Sunset Sail to Buck Island

On Tuesday night we were invited by one of my work friends to go out on Caribbean Sea Adventures for a sunset sail for her birthday. We'd never been on a boat during sunset so this was set to be beautiful - especially since it was such a nice clear sky. Little did we know that we were going to Buck Island and everyone had brought their swimsuit except us..... well lucky for me, my friend Wendy whipped out another bikini (who carries two pairs with them, really?) and I could jump in the water and join in on the fun! Geoff - well he just jumped in wearing his work shorts - in which he went straight back to work after we docked back in until 4:30am... :-(

Kayaking at Sandy Point

Although I dont have any pics (the waves were really rough at the Point today), I just thought I'd mention that we saw a huge (could've been leatherback?) turtle swimming out in the ocean today whilst we were out kayaking. She stuck her head up out of the water, looked around and then dove back in... it was the most beautiful thing I have seen in a long time and absolutely made my weekend as i've never ever seen a wild turtle before!

Baby turtles!

Geoff was lucky enough today to witness baby sea turtles hatching and scurrying towards the water! They're so cute!! (I was hosting our Spa event - we had the local orphanage in which we raised $1000 for during the month of February and had all the kids and volunteers in at the resort for a fun day)

Our new inflatable kayak!

We got an inflatable kayak yesterday! Neither of us knew just how big and sturdy it was until we pulled it out of the box and blew it up...we took it down to Great Pond, on the south end of St. Croix and took it for a little paddle around and got Alpie used to her floatie jacket.

Introducing....Bob!

I got the chop! Finally got rid off all my dry frazzled ends and beach hair.

Feeling and looking much healthier now.

Step 2: Growing out all my color!

The Smartphone World

So, I have finally given in. I succumbed to the confusing, irritating world of Smartphones - even though I had always told myself there is no way in hell I would get one.

Lovely Centennial (our Puerto Rican phone server) decided that 2 months of moving to St. Croix, they shut down their only retail store on island. Then, just 2 months after that, we had started to become inundated with letters from Centennial that they were going out of business and we had to switch over (in our case, switch BACK) to ATT. As part of this process, we had to buy new phone too..why? Who knows.

So...we'd putting it off for about 3 months until finally we made the time and effort to haul ourselves down to the always-busy ATT store and actually had a nice, helpful non-pushy (shock horror!) sales assistant. After spending almost three hours there, lots of backwards and forwards we came out pretty happy.. and me pretty confused with a new gadget: the HTC Inspire 4G (even though there is no 4G yet in St. Croix) My favorite feature so far: the distortion feature (yes small things amuse blonde minds)...see above

All in all so far, I'm pretty happy... and for the price ($100 one-time cost with $60/month including cheap international calling rates .. 9c/min) I think I can deal with all the noises, flashing and features on this thing.

New swim suit

My boss used to have a german shepherd that passed away a few years ago that used to wear this in the water. Not sure how much Alpie loved having it on but I'm looking forward to see if she'll last longer in the ocean now!

Sunday Sail with Thierry

One of the guys in our landscaping department at work, a Frenchie by the name of Thierry (or I just call him Pierre because its the only male french name I can remember :-) just bought a glass bottom speed boat to start his own tour company. He's just in the process of getting all the tours figured out (most of them will be custom anyway) and he's just a couple of weeks away from getting all his commercial operator's licences. Sooo... he offered to take us out this morning on a trial run!

The conditions couldnt be more perfect, it was super sunny with hardly any clouds and the water was beautiful. We took Alpie along too on "La Belle Vie" ("The Beautiful Life") and saw for the first time what Christiansted Harbor looks like from the water.. then we cruised around Green Cay Island and Alpie and I ended up having a little swim.

Thierry is a great guy, very knowledgable and is only charging $80/hour!!! He's aiming for small group tours, a maximum of 6 people at this stage so thats only $15 head for a good cruise around the shoreline.

For more info, email : seasidetour@yahoo.com

Bellingham

SURPRISE!!! We had been planning this Bellingham trip for about three months now - a surprise visit for Umon's 60th birthday.

It was a much needed break from work and nice to be back in civilisation for a while too. I got to meet some more of Geoff's family (the Canadian side) as well as the famous work colleagues of Umon's that I've heard so much about.

Sue and Pam did a fantastic job with making a surprise party with a big turkey, ham, cheesecake and all the trimmings - including party favors.

We miss you all already!!!!!!!!