Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Can you believe four days of our vacation have already passed? At this point we were still thinking that we had so much more time left in paradise!
We got up and had breakfast on our balcony (shocking, I know!). I noticed the cat from Sunday on the walkway in front of our balcony. I couldn't resist calling it over, and it very nicely obliged me. It came and sat down on the patio below us and meowed a couple of times. I came in to get some turkey, and J was very disapproving of my plan for said turkey. I threw a piece down to the cat, and it ran into the bushes. It then slowly crept out and sniffed around but never quite spotted the piece of meat I offered. I tossed down another piece, which it found pretty quickly. Then it was able to sniff out the original piece I'd thrown. Upon throwing a third piece of turkey, I noticed another gray cat on the patio to the right of the one below our balcony. It was creeping in, which made the first cat hiss and run into the bushes. I tossed down a couple of pieces of turkey for it and headed inside to ready myself for the day ahead.
I decided I would attempt to straighten my hair today, but I'm still not positive why I bothered. I guess it's simply because I like how I look with straight hair better than partially wavy, partially straight, mostly frizzy hair. It was quite a process with that chintzy hair dryer the resort provided. It's a good thing that I brought my professional flat iron! Two hours later (okay, that may be a slight exaggeration) it was time to head down to the lobby for our ride.
This day we were going on a semi-submarine tour of the coral reef. A van was scheduled to pick us up at 9:20 in front of our resort for a 10:00 tour. Our Caicos Tours van pulled up, and an older gentleman got out, opened the doors and put down a little step stool (yay, someone who cares about us vertically challenged peeps). The driver introduced himself as Alastair and invited us into the van. We hopped in and were joined by a family of four. We made a couple of stops along the way until our van was filled with people (mostly kids). Another ten minutes or so on the road, and we arrived at our final destination - Turtle Cove Marina.
Once at the Marina we were introduced to Alastair's wife, Betty. I do believe they were Kiwis, and I got a big kick out of listening to Betty speak. We chatted a bit about life in Arizona, and she shared how much she loves her job. Off to the side, J shared with me that he wasn't feeling so well, and I asked him if he'd be able to make through the tour. He seemed to think that he'd have no problem. After taking care of some financial business (a.k.a. signing away $110), it was time to climb down inside of the "sub". The seats fold down from the side and seat two people. The family of 4 from our resort took the two seats in front of us; the three year old was super excited about everything he was seeing through the lookout windows. He shouted "fish" almost every time he saw a fish, and there were lots of fish!
Betty narrated the tour; she pointed out what we were viewing and gave us information about some of the sea life. She explained that parrotfish eat coral and the bits that get "excreted" become the lovely sand on the island. Interesting. We were essentially walking through and laying in parrotfish poop! We spotted a puffer fish (not puffed up), two or three turtles, lots of snapper and a bunch of other fish whose names escape me. I thought it was a neat way to see the sea life for people who don't dive, so for us, it was worth the price.
Alastair drove us back to our resort where it was time to just do nothing. J had been doing some thinking (not as dangerous as when I do it). He thought it might be cool to go on a boat excursion. I had thought the same thing when I was planning this vacation, but since we'd never been snorkeling before and the cost was high, I hadn't planned this for us. We went into our resort lobby to see if they had any information about boat tours/excursions. We saw only a little info, but as we were looking, the excursion coordinator entered the room. She asked us if she could help with anything and introduced herself as Andrea (An-dray-uh). She told us most boat tours do the same things, and they only book with people who've turned in paperwork to the resort about licensing and what not (don't ask me what the "what not" includes). Andrea told us that when we stay at the resort we are like family, and they want to take care of their family to make sure that we make it home safely to our families. She was so friendly and warm! We told her we'd decide what we wanted to do with what company and get back with her the next day.
J still wasn't feeling all that well, and I'm convinced it was due to his tummy being sensitive to the pork dinner he ate the previous night. My guess is that it was too rich for him. It could also be that he shouldn't have devoured the entire meal leaving nothing for the next day. At least he enjoyed it!
J wasn't really feeling up to hitting the water, so he probably watched T.V. while I read. Now that I think about it, he may have taken a nap while I was reading. Before I knew it, I was sleeping as well! We awoke and ate lunch. J had another turkey sandwich, and I ate my leftover salmon. I just couldn't wait until dinner time to have it! I really don't even know what we did for the rest of the day.
J and I thought it would be nice to catch a sunset, so after lemon Pledging myself, we headed down to the beach. On our way, we noticed a black and white cat kickin' it in the sand. I took some pictures. Did you expect anything different? We kicked off our sandals and left them on the boardwalk before jumping down into the soft, white powder they call sand. I'll admit, it felt like it was taking forever for the sun to set, but neither of us seemed to mind simply doing nothing in each other's company in a beautiful place. That was pretty much the theme of the trip. I played around with my camera settings and took some pictures of the sunset. There was a group of people to the East of us playing a friendly game of rugby (can one really refer to a game of rugby as "friendly"?) and only two kids swimming after building something in the sand. Several people would pass by us, walking the long stretch of beach. I think one person was actually jogging and listening to her mp3 player device thingamabob.
After watching the sunset, we went back up to our room to get the laptop to do a little research on boat excursions. We found a couple of chairs by the pool where we'd be able to get wi-fi access. We were looking for a boat with nice shade for J; he was a little burnt, and so was my scalp. One of the excursions I liked visited a couple of smaller islands nearby and even took you to a pirate cave/shipwreck site. According to their website, however, they only go out on Wednesdays, and guess what the following day was? Back to the research! We narrowed our search down to Caicos Dream Tours or Silver Deep. I'd read so many good things about the former company that I was leaning a little more in their direction, but both pretty much offered the same exact excursion: visit Little Water Cay (Iguana Island), snorkel, dive for conch, visit a deserted island (Water Cay) and get dropped off on the beach of your resort.
As we were researching, we heard some commotion in the trees and bushes behind our chairs. We looked and saw the black and white cat climbing a tree. Then we saw a lizard frantically trying to outrun the cat. The cat dropped down into the bushes, and I pulled out my camera and set it to movie mode. That's when the cat jumped back up into the tree, climbed up, caught the lizard in its mouth, looked at me as if to say "I am so cool" with the lizard dangling from its mouth and ran off. We were happy for the cat but sad for the lizard. I could hear "The Circle of Life" playing in my head.
When we'd finished up our research we made our way to the room for a chicken pot pie dinner. Let's just say it was edible. At least we had some Ghirardelli milk chocolate squares as a chaser. Okay, this may have been the night we watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It just made me crazy for candy! Oh Lemonheads where were you?!
Time for bed. We're parasailing in the morning!
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