Recent travels and musings

So it’s been a while since I wrote.

As those of you who may follow my blog know, I just went on a 10 day cruise with my mom, my aunt and her husband, otherwise known as my uncle. We went to the Caribbean! Places I’ve always wanted to see. I love to travel. Traveling to me is meeting new people, experiencing new cultures, tasting new food and learning about the history of the people around me. I have to say that it is hard to do this on a cruise.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a hoot and a holler of a good time on this cruise. What I am saying is that it is difficult to travel to a country I’ve never been before and only spend 5 hours there. We even went to some countries and didn’t eat any food because it was go go go. Get organized to your tour bus, go on your excursion, go back to the boat, leave for the next port. The silver lining of it being, I now have new places on my travel list go check out!

So I will briefly go through some fun highlights!

We rode segweys around Grand Turk with two local tour guides and then I ate some delicious conch fritters with a tasty domestic beer called I-Ain-Gon-Lie. Yum.

We toured the mangroves of Cartagena in Columbia and had a speedy, yet efficient walking tour of the old city. This is a place I could return to! There is a plaza full of museums! I even got to haggle down on the price of some gifts at the Dungeons, a row of stores where people hold tee shirts out in front of your face hollering prices. One vendor even used his lighter to show my aunt that the necklace he was trying to sell her wasn’t plastic.

We actually traversed the Gatun Locks of the Panama Canal in our cruise ship. This day was fascinating to learn so much about the locks. We even got to check out the new Agua Clara Locks that have technology that helps them save and reuse water more than the original locks do. Our tour guide, who shared a name with one of my fave baseball players, Asdrubal took us on a rainforest walk and pointed out animals and different plants. We did the same thing in a little boat on Gatun Lake. A sloth even put on a show for us!

We zip-lined in Costa Rica! I saw some howler monkeys in the trees, and it sounded like they were laughing at us.

We visited the Dunn’s River Falls in Ocho Rios and I opted to climb it with a group of people from our tour. The water was so clear and the temperature was perfect. Holding hands with people I had never met before, we climbed up the Falls as a team.

Those are just some highlights from our port days! We had great fun on the ship too. From trivia to bingo to movies under the stars and dance competitions, we laughed and laughed and laughed some more. The food was delicious too, and we even went to high tea on the ship.

All in all, talk about a lovely adventure with family and great memories too.

Where are we going next guys?