Our 3rd beautiful stop was the island of St. Lucia. I love this little place and want to go back. I almost died, but I want to go back. Well, not quite died. A bit of an exaggeration. This was the first day that we ventured off from the group. They went ziplining and we wanted to find a beach with dark sand and good snorkeling. None of those 2 things came to pass but we learned a lot and had the most breathtaking views on top of an abandoned fort! We ended up on Pigeon Bay Beach, which wasn't so great compared to the other beaches we had visited previously. We parked our stuff and ventured out with our snorkeling gear. We kept swimming further and further into the ocean to find those beautiful sea creatures. When we decided to head back we noticed it was quite windy and that we were swimming against the current. Curtis started to panic a bit and shouted out that we weren't getting anywhere. We just remained in the same spot even though we were kicking and swimming. Uh oh. Not such a good thing to say to me, a person who lacks confidence in the area of swimming. I had to talk myself through that one and tell myself to breath and take a break. I grabbed Curtis' hand, looked down on the ocean floor in my snorkel mask, and kicked with all my might. I was getting tired. We had been out there for over an hour. This was a time of prayers and pleading. I was scared. I started to call out for help when I saw some people close by. Curtis quickly hushed me as we were almost there. Yup, he was right. We were almost there. I had never been so glad to be on land. And so grateful that I could return to my children safe and sound. I will never do that again. Never swim out too far, and never swim in a lot of wind, against the current. Yikes. Good thing we got that experience out of the way. It made the rest of the day very enjoyable and made me happy to be sight seeing on land. We took a little hike up the hill to an abandoned fort where we took lots of great pictures of St. Lucia. It was beautiful to behold!
Pigeon Bay Beach was pretty small but at least we had nice chairs. They better be nice. We always pay for them.
Such beautiful trees and neat places!
I could have used a hammock between these 2 palms.
Don't remember what this fruit was called but apparently it's not edible.
It's home sweet home back on the Carnival Valor. And there is nothing like having a vanilla icecream cone whenever you want! Curtis took this pictue because Mr. worker guy in the background had been a crew member on our first cruise, which was a different ship, the previous year. Ha ha! We went and told him this and he looked at us strangely. We are just a bunch more passengers to him who look like all the rest of them. Too funny!
"St. Kitt's is the pitts", as Greg would say! He actually looks back on St. Kitt's with fondness now. We did all agree that it wasn't our favorite port, but if that was the only place we had visited, then it would have been perfect! My favorite part was spending time with our cab driver, "Kevin". He was super friendly, knowledgable, and genuine. It was cool to notice that he had clear blue eyes, even though they don't show up in the picture! I hope we run into him again some day. He is good at what he does!
Laura was well prepared for the day. She was nice to pack muffins, bagels and cookies for us to share for lunch! We all laughed when she pulled the squished ziploc bag out of her backpack.
It was more beach time on Cockleshell Bay in the morning and Shipwreck Beach in the afternoon. The sand was a little more grainy and rough to the touch but I was ecstatic that we found our "black sand"! The star fish Curtis caught was actually alive. I discovered this when it's little suction cups started to pulse. Ew. This also was an island full of monkeys. You could see them running across the road.
This is the black sand that I wanted to find in St. Lucia. We took a little sample of sand from each beach we visited. The little bags sit here with me now as I write about them all. Awe, wish we could go back!
We got the kids tshirts from this fun little shopping area. Greg and Kimberly laugh because they bought all their kids stuff here too, even though it wasn't the favorite port. Poor Greg. The man at the till broke Greg's sand dollar that he had retreived from the ocean floor. It was an accident but rough to accept. Those things are so fragile. I think all of Curtis' broke too. All except one.
Sand dollars are so cool to me. They don't seem real because they look so perfect. There were lots of sand dollars in St. Kitt's.
Gotta love this little towel frog! Too bad he didn't turn into a handsome prince!
Our final stop was the lovely island of St. Maarten. Half of it is French-"Martin" and the other half is Dutch-"Maarten".
We took a tour of the whole island. Compared to Kevin, our tour guide wasn't so nice and she wasn't happy about us getting sand in her van. At least we had pretty things to look at out our windows.
We couldn't have picked a more beautiful beach to end up at. Dawn Beach. It was divine! It was huge. We wish we had discovered it sooner in the day. We relished every moment we were there! So perfect.
We found lots of little and unique sea shells at this place. The waves brought them crashing into our feet and legs.
It's our last day. We are parked back in Puerto Rico. What a bummer.
Was Curtis the "cruise Curtis"? Why yes he was. He was nicknamed this on our last cruise because of his happy and excited nature about being there. He said he was only like that once a year. Glad we had him back, even if it was just for 7 days.
Here are some pictures of the pics! I could go to jail right?? I was pretty sneaky about it! "Tres Leches" is the best! Greg, Curtis, and Shane all make the perfect members of the band and we their wives, are their biggest fans! That bottom right picture is the ultimate picture of the whole trip! We laughed, shed tears, and laughed some more as we looked at this picture over and over again! The photographer requested that the men take a photo together and then we saw him a few days later in St. Kitt's ready to take another one. "Huggy, huggy" he would say. This is all probably not so funny to those of you reading, but it sure was to us and who knows how we came up with all this, but we did. It was the joke of the whole cruise and it felt good to laugh about it over and over again!
What a sad, sad day as we leave for home from the airport. I was actually excited to see my kids again!
What an amazing trip! Thanks Poulton's and Meyer's for the oh so good times and the oh so good memories!
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