Royal Westmoreland St. James

... to Rhonda and her advice, we also visited St Nicholas Abbey, which was lovely…..and in the evening treated ourselves to dinner at The FishPot (excellent) after lunch at Nanika (no wonder we piled on the pounds this holiday)!

All in all, a most relaxing and enjoyable end to our Caribbean adventure…..the R&R necessary to ensure a calm approach to our 44 hour journey back here to Surabaya!

So, after 5 days worth of failed attempts trying to fly standby, I came to the realisation that this is probably going to be impossible for the next month at least. There were 40 other people waiting with me in standby, many of them AA staff, many of them with families and many of them completely stranded for one reason or the other - a few were stuck behind too many people in line and checkin ...

This is my third day trying to get out of the island on standby. I was 38/47 on the list earlier. So many families of staff members using their tickets for holiday.. It's insanity. It seems to be impossible to get out of the Caribbean right now! Hopefully I'll figure out something soon, otherwise I may have to cancel parts of my itinerary.. :(

... to South Point but decided against it, we go there all the time anyway! The guys then had a jam session to end the great drive day! Even though I was driving the whole day, and sunburnt in the most awkward places, it was DEFINITELY worth it. Probably gonna do another on in December, in the dry season, when the weather is a little more cooperative! Pleasant final memories of the Caribbean.. Don't know when pics will be up, possibly not until I have slightly less ...

... villa located at Point d'Esny on the southeast coast of Mauritius about one km away from the Blue Bay marine park. The villa has a magnificent sea view over the lagoon, especially over Ile aux Aigrettes - an island protected and exclusively managed by The Mauritian Wild life Foundation. To the left, the villa offers a view over the Lion mountain range extending all along the southeast coast ...

... the church that dated almost five hundred years ago. It was kind of creepy walking all around them, but this is what made the whole place intriguing and captivating.

We stopped for while along the ocean to admire big huge boulders right on the shore. It was absolutey beautiful seeing them.

Our next stop was at the Highland Adventure Center where we sipped a complimentary soft drink. It was relaxing and we enjoyed the view once ...

... arrived in Barbados this morning at 7:00am under a warm blue sunny sky. A new day, a new adventure. Today promises to be quite exciting since we will be swimming with sea turtles and tropical fishes. Lets hope they show up!

As we disembarked the ship around 8:00am , we met with our tour guide and followed him to another pier to board a really nice sleek, power boat for a high-speed ride to Turtle Bay ...

... we are told, not much! Everyone was told that all the excursions would go...but now the letters canceling a lot of them are being delivered to cabins. They have even added a new excursion! It's called the Ike Excursions....they take you to see things you would have seen if IKE hadn't blown them away!! LMAO!!! We'll shop at the Grand Turk pier and have lunch at Margaritaville...then head back to the ship to start packing! Yes...it will be over that soon!

... but a thumb-sized frog crawling up the window. Yikes! What the heck is a frog doing in a car? We both jumped, Arlette screamed, and the guys looked in amazement at us. "What's going on?" David asked. By then the frog had jumped onto Arlette's lap, then onto the floor. She scooted over causing me to shift onto David's lap, my head nearly hanging out of the open car window. Needless to say, we were all cracking up inside that little car. Our ...

... i want to. any comments on anything or advice or anything is greatly appreciated--post it. i'd like to hear what people think or if they have any experience with what i am going through as i try and experience all of the culture while i am here. that's enough internal monologuing for now. i have class in a few minutes, so i think it's time i wrapped things up. a little more commentary first. in one of my linguistics classes, some students had a discussion on Guianese. Guianese ...