CARIBBEAN

Gotta love those muster drills.
Joe and I just got back from a 7 day Southern Caribbean cruise. We had a blast! It was nice to get away just the two of us and get a break from reality.
On Friday we flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico. After spending the night there we left in the afternoon to catch our boat. Before leaving the Hotel and boarding our shuttle bus the entertainment show started. While waiting to board the bus there was a homeless man, supposedly, that kept approaching people in our group for money or trying to sell other items, if you know what I mean. The Taxi drivers told him to stop hassling us. When he did not and continued to remain there one of the taxi drivers decided to take it into his own hands and punched him. He hit him so hard he fell to the ground.
I thought that would be enough for the man to leave. Whatever he was high on overcame him and he kept trying to go after the taxi driver. Even taking it to the extreme and grabbing a beer bottle out of the garbage can. He then proceeded to go after the taxi driver with the bottle. That is when all the other fellow drivers stepped in to protect the one and the guy decided he had had enough and staggered down the street. It was quite the way to start out our vacation.
Our first stop was St. Thomas where we took a taxi, then a water taxi and last another taxi to get to St. John's. We went to a beach called trunk bay. They have a marked snorkel trail around a little island in the ocean. It was a relaxing day to just snorkel and lay on the beach. There were a few small rain storms and they moved out as quickly as the moved in.
Second was St. Maarten and we took a taxi over to Orient Bayon the French side. You have to understand that there are 3 dress codes on this beach. One end is fully clothed, the middle is partial clothes and the other end is completely naked. Of course we went to the fully clothed side. But, it did not matter there were still lots of topless women and men to be seen. Upon arriving at the beach we witnessed an elderly couple only wearing sandals and thongs. Their thongs were more like strings. When they say you are going sight seeing that is not what I had in mind.
Third day we spent in Antigua. Beautiful island to bad we didn't have more money. We spent the day walking around the island. We even found the Branch office for the church.
Fourth day was St. Lucia. Again beautiful but did not get to see much. We slept in and then took a taxi to a beach. There were lots of sand crabs & garbage to be found. The beach was not very clean so we crossed over some rocks into a cleaner one. To find out it was an exclusive beach for the sandals resort. One of the locals on the beach told us if we wanted to get a drink to go sit at the bar and order. With it being an all inclusive resort they would think you were one of their guests.
Fifth and final island was Barbados. This island was the cleanest of all of them and the beach was amazing. The sand is pink and it is so fine it is like flour. It was my favorite out of all of them. The only downside is that I got a really bad sunburn even though I applied sunscreen. I wasn't the only one. There were a lot of people that got burned that day. We heard someone say that the sun was a lot more intense on that day.
Last day was a day at sea and I spent most of the day recovering from the sun, applying lotion to my sunburn and trying to walk without too much pain.
Saturday we arrived back in San Juan and since our flight did not leave till later that afternoon we went and toured the Old San Juan fort. It was amazing to see how large it was and to think it was built that long ago. I could not imagine those soldiers keeping watch so that pirates would not invade.
After 9 hours in the air we arrived safely home late Saturday night. It was a great week and I miss the warm weather already.