Update Archive

Archive 1/4 - 1/17/2005:
1/4/2005 - ( 11 hours – 720 miles) I’m driving to Dallas today and flying out to Puerto Rico on 1/6. Long ass drive, let me tell you. And the weather wasn’t completely cooperative either. Don’t worry about Max. I left him at a very nice kennel in Albuquerque. It is weird being without him though.
1/5/2005 - I drove to The Galleria in Dallas to visit the Sony Style store and buy a bunch of camera equipment. I also had an appointment for a haircut at Ulta. (Why I think you’re actually interested in these kinds of details? No idea.) Mostly I spent the day driving around lost… sheesh. When I arrived back at the hotel I discovered that the underwater camera case I purchased was broken… no time to go get another one. I was pretty pissed… now I can’t take my camera with me on our scuba dive.
1/6/2005 - I spent most of the day in the air or in an airport. I’m not a big fan of airports. Left Dallas at 7:30AM, changed planes in Atlanta, GA and arrived in Puerto Rico around 4:30PM Atlantic Standard time – one hour earlier than EST… mostly I never knew what time it was. When I arrived at the hotel (Hotel Milano) they said there was no record of a reservation for any of us. Lucky for me, I’m used to arriving at hotels where I don’t have reservations. I hadn’t made any of the arrangements and had no idea what was going on so reserved the rooms that were available. Michelle, Craig and mom were arriving later that evening and they had all our paperwork…they’d get it all straightened out.
1/7/2005 - It turns out that Michelle and Craig had to locate another hotel for Friday night. Hotel Milano – never stay there…. They were so rude about losing our reservations. We even had the confirmation!
We took a ferry across Bahia de San Juan to visit the Bacardi Rum Distillery. Very cool… we were hoping that we could actually watch them bottle the booze, but no such luck. It was a great trip. We went back to Old San Juan and did some shopping then hit the bars. We loved Aquaviva, good vodka – good oysters – groovy interior. Then we hit Senior Frogs and The Parrot Club. I over-indulged a bit. But I swear it was food poising that made me sick. The other bummer is that I left my camera bag at one of the bars… no one turned it in so all the new equipment I purchased in Dallas is history. At least I still have my camera.
1/8/2005 - We didn’t have to be on the ship until 10:15PM so we went on a day trip. Thank god we hired a driver. Driving in PR would have taken a few years off my life. It was crazy! Not many people seemed to speak English in PR. I was expecting that it would be more like Hawaii, instead of more like Mexico. Our driver (Hector) was fantastic. He drove us to the Rio Camuy Cave Park, which was spectacular. We then drove to the Arecibo Observatory. Wow. It was soooo cool! The dish appeared in the movies Goldeneye and Contact.
We arrived at the deep-water pier and boarded the ship around 7, maybe 8PM. We stopped at the Duty Free store on the way to buy some cheap booze. Gotta love the duty free prices!! Our rooms are great, the ship is beautiful (and huge) and everyone is super nice. We sail for Casa de Camp tonight – a distance of 196 nautical miles.
1/9/2005 - We arrived at Casa de Campo at 1PM. Casa de Campo is the port on the Dominican Republic side of the island of Hispaniola. The other 1/3 of the island is Haiti. The Dominican Republic is 18,700 square miles with a population of approx. 7,511,000. The official language is Spanish…. We didn’t run across many folks that spoke English. Craig played golf, but us girls didn’t have an excursion planned so we grabbed a taxi and went to the beach at Bayahibe. The countryside was kind of a mess, lots of trash, but the beach was beautiful. The water was a little chilly, but overall very nice.
We purchased tickets for a show at an amphitheater on island. Kandela, it was a Vegas style show with numerous costume changes and loud music. It was lots of fun!
We sailed for Barbados at 11PM – a distance of 633 nautical miles.
1/10/2005 - All day Monday was spent at sea… I sat out on deck and read a book, thoroughly enjoying my view of the sea rushing by. The stars at night are so bright!!
Tonight is the first formal dinner. Lucky for me, my mom and sister packed a bunch of fancy clothes so I have something to wear.
In retrospect, I wish I had thought to bring a copy of our menus back with me. The food was out of this world. Every night, formal or not, we had spectacular culinary choices… and no matter what we chose, it was delicious. And if you wanted to try anything, you could. It was decadent.
1/11/2005 - We arrived in Barbados at 9AM. Again, not having an excursion planned, we hired a taxi and took an informal tour of the island. They drive on the left out here, so there was no way in hell we were going to rent a car. Our driver (RK) was a great guy. He kept us very entertained. We went to Malibu Beach for lunch and a swim then to the St. James church, one of the Caribbean’s oldest (1660). From there we went to one of the highest points on the island, and then on to the Orchid Farm where I took 100’s of pictures of flowers…. Why? I have no idea, it seemed the thing to do at the time.
We left Barbados for Grenada at 5:30PM – a distance of 160 nautical miles.
1/12/2005 - We arrived in Grenada (pronounced Gre-nay-da; Gre-nah-da is in Spain – learn something new every day) at 7AM Wednesday. Grenada is 21 miles by 12 miles wide, totaling 133 square miles with a population of approx 95,000. In September of 2004 they were hammered by Hurricane Ivan and are still cleaning up. UNICEF tents are still being used as schools and housing. Our taxi driver (Bonnie) took us to a waterfall and then to Grand Anse Beach. As we drove around the island Bonnie pointed out some of the devastation and rebuilding efforts. It didn’t look like any part of the island escaped Ivan’s fury. Churches were wiped out, power and telephone poles and lines were still down, the majority of the houses were in some stage of reconstruction. Grenada is one of the world’s largest producers of nutmeg, but the damage from the hurricane has ruined the trees. They won’t have significant crops to sell for 5 – 7 years. Bonnie took us through areas where, before the hurricane you wouldn’t have been able to see any of the houses because of the dense foliage. The hurricane stripped the trees, leaving valleys bare and shade scarce. Adding to the misery, though this is the dry season, the amount of rainfall has been setting records. It was sad and kind of depressing. We were one of the first cruise ships to stop at the island since the hurricane, and the people were desperate to sell us something, anything. Way too much heckling, which made us feel guilty because we could see evidence of their need all around us. Here we were, visiting their island from a decadent cruise ship while they were struggling to scrape together enough money to rebuild the roofs of their homes. Very sobering.
The beach was beautiful, the water fantastic. It rained most of the day, even while we were swimming. It was warm enough that the rain didn’t bother us. It was actually fun swimming in the rain.
We sail for Antigua tonight at 4:30PM – a distance of 315 nautical miles.
1/13/2005 - Antigua (pronounced An-tee-ga, not An-tee-gwa) is 108 square miles with a population of approx 80,000. We had all signed up for a helicopter tour of the Monserat Volcano. What a fantastic tour!! Afterwards we did a little shopping and then we went to Dickinson Bay to swim. It was rainy and windy so we didn’t actually go swimming, but we enjoyed a nice lunch on the beach. Very peaceful. A person could get used to this…
We sailed for St. Thomas at 5:30PM – a distance of 190 nautical miles.
1/14/2005 - St. Thomas, only 40 miles east of Puerto Rico covers an area of 32 square miles with a population of 56,000. It’s a major stop off for the cruise ship industry. The Wednesday before we arrived there had been 8 cruise ships in port. That’s approximately 16,000 visitors all at once. Lucky for us, we were the only ones in port today. We had to go through customs on the ship before we could go on island. We’re basically back in the US. Michelle and I were supposed to go on a scuba dive today. Unfortunately I had a cold and Michelle’s ears were bothering her so we decided not to go. We went on the St. Thomas Skyride, a 700 ft ascent tram ride to Paradise Point. The view was spectacular, the food at the restaurant was delicious and the Baileys Bushwacker drink was absolutely yummy.
From the Skyride we caught a taxi to Morningstar Beach. There were maybe a dozen other people there and the water was fantastic. The waves were really coming in and swimming there was a lot of work. We weren’t really interested in sunning and the waves made swimming too tiring so we caught another taxi to Magens Bay Beach. Magens Bay Beach was listed as one of the worlds’s ten most beautiful by National Geographic, and there is a $3 charge to access the beach area. It was gorgeous. Calm, warm water and the most sun we’d seen the whole trip. We swam for an hour or so and then headed back to the ship. Another fabulous day.
We sail back to Puerto Rico at 5:30PM – a distance of only 84 nautical miles.
1/15/2005 - We disembarked at 10AM and headed straight to the airport. The whole process of gathering our luggage and arranging transport to the airport was pretty aggravating. They could really improve on that.
I arrived back in Dallas around 11PM. Another long day… what time zone am I in? Does anyone ever really know what time it is?
1/16/2005 - I went back to Sony to exchange my underwater camera case and re-purchase some of the camera equipment I ‘lost’ in Puerto Rico. When I was leaving the mall, walking toward my truck, I realized that someone had stolen my spare tire. What the hell???!!!! It’s not like it would have been easy to steal. Why would someone do that? Damn it!
I drove back to Albuquerque. The weather was much better this trip. I saw a huge herd of camels southeast of Electra, TX. What a hoot! I stopped for the night in Albuquerque since I’ll need to pick Max up tomorrow.
1/17/2005 - Before I picked up Max I went to the tram at Sandia Peak. The Sandia Peak Aerial Tramway has the longest clear and unsupported span in North America and the third longest in the world. The 14,185 ft distance to the top is over a mile above Albuquerque. The tramway side was mostly snow free. However, when you get to the top (elevation of 10,378 ft), you can see the skiers on the other side. Hell of a view… an 11,000 square mile panorama. Spectacular.
I picked up Max and we headed back to camp.


New Pictures: NM, CR