June 18th 2010

Friday, 18 June 2010 00:00

Whilst yesterday was a pretty boring day, involving very little of note or interest, today was an entirely different matter.

The day started out with an early rise.  Okay so it was 7:30am, but that is the earliest we've been up all week.  We headed over to Reflections for breakfast, and then went over to the Island Tours booth in the main lobby to check-in for our for our catamaran cruise.  Apparently we were too eager to go, since when we arrived at 9:00am, we were told to come back at 9:30am.

Oh well...by 10:00am we were embarking on the 3+ hour catamaran cruise, which started off with a short jaunt over to one of the reefs, were most of the guests on the boat (approxiamtely 30+) disembarked in full snorkel gear to check out the reef.

Talk about friggin' amazing.  I am so glad I decided to wear my contacts today!  Amazingly colorful fish of all sizes.  Lots of caves to wonder at.  Tons of pretty vegetation of all shapes and sizes.  I now think I understand the allure of scuba diving.

We re-embarked, had some beverages (to wash out the interest and yet still nasty taste of saltwater), and continued on to our second destination: Iguana Island.

We didn't see any iguanas, since we didn't go looking for them, (but apparently there are many on the island), but did get to see one of the catamaran crew trying to 'empty' a King Conch of it's resident.  He said, he's lived in the area 30 years, and he'd never seen one so big, which he apparently had to dive to the bottom of the reef to collect.

We then walked along the shore collecting seashells (Arianna is real good a collecting pretty, albeit broken shells).  After heading back to the catamaran, we were treated to some photo ops of a massive sting ray, that I can only guess had a 5-6 foot 'wingspan'.  We then had a bite to eat as we headed back to the resort.

Later in the afternoon we, went for some pizza at Gordon's outdoor grill, and while we waited for our pizzas to be baked, we stopped in at the Cultural Market, located right next door to the resort.  Lots of gimmicky things that could be purchased at a dollar store for a lot cheaper, but they did have a number of unique looking hand-made items that we picked up as souvenirs for ourselves, our friends and family.

After picking up our pizzas, we went back to our room, showered, had a nap, and prepared to leave at 6:15 to meet one of the resort's photographers who offered to do a family photo shoot, which turns out to be a free service to the resort guests.  We'll get to look at the images tomorrow morning, where I imagine we'll pay an arm and a leg to have the digitals burned to disc.

We later stopped in at at Bobby D's for a light bite to eat.

Before heading to bed, we packed up all of our luggage and carry on bags, since the resort wants to pick up all the luggage for the day's flights at 8am.  Yikes!

On one hand, it's been a great week away from home, and there's probably more things we could spend our money on.  But on the other hand, I'm kinda thinking it'd be nice to be home, even though that does mean mosquitoes and going back to work on Monday.