Scott and I were blessed to go on a cruise all by ourselves this year. This was huge! What an awesome experience this was! First we flew into San Juan, Puerto Rico. I wish that we had more time there, instead of just the airport excursion! From afar, the old city is beautiful.
This was the view of the ocean in San Juan as we were preparing to leave the port.
The next morning we awoke to the most beautiful sunrise! I am so glad that we captured this one because it was the last time that we woke up with the sun. Our room was in the middle of the boat, no window, so our sense of time passing was a little off. We slept in almost every single day. It was wonderful!
Our first stop was Barbados. We did an excursion with the ship that took us snorkeling to the oldest shipwreck on the island and then to swim/snorkel with the turtles. Scott had gotten a waterproof camera earlier this year and boy did it come in handy! BEAUTIFUL!
Our next stop was the island of St. Lucia. It was lush farmland. There was everything growing there, from pineapples and mangos to cocoa and pecans, really everything you could imagine. We took an open air jeep tour that took us all over the island and showed us some of its hot spots and some hidden gems as well.
Our guide was pretty amazing. He was very knowledgeable and talked for about 3 hours straight. Here he is showing us how cocoa actually grows. I really had no idea. The slimy thing in the middle of the yellow are the outside of were the cocoa is. We got to suck on one of the spheres and it was delicious. I was so surprised! It had kind of a sweet, citrusy flavor. If you bit into it, the cocoa seeds (what they use to make chocolate) are inside each of those little sections.
The view from the top was incredible!
Our main attraction was a farm that this man lives on. He lives free of charge, no bills at all. He lives off the land, sells what he needs to. He has solar power and hydro power, an outdoor kitchen, his bedroom and a separate bathroom. It was a simple life, but oh so full.
We took a lot pictures of the vegetation, but I couldn't fit them all here. I took this picture of his flower pot made out of a coconut shell and even the birds had a nice place to live.
We ate fresh bananas and coconut before walking through the property and down the hill to his personal waterfall. Yep, the man has his own waterfall, hence the hydropower!
After saying goodbye to St. Lucia, we sailed to Antigua, St. John's Bay. It was rainy and cloudy the majority of the time there and because of this, it was not good snorkeling. The water from here on out in our journey was too murky to see anything. Despite the storms that followed us, the temperature never varied from its normal winter temp of 78 to 85 degrees. Yes, we were spoiled!
We weren't allowed to take the seashells home with us. That is really what the kids wanted, so we had to be satisfied with taking pictures to prove that we found some;)
Because of the storms, all of our excursions that we tried to take on St. Maarten's were cancelled. You just couldn't see anything in the water so we had to be satisfied with entertaining ourselves...obviously, it wasn't hard to be satisfied with just the beach, feather soft sand, and the sun!
Goodbye to St. Maarten, but hello to the dinner that Scott had waited for all week: Lobster night! This is our waitress, Velina. She was so sweet and always made sure we were very well taken care of. None of our dinner companions showed up on a usual basis, so she would talk to us and tell us about herself. She is from Bulgaria and was kind enough to answer all of our questions about her native country. We wanted to know about holiday traditions and food customs, and things that she missed from home. It would be very hard to be on the ship and miss holidays with your family!
Our last port was St. Croix. It was here that we got the money shot.
It's kinda silly, I know, but I had to take these shots of the chickens that were running around the island for my grandpa. They were beautiful specimens.
You can't really tell from the picture, but this shell is about the size of a large dinner plate. It was incredible.
It was hard to say goodbye to the beautiful beaches, warm weather and sunshine and return to the snow, but we really did miss our kids. We contemplated just shipping our kids to us, but after sincere contemplation, we realized it wasn't practical. It was a serious temptation though! Christmas, however was only 3 days away, so we figured we better get home after all.
1 comment:
Oh my gosh Sara. I understand why you never wanted to leave. Absolutely beautiful!! I remember how heavenly it was over in that part of the world and the only thing that could bring me home was my kids. Really glad you got to go and have such a wonderful time. You both look great! Love you!
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