Monday April 7

I tend to wake around 6:00 a.m.... as the sun comes up, the sound outside changes over from the millions of frogs to the birds living on the property.  Usually it is the pigeons I hear first... soft cooing... and then in the background I hear a few high pitched "cheep cheep"s of the bananquits, sometimes punctuated by a loud "Crack" of a mockingbird.   I wandered out to the edge of the restaurant deck where D and I sat sipping our coffee.  I brought my camera this morning, and as luck would have it, a heron flew down and patted across the beach within just a few feet of us.  I followed him with my camera, this shot amused me the most.

"Hmm... this looks like a nice place to stay"

I was in such a hurry to post my blog for April 6th that I failed to mention the paddleboarding.  Yesterday the water stayed calm enough for me to take the paddle board out past the buoy line, so I headed out and spent a long time doing laps up and down the length of the beach in front of the hotel.  Every so often I would kneel or sit on the board to watch schools of fish swimming by below the board, then I would turn, stand back up, and paddle down the beach the other way.  I was very surprised that I never felt any panic while out on the water, even without a life vest.  If I wobbled I would just drop to my hands and swing my legs to either side of the board.  I discovered that I could paddle hard and pick up some decent speed by using my lower arm as a pivot point, and pushing with the upper arm to really dig into the water.  I roasted in the sun a bit, but it was a really good time.  As the action picked up on the water, and speed boats began passing close hauling towables behind,  I decided to come in.  I figured I would surf in on my knees, so I sat down on the board to shorten the paddle handle... but as I unlatched the handle I nearly dropped the end into the water.  I leaned hard to the right to grab the handle piece and tipped completely over.  Even out where I couldn't touch bottom, no life vest and no goggles, I didn't totally panic with my dunk.  I did worry about losing the paddle, but I kept a good grip on it and doggy-paddled back to the board.  The water has been chopping up early every day since Sunday, so I haven't been out on the board again, but hopefully it'll calm down enough to get out there again before we fly home.

Here is Dan early in the morning, before the sun hits the beach and warms everything up.

My typical morning breakfast dress code... I think the sun is bleaching out the gray streak in my hair.

Our company front of chairs being set up for the day.

This is Fruita... our favorite fruit vendor on the beach (and the only one we are buying fruit from on this trip!)  I was taking pictures of birds when I heard her say "aaaaaaany fruit?" and I practically screamed "YES!  PINEAPPLE!"  She greets us with hugs and kisses, and then we paw through her baskets to see what she has available.  Everything is whole and fresh, she peels and cuts up the fruit for us on the spot.

G loves to buy coconuts... Fruita will crack them open and have G drink the coconut water out, then Fruita scrapes all the hard coconut into a bag for us to snack on.  Crunchy and refreshing, this is far better than any potato chip.

Fruita and G, holding one of the tiny and oh-so-sweet bananas

I did not have my camera out for very much of the day today... most of the morning was spent walking down to the big craft market at the end of the beach with my sister and two nieces.  I had never visited before because I'd been told it was a "high pressure" market, and the activity there proved true to what I'd heard.  We arrived just as some of the stands were opening, and everyone wanted us to come look at their particular booth.  Most of the booths had very similar items (wood carvings, sarongs, t-shirts, beaded jewelry, paintings)  Some had more of one item than another, but for the most part there wasn't anything in the market that we couldn't find in any of the booths along the beach which are closer to walk to.  Save for one item... I found a wood carving of a doctor bird which was unique, and I felt it would match my pileated woodpecker at home, so I picked up one of those for myself.  While we were away, D had walked down the street to rent a scooter for quick trips down to the grocery store and a little further exploring.  After we came back from our trek down to the shopping center, we took a little bit of time to regroup with everyone and determine what to do for lunch.

  We gathered together on the beach side of the hotel and wandered up the beach in the afternoon seeking out a place for lunch, however we couldn't find anything we wanted up the beach, so we walked back down and ended up next door at Charella Inn for lunch.  I ordered some grilled fish, which turned out to be pan fried, and had something in it that did not agree with my stomach (such is the life when traveling with allergies)  After having gotten sick, I had a bit of toast in the room to settle my stomach and just showered and relaxed until dinner time.  Our lunch was so late in the day that nobody was terribly hungry by dinner time, and we all mostly snacked on leftovers or picked up some jerk chicken from across the street.  I ordered curry shrimp at the bar, which was really tasty (though I left my camera in the room so I didn't get a photo of it)  In the evening we hung around the bar playing dominoes and enjoying conversation.

Tuesday May 3 - Beach Day and a few videos to share

Prior to leaving we had a few excursion ideas loosely planned out, but without making any real final decisions on specific dates for what outing.  Tyrone's been having a fairly busy schedule himself, driving other people, so we are finding ourselves with several lazy beach days in a row.

Tuesday I woke up early again, around 5:30 a.m., and wandered the grounds with my zoom lens.  I was looking for bats (which roost up under the palm trees early in the morning) however I didn't see any, and the sun was still too low in the sky for decent light anyway.  After a few circles around the grounds, I headed back to the room and curled back up for a short nap.
I woke again shortly after 7, and walked up to the front office to get a form for laundry, when I noticed one of the housekeepers had stepped out of the office door and was taking a photo of something in a small tree.  I paused (always keenly interested in whatever anyone else is trying to photograph) and saw a tiny, egg shaped bit of brown wedged between two branches of a particularly sparse and tiny tree.  Inside the half-egg shape sat - perfectly still - a humming bird.  I lit up, tip-toed back a few steps, and hightailed it back to my room for my camera.

Momma Humming Bird on her nest.  It is in a dark corridor of the gardens, so I had to shoot at 1600 ISO, which on my camera is plenty grainy.

After snapping a few shots to ensure I had good focus, I headed back to the room to join everyone for breakfast.  We went down to Chill Awhile again, and I had the oat porridge this morning with toast, coffee and orange juice.  After breakfast we lathered on the sunscreen, grabbed some bread, and headed out into the water for some fish feeding.  They appear to be so accustom to people feeding them that they tend to surround you as soon as you hit the water, perpetually circling and waiting for a morsel.

 G and Eric, the groundskeeper, tossing some bread to the fish while we wait for our breakfast.

In the 3 feet of water I've noticed 4 different regular fish.  There are smaller plain silver ones, which stay mainly at the bottom of the sea (and will sometimes nip at your toes if you stand in one place for too long)  There are the flat origami looking fish, which swim in large schools about mid-level, surfacing to attack lumps of bread.  These have short fins, the bottom fin tipped with a hint of yellow color.  There are larger flat fish, which look like the former only with longer fins tipped only in black, and they stay a bit deeper. Then there are the spikey guys... long skinny fish which appear to be a brilliant blue on their backs - when viewing them from the surface of the water - but seem to be all silver once you dip below the surface.

 From under the water, this shot shows the plain silvers, the flat guys, and the nose of a spikey guy up at the top.

From the surface looking down, this is what you see

 A year ago she was scared of the water, now she does not hesitate to swim through schools of fish on the beach.

Feeding the fish - in this video G helpfully drops bread directly in front of the camera lens



Here G swims right through the fish


I don't know why pizza kept sounding so good to us - perhaps all the swimming and walking we are doing - but we decided to head up the beach to Chances for lunch.  The pizza is OK... I preferred the plain cheese over what looked like canned toppings on our combination choice - but it was an edible lunch at least.

After lunch we were back in the chairs, alternating between swimming and reading, and chatting with some vendors.

 The Patty Man - for when you want a snack but don't want to leave your beach chair.

We had watched the clouds forming and dissipating all day, then... later than usual... the rain came through.  We decided to call it a day at that point and went in to shower up while the beach was rinsed off.  After cleaning up and checking on a few things online, we walked to the resort next door to check out their dinner menu.  It's something of a French influenced restaurant, with a few traditional Jamaican options available.  I ordered a shrimp curry (which I failed to take photos of) which was pretty good, though not my favorite on the island.  While we had waited for our dinner, I walked around the property's rows of neatly planted palm trees and took a few photos of the sunset.

I have noticed that while the days are generally fairly sweltering, the evenings cool down to a perfect temperature - from roughly 5:00 p.m. on it is comfortable enough outside for me to leave my hair down, and all the way up until bed time I've had no need for a jacket or long-sleeved shirt.

After dinner we walked back to Idle Awhile and hung around the porch and bar until it was time to close up shop and head to bed.

Oh, and D has been working on video montages for his travel blog... this is the first one he put together of our jumping adventures over at Tensing Pen... enjoy! (and please let me know if it won't play... we've had some issues with the videos intermittently not working)