Tuesday, February 22, 2011

40th Annual Agricultural Fair and Food Fest 2011




The most talked about event in St. Croix!
This year it was the 40th year in the making and vendors came from all over the Caribbean..fruit and veggies, honey, essential oils, teas, paintings, clothes, jewelery... you name it. We had some yummy local snacks including things I'd never tried before like tamarind balls (sounds funny but they're like rum balls except made with the tangy tamarind plant), cane juice (shown in the second pic) and saltfish pate.

Needless to say we left pretty stuffed :-)


Sunday, February 13, 2011

Scuba!!!

Today I checked off one of the things on my bucketlist... Scuba diving! We are lucky enough to get great deals through the resort with room rates, food, gift shop and even diving.. we've been putting it off for ages as the thought of spending our one day off back at work again doesnt seem appealing but it was well worth it.
I'm friends with one of the instructors (we live close by and often walk our dogs together in the mornings) so we headed out on this perfect day.. first off we started with some pool lessons: the basics, like learning how to get water out of goggles, hand signals under water and using the diving equipment properly. Although necessary, I was just eager to get out into the ocean!

After about an hour in the pool, we headed out to Davis Bay Beach (where the resort lays) and waded out until we were deep enough to put on our fins.. and off we went! Our instructor held my hand the entire time because I had some problems with my ears.. I was able to equalize, but my ears still had a little pain when we descended or went up too quickly. I surprised myself as I didnt think I'd be able to dive at all - I've always been told by my doctor that it would be difficult and painful and i've always had troubles equalizing when going up in altitude.
Anyway, we dove down to 38ft, which is about average for a Discover Scuba course.. we saw some incredible things - parrotfish, puffer fish, 'nemo', angel fish, blue tangs, yellow tangs, different coral (brain, fan corals) and even a lionfish! Lionfish arent native to the area and islanders are trying to eradicate them in the Caribbean by spearing or catching them with the net (they're fatal if stung by them). As we were on our first dive, our instructor couldnt leave us alone whilst she caught it, but she marked it with a yellow ribbon and went back later to hunt it.

All in all - a great experience.. and one that I'd like to try again as soon as we have some more time! As for becoming certified, i'd like to go out a couple more times before committing myself.. but the underwater world really is something magic!

(I did take photos with a disposable camera, but we'll have to wait for them to develop before I can upload them)

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Some pictures from Paradise...






I cant complain waking up every morning to a beautiful garden like this! I'm especially excited about the eggplant bush that is growing and producing a lot now that the rain has eased up a little and we're getting more sunshine!