Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Travel. Show all posts

Monday, August 16, 2010

Vacation of a Lifetime Wrapup

I know! I know! Enough already but I was looking through this entire series of posts and was laughing at all the memories so I decided I had to do a top ten. Or top 11 as the case may be. So here they are in no particular order. My favorite laughs of the cruise.
Davy Crockett the famous Pirate! With his Mom.
Free Diving and Free Stylin!
"I CAN"T HEAR YOU!!" Sorry I gave you a heart attack!
Andrew going nuts on the last night! Scary and hilarious.
Alli and her stripper pole! Such fun times on the back of the ship every night!Mitch helping Haley flash the entire ship within the first hour of our voyage!Sara and the Drunk Guy. Sara and CANADA! All our Idaho friends and the other people who we saw a lot! Most of which were too drunk to have any memories at all from the cruise.The "Private Eyes" Train Wreck. With body guard.
Mom as Art. and all the other fun we had with our outfits! See what I mean? Great, great laughs!Big Man on Little Horse. I adore him.
Prom Night. The tilt of the head makes this picture! Every cruise should have a girl in a choir dress dancing to"Busta Move!"And last but not least. Dead Lady. May she forever live in our memories.

Actually the fact remains that my favorite things about this cruise were ...This.
Yep.
These people.

They were the ones I laughed with. Or at. Whichever.
They were the ones who made the unusual even more unique.They were the cheering crowd. They always are. They were the ones who made the spontaneous brilliant!

The thing I love about this group is that they can make a cruise a Vacation of a Lifetime. Absolutely. Without question. But they also help make my regular life pretty darn sweet.
Thank you people.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Voal Day #8

We woke up on Friday morning and we were here. It is the private island owned by NCL. After so many popular tourist destinations it is nice to have a private island to ourselves and 2,000 of our closest friends from the Pearl!We didn't tender together this morning because some of our group were going to go parasailing and needed to get to the Cay quickly. Here they are loading up on the open air tender to head on over to the island. Hey wait! From this view I can see that Brandon has a bald spot going on back there! I did not know that. I learned something new today.
We tendered a few minutes later. I like the open air tenders better.
Hey from this view Dave's hair looks grey. What?! I think it is whiter than than the guy behind us.
Oh my stars. This picture totally made me laugh because I saw Mom with her money guard necklace pack thing. Mom had learned in previous travels that she was supposed to wear her money bags under her shirts and under her arm to protect all of her important stuff. So we get to the airport to leave and security tells us to put our wallets, purses and everything on the conveyor belt. So we proceeded to die laughing as Mom basically is having to remove her arms from her sleeves and duck her head into her shirt and pull her money purse over her head while trying to hold her shirt on to stay modest. It was HILARIOUS!
So these 4 hoodlums
and these two strangers were the parasailers of the day. The weather was a bit on the overcast side but it didn't stop these brave adventurers.
So I wasn't actually on the boat so I have no idea what happened. Although I am sure none of it was very fun because, after all, I wasn't there. Duh. But, from what I can tell this is Mitch and Haley. Haley was told to flap her arms very fast to help them get going. And Mitch was told by Tricia to snap a picture of her legs before he left.
Yeah Tricia! Your legs look great from here! Although look at Haley's. They look good from here also. Mitch's are way too hairy. And his pinkie toe looks like someone cut off the top of it.
Hey Mitch, with the strap cutting into your arm you actually look like you have muscles. Haley looks happy about that also. Here goes B. Rad and Sara. At least that is Sara. I think B. Rad is still hiding from us. Again. Hey B. Rad! We can still see your bird legs!!! So, speaking as the true acrophobic that I am. That does not look fun to me.


If anyone else thinks this is crazy raise your hand!
Thanks B. Rad. See now this height I can handle. Why go up any further I ask you?
Last the best of all the gang. Tricia and Brandon have their turn. Although, once again, I was not there I have no idea who went first or last.


I don't know if they were coming back in or just heading up but I do believe Tricia was yelling something about Mitch handing her her shoes!
After the adventure they all headed back to our site on the beach and recovered. Apparently Tricia is the only one who is not feeling the need to air out her left armpit. I think they were more nervous than they let on!
Brandon bought some fish food at the little shack here on the island (conveniently charged to your room, sir!) and he and Tricia and some others went out snorkeling and took the food out for a try. I guess that the fish REALLY like this food and they will nibble off your fingers in order to get some. These fish are not small. And they are not afraid to touch you.
All of this resulted in Tricia struggling greatly to get out of the water and onto Alli's tube very quickly! There was some screaming involved also. The schedule for this day went pretty much as follows. Snorkel, rest, repeat. We followed that schedule for the rest of the afternoon. We also added a little shopping in. There were a ton of little booths where the natives (of this little private island, pop. 0) were selling authentic Bahama souvenirs. This is the snorkel portion of the day. B. Rad. Looks like an awesome free dive! Snorkel again.
Andrew this time. They make us wear these scraps of yellow fabric that somehow will save you if you start drowning. I worry about this design a bit. I guess you just have to hope that you realize you are drowning in time to have enough air to inflate this scrap. Hmm.

Rest portion of the day. Wow he is wiped out! Oh I forgot that after lunch Dave added an extra event into his day.

Have you heard of geocaching? If not. It is basically a hidden treasure game where adults hide little secret stashes or "Caches" all over the world and then they post online the GPS coordinates and other people go find the treasure. You sign a log, take a bit of the treasure and leave something for the next person. It is the fastest growing hobby in the world! And Dave does this. And I tease him about it. Teasing Dave is the 2nd fastest growing hobby in the world.


So back to the day. After lunch Dave went on a hike to find the cache located on the island. He found it and left a geocoin (a coin that you can track as it travels the globe). Then he rested.

After we arrived home I mocked him for doing this on a vacation but as we spoke he got online and showed me that the coin was picked up THE NEXT DAY by another geocacher! Good grief. So many people to mock.

I think Haley is talking about how nuts Dave is also. "Did you here Dave went Geocaching? What a nerd!" 2nd fastest growing hobby I tell you!
Sara and B. Rad taking a break from their busy routine. You know, snorkel, rest, snorkel , rest. It was a busy day.
I am not sure what is happening here. Alli is neither resting or snorkeling. She is however holding onto a scrap of yellow fabric. I know! She is probably running an emergency drill to see if she has enough oxygen to inflate the vest! Hey Alli! Did we mention that once you blow it up you can't deflate it? Good luck free diving in that thing! Good idea. Go with the rest option instead. But watch that you don't open your mouth much more because then you will be pulling a dead lady and you don't want that to happen! B. Rad you are looking hot! And not just because of the weather you know what I mean? Ha ha. He finally put on his little coconut bikini top. And it really doesn't look hot. It looks ridiculous which is the point.
"Hey what is everyone looking at? What is so funny?"Oh yeah. That is a sight. I really like how Dave refused to get any closer.
Creepy guy in the water! Notice how everyone pulled their children out of the area!

It just gets worse folks.
"Take your children! Shield their eyes."
As creepy as B. Rad is it is really Mitch with his midriff shirt who scared me here! What is he doing?
They must have secretly made a bet of who could be the most frightening sight in the water on this day! And trust me people. There are some Seriously Scary People on this beach!
So Dave persuaded me to go out one last time with the fish food. We went out a ways between the two reefs and Dave started spreading the fish food around and we were SWARMED. Those fish freaked me out a bit. I can see why Tricia jumped up on the raft! Lucky for me I could swim a little ways away from the feeding frenzy but Dave couldn't. The fish actually started biting his fingers and his hands. Then he did the macho, manly thing and threw the food away, screamed like a little girl and headed for the surface. I could hear the screaming through his snorkel. I laughed so hard! That is my man!
So we finally had to start heading back to the ship. Thanks for pulling your shirt down Mitch!

Look at all these cute couples! So darling, aren't they?
These two were the sweetest couple on the beach! "Jenn, would you please get over here and save me!!"
That is much better! Jenn is much cuter than that other person.
As you got back on to the tender to head back to the ship they had water spraying on the ramp to help wash off the sand from your feet. Ingenious really. Except for the people that think it is part of some lame water park! "Woo-Hoo! A water slide!"
Here is where we hung out all day! As we pulled away they were already lining the chairs up for the next crowd of cruisers.
It was a delightful day spent on the beach.
We sailed off towards home. Here it is. If you look really carefully on deck 11 you can see someone showering! I hope it isn't Sara!
We went to dinner with Mom and Alli. The rest wanted seafood but Dave hated fish even before they attacked him while snorkeling! We discovered a new restaurant that we had never tried. It was really good! How did we miss this place?
We watched our last sunset. I remember this one. I think.

It is only appropriate as we sail through the Caribbean that we run into a pirate or two. He didn't show up until the last night while we were hanging out on the deck after dinner but he was worth the wait! He looked great! I really liked the pirate coat.
He really liked the long dreadlocks! He like to flip them over his shoulder every so often. Very manly. I must say that I don't really see a resemblance between him and either of these "Pirates"!