Caribbean day 5 & 6

I know this is taking a bit of a while, but I didn’t want to overwhelm you all with pictures and videos, and I have been busy in the mornings before work trying to catch up on sleep.  On day five we were in Puerto Rico.  We didn’t have an excursion planned and so when we got of the ship we just talked to a local guy that got us on a tour bus that went up into the rain forest.  It was very cool to go and see and be in.  It was not their wet season though to wildlife was a bit scarce even when our guide Josh was looking for little quarter sized tree frogs called Cokee (co-key).  La Coca Falls was a bit of a trickle as well too, but it was cool to see.

That night was Hasbro The Game Show for the second time on the trip and I managed to win myself up on stage by answering a trivia question.  ‘In the Peanuts comic strip who does Marcie refer to as “Sir”?’

We played giant operation, which was really skee-ball.  you rolled the balls up into the injuries and scored points.  The team of four with the highest points wins.  We won by nearly double the score, and so each of us four got to draw a Monopoly ABM card.  So us four and four winners from the game before us (a giant curing version of Sorry) put out cards in the machine, and mine ended up being the highest value!  the prize was not a ship on a stick, but a bunch of mini Hasbro games, and card games, and $150 for Hasbro.com.  (Un)fortunately they don’t ship to Canada, so we just got $150 back as credit on the ship!  Sweet!

There was also a magician for the last few days and I was sure to get involved with him.  I have a bit of video from one of his shows, and later we went to his seminar, pretty awesome!

The next day we were supposed to go to Grand Turk, but due to a Gastro-intestinal virus outbreak at the port, two ships has loads of people sick earlier in the week, the Captain cancelled the stop.  So our power snorkel excursion was cancelled as well.  And on the ship we just did trivias and stuff.  One exciting thing was that someone got hurt and the U.S. Coast Guard had to fly out in helicopter, and pluck them off the ship to fly to get medical care!  There is a little video of that which was pretty neat to see.  It’s hard to see the guy going back up into the copter, but if you look close you can see it.

 

A Pirate ship in the port at Puerto Rico

La Coca Falls

Looking down

 

The guide told us to be careful and not jump around

I couldn’t help it

 

Some Bamboo can grow 4’ in a day!!

The Big Bath, this was the first thing workers built when they we sent in to build the roads up the mountain.

Our Guide Josh

The Lazy Indian (sent your hate mail to Puerto Rico, not me, that is just what it is called)

The view from the top of the lookout tower

 

Inside the tower

 

Almost everyone had a nap on the way back!

Mofongo!  Soooooooo Good!

Towel Turtle!

Hasbro the Game Show

I played Operation

We had one minute to score as much as possible

 

 

 

 

I went second last and had a huge score

Winning!

Amber the Cruise Director and Me

The Piano Bar guy, he was from Stratford, Ontario and taught us The Beer Song

Amber with her Scattergories trophy

Guy Fieri’s burger joint on the ship, it looked REALLY greasy, we did not get food from there

U.S. Coast Guard taking a sick person off the ship!

 

At elegant night dinner

Me and Oksana, the best server ever!

Towel frog

The Caribbean Part 2

Check out Part 1 here!

I was a bit more into the whole video blogging part by the time we got to day three and four and so the video is a bit longer, but I also have some on location shooting while out and about on St. Thomas.  Check it out!

It was really cool to go up into Blackbeard’s Castle and see the view from there.  I think what also made that cool was that it was totally unplanned.  We just set out on the island and went places.  Meghan’s Bay was also very nice, Amber says it is one of the top five beaches in the world!  I can believe that, there was nothing but perfect sand on the beach itself and a very nice view all around. 

On our first Sea day where we played Scattergories is where I won my first ship on a stick.  The scavenger hunt we came close to winning but not close enough.  There are pictures going up on Facebook as I type this some comes check them out, but just like the other day here are some of the highlights for you of these days first!

 

This here shows how many pictures I tool on day 3.  This is the towel pig that we found at the end of the day!

Getting ready to run on the super windy running track

Posing

Check out the bumper sticker!

The 99 steps up to Blackbeard’s Castle

Pirates!

Jack Sparrow

The view from Blackbeard’s Castle

I got someone to take my picture up there

They have build this little inn and pool and so on up there

My sandcastle at Meghan’s Bay

Amber’s sandcastle

At dinner

Me and these other guys had to preform My Girl

Towel Elephant!

The Caribbean

Hi again, I meant to try to prepare some of this yesterday so that I could just post things up, but we had game night at one of Amber’s friends houses and so, nothing got done.

During the trip I decided to do some video blogging and so you’ll all get to see how poorly I speak into a camera, but I think it had value and by the end it worked pretty well.

So here is the first ever instalment of the Wisdom, Courage, Power video blog!

Some explanation is needed for the one part there.  That guy was in among all the vendors with a few little stumps behind him carving things while he waited for people to buy his stuff.  He was not nearly as pushy as a lot of the other vendors though.

Here over the next few days I’ll put up some of the highlight pictures, if you want to see all the pictures you’ll have to follow me on facebook I think.  So highlights from the first couple of days.

One the way there this was the only line we didn’t have to wait in.  This is to check in to the ship and get your cards and stuff at the port.  We did the same process at the airport but only had one other person to wait with.

This picture was up yesterday, but this was my gym on day 1.  The blue with the arrow is part of the jogging track.  I was up there a few times.  We’ll talk about fitness on vacation later in the week.

The girl in the red in the middle is Bobbi, she was from Bowmanville Ontario (only an hour from our house).  This was the first game of the cruise, I forget what they called it, but it was Family Feud really.

The first towel animal of the trip, stingray.

This was up yesterday too.  The view of the ship in port in the Bahamas.

This was some art part way up a set of stairs, carved right out of palm tree trunks, very cool.

Some really familiar looking pirates at the Pirates of Nassau exhibit

They threw me in the stockade!

Down behind the Fish Fry, wish was a place as well as an event, there was a holding bay for all the conch for all the restaurants!

That guy in the back there is using a pole to pull up three of four conch on a rope at a time.

Then you use a hatchet to chop off the pointy tip of the shell so you can pull out the meat.

On the beach I build a sandcastle.

At the fish fry we had grouper, fried plantains and beans and rice.  It was a great lunch!  Having the face on the fish was a little weird though.

My awesome sunburn.  You can see the pale ring by my neck where I had sunscreen while my shirt was on and we were wandering around.

Day two towel animal, Monkey!!

I’m Back!

Hey everyone!  I’m back from my trip.  Luckily Carnival Glory is not one of the ships you saw on the news that last few days and we made if safely around the Caribbean and back.

Over the next few days I’ll be posting some pictures and I actually did a few videos during the week away because it was easier than typing blogs on my phone.  It was way less time consuming too.

In short the trip was awesome!  We had some nice sunny days, thought we only got to the beach once really.  Sort of twice, but that’s a longer story and we will get to that.  I won a few things on the ship, ate some weird food, and took some good pictures.  For the moment I’m just going to leave you guys with a few choice pictures and then look forward to this week where we’ll explore a few more things in depth!

Click on the pictures for a much larger and nicer view!

Miami

Nassau

St. Thomas

Puerto Rico

Pretty nice views huh?  Wait till you see the other stuff!