Day Three: Kayaking Part One

The next day I went on a "kayaking" adventure. It was more like a bit of kayaking and an all inclusive island for a few hours. Still fun...just not what I was expecting. Plus, they were very concerned about us tipping over, so I didn't have my camera while kayaking. So lots of island pictures instead.

 

 

 

We did kayak around mangroves like this. That was the main viewing highlight of the kayaking.

 

Day Two: Beach

Pirate Ship! (or tour boat, whatever)

 

Wild Life....

 

 

Moose!! (Isle Royal, Summer 2007)

I couldn't resist posting now anyway (see previous post). Before this particular moose headed into the water, he/she was standing on the trail like 10 feet from us! Seriously! And then there were a couple in the water, much further away. Of course we were coming back from getting water or something when we first ran into the moose, so no camera. (Plus, 10 feet from even a medium sized lizard makes one think, great, lizard, let me get closer with the camera. 10 feet from a giant moose is more of a wow, moose, I'll just stand here sort of feeling). Still, it was pretty exciting on the wildlife experience scale, especially given my usual lack of luck with these things.

 

Day One: The Beach!

The first day on the beach! The photo taking was not awesome, but the water was great and it was the only day when I enjoyed myself sans sunburn. I left red like a lobster despite not quite copious enough amounts of sunscreen. Nonetheless, it was lovely.


So the beach was basically divided into little sections for each giant hotel. Our hotel was not directly on the beach, but after much searching we found that we did have a section anyway complete with a guy giving us beach chairs if we showed him our handy wristband. We set ourselves up right behind these ladies, or more precisely we set ourselves up right behind some chairs and then these ladies returned. I'm not sure if the golddigga swimsuit is more or less appropriate on a woman who is surely pushing the age limits for gold-digging...

 

Beach feet! Becky points out that my strange interest in taking pictures of my feet on the beach this particular day was, well strange, but I like them anyway.

 

Even more than taking pictures of feet, I loved taking pictures of the lizards!! They are the perfect wildlife for photos. They dart around and will run away from you, thereby posing a photographing challenge, but on the other hand, they aren't THAT scared of you and are common enough that you don't have to stand down by a lake at dawn just trying to catch a glimpse of them from 50 feet away, which is my experience in trying to photograph/see any range of animals from a platypus in Australia to moose, caribou, bear, elk or anything really in the Canadian Rockies. (All of those efforts failed, but we did see some moose on Isle Royal. I'll post those after the Aruba pictures sometime.)

 

Finally the beach. Not the best photo, but still so lovely.

 

Did I say Puerto Rico?? I meant Aruba...obviously.

 

So after much booking difficulty, we ended up going to Aruba instead of Puerto Rico. Still awesome. The trip is a distant memory now, but I'm slowly working on culling through my hundreds of photos, so here they come.

Going to Puerto Rico!

reef2, originally uploaded by cmlamber.

surfing, originally uploaded by cmlamber.

waterfall us, originally uploaded by cmlamber.

Becky and I are going to Puerto Rico! It is way too expensive, but going to be awesome...check us out back in our younger days in Fiji and the Aussie reef! Things I have learned about trip planning: if you find a good deal, book it; spring break=horrible time to travel; if you put two tickets on hold on American, they will cancel one and not tell you. They also have no sympathy for any resulting problems; too many options is not always a good thing. Things I have learned about myself: not a good decision maker, but then I already knew that; being meticulous about travel decisions can bite me in the ass; I am not actually that flexible. Once that slow decision is made, it is hard to change my mind. In the end, I'm feeling a little guilty that if we had been smart and booked right away we would have saved a good $100 and much stress, but still, the trip will be awesome and it is good motivation to get my chapter done!!

Dreaming of Trips!

 

It is cold and snowy and nearly time to get out of town again. I'm planning a trip to the Caribbean in March!!! It should be awesome, but planning is more difficult and more work than would be preferable...who would have thought? There are so many search engines and none that really do what we want--namely find us somewhere nice and affordable and warm, any island is fine, and any reasonably better than crappy hotel with a great beach is good. Preferably said great vacation would be found without having to read 50 reviews on trip advisor, but that seems to be too much to ask. The Frugal Traveler at the New York Times feels our pain. Seriously, this should be easy and fun. We've currently narrowed things down to Jamaica or Puerto Rico and must book soon....more to come when that decision is made. And then, it will be time for plane rides and beach time! (And before that the gym and possibly some shopping, but hopefully not much).

On another note, I've become completely obsessed with the show What Not to Wear, which is either great--I will dress better--or horrible--I will soon be poorer than I already am as a grad student and/or be unhappy with many of my clothes...Someone should give me $5000 for new clothes and the sake of television viewers' entertainment! :-) But I think they need to do two things: A. talk about shopping on a budget. Seriously, most of the people watching this show (I assume) cannot go buy a bunch of $200 handbags, jeans, shoes, etc. to go with the other (somewhat) more reasonably priced items they bought. Those that can, great, but for the rest of us... B. They need to help some people dress for winter. You simply cannot go tromping around town in heels when there is snow on the ground. Or I can't anyway and no one should when it is actively snowing or recently has unless you are going to drive everywhere. And long underwear is going to totally change those jeans. These are important issues people! Anyway, clearly, I need to spend less time watching the show or the youtube videos....back to dreaming of beaches...