Tuesday April 8 - some shopping and beach time

This morning I woke up around 6:30 and tip-toes out to the kitchen to make some coffee.  D had made a run to the grocery store yesterday on his scooter, so he picked up a few things for the room.  I was able to make a nice little pot of blue mountain coffee at the strength we like it, along with some sweetened condensed milk to go with it.  My sister had come up with the idea that we should get a post card and send it to my folks with everyone's signature, so after breakfast and snacking, we gathered our stuff up and started heading up the beach to visit some of the gift shops.  G and one of my nieces came with us, as D was going to head out with my brother-in-law to get a second scooter.  I haven't been shooting with my plastic film camera much, so I brought it with me on this trip instead of the digital.  After a lot of walking in the hot sand, and stopping in to quite a few shops, we settled on a couple of post cards.  I found one which is a leaf with a doctor bird painted on it... it immediately caught my eye so I picked it up quick.  We stopped off for some bottles of cold water on our way back to the hotel, and after putting our treasures away we settled in for some lunch.  I ordered the Jamaican stir fry again, just because it is one of my favorite ways to have vegetables and seems to be both light and filling at the same time.

D and my brother in law had headed out for a scooter ride with the other two nieces, they appeared back at the hotel just as our lunch was being served.  After letting my food settle and reapplying sun block, G and I went out into the water to see if we could go hunting for shells in the low waves.  We saw a group of people standing on the edge of the water and quickly realized that the stingray was circling around on our beach.

The dark blob is the stingray... I didn't want to get any closer than that.

Earlier in the day, my niece had gotten ahold of Karl Ricketts, a local artist I'd heard about online.  We've seen a lot of art in the booths around here, however she was keen on buying art directly from the artist, and I like the work of his that I have seen online, so we decided to meet with him so that we could see what he had available.  Apparently he has become quite popular and only had 10 pieces to show us today.  After some browsing and thinking and chatting, my niece bought a piece showing the cliffs, I bought two pieces... one showing sugarcane fields (which G and I both really loved) and another showing the cliffs from Xtabi looking down towards 3 Dives restaurant.

After having spent the day running around and then waiting for the artist, everyone was pretty well worn out.  We decided to take it easy for the night... D fell asleep in the hammock, I was hungry so I went down to the bar and ordered a shrimp rundown (shrimp in a coconut/papaya sauce)  G joined me after a little bit and ordered the same thing, everyone else wandered next door for dinner.  After dinner, I spent a little time reading my book and then headed to bed.