Month: July 2009

Happy birthday, America! God bless America! America, bless God! (I thought the teacup graphic was appropriate at this time. 🙂 )

Lost? You can catch up here with the precursor, part one and part two.

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I like animals … at a distance. I’ve never been one to invite a cuddle or even interaction because well, I don’t really know why. They’re cute and fun to watch but actually having one underfoot or to care for one … uh, no thanks.

Not my thing.

So when we stumbled across a shore excursion that would bring us up close and personal with exotic birds and monkeys, well, we hesitated.

But when we weighed our excursion options, it seemed like the most attractive alternative, so, we scheduled a time to see exotic birds and monkeys.

The Carnival cruise director strongly suggested we sign up for a shore excursion. Isla Roatan, Honduras is a rather volatile, and unstable country so we were cautioned to not leave the gates beyond the pier unless we had an excursion planned. We were also cautioned not to buy anything from anyone outside the gates as it was likely illegal contraband and it would not be allowed back on the boat.

These warnings were enough to make us uneasy.

However, we met our party on the pier and loaded an air-conditioned van to drive into the bowels of the island to see Gumbalimba Park.

Once we arrived at the park, we were instructed to leave our bags on a table in a pavilion. We had to do this because the monkeys associated bags with food and would likely run off with them. Since none of us wanted to chase a monkey around the jungle to retrieve our precious belongings, we all gladly obliged.

We were also told we were not allowed to use flash when we took pictures. The flash would confuse and irritate the monkeys and put them in defensive attack mode.

Unfortunately, and unbeknownst to me, my camera defaults into flash mode whenever it’s turned off and then turned back on again. So, I took a picture and the flash went off. Our guide was not happy. In fact, everyone in our group was not happy, though most of them didn’t know where the flash came from and to prevent getting lynched, I also pretended not to know where the flash came from.

When the flash went off, the monkey froze, its eyes grew large and it stiffened. Actually, we all stiffened and waited with bated breath to see what would happen. Thankfully, it wasn’t currently sitting on someone’s head but on a vine, which might have made a difference to its reaction.

But after several long seconds, it simply went back to being … a monkey. And we all went back to being … skittish tourists.

I nearly fainted from relief. How embarrassing would it have been to be involved in a gruesome monkey attack that I carelessly started?! I endured several dirty looks, but, thankfully, everyone’s attention soon turned back to the monkeys.

Whew.

To coax the monkey to climb on people, the guide placed a sunflower seed on top of the person’s head. The monkey would then scurry up the person’s body, or jump onto the person’s head, and forage around in his/her hair until it found the seed. This allowed us an opportunity to take close-up pictures of the animals, hence the reason you see several strangers with a monkey on their heads in the slideshow.

None of us volunteered our head – we were just content to watch, but I have to say this, they were awfully cute to watch. Their jerky movements and their sheer innocence was fascinating. They also had a two-month old baby, which you can see clinging to its mother’s back in a few slides and we all kept a respective distance from the momma.

We mothers KNOW about that protective instinct.

But it was really cool because apparently, that was the first time they had had a baby born in the park, so the tiny monkey was a big deal.

Even though I never had a monkey on my head (as opposed to my back – haha), I had one monkey scurry through my legs and I felt it’s silky soft fur against my skin.

That was close enough, thank you very much.

The brightly-colored parrots nonchalantly walked among us. They were intent on picking at the fallen sunflower seed shells that the monkeys dropped so they completely ignored us humans.

At various intervals during the excursion, we would hear this zipping/rope sound. When we looked up, we saw tourists from another excursion riding a zip line over the jungle trees. I thought that particular excursion sounded fun, but I couldn’t get the guys interested in it.

After the monkeys, we walked through an area that contained several large cages of macaws. There’s a picture of Kevin allowing one to sit on his shoulder. I refused because I had seen another bird on another man’s shoulder poop on him and I wasn’t particularly excited about spending the rest of the day with warm poop on MY shoulder.

After we finished with the animals, we waited our turn to walk across this rope bridge. Actually, it was quite safe, it was held with strong cable, but it crossed over a lake and it swayed from side-to-side enough that it was enough to freak me out. I was even more freaked out when Kevin, who was ahead of me and Dude, turned around to take pictures and nearly tossed himself into the lake below. Even though our guide told us that they had yet to rescue a tourist from the water, that didn’t mean there couldn’t be a first time.

I seriously sprouted three more gray hairs from that experience alone.

When our tour was over and we were deposited at the pier, we noticed several armed soldiers patrolling the gates. Kevin was stupid brave enough to venture closer and a few of the soldiers tensed.

That was enough to send us scurrying back to the boat.

Coincidentally, the day after our visit, the Honduran President was kidnapped by their military.

We look pretty rough in the following pictures. It was h..h..hot over there – it was close to 100 and 98% humidity. Since we were in the jungle, there wasn’t a breeze, so the air was heavy and sticky.

Please excuse my sopping self.

You can see a larger version of this slideshow here.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

(RSS Readers: I had to insert the slide shows using Vodpod. As a result, the slide shows won’t show up in your readers. Please click over to view. Sorry about that!)

ø There’s a picture of jungle foliage – if you look closely, you can see that rope bridge I talked about in the background.

ø The next picture is a group of people bent over a plant. I don’t remember the name of the plant, but once you touched it, it wilted in your fingers and died instantly. There’s a picture of Kevin bent over and touching the plant,too.

ø Our tour guide was awesome. So nice and funny. There’s a picture of him with small dark pink flowers in his hand. He gave those flowers to all the ladies and if you look closely, you can see mine in a lot of the pictures.

ø The thorny tree bark – it was called “Monkeys Don’t Climb” trees because monkeys don’t like the thorny texture and stay far away from those types of trees.

ø We did end the tour walking through a man-made cave. There they told the story of one of their more infamous pirates discovering the island and a few tall tales of his adventures.

Overall, our tour was a bit disappointing, at least to Kevin. It was all manufactured – the monkeys had been brought over and then the man-made cave. But it was still a fun excursion because it took us places we never would have seen otherwise.

Here’s a short video Kevin took on the pier.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Isla Roatan was certainly different and we’ll likely never choose to go back there, but I’m glad we had the opportunity to see this small, and volatile, part of the world.

Next up — seeing a third world country, up close and very personal.

Lost? You can catch up here with the precursor and part one.

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I’d like to preface this entry by saying: I’m not a big water sports person. In fact, it’s safe to say I’m a teensy-weensy bit scared of the water in general.

Scratch that. Whenever I’m in over my head, literally, I’m actually PRETTY NERVOUS. It’s just not something I care to do. I’ll participate, but it’s a grudging participation.

I’m not the greatest swimmer – I CAN swim, just not that great. I CAN tread water, but not for long periods of time before I start sinking. My wide berth will be the death of me yet.

So when Kevin suggested we go snorkeling, I swallowed my dread. I’ve been snorkeling before, but it was right off the coast and I never felt out of control or out of my depth; as a result, I quite enjoyed the experience.

But that didn’t deter me from steering clear of the snorkeling excursions that required jumping off a boat in the middle of the ocean. Just the thought of that and not having any solid footing to sink my toes into just a few feet away was enough to cause me to hyperventilate.

We compromised. We signed up for a snorkeling excursion, but it was a shore excursion and not a boat excursion. I thought I was home free on the deep thing.

Wrong.

We arrived at Grand Cayman at 8:00 a.m. Our excursion was scheduled for 9:00 a.m. So, I dragged the boys out of bed, we ate a quick breakfast and then loaded the tender to be shipped over to the mainland.

I have to interject here: Carnival has these shore excursions DOWN. It was very organized and we quickly found our group. When enough of us had arrived, they began walking us to the spot.

That was another reason we picked this particular excursion, it was within walking distance of the pier.

We were a bit disappointed when we arrived. It was nothing like we envisioned. We pictured a white sands sort of beach where we could just walk into the water and begin our snorkeling adventure.

Wrong again.

The “beach” was all rock. (There’s a picture of it in the slideshow below). And our guide gave us all life jackets to wear.

I was immediately apprehensive. If we were going to be required to wear life jackets then that must of meant we were going to be out in deep water.

*GULP*

I kept my cool. I didn’t want to panic in front of the boys, who didn’t appear all that nervous, quite frankly. Apparently, I was the wuss in the group.

Kevin, Dude and Jazz quickly donned their gear and headed out into the water. It took me a bit longer to adjust my stupid mask. I have a rather prominent bump in my nose and I couldn’t get the mask to sit over that bump comfortably.

Damn this crooked nose.

When I finally got situated, had the fins on my feet and I flopped awkwardly slid gracefully into the water, I had lost track of the guys. Kevin I wasn’t worried about, but this was the first time for the boys and I wasn’t sure how they would handle it.

I once again swallowed my panic (which by this time was beginning to taste pretty sour) because I figured they had their life jackets on and were pretty good swiimmers and did a little snorkeling.

Again, I was disappointed. The landscape was brown and not at all pretty, but I chocked that up to the fact that so many humans had trespassed on the area and killed any remaining coral.

So, I ventured out a little further. And then my mother instinct kicked in and I surfaced, in a panic (really no reason why, just a feeling) and started looking around for the boys.

There were several people in the water and they all looked the same with their masks on – I had no clue where they were.

I started flailing because I was in deep water and well, deep water freaks me out. But luckily, Kevin was behind me so I had a visual anchor. However, he didn’t know where the boys were so my panic doubled.

In the meantime, I’m bobbing like a drunk frat boy on the water, whipping my head from side to side in an attempt to see where the boys were. And in the process, swallowed about half the ocean to boot.

I started feeling queasy.

But I ignored it, my children were not in sight.

Even though they are teenagers, and boys to boot, it doesn’t matter, a mother’s instinct never ages. I needed to know where they were so I could resume drowning, er, snorkeling.

I found Dude first, and he was beginning to look green around the cheekbones. I knew that look. He got that look from me.

“Are you okay?” I asked him, careful to keep my voice down so he wouldn’t be embarrassed.

“Not really,” he muttered and I nodded. It was time to get out of the water.

I caught Kevin’s attention and told him to look for Jazz, I was taking Dude back to shore.

Dude and I dragged ourselves back to the rocky shore and gratefully sat on a rock. We were both sea sick from the bobbing and swallowing too much salt water. I walked Dude to the bathroom where he remained for nearly ten minutes.

I didn’t ask. He didn’t tell.

In the meantime, Kevin had found Jazz, who had ventured out near the buoys we weren’t supposed to swim past and was fine. In fact, he was more than fine, he was having a ball. So I concentrated on getting Dude back to our chairs where he promptly collapsed and covered his face with his t-shirt.

I gingerly sat down and waited for my own nausea to pass. I will admit, I panicked on the water. I hope I did a good job of hiding my panic from Dude, but he’s pretty intuitive – he might have noticed. The bob and salt combination nearly did me in and I thought I was going to upchuck for the entire group to not only see but likely swim through as well.

Which only made me more nervous. I’m sort of glad Dude was feeling queasy because it gave me an excuse to also go back to shore.

About fifteen minutes later, Jazz surfaced and collapsed onto his chair. He wasn’t having any trouble with the bobbing or the salt water, he was simply pooped out from all of the swimming.

Kevin joined us about fifteen minutes after that looking flushed and very pleased with himself. He had taken some underwater pictures (I talked about those yesterday) and he was excited to see how they turned out. He was disappointed that Dude and I didn’t have a better time, but what can I say – I have a motion sickness “thing.” Apparently, Dude is just like his momma. 🙂

So, Dude’s first snorkeling experience didn’t go exactly as planned, but when (notice I said “when”) we go back to the Caribbean, we’ll try it again. At least the next time out, he’ll know what to expect.

We finished the rest of our time on Grand Cayman just walking around. George Town is a pretty little village but I’m afraid I just wasn’t that into it because all that was left to do was browse some shops and ya’ll know how much I hate to shop.

Being on a tropical island doesn’t change that fact.

Now moving on to the pictures …

You can see a larger version of this slideshow here.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

(RSS Readers: I had to insert the slide shows using Vodpod. As a result, the slide shows won’t show up in your readers. Please click over to view. Sorry about that!)

ø The first set of pictures are a mixture of Miami, Grand Cayman and more of us around the boat. Because you can’t have too many pictures of yourself awkwardly posing around the boat. 🙂

ø There’s one picture where Kevin has the camera at his eye and trained at something (Dude is in the background) and he’s standing on the ship track. This is where I walked … well here, Kevin took a video.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

I have to tell you, listening to my music while walking on that track, in the open sea and fresh air was exhilarating. I felt close to God and it was a wonderful experience. I wish I had had more energy and time to devote to more walking.

I also wish we had taken more little videos like this. It makes it seem more real, doesn’t it?

ø When you take a cruise, one of the first things that you MUST do is participate in a lifeboat safety drill. You feel like an idiot wearing those bright orange vests and it seems like a waste of time, but it IS a good idea to know what to do and where to go in case of an emergency.

ø Next few pictures are of the clubs (Kevin is playing air guitar on the “banana” stage). The train-looking room was The Caboose, this is where the teenagers could hang out.

ø I took the picture of Kevin with the walkie-talkie to remember that was how we communicated with the boys the entire time we were on the boat.

ø The next picture is of the tender we took to get to Grand Cayman.

ø After we reached the island, you can see us heading toward our snorkeling adventure. See the rocky shore? *sigh*

ø After we finished snorkeling, we ate at an open-air restaurant. Dude was feeling considerably better by then and after eating something, he was back to his sulking self. 🙂 (Our boys are so skinny – I wish I had their problem).

ø Here are a few pictures from around George Town.

ø Here are a few more pictures from the first formal night.

ø We found a sword shop and the boys really enjoyed looking around and “testing” a few swords out. (They’re boys, what can I say). I think Jazz secretly wants to be a knight when he grows up.

And that was our experience on Grand Cayman. Next stop? Isla Rotan, Honduras. There’s nothing quite like being attacked by a monkey and dodging scary military soldiers to get your blood pumping.