D.I.N.K. Cruisers

Last Day in St. Lucia

2009-04-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

Julie and I were up early and she wanted to take some pictures in the rain forest walk, which was behind the Sugarmill rooms. The walk was short, but walking with Julie and a camera can turn a 10 minute walk into a 30 minute walk easily.

After our walk we met up with everyone else back on the beach. Elona, Stephanie and myself went sailing on the Hobie cat. This sailing trip was much better, the wind was stronger which made it much easier to tack the boat.

We hung around the beach until about noon. 8 of us had flights at the same time, so we all packed into the vans and headed back down the curvy road to the airport.

Bye bye Jalousie, it was fun.

Adventure day

2009-04-18T16:26:00.000-07:00

It was around 1 am when we called it quits on the beach, (actually the resort kind of suggested we leave the beach, so he could put of the fire.) We had great intentions of getting up early and trying out the tennis courts, but when we got up it was raining, and we were to lazy so we never used the courts. (Oh well, next time). The sad part about Wednesday is that it was Jayson's last day on the island, the non-sad part was that I had another day! (sorry Jayson)

The morning was pretty lazy, we all meet in the lobby to try and figure out what the plan was. A number of people wanted to go to Pigeon Island and into Castries for some shopping. Another group wanted to do a sunset boat cruise, and some people were just going to lounge by the pool.
See Brooke by the pool, on the totally amazing and comfortable swinging beds. They were so comfortable and had to be reserved before 7am, because everyone wanted one.This is Brooke doing his impressing of Julie. I just think this is a funny picture.

The group going to Castries: Mandy, Charlie, Mart, Joyce, Casey, Julie & Tek. The Sunset cruise group was, Brooke, myself, Anita, Scott and Donna. I will ask Julie or Mandy to write up their experience going to Pigeon Island, because I don't think I could do it justice, so you'll just have to wait.
As for the sunset cruise it was really nice and romantic??? We boarded the "EverReady" around 4:30pm right from the beach. It was a very large sailboat, where you could easily sit up on the front deck. After we got out of the bay our group headed up to the front.
The resort from the sail boat.

Donna was 'King of the World".

Unfortunately it was really cloudy so we didn't get to see the sunset, but we did see a Royal Caribbean cruise ship pass by us with dolphins playing on the bow wake.It really was a dolphin, i think there were a few, but they were a little shy and hard to photograph.

The cruise also had passed snacks, beer and a champagne toast when the sun was setting. So instead of a sun set we got to see the Bat Cave. There were so many bats, you could hear them all inside, I was glad they stayed inside. (I'm not sure if a bat cave equals a Caribbean sunset on the 'amazing experience' scale , but it's the best we got.)

At the every end of our cruise it started to rain harder, so we haded back into the covered part of the boat as we headed back in.

On the shore we met up with the other group who looked pretty worse for wear. Mandy and Julie were wearing Dollar Store ponchos, Joyce looked liked she sat in mud and Mart was over heard "talking" to their boat driver saying he wasn't going to pay him anymore money because he ran out of gas. We kept asking them what happened, but they wouldn't tell us what happened on their adventure, they just keep saying we'd have to wait until dinner, so now you'll have to wait until one of them type up the story to share.

That night was the last night for many of us, so we headed out to a restaurant in Soufriere for dinner at Hummingbird. It was really good food, and the band they had was amazing. Family Affair, a local band kept the music going longer than planned because we were all dancing.

Such a cute couple. It was worth the trip to see them get married.

Onto the reason we were here...

2009-04-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

At 5:11 Mandy and Charlie will tie the knot. Before we headed back to the beach for the wedding Sarah and Stephanie hosted a pre-wedding reception on their veranda that overlooked the beach. We had drinks and appetizers.
The hostesses for our pre-party.
Jayson watched the locals on the beach and learned how to open a beer bottle with his teeth. To bad he lost two teeth in the process.
Then we headed to the beach. They put all the chairs in a circle and had the isle along the outside edge.
Mandy's Dad giving her to Charlie
Joyce had to fluffy up Mandy's dress. She had it made for her. The colors on the dress match her ring, and now stones in Charlie's ring. The colors, green and blue, symbolize Land & Sea.
Charlie was building up the sand under his feet and Mandy dug her self into the sand a little bit. :)
I taped the wedding for my Mom since they were unable to be here, so this is the only kiss I have them doing. It's after they have officially signed the wedding license!
I love the colors of the flowers!

After the wedding it was time for pictures, lots of pictures, and they had the most amazing ever-changing backdrop.The Schmidt's, Doug, Granny Great, Anita and Donna.

...they're going to get married...but first I must SCUBA

2009-04-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

The day was here! The sun was out, the breeze was off shore, and at 5:11pm Mandy and Charlie were going to be married.

As they spent the day getting ready the rest of us were on the beach. Jayson, Julie, Sarah Stephanie & myself decided to sign up for SCUBA lessons and a Resort Dive. SCUBA was something I had always wanted to try but my asthma was so bad when I was younger that I was afraid to try it. So I wasn't sure if I was going to actually dive and after the first 7 minutes of the training video I'm was almost 100% sure I wasn't going to dive. because for the first 7 minutes they tell you all the ways you can die or severely hurt yourself.

I made it to the end of the training video, but I was playing along with the idea of diving. Then it was time to get suited up and see the air tanks up close. The trainer was showing everyone how the air comes out of the tank, how much air you have in the tank, blah blah blah. Which would have been all good and very helpful to see, but I was more afraid because he was showing everyone one with my tank, my air! I'm an only child I don't share and I certainly don't share my air! He said I had more than enough for the dive, but really couldn't he have shown us while using one of those British people's tanks!

Jayson decided not to dive before we put on the wet suits. The rest of us got in the water to test out the equipment. I was pretty sure I was going to be out of air or suck in an entire lung full of salt water. After trying and passing our 30 second safety test, Julie and Sarah decided not to do the full dive. That left Stephanie and I. Stephanie really wanted to go, so I decided to not let her down and I agreed to dive with only 1/2 a tank of air.

I'm so glad I did the SCUBA dive, it was only $17, $10 for the suit and $7 for the entrance into the underwater nature reserve. We went down to about 40ft and saw a number of fish sponges and sea cucumbers. I was hoping to see sea turtles, but no luck. We were down for about 20 minutes which was good because I was sure I only have 2o minutes of air total. (It sounds like I'm being over dramatic about this lack of air fear, but I swear after every 4 breaths I was checking the O2 meter on my tank.) Speaking of fears, my other fear from when I was a kid, is to be hit by a boat motor. So while SCUBA diving, we were down about 20 some feet, when a boat docked at the pier started their engine and drove over the top of us. I kept telling myself that the prop was only in the water a foot or two, but still, it's crazy to watch a boat drive over the top of you.

All in all the dive was cool. I wish Jayson would have done it, but I didn't want to pressure him. He said maybe next time he'll try the dive thing again. I was thinking the next time we do a big cruise ship, we'll have to get the certification.

Exploring St. Lucia

2009-04-14T19:04:00.000-07:00

As a thank-you from the Bride and Groom they gave everyone attending the wedding an excursion on St. Lucia. We signed up for the Land & Sea tour. It started with a tour of The St Lucia volcano, also called the St Lucia sulphur springs, then we toured a cocoa plantation followed by a long drive for lunch followed by a boat ride back to the Jalousie.
The St. Lucia volcano, is the only drive in volcano in the world. It doesn't have a cone anymore, because it blew up a while ago. We walked down to the viewing platform and were able to take a bunch of pictures.
There is a very strong smell of sulfur that comes out of it. It is weak during the day but very strong at nights. The running joke on the island is that you can fart and blame it on the volcano. You can smell it for miles away at nights but that is a good thing. If the smell goes away, then that would mean that there is going to be a volcanic eruption. The other thing that the smell is good for, is that it keeps the boa constrictors away. I love this shot, I just wish the computer had smelly vision so you could get the full affect.
Elona, and the other Schmidt's were on different tour, but we both had the same first stop. It was good to hang out with them more.
The hot sulpher springs flow down into a river that is said to have healing powers. The locals and tourists bath in the mud. And they are not modest, we felt a little uncomfortable taking pictures, but I kept these pictures PG. Jayson had burned his feet really bad the day before sailing and playing sand volleyball so he went and put in his feet to help with the pain. He was in the mud for maybe a minute at most. He said it was really hot, but he feet felt really good and didn't hurt for at least 45 minutes. It made us a believer.
Burned feet!
After we fixed Jayson's feet we headed for for the Cocoa plantation. The Fond Doux Estate was a resort and a working cocoa plantation. We were given a tour of the grounds and then we got were able to see how they make cocoa. The guide wasn't into the tour at all but the estate was beautiful and filled with really pretty flowers and humming birds.
Fresh nutmeg, from left to right: The pod with a nutmeg seed, and open pod, a nutmeg with the mace (red) on the outside. (I took this home, not sure if you can???)

Fire FlowerHumming bird in front of a grapefruit on a tree
The end of the tour was the best part, they showed us how they ground up up the dried cocoa seeds(???) then rolled them into sticks. The sticks are then shipped to Hershey Pennsylvania.

Our guide in front of the house that had drawers used to dry out the cocoa beans (???)
She's grinding the cocoa, and Mrs. Olson is trying it. it was pure cocoa and tasted like coffee and chocolate.

Cocoa Stick and the lady who rolls them.

We picked up a few sticks as souvenirs for family at home and the recipe for Cocao Tea, which is hotchocolate without sugar. (At home we tried it their way, then we added sugar then finished the chocolate tea.)

The beginning of this trip was nice, but the most memorable part of the entire day was lunch. It wasn't because the food was amazing, or the great service, it was the view. And I'm not talking about looking at beaches, mountains or any cool animals. It was the view that our table had of the topless sunbather at the pool. There was only one woman at the pool, and she was as close to a 'Perfect 10' as you can get without surgery. (sorry no pictures)

After lunch we took a boat ride back to the Jalousie. Dinner that night was kind of a rehearsal dinner without the rehearsal.

The Jalousie Plantation from the water.

Getting ready for Dinner

Aren't we cute.

St Lucia - Wedding Travel

2009-04-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

Our Good Friends Mandy and Charlie decided to get married on an Island in the Caribbean, St. Lucia. Since we are always up for a trip, we booked a 5 night stay on St. Lucia. They got married on the beach at The Jalousie Plantation. It was an amazing resort, about a 45 minute drive from Vieux Fort, UVF airport, and about 1.5 hours from the airport in Castries (SLU). On a map the plantation and the airports don't seem that far, but trust me the roads in St. Lucia are very curvy. If you get car sick easily ask to sit in the front seat, because I have a strong stomach and I was left feeling queasy after that car/van ride.
We got to the Jalousie (like jealousy, but with an 'a') around 3:30pm. It was 85 and sunny. Our room was a Mountain View Suite. It was really cute, we were in the 400s which meant we were about a 10 minute walk downhill to the beach, and a 15 minute walk up hill from the beach. (The hill was a pretty steady climb, but you could wait for a free shuttle to pick up and drop you off.) We did both, but it was usually based on how much we had to carry. The suite was really cute, and had plenty of room for us. It had a king size bed, couch (with hide-a-bed), table, 2 chairs plus a desk. The bathroom was very spacious, included two fluffy robes and we had good water pressure both some of our friends said that they didn't have as good of pressure as we did. Oh and the shampoo smelled amazing!

Our friends arrived a few days before us, due to the law in St. Lucia that for a wedding to be valid the bride and groom have to be in the country for 3 business days before the wedding. So they were super excited when most of us showed up on Saturday afternoon. They invited us up to a sunset cocktail party on their Villa's patio.

The Jalousie, upgraded them to a Villa, since they were getting married. This Villa was just finished being built and they were the first people to stay in it. It was amazing!

After the sunset we went to dinner at the Bayside Bar & Grill. It's right on the beach, and had live music by a really good band. At the beach restaurant it's buffet style, and dinner was $58 per person, the food was OK, it's wasn't wonderful, but the grilled fish was pretty good.

Penguin Tour Video

2009-01-16T19:33:00.000-08:00

Here's the video I took from Punta Tomba in Argentina.

Almost Home, Dallas layover

2009-01-13T21:01:00.001-08:00

We had a 11pm flight out of Santiago. We got into Dallas about 6am and we decided to change our flight to have a few hours in Dallas to see Jamie and her new (8 month old) son Cody. He's really cute and good. Jamie, Brian, and Cody took Jayson and I around the city since we had never been there before.

There was bad weather, cold and snow, in Chicago so we were delayed a little bit leaving Dallas, but we were home by 8pm on the 10th. We had a great time on our trip, but we were glad to be home.

I'll do our final thoughts later this week or weekend.

Andes Mountains January 9th

2009-01-13T20:06:00.001-08:00

Andes Mountains - January 9th

We got up early for our horse ride up the mountain, but on our way to the barn we ran into this fella. He lives at the ranch and was wandering around the grounds. He was friendly and fuzzy. I fell in love with him in about 2 seconds and wanted to bring him home with us.

The reason I am making this face is because the little guy kept making the most adorable squeaks. I kept laughing because they were so funny.
Jayson and I are not horse people, and we are flat landers, so to say we were out of our comfort zone. We were the only two people on our ride, besides the guide and 4 dogs from the ranch that came along for the ride.

Going up the mountain, was a little crazy, but it was pretty cool, great views, slightly freaky, but we felt we were going to live.

See how much fun we are having at the top. It was so nice, the sun was out and life was good.

See how happy we were, that was all about to end, as we started to head down the mountain.

This picture of Jayson does not begin to show you how bad going down was. It was endless switch backs on the side of a mountain. My horse would slip with every 3rd step and he liked to get extra close to the edge. About 1/2 way down my horse began to contemplate his own existence and I think he was considering jumping off the cliff, because he walked up to the edge and just looked over with me on him. I really thought I was going to die on this horse. At that point the guide took the reigns of my horse and made him follow directly behind his horse.

When we got down the mountain, I was soooooo happy. We decided that we would not be coming back to the ranch to do a week long trip in the mountains on horse back. Maybe just on foot, but as we found out later that afternoon, walking up the mountains is just about as terrifying. We had a great time, but our ability to be serious mountain people is pretty much out of the question.

I did take some pictures of our cabin. We were in Cabin 9. It was a 1 bedroom, with a porch, and backyard, kitchen, and cute livingroom.

The funny thing about the cabin was that all the door knobs were really really low. We called them Hobbit doors. :)

Since the only place to eat on the ranch is the resturant, we went back there for lunch. It started with these really good bread dippers, the red one was the best. For lunch i had the shrimp pasta. They look like ravolies in this picture, but they were funny shaped, more like little pillows that were open on the top and filled with shrimp. I thought at first the pasta was just broken or something but all of them had little holes at the top of the pillows.

Jayson had chicken, in the picture it doesn't look like much but it had good flavor.

We did get dessert, and they said it was a traditional dessert in the area. I'm not sure about that, but it was really good and sweet.

After lunch we had some time to hang out at the pool before we had to catch our ride to the airport home. The sun was really hot, but the water was really cold.

The trip was over and here's the luggage we had to bring home with us. We gained one full duffel bag, and replaced the contents (T-shirt we were tossing during/after the trip) of the rollerboard bag with souviners. So we really gained 2 bags worth of stuff.

Andes Mountains - January 8th

2009-01-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

The Andes Mountains.

We had made the decision to only stay at the Hotel Orley for two nights instead of three when we were in Vina Del Mar. But after we had such a great day in Santiago we were thinking maybe we made a mistake. But we had made an arrangement with our driver from the day before to pick us up at noon and take us to Cascada de las Animas so we left.

It was about 1 1/2 hours to the resort. Which is actually an Eco Friendly Ranch that had Trekking, Horseback riding, Rafting and a Zipline. The place is huge! We wanted to go hiking and horseback riding in the Andes. So we scheduled a hike Thursday afternoon to the waterfall and a horseback ride Friday morning.

Below are a number of pictures from the Ranch and our hike to the waterfall.

Jayson tried rock climbing.

It wouldn't be a vacation if I didn't fall and hurt my knees. So here is the aftermath of this trip's fall. We were on the way to dinner, and I slipped on the rolly gravel on the steep driveway. I wish I could say it was on a hike while battling a snake, but no. I was walking to dinner with tennis shoes on, not even flip flops!!!! ugh.

Dinner at the resort, La Triba. We had a great table. The Sun had just moved behind the mountain and we dined listening to the sound of the river.

This was our view from our table. For dinner we started with the cheese plate. Then I had a Veggie Crape, and Jayson had the Spicy Thai Seafood dinner.

For dessert we had this raspberry/rum crape. It was very good.

Here's the video of our first day at the ranch.

Santiago All Day Tour

2009-01-07T16:27:00.001-08:00

January 7th, My Birthday!!!!

We scheduled an all day tour of Santiago with a tour group About Chile. We have to admit that this has to be the best tour we have been on. It was private, just Jayson & I, a driver and our english speaking guide. About 50% of the tour was in the car, and 50% was on foot.

We went all over the city. We started with a trip to St. Christobal hill, which is a State Park. We went up the Furnicular and walked around the top to see the views of the city. Then we walked to the very top to see the statue of the Virgian Mary.

From there we walked over to the cable cars, which looked something out of the Jetson's. We took this over to the top of the other hill in the park, where our car was waiting for us.

Then we drove around a little looking at different nighborhoods and to the Plaza Las Armas, which is the center of the city.

From there we went for lunch in the Fish Market. Not as big or as fun and the Fish Market in Seattle, but still very colorful.

This big guy is the Centioa, The Red Spikey Crab, that we had with GC and S in Val paraiso. We didn't have it today, but the people next to us did, and 1 of them feed 4-6 people!

Check out the size of this corn!!!

After the market we went to the top of Santa Lucia, a very important hill hill in Santiago. We walked all around and saw the Castle at the top. (It's not really a castle.)

After all the sight seeing we went to a very nice shop to get some Lapilazul (Lapis), it's the Gem of Chile. I purchased a bracelet and a pair of earinings, there were nice. Jayson got a penguine made of Lapis, to go with our Jade animals from Alaska.

After a long day of touring Santiago with a guide, Jayson and I set out on our own. We picked up a few gifts and some candy to share with people from home. Then tonight we went out for a nice dinner for my Birthday.

We didn't take any pictures of the food, but trust me, it was amazing and once again I'm so full on Sea food, I could burst. We found out why Chile doesn't eat Beef and they mostly eat fish. It's because their beef is tough as they are so hilly that their cows need big muscels to walk around the fields, so they import their beef from Argentina where the land if flat.

thanks for the Birthday wishes in Facebook. We only have 30 minutes left of battery life, so this could be the last entry. See everyone soon!

Love

N & J

January 6th, Trip to Santiago

2009-01-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

January 6th,
Trip to Santiago via a Vineyard

We talked to Miguel at our B&B and he suggested we hire a car to drive us to Santiago. The car would take us to Casas Del Bosque, and very nice vineyard just outside the city of Casablanca.
We had a private English speaking tour and then we had our own private tasting, in the most amazing tasting room.

We tried a new grape called Carmenre. It’s only grown in Chile, and it was amazing. We picked up a bottle to bring home. We also had a really good Sauvignon Blanc, that tasted like grapefruit. It was very good and we also picked up a bottle of that to bring home with us.

Grapes:

After we drank at the vineyard our driver took us to a restaurant called Mercado. Once again, the restaurants on Chile amazes us, and we had another wonderful meal. We started with a trio of Ceviche and then Jayson had a seafood pasta and I had Spicy short ribs with spicy mush potatoes (that’s how they spelled them.

We are short on battery life, so I’m going to cut the blog short today.

Valpo Take 2

2009-01-06T14:34:00.000-08:00

Ok, we are back online and I was able to upload what I had written for Valpo.

January 4th.

We got off the ship without any issues, in spite of the fact that the ship instills that the Chilian customs is very tight. Basically they don’t allow any fruits in the country. Gian Carlo, Silvia, Jayson and I headed to our hotel, (B&B named My Father‘s House) in Vina Del Mar. We all dropped off our luggage and headed out on foot to explore the beach and the city of Valparaiso.
Our hotel was in the hills over looking Vina Del Mar, so we walked down the hills that remind me of San Francisco. We found a furnicular that took us down the steepest hill.

The beach is pretty famous across South America, because Vina Del Mar hosts a huge music festival in February along the beach. (We are missing the festival by only a few weeks). (I think it’s similar to Summerfest.)

We walked along a did some shopping, Silvia had never put her feet in the pacific ocean so she and Gain Carlo had to do that.

We walked along the coast to see this cool castle (Castle Wulff) and also we were looking up at a and then to take a picture of the flower clock.Our next stop was to head back to Valparaiso and see if we could tour the house of Pablo Neruda. He is a very famous poet and politician. When he died he donated his 3 house to the people and we were able to tour one of them, named Casa La Sebastiana. It was beautiful and really interesting inside. We weren’t allowed to take pictures of the inside but I was allowed to take a picture of the view.After an hour or so at the house we explored a little more as GC was looking for a specific restaurant that served a Red Spiky Crab. We had to try 2 different places, but we found this amazing restaurant overlooking the port. (We watched as our ship filled with new passengers and they didn’t include us. )
We all ordered freshly caught sea food and we shared the most amazing sea food sampler platter. It included shrimp, Abalone, scalps, mussels, and the precious spiky red crab. (The Abalone was my favorite).

For dinner I ordered Mahi Mahi Skewers with coconut and pineapple. The side I chose were spicy mashed potatoes. (This dish was soooo good)

Jayson and GC ordered the same thing, it was a type of Crab Salad (but they called it a crab pastry) and it was in a bowl made of cheese.

After dinner we headed back down the famous Conception Furnicular. It was really long and pretty cool.
Unfortunately it was getting late and GC and Silvia had to get going, since they still had 1 ½ hour bus ride to Santiago.
After we got back to the hotel and said goodbye to our new friends Jayson and I hung out in the garden of our B&B overlooking the city and watched the sunset. It was a long day and we were pretty tired.
Tomorrow we’re on our own, and we’ll have to communicate without having our two translators with us, but they were really helpful in teaching us how to use the trains. I think tomorrow we’ll try to head north along the coast.

Valpraiso and Vina Del Mar

2009-01-05T16:59:00.000-08:00

January 4th and 5th
They made us get off the ship, we tried to stay, but they said someone else paid for our room and we had no choice but to leave. We were very sad, but I think if we were on the ship for another 2 weeks, i would need all new clothes as nothing would fit me.

So here we are in Valpraiso/Vina Del Mar Chile. Our friends (tablemates) Gian Carlo and Sylvia that speak Spanish, came with us for the day. We toured the home of Pablo Neruda, a very special person here in Chile he was the first Chilean to win a nobel prize. His poems are very famous and have been translated into a number of different languages. Will probably try to pick up an English version when we get back to the states. His house was very cool and crazy at the same time. He designed it to remind him of a ship and also of the multi colored homes in Valpo. We could not take pictures inside, but the view from the windows was amazing.

(I would add in pictures but our computer is having issues with the wi-fi here so I can not upload any pictures. I will try to add them later if I can. So for now it will only be text.)

GC was on a hunt for a resturant that served a speical kind of Spikey Crab, so he asked around for a place that served it. I must admit, the food could very well be the best seafood we have ever eaten. We tried abalone for the first time which was absolutely excellent. I have pictures and full descriptions but i will save that until you can see for yourself.

Unfortunately, Gian Carlo and Sylvia were set to meet up with some friends in Santiago and could not stay in Vina Del Mar with us. It was still great that they were here, though. We got back to our B&B just as the sun was setting and we overlooked the ocean and the beach of Vina Del Mar.

Today, we headed north to the wealthier sections of the Coast and ended up walking about 13 miles (12 legitimite miles and 1 because Jayson made a wrong turn on the way back). The walk was beautiful and we stopped by a wonderful restaurant in a town called Reñaca. The food was wonderful and we learned you really only have to eat once a day in Chile because they feed you so much at any restaurant that if you had more than one meal you would probably explode.

Tomorrow we are heading to Santiago. We are going to see if we can change our reservation to only 2 nights in Santaigo and spend one night it the Mountains at the park we planned to visit on the 9th. We think that would be more fun, and since the air quality in the city is really poor, i am sure my lungs could use the break.

January 2, 2009 Puerto Mott

2009-01-03T14:31:00.000-08:00

January 2, 2009
Puerto Mott
We arrived early in Puerto Mott. We had an all day tour scheduled so we could view the Osorno Volcano and Petrohue Falls. Puerto Mott is located in the Lake District of Chili (about 42 degrees S. Latitude). The area has a number of really large lakes, cute charming towns, and an almost perfectly shaped Volcano.

Some interesting info on Chili. Our Tour Guide explained Chili as God’s Leftovers. What he meant was this. When God was done creating the earth, he had some extra deserts, lakes, mountains and glaciers. So it took them all and made: Chile.

We drove about an hour to the base of Osorno Volcano, and then it took almost an hour to ascend the switchbacks to the top (well to the location of the ski lodge).

This is a bridge to nowhere. I just think it’s a really cool photo.

We opted to take the first chairlift to get a higher view. It was a 12 minute trip up, and we have a great clear view of the Volcano. (There was a second lift that went even higher, but we didn’t have time for that one.

Once at the top we wondered around and took some pictures.

This is some vegetation that was growing on the slope

Then we climbed to the top of another hill where it was really windy. Trying to climb up wasn’t easy as the entire thing was made of pumice and was really loose, so with every step you would slid half way back down.

Overlook stop on the way down from the Volcano.

After the Volcano, the tour stopped at Laguna Verde (Green Lagoon) for a some quick photos.

The reason it was quick wasn’t because we were running short on time, but because the area was filled with Tabanos, (basically a horse fly). They were huge and were attracted to dark colors and anything that moved. Some people would have 15+ swarming around or landing on them. They weren’t harmful but they were annoying, (Tabanos is the slang word in Chili for someone they find annoying).

Our tour also included lunch and a resort along the shores of the Llanquihue ( sounds like:Yan Kee Way) Lake. The Resort was named Yankee Way Lodge. Take a look at the view outside from our table. We could only guess how much a piece of lake property (including volcano view) would be worth in the United States.

They had a number of large Art Installations around the property. This one was carved out of an entire tree.

This one we think was a mosquito.

After lunch we traveled to Petrohue Falls, which aren’t really a water fall, they would be described at Rapids.

We took a number of really cool pictures as it was very pretty.

Check out the color of the water.

Gian Carlo and Sylvia.
Chili is broken into different sections one on top of each other. The deserts are to the north, the Lakes in the middle and the Glaciers at the bottom. The Lake district section was settled by German immigrants and is this is the area where they have all the dairy cows. (I really thought it looked like Wisconsin, but only with mountains and volcanoes.)

After the tour we had to wait in line and we were joined by a guy and his Alpaca. (Yes the alpaca is wearing a funny little hat). Jayson like the music and purchased the CD, (we have yet to listen to it).

Pictures of the Coast of Puerto Mott.

January 1, 2009 New Years Day

2009-01-03T14:27:00.000-08:00

New Years Day
The ship continued North and the weather continued to get warmer and warmer. It was finally nice enough to be out on deck for more than 2 minutes without a coat. This meant we could be on deck as we cruised the Chilean Fjords.

Here’s some of the amazing views.

The water was calm within and around the islands. The islands are actually the tops of the underwater mountain range. We were also able to see 1000’s of diving birds along the shore and next to the ship. At times the Fjords become narrow and our ship is really close to both sides, and at times the ship has to leave the protected waters of the Inside passage because the passages are no large enough for The Radiance of the Seas.

These are more pictures but I was playing with the settings on our cameras.

There were a number of these salmon farms along the Fjords. Salmon and Clam farms are a major export of Chili’s.

Dec31st -New Years Eve, Squa Glacier

2009-01-01T06:43:00.001-08:00

Dec31st -New Years Eve, Squa Glacier
Since our Punta Arenas port didn’t happen, the Capitan added in the Squa Glacier. It isn’t on the normal itinerary, but because we had extra time at sea he was able to take us to it.

This is a huge Glacier, much larger than the ones we saw in Alaska.

Things to remember, anywhere you see white, it’s snow, and anywhere you see blue it’s ice.

The Capitan

NEW YEARS!

We were really excited to experience New Years on the ship. It was a formal night and we were all dressed up and ready for some fun.
Our dinner table was decorated with festive additions, and came with hats, crowns and noise makers.

We had a special menu for dinner. Jayson and I both had the Filet with Tiger Prawns. They were excellent. The dessert was also really good.

New Year's Kiss. Ring in 2009!
Then we attended 5 parties across the ship, including the balloon drop at midnight. It was a really fun as each party had a theme. This morning…we slept in! (sorry no pictures)

Dec 30th - unexpected day at sea

2009-01-01T06:40:00.000-08:00

The last time I blogged I mentioned we were having a problem getting the ship away from the dock, but we didn’t realize that the wind would continue to be an issue on the trip. Overnight we headed to Punta Arenas and the wind and waves were strong the entire time. We arrived to Punta Arenas, Chile about 2 ½ hours later that expected, only to find out that the city had closed the port due to the high winds. It made it unsafe for our ship and others to enter the port. This was unfortunate because we had a very cool hike planned in the national park. But We were thankful that we had decided to book this tour with the ship, (Something we almost didn’t do). The ship hung around outside the port for a few hours, but then finally the Capitan made a decision to leave. Here are some pictures of the coast line.

The city seemed really large, it to bad we didn’t get to see it.

This night was also the Murder Mystery Dinner, Jayson and I had never done one before so we figured we would check it out and it was fun. It started with appetizers in one of the lounges, where we were introduced to the cast of characters. Basically there was a love triangle, a stolen necklace and a jealous brother. Then 4 gunshots and someone was killed…
We moved our dinner into Portofino’s restaurant where there was another scene. We then were able to discuss the mystery with our table and start to figure out’ who did it”. Then each table could ask 1 question of the characters to help with their answers. At the end each person guessed and the winners names were put into a hat and 1 lucky winner took home a bottle of wine. I had the correct person, but I didn’t win the wine.

Ushuaia, Argentina - Bottom of the World!

2008-12-29T14:47:00.000-08:00

Ushuaia, Argentina - Bottom of the World!
December 29th

We arrived to Ushuaia around 6am, but the Sun has been up since 4:40am. Today we took an excursion through the ship. It was a 4x4 off-road adventure plus Hike and included Lunch. Unlike the 4x4 tour in Aruba, we didn’t have to drive the Land Rovers. And when you look at the pictures, you’ll understand why we were more than happy to not drive.

Our Tour Guide grew up in Ushuaia, and he was really nice, funny and a tad crazy. He really enjoyed the off-roading part. We didn’t get stuck at all, but there were a number of times I was really happy for the power of the Land Rover.

After a few river crossing and some major potholes we arrived at the Adventure Lodge. Where we took some pictures of the Peat Moss and river. It was really pretty and the Peat Moss was flowering.

After that quick stop, we hopped back into the land rover for another river crossing, but instead of crossing the river we just used it as a road to get to the trail head of our hike.

The hike wasn’t long as it just led to the cabin where they were fixing us lunch. It was a beef and vegetable dish, almost a stew, but not really. They also had sausage, cheese, bread and wine to start. The dessert were this cookies that we’ve had a number of times so far. They are really good. They are a sandwich cookie filled with caramel or chocolate and then the entire sandwich cookie is dipped in chocolate. They are pretty good.

After lunch we went for another hike, this took us deeper into the Sub-Antarctic forest. The tour guide pointed out wild orchids and some Beaver Dams. Here are some pictures and then a few video’s of that second hike.

Wild Orchid

Peat Moss and some of the flowers:

Yellow Violets

Mountains behind Ushuaia

Coast Line

After that hike we hopped back into the Land Rovers and headed back to Ushuaia. Jayson and I shopped for a little while as Ushuaia is a Duty Free City. We got back on the ship before it was to leave at 3:30pm.

3:30 came and went today, and our ship was still at the dock. What ended up happening is the wind had picked up in the afternoon to the point where our ship couldn’t push away from the dock due to almost hurricane force winds pushing us so hared against the pear. After about 2 hours of trying the Capitan was able to get the ship off the pier! But now we are in some serious winds, 60 knots. They have closed all the upper and outside decks due to the risk of some being blown off the ship.

Cape Horn, December 28th

2008-12-28T15:30:00.000-08:00

Rounding Cape Horn

We made it to the bottom of South America, Cape Horn. Today we went through Drake’s Passage. Which he found by accident. Sir Drake was caught in a storm while trying to enter the straight of Magellan when he was blown off coarse and found out that you could also get around SA via this route. The waters were really choppy has we crossed from the Atlantic into the Pacific Ocean.

Also the wind was really blowing at around 40 Knots. The Capitan said this was their best day to see the cape because it wasn’t raining and the wind and waves weren’t that bad.

Cape Horn itself

Rocks

Us, it was really cold and windy on deck. We didn't stay outside long.

Video of the bottom of the earth.

Puerto Madryn, December 26th

2008-12-28T15:12:00.000-08:00

Puerto Madryn, December 26th
We watched as the ship came into view-kinda hard to miss given its size. Also here is the sun-rise from our beach front hotel.

We had planned to walk to the port, but we later learned that the Radiance was too big for the standard cruise port in downtown and had to dock at the shipping port designed for ships carrying metal alloys. We hoped in a cab because we know it would take a while to get on the ship and we only had 45 minutes to get through Argentinean Navy security catch our cruise tour to see the penguins. Talk about cutting it close, it took us 40 minutes to clear security and get down the long long pier. We met our tour on the dock and talked our way onto the tour van with our luggage without ever actually getting back on the ship. We then proceeded to see penguins.

The van ride took 2 ½ hours to Punta Tomba, about 120km South of Puerto Madryn. Punta Tomba is a national park that was donated specifically for the preservation of the Magellanic Penguins nesting grounds.

Some facts an Penguins: Magellanic penguins mate for life, and the males go through a courtship to win the hearts of their ladies. (They show their potential mate the home/cave, they created, and if the female likes it she’ll stay with him, if not, she leaves the home and he has to try another female.

Penguins live about 30 years and it takes them 4 years before they are sexually mature.

Male and Female penguins look the same to the human eye, but I guess the penguins can tell the difference.

The babies we saw were about 20-25 days after the baby penguins where hatched, so they were old enough to be walking around. The babies stay in the home and wait for their parents to walk back from the sea and bring them dinner. (their first food is Anchovies as babies, but as adults they eat other fish and squid)
As you can see from the photos some of the penguins travel a really long distance from their homes to the sea for food.

Penguins lay two eggs at a time and hope they both hatch.

Penguins at the beach. They will swim out to 5K to get food.

The other animal that is common in this park is the Guanaco. They are part of the camel family and closely related to the llama. Only they were not able to be domesticated, so they roam around the park. They were pretty cute.
Our Guide said they disliked by the sheep ranchers because they eat the same food as the sheep, and they are to fragile of an animal to be domesticated and used for fur like the Alpaca.

The landscape of the East Coast of Patagonia is a desert. There are just miles and miles of brown landscape with small shrubs.
Here’s a video of the Patagonian shore with the steep cliffs.

All in all we had a wonderful time and met great people from all over the world. Our hotels and tours were awesome. The transport was an adventure but that is likely due to traveling over the holidays. Still, while we had a wonderful time being off the ship, we are not certain we would do this again.

Puerto Madryn, December 25th, Christmas

2008-12-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

Puerto Madryn, December 25th, Christmas

This was the morning. At 4:30AM (after at most 2hrs of sleep), we were up again getting our stuff together for our flight. A little before 5, I checked our flight online to make sure that everything was okay (Nickie kept watch for the cab that we negotiated with the prior night). Sure enough, at 5AM sharp, our cab was at the hotel ready to take us to the airport.
The flight was very smooth and we were landing in Trelew about 2 hrs later. We quickly found a cab driver in Trelew (Tra-lay-heu) on the 25th willing to take us to Puerto Madryn. It was an adventure and the speedometer typically kissed 140km/hr (between 85-90mph).

Puerto Madryn, in the distance

We got to PM quickly and got to the hotel I had arranged. This hotel offered us early arrival, a nice sized room and a balcony that overlooked the South Atlantic. We were thrilled because we would be able to see our ship coming in on the 26th. We then walked the entire beach (a huge beach that was practically deserted and at least 3 miles long).

We picked up a few shells and saw some historic areas since this was the first settled area in Patagonia in 1865.

We walked over to the far southern point, which had a historic site, called the disembarkation point. Which didn’t refer to our cruise ship, but it referred to the point where the Welsh settlers landed and carved out some caves where they first lived.
The Welsh settlers were very important to Patagonia as they were seeking new land.
We then realized that we had very little sleep over the last couple of days so we really needed to take a nap. So, we headed back to the hotel. By the time we woke up, the beach was packed with families. We walked around had some food and picked up a couple of souvenirs.

This is the newer style houses along the beach. They are very pretty and have a great view.

Looking around the cliff we walked to from the hotel.

This cute little critter was eating some leaves on the shrubs. he was about the size of a gopher.

Buenos Aires, December 24th

2008-12-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

Buenos Aires, December 24th.

(Blog written by Jayson, but Nickie’s rebuttals are in italics)
We awoke on the morning of our Goucho Party to find out that The Soccer Team/Stadium (Boca) we visited yesterday won the championship game that night . (We had no idea they were evening playing in it.) I decided to wear the Boca-jersey to support the local team, I though this was a no-brainer. Later, we found out that there are three major teams based out of Buenos Aires. (And they are worse than the Sox vs. Cubs plus add in the Cardinals rivalry)

On the way to see the tour, a guy in a pickup truck enthusiastically voiced his support for the team. (We though it was cool, we seemed like locals or that we were in tune with the city) We then got on the tour bus on our way to see the gaucho’s and our ‘fitting in’ seemed to change. Our Tour Guide asked about the various “futbol” teams and then mentioned Boca (apparently her team’s arch rivals). We quickly learned that our tour guide did not support Boca, to the point where she said she was not offended by any of the teams except the Boca. She seemed to want to let Nickie and I off in the middle of a 12 lane expressway. Then, just wanted to drop us off in the countryside and leave us there. (I was more than willing to support her team to stay on the bus, and let Jayson find his own way back to the hotel)

The gaucho party took place in the countryside. As you can see from the picture it was really green and pretty about 40km outside of Buenos Aires. We visited the Saint Suzanna Ranch. It used to be a working ranch but now it was for the tourists.

We rode horses, visited the gaucho museum, enjoyed Meat Fest 2008 and drank a ton of alcohol. It was pretty touristy, but we were having a good time, as the weather was perfect and the people on our tour were really nice and cool speak better English than we spoke Spanish.

The Gaucho belt holds money and their knife. They didn't have pockets so they used their belts so show the ladies how rich they were.

Nickie with an old Gaucho. This is My Horse. He was a good horse and let me take the picture of the owl at the start of the blog.

I was able to make Jayson ride another Beast of Burden. But his liked this much better than the donkeys.

Jayson with a Horse in his Boca Jersey.

These were the Gaucho's Museums. It was a house and Church.

Kitchen

Dining Room

Meat...It's what's for dinner...

They did have some non-meat items. A few salads

And these really sweet desserts which were deep fried and filled with a sweet jam and covered in honey.
The Gaucho party had entertainment also. They had music and Tango and a guy who did the Boleros (which were used as a way to hunt food, but now are only used for traditional Gaucho dancing.) Boleros are 3 balls attached to and end of a rope. I tried to get a picture but they fling them around very fast and play a beat with them on the ground when they dance. So here’s some pictures of the tango dancing and the musicians.

The ton of alcohol started when I asked the people next to us in Spanish (Nickie doesn’t speak the language) to get Nickie drunk by keeping her wine glass full. True to their word, they did. Unfortunately, they also made sure that my beer glass was also kept full. After the professional dancers ended the crowd started to dance. So, by the end of our beer and wine, Nickie and I were dancing with a group from Venezuela and Colombia. (I am totally against public dancing, but I was totally buzzing and the Venezuelans insisted that we dance, so they took pictures so I can remember this drunk-fest)

While we were sitting, one of the ranch workers came up and said he did not like Boca because his team lost to them in the championship game. I apologized to him in Spanish and that led to a bit of a discussion about soccer in Argentina and the U.S.. Nickie saved me a bit when he started talking about the NYC soccer team and he wanted our opinion on some player blah blah blah… (Nickie butted in and said New York was a completely different country and therefore we don‘t consider them when we talk about Chicago Soccer). The guy left laughing and walked off. (We were really happy to dodge that conversation as we were really faking any knowledge about U.S. Soccer players. )

The other part of the entertainment was the Gaucho’s on horseback, showing us their skills. I guess their skills include putting a stick through a little ring while riding full speed.

When they are successful they get to kiss a lady. They did this a number of times until they ran out of little rings. We got a few cool pictures of this.

We had an absolute blast and were sorry to go. On our walk back to the hotel we met up with another woman that was not supportive of Boca. We passed by and all we could make out was her yelling at us saying “BOCA, NO!). Everyone it seems has an opinion when it comes to the support and dislike of their team and it seems they have no problem letting you know where they stand.

After all the Meat we ate at lunch we really just wanted a Coca-cola light for dinner, but being Christmas eve, most places were closed, and the only open restaurant insisted that we order off their fixed “Christmas” menu so we could get a diet coke, so we did. I took some pictures of it, but now that I look at them I remember how bad the food was. I could skip talking about the food, but I’m not going to, just because it was that much of an experience. We had Chicken as the 1st coarse which had some weird bone sticking out of it, and was wrapped around some really bad tasting herbs.

Then we had Chicken as the main course, (which they asked if I wanted my chicken hot or cold…odd request). If you look at the picture you’ll see that the 2nd chicken plate seems to looks almost like the first one, only now it’s covered in a (nasty) green sauce. And the reason they look the same is that they were the same, only now they added in their version of mashed potatoes and green sauce. The idea of this dish still turns my stomach, but then the thought of this chicken served cold turns my stomach even more.

The only saving grace of this dinner was the dessert, which was good. Here’s a picture of that. All this food for about $30 and all we wanted were two $2 diet cokes!!!!

One interesting thing about Christmas Eve in BA is that they celebrate it with Fireworks, and not fireworks like on the 4th, where there is a 20-30minute show and then people go home. They celebrate it for hours and hours, until 3am to be exact. We couldn’t see any fireworks from our hotel, and with a 7am flight and a day filled with activities we were really tired and the constant booming didn’t make for much sleep. We actually think that many people didn’t actually sleep the night of the 24th.

Buenos Aires, December 23rd

2008-12-23T19:36:00.000-08:00

December 23rd

This was the day that we deboarded the Radiance of the Seas for a couple of days to see a little bit more of Buenos Aires. Nickie and I were both very nervous about this idea especially when none of the guest relations people had ever heard of anything like this. That being said, we had our approval from RCL headquarters in Miami, FL and were permitted to deboard. After that, we were off to our first hotel located in the Palermo section of Buenos Aires. Palermo is a nice area located next to the wealthiest area of the city. The hotel was very nice-the staff was helpful when they could be and the room was by far the nicest I have ever stayed in. The room had 1 and a half bathrooms, a kitchen, and a balcony.
Once we were settled in we took off for our City Tour. We had about 3 hours before the tour started so we walked the 2 miles to the Marriott hotel. The weather was nice for walking, not to hot but warm enough without jackets. The road our hotel is off of, is a huge shopping district. It reminded me a lot of New York. Lots of stores, lots of people, lots of cars. We went in a few, but didn’t buy anything, we knew we had a long had and many miles to carry our purchases. So we stopped and got lunch. The most common food we found was Italian. There were Italian cafes, pizzerias, and pastry shops. We decided it was like New York’s little Italy.
We hung out in The San Martin Park waiting for our tour. I took this great shot of the bell tower and flag.
The Bus tour ended up being pretty good. We stopped at a lot of the areas we wanted to go. We saw the government buildings and they took us into some neighborhoods.

The Bus tour ended up being pretty good. We stopped at a lot of the areas we wanted to go. We saw the government buildings and they took us into some neighborhoods.
We explored a number of the Buenos Aires neighborhoods. All were very nice. While in a neighborhood called Boca, I picked up a soccer jersey for the local team-Boca Junior. Little did I know the effect of purchasing this jersey that was most likely bootlegged. I will go through that a bit more later.

Art in the park. We also took a picture of the big floral sculpture that open and closes with the sun. I have to find the picture of that.

We hopped off the tour buss a little early so we could walk along the river. Here we are in front of their foot bridge over the Most polluted river in the world. They seemed to talk a lot about this, to the point that they said 1 glass of water from this river would kill a man. We decided to skip swimming in it.

On our way back from the tour, we stopped by Recoleta cemetery and church to see Eva Peron’s grave site and the church. We were thoroughly impressed with the church; however, out of respect for the people that were in prayer no pictures were taken inside the church.

This Statue is of Eva, and it's how they like to remember her. She died very young only 33 years old.

Unfortunately, the cemetery was closed (I did ask what time it opened the next day, but it didn’t look like we were missing much so we skipped this.

That night we had arranged to watch a Tango Show. It was like dinner theater. We decided to pay a little extra for a better (private) table. Dinner came with wine, and a full dinner. The show was very nice but a bit long (we arrived at about 9PM and didn’t get back to our hotel 1AM). We took a couple of pictures that turned out nice.

Having the private table made for an unobstructed view of the stage and also we got a picture of us with the dancers.

She was singing Don't Cry for Me Argentina. It was nice, but she wasn't Madonna.
The Dancers

(Jayson thought the skin colored body suit woman was hot, (I think she had a creepy forehead with lots of veins)

Montevideo, Uruguay

2008-12-23T04:54:00.000-08:00

Dec 22nd

Montevideo, Uruguay

We slept in and awoke just in time to watch us coming into port. Montevideo is the largest and best natural port in South America (so says the Montevidaens). Looking at the number of ships coming in and leaving it was really busy. Jayson took a number of pictures of ships and including parts of the Uruguayan Navy.

(Fort across from the port.)
For our day in Montevideo, we had a ½ day city tour which took us to a number of local sites, including the Large houses in the High income neighborhoods.

(Big House)

The Capital, which is a double bonus for me, as I love to see capitals of states and countries. We also stopped at a number of monuments. The monuments were put up to help the large number of new immigrants learn about the history of Uruguay as they enjoyed the parks of the city.

(Capital Building)

We stopped by the covered wagons monument, which showcased the Gauchos and their importance to the country. This monument also indirectly showed how desperate the current people of Montevideo are, as this statue is made of solid bronze and any part of the monument that a person could break off to take off was removed and sold for the cost of Bronze.

It’s hard to tell what’s missing form the picture, but all the reigns and whips have been removed. I guess I should have done it like in the Highlights magazine and have you guess what’s missing. This is the National Tree of Uruguay, not much of a tree, it's looks more of a bush.

We also went East along the coast, which is actually the mouth of the Uruguay River. Kay, we took this picture of the Casino for you, incase you take a cruise down here, you’ll know where to go.

(Casino for Kay and Bud)

Here are some other interesting buildings in and around the city.

The obelisk

The Soccer stadium

This monument shows the native people of Montevideo. The relationship between the immigrants and the natives started badly, improved, then ended horrendously. The natives were nomads that didn't like the Spanish visitors so the initial Spaniards were mostly killed. After sometime, the nomads and the newer Montevideans had a truce. The truce went even further when the settlers decided to go to war with Spain for their independence and the nomads and settlers actually fought together against Spain. Unfortunately, the relationship soared soon after the Spanish were defeated when it was reported that the nomads took food, livestock, and were apparently very attractive to women. So, the president manufactured a war with Brazil and moved all the nomads to an area that was supposedly under dispute. After all the nomads were relocated to the area, the Montevidean military attacked and nearly the entire society was systematically exterminated. Any that remained moved to Europe; however, at this point, there are no surviving members of the native people of Montevideo.

About ¾ into the tour Jayson and I got off the bus and headed back to the ship on foot. We wanted to go down the main shopping district to find a few things. We picked the best point to do this this allowed us to get the info from the tour, but also allowed us to have more time to explore on our own. We picked up a few things, including a bottle of Local wine from Juanico Winery, a local winery just outside of Montevideo. We also picked up a Mata cup and some candy. (We’ll let you know how the wine is, we don’t think it will make it back to the states.)
We fully expected our luggage to be waiting for us in our room when we retuned. We were really worried when about 30 minutes before the ship left, our luggage was not on board yet. The cruise ship said that American Airlines was delaying flights from Sao Paulo to Montevideo today and it was holding up our bags. But the ship was on top of the situation and was waiting for the luggage. The last pallet of supplies loaded on at 6:58pm contained our luggage and that of a number of other guests. We were so happy to have our bags, just in time for us to unpack and then repack a bag for the Buenos Aires leg of our trip.

Dec 21st. Day at Sea

2008-12-21T11:35:00.001-08:00

Good News our Luggage has been found! It will be waiting for us in Montevideo! Yeah, no more hiking boots! Here’s the picture of the Brazilian Coast outside our state room.

Dec 20th - We Made It.

2008-12-21T11:29:00.000-08:00

Dec 20th
We landed in San Paulo pretty much on time, we only had one small snag. Our luggage was no where to be found. So after an extra hour dealing with baggage claim, we left for our hotel. The hotel was great they even gave us an upgrade to our room. We didn’t get to see much of the city on our own, due to the late arrival. But at night the city had some really festive Christmas Decorations, they were pretty. If we make it back to Sao Paulo we’ll try to get out more.

We learned a few years ago that when the port is far away, be sure to book the cruise transportation. I’m really glad we did, as the weather was overcast and foggy at times. Because we were on the bus I was able to take photos out the windows. As you can see from the pictures the road was full of switch backs and clouds. We were in southern Brazil, miles and miles away from the Amazon, but You can see how lush and green things are. I think this will be so different from what we will be seeing in Patagonia. The bus did go through some small villages on the way to the port. These towns were not really much of a town, just an area shanties really close together. Along the road were some food stands, but the bus didn’t stop. The places must have been good as many trucks were stopped to eat before making their way to the port.

On the Ship:

Radiance of the Seas. We’ve been on this ship before, we took it with Julie and Brooke in Alaska. We really liked this ship the first time. Being back on board was just as wonderful. The crew and staff are so nice. One of our first stops was to check on our missing luggage. Jayson spent over an hour talking to American Airlines at the Gust Relations desk. The staff gave us a number of T-shirts, bathroom supplies and also free laundry service while on board. They also said that we could have access to any of the items in their clothes closet. (that’s not their personal closet, it is a closet filled with forgotten clothes) I took a shirt, but it seems that only Size 2 or size 24 woman left dresses. Oh well.
We went to dinner in T-Shirts and hiking boots. We were pleasantly surprised when we got to our table. It was a 4 person table, and the other couple is about our age and they are from Venezuela. They are really nice and we quickly found out that they were Biologists. So we instantly had things in common with them. They speak really good English and are really fun to talk with. We totally lucked out this cruise with our dinner table.

We saw this ship on the other side of the port, and we thought we had a bad day. :)

Jayson drinking the traditional Rum Drink of Brazil. It was really really strong. To the point it could be used to start a fire.

Dec 18th-19th - Trying to get to Sao Paulo

2008-12-21T11:25:00.000-08:00

We headed for the airport on time, but knew we were going to be cutting it close with the weather. We took off about 1 ½ hours late and landed about 10 minutes before our connecting flight was to take off. As if from a scene from the Amazing race, Jayson and I sprinted with our backpacks across Miami Airport. Jayson lost his wallet and I lost my purse, but both times there were very nice people that alerted us to our flying debris.

When we got to our gate, we found out that the doors were closed and the plane was leaving for Sao Paulo without us, (and the other 20 people from Chicago). This is the beginning of our adventure in MIA. I’ll spare you the details, but it ends with us having a hotel room and Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner vouchers all paid by American Airlines.

Dec 19th

Back in Miami Airport. We are expected to get out on the 12:05 flight to Sao Paulo. The only thing we really lost was a lot of sleep and our day in Sao Paulo because we’ll get in at 11:30pm tonight.
Here’s some pictures of our little camp site at MIA. J for almost 24 hours in Miami, this is all I’ve seen.

Off to the Airport!

2008-12-18T05:45:00.000-08:00

Well it looks like we will be the snow/ice storm that is about to hit Chicago will miss us by about 2 hours. :)

The final update on our to-do list
1. Get on the plane
2. Pack - 100% done.
3. Give plants to Sarah for watering - Done! As an added bonus She got a sweet potato and 2 coupons from White House / Black Market that I would be able to use.
4. Laundry -Done!
5. Finish eating all food (Added bonus: win the baking contest at work on the 17th) - Still working on the food, but the baking contest treats are finished and waiting for votes! Baking contest update, I won. Below is a picture of the winner items. Peppermint Chocolate cake lollipops. I won Best Overall and for the 2nd year in a row Best Presentation!

6. Buy last minute travel items - most are done, except face soap and small gloves for Jayson - Done!
7. Set up cellphone for international calling - Will do before Tennis on Wednesday - Done!
8. Copy/scan in Passports and credit card information. - Done :)
9. Finalize Punta Arenas and Ushuaia tours - Done & Done!
10. Clean the house - hmmmm, yeah i have to get to that one. I figured once we get all our bags out the house will look clean or maybe the magic elves will come in and clean our whole house while we are out. Elves, while you are at it, will you wash our car?

I can't believe we leave this afternoon. Here's a picture of our all our luggage. I actually think we did pretty good for a 3 week trip. We managed to get it all into 3 bags and a few backpacks. I know we wont be as well packed for the trip home so I snuck in a extra duffel bag for the return trip

Less than 48 hours to go!

2008-12-16T14:11:00.000-08:00

Here's the update on our to-do list
1. Get on the plane
2. Pack - 95% done. just a few odds and ends and I have to iron 3 shirts.
3. Give plants to Sarah for watering
4. Laundry -Done!
5. Finish eating all food (Added bonus: win the baking contest at work on the 17th) - Still working on the food, but the baking contest treats are finished and waiting for votes!
6. Buy last minute travel items - most are done, except face soap and small gloves for Jayson
7. Set up cellphone for international calling - Will do before Tennis on Wednesday
8. Copy/scan in Passports and credit card information. - Done :)
9. Finalize Punta Arenas and Ushuaia tours - Done & Done!
10. Clean the house - hmmmm, yeah i have to get to that one. I figured once we get all our bags out the house will look clean or maybe the magic elves will come in and clean our whole house while we are out. Elves, while you are at it, will you wash our car?

Jayson didn't get the upgrade earlier this week, but we will try one last time as we are boarding the trip in case they want to give it to us. :)

The Week is Finally Here

2008-12-14T19:41:00.000-08:00

We have called twice for an upgrade, and we haven't had any luck. We are going to try one last time as we board the ship just incase we are able to get a better cabin at the very last minute.

As far as packing, well..... I haven't started. But my laundry is done, and Jayson was able to borrow an extra sport coat so we wont look the same in all of our pictures. Up next is to actually put some stuff into bags. :) maybe tomorrow.

9 Days and trying for an upgrade

2008-12-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

Jayson was checking on the RCL website and noticed that there were Jr. Suites sill available on our cruise and we are trying to see if they'll give us an upgrade as Platinum Cruisers. This would be soooooo amazing.

Update on our to do list:

1. Get on the plane
2. Pack
3. Give plants to Sarah for watering
4. Laundry
5. Finish eating all food (Added bonus: win the baking contest at work on the 17th)
6. Buy last minute travel items
7. Set up cellphone for international calling
8. Copy/scan in Passports and credit card information. - Done :)
9. Finalize Punta Arenas and Ushuaia tours
10. Clean the house

10 Days

2008-12-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

10 Things to do with the last 10 days before our trip.

1. Get on the plane
2. Pack
3. Give plants to Sarah for watering
4. Laundry
5. Finish eating all food (Added bonus: win the baking contest at work on the 17th)
6. Buy last minute travel items
7. Set up cellphone for international calling
8. Copy/scan in Passports and credit card information.
9. Finalize Punta Arenas and Ushuaia tours
10. Clean the house

Update on Santiago

2008-12-01T06:33:00.000-08:00

Our tours our set. Here's the updated itinerary for the last few days of our trip

Jan 6
Transfer from Vina Del Mar to Santiago, Chile. Hotel Orly
Santiago city tour full day
Pick up 09:30 Am. at Hotel Orly
Includes funicular and cable car at "Cerro San Cristobal"
On the Santiago city tour we visit all the historical downtown, but does not include any museum. If you want to visit a museum we suggest you the "Museo Precolombino".

Jan. 7
touring Santiago
Santiago city tour full day
Includes funicular and cable car at "Cerro San Cristobal"

On the Santiago city tour we visit all the historical downtown, but does not include any museum. If you want to visit a museum we suggest you the "Museo Precolombino".

January 8
Maipo valley wine tour
Pick up 10:30 Am. at Hotel Orly
Includes tour and wine tasting at Aquitania and Concha y Toro

Jan 9 touring Santiago.

"Cascada de las animas" in Cajon del Maipo (Mountain area to the south of Santiago)
*just spanish speaking guide
Entrance to "Cascada de las Animas" is around USD 8 per person

Where we'll be and when.

2008-11-25T20:22:00.000-08:00

Here it is...Our Itinerary! We still have to finalize Santiago's tours, I'll update those as soon as they are finalized. But here's our trip as it stands today. 24 days and counting...

Dec. 18
Depart Chicago; heading to Sao Paulo through Miami
AMERICAN AIRLINES 2378 ORD Chicago Dec 18, 2008
04:15 PM MIA Miami Dec 18, 2008
08:15 PM
AMERICAN AIRLINES 929 MIA Miami Dec 18, 2008
09:35 PM GRU Sao Paulo Dec 19, 2008
09:05 AM

Dec. 19
Arrive Sao Paulo at 9:30AM. Renaissance Hotel
Alameda Santos, 2233
Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo 01419-002 Brazil.
(see trip voucher’s from Royal Caribbean)

Dec. 20
Cruise starts

Dec. 21
At sea
Wine Pairing dinner on the ship
Cleveland Browns vs. Cincy Bengals (1PM-EST)

Dec. 22
Montevideo, Uruguay (12P-7P)
Taste of Montevideo-ship tour
12/22 830P EST Bears/Packers game!!

Dec. 23
Buenos Aires. (6A-6P)
Leave the ship for 3 nights
Hotel Reservation---
Ayres De Palermo Hotel
Sanchez De Bustamante 1955Buenos Aires, ARExcursions have been booked through this hotel.
They include a city tour, tango show, and a gaucho fiesta party scheduled for the 24th

Dec. 24
Christmas Eve
Buenos Aires-Gaucho fiesta party

Dec. 25
Christmas
Flight to Trelew
-Transfer from Buenos Aires to Trelew (Puerto Madryn)
Reservation code : Aerolineas Argentinas

Flight 1 Thursday, December 25, 2008
confirmed Departure: 07:00 Buenos Aires, Argentina - Jorge Newbery
Arrival: 08:00 Trelew, Argentina – Trelew

Cab to Peurto Madryn
Hotel Reservation in Puerto Madryn-Via Interhabit.com
Villa Piren Hotel

Dec. 26
Peurto Madryn (7A-5P)
Leave hotel. Meet up with Punta Tomba tour through Royal Caribbean.

Dec. 27
Cruising

Dec. 28
Cruising Cape Horn
Cleveland Browns vs. Steelers (1P EST)

Dec. 29
Ushuaia (6A-4P)
4x4 tour 715AM-12P
May be doing some extra hiking and also have time to explore the town.

Dec. 30
Punta Arenas, Chile
Half-day kayak through the Straits of Magellan (Need res. Number and some documents to fill out)

Dec. 31
New Years Eve (At sea)

Jan 1, 2009
New Years Day

Jan 2
Puerto Montt, Chile (8A-6P)
Osorno Volcano and Petrohue Falls tour (8A-445P)

Jan. 3
Crusing

Jan 4
Arrive in Valparaiso, Chile
My Father’s House Bed and Breakfast for two days
Hostel: My Father's HouseAddress: Gregorio Marañón 1210 ,Viña del Mar Valparaiso ., ChileTelephone: (056) 32 - 616136
Website: http://www.hostelbookers.com/hostels/chile/vi-a-del-mar/5117/

Jan5
Relaxing in Vina Del Mar

Jan 6
Transfer from Vina Del Mar to Santiago, Chile.
Hotel Orly
http://www.orlyhotel.com/
Chile Tel: +56 2 / 231 8947
Jan. 6 tours
Jan. 7 touring Santiago

Jan 8 touring Santiago

Jan 9 touring Santiago.
Transfer to the international airport
AMERICAN AIRLINES 940 SCL Santiago Jan 09, 2009
11:05 PM DFW Dallas/ Fort Worth Jan 10, 2009
06:00 AM

AMERICAN AIRLINES 2328 DFW Dallas/ Fort Worth Jan 10, 2009
07:45 AM ORD Chicago Jan 10, 2009
10:10 AM

Jan 10th. Dallas, TX
Trying to meet up with Jamie at 7am to see Cody.
*Need to push back connecting flight at the Airport.

10:10am Land in Chicago

26 Days!

2008-11-22T20:40:00.000-08:00

This is our last weekend home before our trip. I spent the day working on our new laptop computer (Travel Buddy) we purchased it for the trip. We are really happy with the 13 inch Dell, it's not to big or heavy, and we added extra for the large battery and it looks like we can get 6 hours of use between charges. This will be really good since we would perfer to not have to charge it at all except for when we are on the ship.

Jayson is working hard on our itinerary, it's up to 6 pages. I'll be sure to post the hightlights so you'll know where we are on what days.

30 Days and counting

2008-11-18T15:08:00.000-08:00

Today we made it to the Brazilian Consulate and submitted the information for our Visas to Brazil. This was the 2nd time we tried to submit them. Last Thursday we tried and failed, when we didn't bring our itinerary. Word of Warning for anyone trying to go to Brazil. "When you apply for a Visa bring your itinerary. They don't say to bring it on the website, but you need it when you get there." We actually had one small issue, (we forgot to fill in one section), but we were able to fix it there and just go to the end of the line. (It's a lot of work for 24 hours in Brazil)

In 10 days (Dec 5th) we can pick up our Visas and our passports (because they keep them). Then we can check that off our 'to-do' list.

Less than 2 months to go!

2008-10-24T08:43:00.000-07:00

I can't believe we have less than two months to go before our trip. We have been working hard on trip plans, so here is the break down of what we are planning.

Setting hotels in Brazil

2008-07-16T04:21:00.001-07:00

We are getting closer to picking a hotel in Brazil.

Cool camera pics and tricks

2008-07-13T18:14:00.000-07:00

So with the new camera we've been taking more pictures trying out different settings and really learning what it can do. Here's some exaples of photos from our Canon G9.

The Blue Ridge Waterway, I mean Parkway

2008-07-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

We decided to get up early to be at The Blowing Rock right when they opened. Here's the actual blowing rock:
The Blowing Rock is an immense cliff 4,000 feet above sea level, overhanging Johns River Gorge 3,000 feet below. The phenomenon is so called because the rocky walls of the gorge form a flume through which the northwest wind sweeps with such force that it returns light objects cast over the void.

Here's the view from Blowing Rock

There are a number of signs saying to stay on the path, but Julie doesn't obey rules when it comes to photography. Here she is getting the perfect shot.

Here she is getting busted while ducking back onto the marked trail

This was cool rock in the middle of the path.

Jayson climbed up it, and I think he looks like he's on the moon.

After Blowing Rock, the Rock, we wanted breakfast. It was such a cute little cafe and we had a great spot on the porch.

After Breakfest we headed out on The Blue Ridge Parkway towards Grandfather Mountain. Since it's a National Park, we got to stop at the shop and get our stamp!

Next stop, Grandfather Mountain!

This swinging bridge was really cool, really high, really busy and really beautiful. Here are some fun and pretty pictures we took at the top.

This is where Julie fell off the mountain and had to climb back up.

Jayson, who hates bridges like this was a trooper, but he didn't pause to long for me to take this picture on the bridge.

Sometimes the drive is half the fun...

2008-07-09T06:37:00.000-07:00

Saturday and Sunday the 4 of us planned to head up into the mountains to Blowing Rock, NC. It's about a 2 hour drive from Fort Mill, SC. Sometimes on a road trip the drive is half the fun, and sometimes the drive sucks, but the destination makes up for it. This was the latter. We had a little car trouble, and we lost Brooke to along the route because he had to tend to our car. But in the end the destination was worth it.

The rain stopped just after we got to Blowing Rock, so we quickly unloaded the car and took off to look around the town.
This is our Hotel, The Hemlock Inn. It was really cute, we had the two room suite. It had a small kitchen area in the room where Julie stayed. It also had a little fridge which allow us to keep our wine and food cold for the next day hike.

We walked around downtown to get the feel for the town. Most things were already closed beause it was after 6pm. But Jayson was able to talk the people in the chocolate shop to open so he could get a treat. :)

This is us in front of the little tourist office. I thought it was cute with all the flags for parade earlier that day.

We're in Boone country. Here's the marker for the Daniel Boone Trail.

While we were walking around we found a little wine shop that was doing tasting of Local North Carolina wines. We were talking with the host and he goes to college at Appalachian State college, which was made famous for beating Michigan state the first game of the 2007 season. Jayson instantly liked this guy. (Here' the video that Ohio State posted thanking Appalachian State.

Here's the wine shop

After checking out all the open stores in Blowing Rock, we knew we had a number of hours before it got dark, so we talked to the people at the Hemlock and they gave us map to the Blue Ride Parkway entrance so we could do some exploring. About 10 minutes outside Blowing Rock was an entrance to this beautiful road. We only had about 2 hours so we stuck pretty close and explored the area around Cove Manor. Here are some photos and vistas from their front door.

Here's the Manor and their front porch. It's now a shop but it was closed so we just peaked in the windows.

Julie commented that she only wears her hair like this when she's with us. :)

This was the Moon on July 5th over our hotel.

That night we checked out the Blowing Rock night life. Dinner was good, and they had a good live band after we were done eating, but this is a beer drinking town, don't order a martini no matter how much they say they have a 'full bar'. We left early and drank our bottle of NC wine back at the hotel and planned our next day.

Whitewater--Wet Water

2008-07-08T06:50:00.000-07:00

Our first full day and we headed to the U.S. National Whitewater Center about 30 minutes from Julie and Brooke's house.

We had a 2 hour trip planned. They take you around the course a number of times and change up how you go over the falls and different way to ride down them. Sometimes when they change it up, you run into a way that doesn't work so well...

Here is our sequence of flipping over thanks to the fine photographers at the center. I would love to purchase these photos, but they are $20 each, and this would cost us over $200, so we'll just use the little pictures to relive our near death experence.

That afternoon before the huge thunderstorm rolled into the area we took these cool pictures of the Kayakers with come cool features on our camera.

The rain ended but we left before fireworks. Brooke decided since Fireworks are legal to purchase in South Carolina we would make our own firework display. Julie and found the whole experence to be really funny. Here's Julie with large rocket infront of the store.

Julie picked out the box of Wisconsin flavored(???) fireworks.

We made the guys stand outside with their fireworks, to remember this event forever.

This is what they purchased:

I made them purchase 3 very cool fireworks, 1 was called The Chicken, it laid flaming eggs and ended with 'BALK'. Totally worth the 50¢! The 2nd one was a tank that shot out flames, another 50¢ winner. Here's a picture of the flame from the tank.

The last one was called the Lady Bug, it was pretty cool it spun around on fire and then shot up into the air.

North Carolina, here we come!

2008-07-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

Thank you American Airlines, not only did you give us an extra day in San Juan, we also got to go visit friends for free! We spent the long weekend in North Carolina, visiting our "travel friends", Julie and Brooke over the 4th of July. We got down to NC on July 3rd, just-in-time to catch the Orchestra Outdoor Summer Concert Celebration and their fireworks display.
Brooke had gone early to reserve our perfect location in the shade on a steep hill overlooking the pond.

Julie set up a great little dinner for us. She made a gourmet meal for us to enjoy before the music started.

Brooke was very proud of his ability to pick the perfect viewing location and as you can tell, it took Jayson about 30 seconds to relax.

I couldn't let Julie bring all the food, so I decided to bring dessert! My cake from class, the night before came with us. It was my carry on, and even went through the x-ray machine! I did get some really funny looks in the airport, but it it made it in one piece and tasted awesome! (Sorry the pictures are in black and white, but we were playing with our new camera)

It was time to cut the cake. Julie was a little nervous, but assured her I wasn't taking the cake home, so she had to eat it. (Now you can see the cake is in color)

Pretty flower! YUM!

Just, trying out the Sepia setting on our camera, while looking at the band shell.

As it got dark this is what the concert looked like. The conductor was great, he was really talkative and into the whole experience. I thought he looked a little like The Colonel from KFC.

The new camera has a setting for taking pictures of fireworks. These are my 5 favorites. (we took about 30+ pictures)

At the end of the night, we had a little bit of wine left, so Jayson took one for the team and finished the bottle. (He was totally on vacation!)

Jayson is coming with me!

2008-07-02T10:54:00.000-07:00

The transfer of airline miles worked liked a charm. The miles showed up in my account and with 1 phone call and $75, Jayson has a ticket! Now we have to get sleeping pills because it's going to be a long long flight. YAHOO less than 6 months to go!

1 Ticket booked!

2008-06-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

South America is getting close. (Less than 6 month close) We've acutally booked 1 ticket so far. I am going to take Jayson with me, but his ticket has to wait another week for the frequent flier miles to post to my account. Then we can book the free ticket.

The best part is we have Exit rows for all of our flights! Once again I love Gold Status!

Road Trippin' back to Boston

2008-06-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

We got an early start on our way back to Boston. We had a lot of stops to make.

Fun with Crustaceans

2008-05-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

After a long day of Puffin watching we headed back to Sarah and Felix's. Tonight we were heading out to the other side of the island for Lobster!!!

Jayson and I were psyched. We went to a locals Lobster Pound for some of the freshest lobster you can get. (The restaurant was located on the dock where the Lobstermen come in to unload their boat.)

Later that night we went to the local Bowling Alley. This isn't Wisconsin style bowling, with loud music, beer, smoke and people. This is Maine style bowling, called candle pin bowling.

Whales and Puffins

2008-05-29T16:41:00.000-07:00

After such a full day of hiking we decided that Sunday we would do a boat tour. We signed up for Whales and Puffins! It was 70 degrees on shore and 40 degrees on the water. But the sun was out and the seas were calm.

It was called whales and puffins. Puffin's only go on land when they are nesting, so it was pretty cool to try an see them. It took us about 40 minutes to get to Lighthouse 1, (someday I'll look up the names of them)

This is where the Puffin's were nesting, can you spot the puffin in this picture?

If you guessed the dark dot quickly flying across the water, you are correct. Here is a blurry close up. Those cute quick little birds didn't sit still for pictures.

As you can tell there were a number of other birds nesting on the island. If I would have paid attention better in Dr. Brooks' Science class I would name them all for you.

Mean while, Here's some more lighthouses off of the Maine coast.

In our search for Whales we found Seals, it was pupping season. So the seals were hanging out on the rocks in front of the 2nd lighthouse. Can you spot the seal?

Here they are, they blend in pretty good, at least these didn't move like the puffins.

Here's our tour guide, she went to the hippy college on Mt. Desert Island. She was good, but she never found us a whale. :(

After 6 hours of searching we headed back to the dock. We were really bummed, but the tour company was really nice and gave us each a free ticket to try again later. Since we were leaving the next day, we gave the free tickets to Sarah and Felix.

Bar Harbor - (it's not the name of the island)

2008-05-28T07:32:00.000-07:00

After a month of being busy with family we were really ready for an active vacation with some friends. We were ready to hike some mountains and see the ocean.
Our weekend started with a great breakfast at a local place where Sarah used to be a regular called 2Cats. The food was really good. I started off with the cutest hot chocolate, yes cute, it came with sprinkles on the whipped cream! (I am easily amused.)
My meal was Salmon eggs Benedict, which home fries, I'm not a big home fry person, but these were seasoned really well, so I ate more than I should. Jayson had an omelet stuffed with smoked trout, sorry no picture, but really it just looked like an omelet. (I ordered better, but he liked his.)

After breakfast we walked down to see how Bar Harbor got it's name. About 1 block off of main street the road ends at the ocean...sometimes. Sometimes (when the tide is out) you can actually drive over sea floor to Bar Island. As you can see the tide was out when we were there, but it was coming in fast, so we didn't walk all the way across because we would have been suck out on the island for 6+ hours.

Next Stop - Acadia National Park!
We were with locals, so we had our own personal guides around the park and they took us to all the cool spots. First, the only sand beach on the island, Second a pretty river trail, Next, the hot spot for rock climbing (Felix does a lot of rock climbing on the weekends) 5th: Bubble Rock and finally the big one: Cadillac Mountain.
Yes all of this is one day.

Here we are at Sand Beach

These are from a cool trail that follows a river that ends in the ocean.

Postcard shot 1:

Postcard shot 2:

Friends:

D.I.N.K.S.:

I love the look of the rain starting to fall on the rocks.

Here's where the river ends in the ocean.

The rain kind of followed up around all day, but it didn't stop us, we just got a little wet at every place we went.

We didn't take any pictures at the rock climbing cliffs.

The hike up to Bubble Rock started with the most beautiful green trees.

Here are the Newlyweds. :)

Sarah and I were a little slower than the guys hiking up the mountain.

I love this picture, it looks like Jayson is standing on the top of the world.

This is the actual bubble rock on bubble rock mountain.
Here's Felix:

Here's Jayson trying to push the rock down the mountain.

At the Top of Cadillac Mounting. This is the highest point on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. If you are at the top of this mountain at dawn, you'll be the first person in the U.S. to see the sun rise.

Here's what Cadillac Mountain looks like from the road:

Here are some postcard shots.

Money Shot:

After a long day of hiking, Sarah and Felix headed home to get ready for the cookout with friends from the Lab, and Jayson and I went shopping downtown and to find a wedding present for Sarah and Felix. We also found a micro-brewery and had time for a quick beer tasting. We picked up a few bottles for home, but they were all drank at the cookout that night. :)

From Austin to Boston!

2008-05-27T13:56:00.000-07:00

OK, we really didn't make it into Boston, other than the airport but I like the fact that the title rhymes.

The best thing we could have done for this trip was get the GPS for the rental car. Our trip involved a lot of driving to locations we didn't have time to print or buy maps to.

First stop: SALEM, MASS

We got our Halloween fix in early this year. We only had few hours so we jumped into the world of witches with both feet. We wanted to go to the Salem Witch Museum, but we ended up at the Witch History Museum. (I know how could we have mixed to two up their names are totally different.) It was pretty cheesy, but we were psyched to be on vacation, so we were up for it.
We first listened to a short presentation and then entered the basement of the museum where they had very realistic waxed figures showing the history of the witches in Salem, Mas..
Here's the start of the witch trial, I guess the Puritan girls were acting like 13 year old girls and therefore they were witches.

This freaked me out, if this green guy would have moved or stood up suddenly, i would have screamed, he was just creepy.

They did the hangings up on the hill.

Our tour included another museum, the Witch Dungeon Museum.

This one was better, it started with a 1 act play with dialog taken from an actual witch trial.

This is the only original item from the real Witch Dungeon, the rest was found totally intact beneath the Phone Company building in 1950, but they dumped into the landfill to make room for the building. (so much for historic preservation)

Here stands Nickie: She is guilty of not yielding to a pedestrian in a cross walk.

Here stands Jayson: He is guilty of falling asleep as co-pilot.

After our time in the Stocks we checked out the really old cemetary.

We then got on the road agian towards Maine, we couldn't wait to get there. We made a stop at Freeport, Maine to check out the very large L.L. Bean outlet mall.

Austin Day 2 - The Not so Lone Star State.

2008-05-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Second and final day in Austin, left me with about 2 hours to sight see in the morning. I got up early and took off on foot towards the capital. (Another state capital checked off my list).

As you can see the downtown was pretty empty for 8am on a Wednesday. It was a clean downtown with about 3 coffee shops and 6 cars.

So I walked to the capital.

So I was pretty board since the capital only took 15 minutes to walk all around and inside. (My talent for fast sightseeing at times cauese issues, when I run out of thing to see.)

I decided I needed to find people, I had heard that Austin was a lot like Madison, Wisconsin, so I walked over to University of Texas to find people awake at 8am. On my way over ther I found this huge 'Lone Star" But then I realized it wasn't alone. Texas puts stars on everything.
Their Flag:

Their Park Department Seals:

Random etchings on a wall:

Railing Posts:

On the capital building (this one I understood):

The door knobs to the capital (this could be a bit much):

a random mosaic star on the grouds of the capital:

Really they put stars on the manhole covers?

The drainage grate below the gate doors to the capital (really this could be to much):

And the finaly and best place they could find to put a star(s) would be on the city planter and the garbage cans:

Ok, one last thing, this is not a star but I love the fact that the free city transportation are caled Dillo's. I even tried them out. :)

Austin Day 1

2008-05-08T20:02:00.000-07:00

Typically when I write about a trip, it's because we traveled together unless my company is picking up the tab to some place pretty cool. That's what Austin is.

My boss and our VP Kelli, were along on the trip and Kelli grew up in Austin and knew the 'cool' area to stay Our Hotel was very 'Austin', The San Jose Hotel on South Congress. The pictures don't do it justice, but Julie you would love it.

I didn't have much time to explore on Tuesday, but we did get a good dinner at Güero´s Taco Bar. The food was great, but personally I get a better margaritas at That Little Mexican Cafe in Chicago.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel bar for drinks. They had a limited selection, but the atmosphere was very relaxing so it made for a great evening sitting outside talking some business and some baseball.

(PS check out my totally awesome polka-dot suitcase!!! )

Our Next Cruise has been picked

2008-04-17T15:25:00.001-07:00

Ok, so we actually picked it out a while ago, but we are excited to start to research our South American cruise. It's a Christmas/New Years cruise, and is only 8th months away.

The Link above shows the cruise dates and the places Royal Caribbean planned for us.

Here is what we are planning:
Arrive on the 19th of December To Sao Paulo
20-Dec Sao Paulo (Santos), Brazil
22-Dec Montevideo, Uruguay
23-Dec Buenos Aires, Argentina
24-Dec Buenos Aires, Argentina*
25-Dec Buenos Aires, Argentina*
26-Dec Puerto Madryn, Argentina
28-Dec Cape Horn, Chile
29-Dec Ushuaia, Argentina
30-Dec Punta Arenas, Chile
31-Dec Strait of Magellan
01-Jan Chilean Fjords
02-Jan Puerto Montt, Chile
04-Jan Valparaiso, Chile
05-Jan Santiago, Chile
06-Jan Santiago, Chile - Leave in the evening for Chicago.

*In Argentina we are planning to leave the ship for two nights to explore Buenos Aires a little more. We haven't worked out the details yet, but this is what we are planning as of today.

Summary of the Southern Caribbean Cruise

2008-04-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

I will sum this up this weekend, when I have more time, but i needed to put in a placeholder, so I made sure I did it. To much time has passed, i'm going to forget everything.

Algelica's Kitchen Recipes, #5

2008-04-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

I saved the best for last!

Pumpkin Pancakes with Curacao Liqueur Sauce
Serves 8

800g Pumpkin
1 Stick of cinnamon
2 cups of water
a dash of salt
1 cut of flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1/2 cup of raisins
juice of 2 oranges
2 tablespoon of Curacao Liqueur-rum and raisin

Peel and seed the pumpkin
Dice it coarsely
In a pan the water and cook the diced pumpkin with the cinnamon stick
Take the coked pumpkin out of the water
In a food processor add the pumpkin, the milk, the sugar and the vanilla and mix to a fine consistency
Add the egg and mix
Add the baking powder and the flour mix
If necessary add some more flour for a medium thick mixture
Add the Raisins
In a frying pan heat a little vegetable oil.
Put appp. 2 tablespoons of pumpkin mixture to form a pancake of app 10cm.
Fry the pancake on both sides to golden brown
make 2 pancakes per person
Mix the juice of the oranges with the Curacao Liqueur
put 2 pancakes on a plate and pour a little bit of the sauce over the pancakes
Serve with a scoop of ice cream.

Here are my changes:

Instead of a real pumpkin, I suggest using canned
Instead of raisins I think chocolate chips could be substituted.

Algelica's Kitchen Recipes, #4

2008-03-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

Jerk Chicken
Serves 10

10 Chicken Breasts or Ties (thighs)
For the Marinade:
2 t all spice powder
2 t cinnamon
2t dried thyme
½ t nutmeg
4t brown sugar
5 cloves garlic, chopped
2T chopped onion
4T Tamarind puree (this is the bitter tamarind, boiled and strained)
2T lemon or lime juice
2 hot chili (scotch bonnet) or 1 habanero pepper
4T olive oil
2t salt
2t pepper
Mix all the ingredients for the marinade in a blender and mix well. Rub the chicken Pieces with the marinade. Marinade at least 30 minutes, or overnight in the refrigerator

Take the chicken, and remove most of the marinade.
Heat in a frying pan of few tablespoons of olive oil
Fry in batches until golden brown.
Keep warm.

For the Sauce:
1 onion, medium finely chopped
1 red bell pepper
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2T Olive oil
1 can tomato sauce (about 2 cups)
1t finely chopped chili
1t cinnamon
1t all spice
1T brown sugar
2T spring onion
In a clean frying pan, heat some olive oil

Saute the onion, bell pepper, garlic and chili for about 5 minutes
Add the cinnamon, all spice and brown sugar
Saute for 2 minutes
Add the tomato sauce
Simmer for 5 minutes
Add salt and pepper to taste
Finish cooking chicken in the sauce for 20-30 minutes.

Serve with rice, garnish with the spring onions. Serve also with some fried plantains.

Overall Impression: This rocked! I have had Jerk Chicken before, but this was so amazing. My Mom has made this already once since the cruise.

Algelica's Kitchen Recipes, #3

2008-03-27T14:36:00.000-07:00

Salt Cod Salad
Serves 4

200 g salt codfish
1 Medium Onion
2 Medium Tomatoes, peeled
1 Chili pepper
3 tbs olive oil
1 tbs lime juice
1 Medium Avocado
Lettuce Leaves
Black Pepper
Salt

Soak the salt codfish overnight
Discard the water
Pour boiling water over the fish and allow to cool
Discard the water
Remove the skin and bones of the fish, if necessary
Shred the fish
Slice the onion finely
Peel, seed and dice the tomatoes coarsely
Seed the chili pepper and dice it finely
Mix the olive oil, limejuice, chili pepper a dash of salt and pepper into vinaigrette
Pour the vinaigrette over the fish
Serve on lettuce leaves
Serve cold or at room temperature.

Overall Impression:
I like fish, and salad. But this was way to salty for me.

Algelica's Kitchen Recipes, #2

2008-03-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

Tomato-Cucumber Salsa
Serves 10
5 tomatoes
1 large cucumber
4-6 tablespoons of fresh lime juice
10 cilantro leaves
Salt & Pepper

Cut the tomatoes in four and cut the seeds out.
Peel the cucumber and cut it in half lengthwise.
Scoop the seeds out with a spoon.
Dice the tomatoes and the cucumber into small cubes.
Cut the cilantro finely.
Mix in a bowl all the cut ingredients and add the lime juice.
Add ample salt and freshly ground pepper to the salsa and mix well.
Serve cold or at room temperature with tortilla chips.

My Overall Impression:
It was good, almost like typical salsa but with no onions. I didn't really miss them either.

Algelica's Kitchen Recipes #1

2008-03-24T07:51:00.000-07:00

Here's the Menu. I'm starting in the way we were served them. I'm sorry I don't have pictures of every dish.

Hidden Sardines
Makes 20

10 Sheets of frozen puff pastry
3 can of sardines in hot tomato sauce
Preheat the oven to 450F
Thaw the slices of puff pastry slightly
(puff pastry is best handled when quite cold)
Open the can of sardines and take out the bone
Take a slice of puff pastry and cut it diagonally to make two triangles
Put, slightly off the middle of each triangle, a piece of sardine and some sauce
Fold the puff pastry in two and seal the edges with a fork
Arrange the triangles on a greased baking sheet
Bake the triangles in a preheated over 15-20 minutes
Serve Warm (a must!)
My Overall Impression:
I tried them, but I didn't go back for seconds. They weren't as bad as they could have been, but I don't think I'll make them at home.

Our Extra Day, in San Juan March 9th

2008-03-23T08:32:00.000-07:00

We were all set to fly home when American decided that we were lucky enough to spend an extra day in the sun and warmth because they oversold our flight. We didn't have much in the way of luggage because most of it went to Chicago with my parents. So we took our 1 bag, filled with dirty clothes and said, we would be happy to stay an extra day.
The room they gave us was smaller than our room on the cruise ship, but this one was free!

We took off for Old San Juan. We had see the fort from the water was we left on the ship. Only 1 side of the Fort was lit up from the water, and it was really pretty. Here are some pictures from the shore.

After walking part way around the outside we headed up top. This is Jayson standing in the guard tower. He didn't like this picture because it smelled like pee. Sorry, it's still a cute picture.

St Thomas, St. John, March 8th

2008-03-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Our last day on the cruise. Our port was St. Thomas, but we headed out via boat to St. John about 45 minutes away. We took a eco tour/hike with in the Virgin Islands National Park.

The trail we walked up

This was our guide, I believe he was made of leather.

The trees were totally different from one side of the island to the other. Here we are over looking the harbor and the Virgin Islands.

We continued to explore the island. We saw lots of holes along the path, come to find out they are Tarantulas burros. I didn't stick my finger in them to see if anyone was home.

This wasn't a tarantula, but it was a huge spider. Our guide spotted it, I didn't pet it.

These are Wild Cliff Orchids

At the end of the hike we were able to swim for a while at Honeymoon Beach. It was voted one of the top 10 beaches in the world (or the US, I can't remember)

St. Maarten, March 7th

2008-03-21T07:03:00.000-07:00

What should we do with another wonderful day of sun??? Why not sign up for a tour that has you swinging from the trees like a monkey? Sounds good, if only we knew what it entailed before we arrived.

It was a very pretty farm.

This was our first view of what we were about to start. We then got a 10 minute saftey course and told to head to station 1. If you wanted to turn back now you still could.

CHICKENS!!!!

They take your picture on the first zip line. They told us to cross our legs. I did.

Jayson didn't

There were 36 stations we completed, it was fun but I don't need to do it again. :)

That tour was just in the morning. We had the afternoon to wander around the island.

Day at Sea, March 6th

2008-03-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah a day as sea, we can rest. We did the typical cruise stuff. Got up early, sat in the sun, moved the hot tub, ventured into the pool, back into the sun, you get the idea.

Jayson on the other hand took part in the Ship's Dodge Ball Tournament. He learned from watching DodgeBall 500 times on DVD, so he knew he was ready. He had learned the 5 Ds of Dodgeball. Dodge, Dip, Duck, Dive and Dodge. On the ship they play Crew vs. Cruisers. The Crew said they were undefeated, so the Cruisers were out to beat them. About 10 teams of 6 played, it was really fun to watch, and we had a great 'birds eye view'.

The guy in the center along the wall with the blue shorts on is the Capitan of to ship. I know he looks way to young. (But he was great, (and cute) we actually got to shake his had at the Platinum/Diamond reception we attended)

Creating a plan of attack!

READY... AIM...

FIRE! What an action shot!

Reload!

Last Throw!
Unfortunatly the capitan of the ship caught it and Jayson was out.

Bummer :(

So Jayson played great, but the Capitan and Crew were crazy good. The team before Jayson's team beat them once, but then they played best 2 out of 3 for the championship, and the crew creamed them.

Curacao, March 5th

2008-03-19T06:49:00.000-07:00

We split into boys and girls for our adventures in Curacao. The guys went mountain biking (no pictures) and the girls went cooking.

Our tour took us to Angelica's Kitchen. It was in a very beautiful house which had the largest kitchen I had every seen. Think of it as a Kitchen with an attached house.

This is the main kitchen, there was actually a mini kitchen just to the left of this picture where a woman was doing dishes as we cooked and ate.

We had a group of about 12 people. We started off the tour with fresh lime juice learning about Curacao and how the business was started. Apparently Angelica grew up in this house and after spending 19 years in Amsterdam she return to the island and was able to buy it. She fully restored it and started the cooking classes.

The hostess walked us quickly through each recipe, and then we broke into team of about 3 people and started to create our dishes. My Mom made Jerk Chicken, and I made a Spicy Salt Cod salad.
I was put in charge of cutting tomatoes, avocados and these tiny spicy red peppers. They were so hot I had to use a tiny fork to hold the pepper so my skin never came in contact with it.

Really this picture was to show you the Salt Cod salad.

The Jerk Chicken had a lot of steps so while it marinated we drank wine and got to know one another. The people on this tour were really interesting (unlike that dull Packer)

Back to work, cooking the chicken.

As a bonus for our class she showed us how to make Passion Fruit juice from scratch. It was pretty good, but I know I'll be buying my Passion Fruit, Lime and pretty much any other kind of juice from the store, but it was cool to try it this once.

We set the table and each group served their dish.

(My Mom took this picture, she must have had to much wine)

Here are the final dishes we made:
Salt Cod Salad

Jerk Chicken

Pumpkin Pancakes

The Jerk Chicken is now called Donna's Curacao Inspired Jerk Chicken if you are looking for the recipe.

Here are some cute pictures from across the inlet. The downtown area was cute, and the shopping was pretty good. But after all the food from lunch we were ready for a nap.

Aruba, March 4th

2008-03-18T19:08:00.000-07:00

Aruba,

We landed on a beautiful sunny and windy day in Aruba. Our tour left first thing in the morning for an off road 4x4 Jeep Adventure. All 4 of us were on this tour, but only my Dad drove, the rest of us hung on tight and made sure we didn’t fly out. We went all over the island and at times we were even on an actual road. :)

Our first stop was the California Lighthouse. It was named after some ship that went down off the coast; I guess they needed the lighthouse to be installed earlier.

The ground was not ‘barefoot’ friendly.

But the views were stunning.

It was really windy and the waves were crazy to watch crashing in the rocks.

Jayson and a big cactus. Not much here is fuzzy and warm. It looks like everything here wants to hurt you.

The flowers were pretty.

The shore of the island has all these great formations and natural bridges and blow holes which are very hard to photograph.

The Natural Bridge, or what's left of it?
Apparently a few years ago in the middle of the night the largest of the natural bridges on Aruba collapsed. The island has more, but this location still has a smaller bridge (see below) and more importantly they built a souvenir shop next to these two. The other 6 bridges that are still standing don't have gift shops so we didn't really stop at them.

The second half of our tour took us to a beach, it was barefoot friendly, to snorkel and bake ourselves in the sun. It was beautiful!
EXTREAM CLOSE UP, Nickie!

EXTREAM CLOSE UP, Andy!

EXTREAM CLOSE UP, Blue Parrot Fish!

This is a picture of one of the Packer Players on our cruise. We spent the entire day with him on this tour. He was rather dull and was kind of rude to my parents, so now I don't like him. (He's the guy behind my Mom in the lame white sunglasses.)

The sunset leaving Aruba.

Puerto Rico, March 1st & 2nd

2008-03-11T12:03:00.000-07:00

We arrived on time and we were able to go on the Bioluminescent kayak tour! It was sooo amazing. And amazingly hard to photograph. You'll have to settle for a few pictures I took in the dark with the flash.

This is our guide he was a marine biologist who does the eco-tours for fun at night. We arrived really late and ended up having a private tour with just the 4 of us. (The little kid in the kayak was our driver's Grandson who was in from Virginia)
The blue-green algae was so neat to look and play with. We loved watching the fish swim in it because they would glow bright blue as they swam away from our boats.

I tried to take pictures of the Bioluminescence, but it's impossible to photograph, so I made this picture to show you what it looks like:
When the fish swim in the water their movement stimulates the algae and they make streaks of green in the water.It was so amazing to see and watch them. We could have 'fallen' off the boat to swim with them, but we decided that getting into the kayaks in the dark wasn't going to be pretty. After the 1 1/2 hours of kayaking we headed back to the shore and crammed into the minivan for a long 1(+) hour trip to the hotel in old San Juan. It was 2am when we arrived to the hotel. We were tired.

March 3rd
Our hotel, The Normandie was really nice, it was actually too nice, for the amount of time we spent in it. Because we didn't think we were going to take a kayaking tour we planned a Rain Forest tour for early the next day. At 8:30am we were up and eating our complimentary breakfast. By 9am we were in another van for an hour ride to the other side of the island.

We went to El Yunque Rain Forest, about 35 miles from the hotel. Our guide was great, Here's a picture of him talking about the flora of Puerto Rico. We walked around the rainforest visitors center and watched a video about rain forest before we headed even deeper into the forest to see waterfalls and the fountain of youth.

Here's Jayson and my Mom drinking out of the 'Fountain of Youth'. I believe there are a few of these on the island. Do they look younger?

Group Shots:

The 3 stop in the rain forest was to look at this old tour, which gave you sweeping views of the island. Including the lagoon where we were kayaking in the night before.

Our Forth and longest stop was a 30 minute hike down to this amazing waterfall. We had about 30 minutes to swim or play on the rocks. It was very pretty to look at. It took us about 30 minutes to walk up the otherside of the waterfall to meet the van. We were really hot and tired by this time.

Our last stop was for a snack before we went back to the hotel and then to the ship. We decided to order a sample of items to taste the local food. It was ok, but not great. It was very fried and needed the sauces that came with the table to add some spice to them.

Now onto the ship!

The Day is Here

2008-03-01T08:13:00.001-08:00

We are all packed and ready to go. We even worked out this morning to help counteract all the eating that will occur in the next 8 days. We are impressed with the small amount of luggage we actually fit everything into. We each have a backpack, and a small rollerboard carry-on, plus 1 folding suitcase! It's pretty impressive. We even added in a small duffel bag for the trip home. We never pack as well on the way home.

This is what luggage for 4 people looks like.

Also we have to send our computer in for repairs while we are gone, so we hope it will be fixed after we get back so I can update the blog with pictures.

1 shoe, 2 shoe, black shoe...brown shoe?

2008-02-26T10:02:00.000-08:00

It's that time before the cruise when I start to think about packing. I had great plans to do it over the weekend, but that didn't happen. Oh well sometimes life gets in the way of vacations. So now that I'm back, and the bags are ready to be filled I have to ask myself a very important question. Just how many shoes can fit?

All Booked Up

2008-02-15T20:12:00.000-08:00

ok, it looks like all of our cruise tours are set, including our wine package.

Booking Our Ship Excursions

2008-02-11T06:59:00.001-08:00

This weekend we were up in Wisconsin putting the final touches on our cruise. (less than 3 weeks to go) Since this time we are traveling with my parents we had to have a meeting to go over all the choices, to see what each of us wanted and didn't want to do at each of the ports. This is a very serious process that required each of us to drink 1 bottle of wine (apparently we had a fifth person planning our cruise with us because some how we ended up with 5 empty bottles, and none of us will admit to drinking it) Oh well!
We went through each port, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Oranjestad, Aruba; Willemstad, Curacao; Philipsburg, St. Maarten and Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas/St. John. This was very serious as typically Jayson and I pre-book all shore excursions so they are pre-paid and then we don't have to worry about waiting in line as the Excursions Desk when we get on board.
Puerto Rico was already planned, booked and confirmed, so we only had to work on the actual cruise ports. I like to use the Royal Caribbean book as a guide, but I'm not necessarily tied to only using them for our excursions. A

It looks like we can do the Bioluminescent Tour after all!

2008-02-08T15:16:00.000-08:00

We were recommended Eco-Tours from a friend who just used them in January for a tour while in Puerto Rico. I e-mailed them about trying to do a Bioluminescent tour on the one and only night we were in Puerto Rico, and when they came back with the times I figured there was no way we would be able to get to the hotel in time for the tour and was figured that was the end of it.
I didn't realize was how great and accommodating they would be. They asked about our flight and I told them our flight didn't land until 8:30pm. Since we were a group of 4 they told us that they would pick us and our luggage up at the airport and take us directly to the bay to go swimming and then drop us off at our hotel. I couldn't believe it, and all this for only $85 per person! The only catch is that our plane has to be on time, since there is a time limit when the kayaks need to be out of the bay, so if our plane is late, we have to cancel but they will refund our money.

I am just so excited that we get to go!

San Fran Club Review - Slide

2008-02-04T11:26:00.001-08:00

On a recent work trip to San Fran, we had an event at the club Slide.

Getting Ready- Planning San Juan

2008-01-27T12:55:00.000-08:00

We had to book a later flight to San Juan that we wanted, so our time is very limited before the Cruise. Luckily our hotel is downtown in Old San Juan The Normandie. Our flight lands at 8:30pm, but by the time we have delays out of O'Hare and retrieve our luggage we figure we'll be to the hotel by 10pm. First, we'll need food and drink. My mom is ready to hit the rum drinks, she just returned from 2 weeks in Florida, and she is already, ready for her next vacation. We figure we'll play that night be ear and just head for a local spot recommended by the hotel.

I have to put this in, because it was such a great idea to do on our only night in San Juan. So I hope someone reading this will take my advice and go to the Bioluminescent Lagoon. I have swam with bioluminescents before, but Jayson and my parents have not. I wanted them to experience swimming in sparkles or stars. It's such an amazing experience that everyone should do at least once. (I did it in the San Juan Islands, in Washington state, funny that the names are the same :) ).

March 2nd is easier to plan. We have most of the day, but none of the evening. Our ship sails at 8:30pm, so we should be on board by 5pm at the latest. That means we have plenty of time to do a tour. Currently I have 'tentative' reservations for a 1/2 Day Rain Forest Tour set by The Normandie hotel. They asked me to call 1 week prior to arriving to secure the best company and they will then take my CC info. The concierge was very nice on the phone and told me the tour has about 10-12 people on it. (I hope he's right, I don't like big tours. Big tours = slow pace.) Side Note, I liked the concierge, he gave me his direct line and e-mail so I can contact with with any additional questions I may have. So far The Normandie has a thumbs up from me. Also I guess the El Yunque National Forest, formerly known as the Caribbean National Forest is 35 miles and about 40 minutes away from the hotel. We'll be back by 3:30pm, with plenty of time to gather our stuff and head to the ship!!!

Cruise Document Arrive

2008-01-23T09:30:00.001-08:00

You know your next cruise is fast approaching when the packet arrives in the mail will all your cruise documents. And that's what happened over the weekend, but we were out of town so it was great fun to get home and have it waiting for us. It's been super cold the last few days in Chicago and Milwaukee, so it was great fun to look at what awaits us in March.

Florida Enounter with Manatees

2008-01-18T08:41:00.000-08:00

I had been told that the Manatee exists, but being from Wisconsin I have never seen one outside of a text book or a Discovery Channel TV program. So on this trip to Florida I was determined to see one for myself. (We had tried in 2007 at Lovers Key just south of Fort Myers, but didn't have any luck.) I figured we had already seen Dolphins and a Shark this year so I had a good chance to make the trifecta of Florida creatures.

Our last day in Florida was rather chilly near the coast so we headed north of FM to Manatee Park. It's an area just down stream from the Power plant and the water is a little warmer and when it's cool the Manatees head up river to stay warm. We walked around the path and garden. They have an over look of where you can see them, but when we were there all we saw was a Tarpon.

I was disappointed, but we still had plenty of time before our plane left so we decided to rent Kayaks and try our luck further down river. Julie and I both had cameras, and hers is way more expensive than our so I decided to bring it with us. I'm so glad I did. We figure we saw about 10 different animals in two groups. They were so friendly that you want to touch them, because they keep reaching up with their flippers and noses at you. But I'm proud to say that we all followed the Marine Mammal Protection Act and didn't touch them. These are our pictures:

Here's the info on the park. Keep in mind the manatees are wild and not capitive so it's not everyday they are around, but I'm glad we go to see them.

MANATEE PARK -
Address: 10901 State Road 80 (Palm Beach Blvd.), Fort Myers, FL 33905
Park Hours (year round) 8am to sunset daily -
Visitor Center / Gift Shop / Seasonal Programs (November-March) 9am to 4pm daily.
Parking: $1 per hour/$5 per day
Kayak Rentals: $10 per hour or $30 per day.

Back from Florida

2008-01-15T15:29:00.000-08:00

We're back from Florida and it was a great time in 3 short days. Saturday we got up early to drive to Sanibel Island from Fort Myers. We wanted to go shelling at low tide and then go on a dolphin watching cruise in the afternoon. Well who needs to go on a cruise to see dolphins when they are just swimming 100 feet from shore! It was great, there had to be 20 of them all along the shore feeding on jumping fish. That would have been the coolest thing we saw along the beach until just before we left we were talking to a lady who said this 'dolphin' had been following her along the shore for a long ways. So we stopped to gaze the 'dolphin' that was about 10-15 feed from shore, when I realized that the dorsal fin was a lot different from the ones feeding further out. Just as I'm about to say, 'I don't think that's a dolphin...', the tail come up out of the shallow water and it's vertical with a notch in the back. Yup, it was a shark! We guessed it was about 6 feet in length and it was only 10 feet from the edge of the beach. I didn't plan on swimming Saturday morning, but after that, I for sure wasn't going to go swimming.
Just funny to see Pelicans in trees.

Meet & Mingle

2008-01-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

From: Royal Caribbean International (Xplora@rccl.com)
Sent: Mon 1/07/08 6:04 AM

Dear Nicole
CONGRATULATIONS! We've met the 25-person minimum for the Royal Caribbean Cruise Critic Community Meet & Mingle you helped organize for the Adventure Of The Seas on our Mar 02, 2008 sailing. During the cruise, registered guests will receive an invitation in their stateroom with the day, time, and location of the Meet & Mingle. You can meet your fellow cruisers on the Royal Caribbean Roll Call or Message Boards online at the Cruise Critic community and invite them to join the get together when you click here If you have any questions about your Meet & Mingle, check out the Frequently Asked Questions online at or e-mail us at Xplora@rccl.com.

Get out there!
Xplora
Royal Caribbean International

Great Deal At Orbitz!

2008-01-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

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