vacation day 8: scuba diving

Today we went scuba diving. It was a nice day for it because it was cloudy and periodically rainy, but that doesn't matter much when you're u deer water. Since we couldn't take pictures of the cool things that we saw, we made the hand motions afterwards.

We dove twice. The first dive I kind of was having a hard time...I couldn't sink and needed help staying down. but we got to play with a sea spider, saw some eels waiting for food with their big teeth, and lots of iridescent fish and coral. I also got to scare some sea anemones. The second dive went much better. I still didn't sink very well, but I also didn't float right to the top either. I figured out how to sink somewhat, so could control my position a lot more.

We saw a huge sea turtle. I have no idea what it was doing, but it looked it like was just trying to climb the coral.



We also saw another eel. this one was much larger than the others and was moving around.



We also saw a lobster.

vacation day 7: kayaking

Today we went to explore the island that you can see from our room. (It's the one between the two trees below.)




We made it!



It turns out there is an abandoned building on the island. we explored for a little bit and then returned home. Going back was much harder because if we stopped paddling for too long we started going the wrong way. I'll admit, my arms are a bit sore now.

Just as we got back to our room and stepped into the pool it started to rain.



It was rainy on and off for the rest of the day, but it didn't really interfere with our plans and reminded us how beautiful this place is...even in the rain.

Vacation day 6: zipping

Today we went for a gondola and tip line tour through the rain forest. I'll admit, we were expecting longer zip lines than what they had, but it was still a lot of fun. Our guide also knew a ton about the rain forest and animals in it, so it was interesting to learn some of that information.

I'm not posting many pictures of the rain forest itself because the camera just didn't do it justice.












And of course, we spent time reading and relaxing.

Vacation day 5: rain

Today the weather forecast on Ben's phone called for rain all day.

The above picture is the closest we got to any rain. :)

Today I also had some delicious chocolate croissant things:

It was another relaxing day...a lot of swimming, eating, napping, and reading.

We also decided to play Catan the card game again. We played it all the time during our honeymoon, but had to shelve it about four years ago because we got too competitive about it. Well, today we took out one of the cards that seemed to determine who was going to win. I thought it worked well, but then I was also the winner. We'll have to try a few more games with the rules and see how it goes.

After dinner we went star gazing. It was actually a little sad because we only found one constellation that was familiar. I also found a lot of triangles. We did try and use a star chart app to help us find constellations, but it just wasn't quite working.

(It's the night sky. No, I don't think you can see anything in the picture.)

Vacation day 4: horses

Today we went on a horse back ride. It was nice because there was a place by the ocean that served as a stopping/eating point, and allowed us to get off the horses often.











Here's the beach. This is my artist shot of the day.



We also got to swim with the horses. I think this is a once in a life experience for both of us...riding bareback is so uncomfortable! It also seemed like something the horses should enjoy because they got
to cool down, but Ben's horse sounded like it was growling the whole time (which might have been a good thing, but it sounded really weird).






Although most of the time wasn't this bad, we both felt like we were going to fall off a time or two!

Vacation day 3: relaxing

Today was a relaxing day. It pretty much went like this: eat, swim, read, swim, read, swim, read, eat, red, nap, swim, read, swim, read, swim, read, eat, read.

I know, a rough life.

Housekeeping came twice today (which was rather unexpected).



This is the view from our deck.



Here is Ben reading. Behind him you can see the outdoor shower.



Our pool



The sunset



A crab! They're hard to spot, but they have holes in the sand all over the beach.



Our villa from the beach side.

Vacation day 2

After getting up way too early this morning, remade it to the airport and our flights without any serious issues. hurray!

Then I got my surprise...the airport was on the south of the island, and so we took a helicopter ride up to the north part of the island, where our hotel is. Oh, I've wanted to ride in a helicopter for several years now. The roads are really bad and we got to see how the island looks like from the skies, so it was really the perfect time to do such a thing! It was a lot of fun.













PS. I know this is a day late but the Internet is down in our room...hopefully to be fixed soon, but we didn't realize there was another place we could go until later.