we were a group on a regular cruise, we bonded together much more than I think we would have if we had been part of a larger all gay cruise (where guys from our group may have found too many "distractions" shall we say). That doesn't mean that there weren't plenty of romances or hookups happening, I mean they don't call it the "Love Boat" for nothing. In fact, quite a number of guys seem to have found the man of their dreams during the voyage. We had excellent presentations on medical updates and fun ice breaker events like a rather twisted version of "The Dating Game". And we joined up with 2 other gay groups who were on the ship to take over entire ship bars and the disco every night. Heck, by the end of the week, we had made the smaller pool on the back of the liner our own semi-private gay resort!
I'm still getting over jet lag, but I hope to write more about the journey soon. Again, as I said, it was definitely one of the best things I've ever done in my entire life. I never thought I'd be the kind of guy who would like a cruise, but I loved it. The rooms were comfortable, the international staff was incredibly friendly (and some of them totally hot), the food was very good and plentiful, and the ship itself made relaxing very easy since everything you wanted to do was all within a 5 minute walk or less. The islands, the warm tropical breezes and the crystal blue waters were stunning.
The highlights of the trip for me were snorkeling with 50 other poz guys off the reef at St. Thomas (US Virgin Islands) with sea turtles comfortably swimming around us, and jet skiing of St. Maarten, an island controlled on one half by the Netherlands and the other half by France. I also made dozens of new close friends, including a very special guy who made my trip very memorable. Even our unintended taxi bus trip that should have been 1/2 mile turned into a 1 hour mis-adventure to the other side of St. Thomas, but our bus if mostly rum-drunk funsters turned hungry frustration into a hilarious chance to sing theme songs from 70s/80s TV shows while we raced like a rollercoaster up and down narrow winding streets past stunning vistas and bright blue bays.
I'm uploading photos & videos now but since I took almost 800, it will be awhile until they are all ready on our Flickr account for SIN:
Next year's cruise sounds even better with more islands to visit. And I'm now more excited than ever about our first ever Strength In Numbers cruise for HIV+ gay men and their friends to the west coast of Mexico the first week of May, 2009. We'll have 3 days at sea and be visiting fantastic ports like Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and the gay capitol of Mexico, Puerta Vallarta. This trip is filling up fast though so please move now to register and get your small initial deposit down before Dec. 1st, when the deposit amount will go up. Check out our website for all the details:
And help us spread the word about the cruise so we can have as many guys join us as possible by adding the following to your personal ads on HIV/poz dating sites and other message boards:
Join me on SIN Cruise (a poz social event to the Mexican Riviera on Carnival Fun Ships, May 3-10, 2009). More info at:
www.SINCRUISE.com
Trust me, if you join us on either of these cruises, you will have a great time, make a lot of incredible new friends, and quite possibly meet the love of your life. Thanks to Paul for organizing a great voyage, and in particular to David and his crew from SIN NYC for being the life of the party!
Yours truly,
Bryan Levinson
Founder, SIN
Offline 
Send Email