Caribbean Cruise

Brian and I got the chance to go on a cruise to the caribbean! Sweet!The Myler's (a very close family to me) went on a cruise as a family and invited us to come along! We left Maliya with her grandparents for the week and enjoyed a week long fling with good friends. It was so fun!

On Sunday, we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, where the cruise began.

Monday was spent at sea, so we just hung out on the ship all day. 

This is our spacious stateroom...

And our big window...

This was some weird random art...paintings of olives in drinks...it was auctioned off for ridiculous amounts of money.

The Mylers sent me flowers for my birthday. They are so sweet!

Monday night was a formal night at dinner. Always fun to dress up!

and this is the whole group...almost. Minus Brad and Lisa, the sponsors of the cruise. :)

Barbados:

On Tuesday, we went to Barbados. We got off the ship and were immediately attacked by locals. It was like a pack of ravenous wolves, all fighting to win our business. Appearantly, tourism is pretty much the WHOLE economy in that area of the world. It was pretty overwhelming and kind of stressful to have all those people in your face all day. But the islands really were beautiful. 

Anyway, we made our way to a beach called Blue Monkey, which was pretty touristy, but had lots of good activities. There was jet skiing, snorkeling, a banana boat, glass bottom boats, etc. For about $15 you could have a guy take you on his boat to 2 really good snorkeling spots--1 was a ship wreck, and 1 a spot of coral where there were sea turtles. I  didn't go with the others in our group, but I wish I had, now. It would have been awesome to see a turtle!

I did, however, go on a walk to see what kind of cool beaches were 'around the corner.'

 Appearantly I was gone for a long time, and some locals told Brian some scary stories about a girl getting attacked recently, so he became worried about me. He was especially concerned that I had gotten lost (typical for me, I have to admit) and that I was scared and alone. He went

 'around the corner' and found another tourist beach, but I wasn't there (since I had passed it and continued on long ago), so then he became especially concerned for me. 

Eventually, I decided that I should head back, and as I did so, I came across a couple who asked if I was there with a big group and my husband and that he was worried about me and I needed to hurry back. I ran for a little while, but--let's be honest--it didn't last long before I started to

 walk again. Needless to say, I was busted when I came wondering back to our beach. 

St. Lucia

St. Lucia has some rain forests in the middle of the island that would be cool to hike through. Of course, on the outsides of the island, they also have great beaches! We ended up going to Pigeon Island National Park. It was originally a smaller island right by St. Lucia, but they actually pushed out dirt and built a road connecting the two. The road is also seperating the Caribbean from the Atlantic. Interesting...

There was a short hike up to an old fort.

That is a pirate ship over my shoulder :)

And they had good snorkeling here. We saw lots of really cool fish and a couple of sea snakes.

This is our new leash, keeping me from running away again. :)

Antigua

On Antigua, we went to Jolly Beach, where there were a LOT of really beautiful sea shells. There were jet skis here, and Brian got to go play on one for a while with Lisa Myler. They also had a sand volleyball court that a lot of the Mylers got playing on. 

On our way back to the ship, we found a stand on the side of the road that sold sugarcane. We bought a bunch and we all tried some. We tried to bring some home to have friends and family try some, but couldn't get it past customs. Apparently, if you cut them up just right, they will let them through, but we didn't have the time, or a knife... oh well, what can you do?

We tried to find a pay phone on every single island that would let us use our international calling card. But such a thing did not exist. Despite our best efforts.

We also bought this handmade souvenir, here, for my in-laws. Thanks for taking care of our little angel!

Tortola

The beach that we went to on Tortola actually had some good waves. Sadly, they didn't rent boogy boards or anything similar...or...pretty much anything at all. The crazy thing was that, despite the waves, things seemed to stay by the shore if you dropped them in the ocean. I actually just found a snorkel mask hanging around my foot!

We did a lot of body surfing here. So fun!

St. Thomas

At St. Thomas, we went to Koki Beach, where they give you fish food with any snorkel gear that you rent. There were TONS of fish here, snorkeling was awesome. I saw lots of neat fish and wished that I could have taken pictures of them. I actually didn't get any pictures of this beach, because the camera stopped working the day before.    :'(    Sorry Sherlynn!