cruise, part 2

On Wednesday we were in port, this time in Puerto Rico. I again woke up early, went out to the balcony (ask Spencer how happy he was with how "loud" I was every morning as I waited for him to wake up) and watched us pull in. It was big-city looking. We had chosen to go to the rainforest on a tour that morning, and Brian and Camille were going to go zip-lining but changed to our excursion after rain was in the forecast.

It DID rain in the rainforest, but it was pretty and my smart husband had packed an umbrella. We could see so far from the top of the mountain, and it was nice to have a break from swimsuits and sunburns for the day.

Spencer started doing this every single time we took a picture...

We also visited the fort in San Juan, and old San Juan. I was really excited about old San Juan, but it was SO HOT and after we got our souvenirs I was pretty much done.

It was also waaay past lunchtime. We took a few pictures, ate at authentic American chains (Subway and Wendy's) and then it started POURING. We headed back to the boat and I got excited for our next destination...this destination was the entire reason I chose this specific cruise.

But back to our Wednesday... we had made reservations to eat in the steakhouse that night. None of us was super impressed with the dining room. It was fine, but nothing spectacular. I'm glad we went to the steakhouse, because the food was MUCH better than the dining room. Except for my meal. I chose lobster ravioli and it was super gross. But the cheesecake was amazing, the caesar salad was fantastic, and the service was perfect, which totally made up for the gross ravioli. Everyone else was very happy with what they got.

This is what 14 oz of cheesecake looks like, in case you were wondering.

On to our next stop...Turks and Caicos (Grand Turk)!

I have heard such phenomenal things about this place, but it is SO expensive to get there/stay there, so when I saw that the cruise went for a day I realized this might be the only way we could set foot there. Our port stay was only 6 hours (11 am-5pm) so we knew we had to make the most of it.

We pretty much ran off the cruise boat and headed outside the gates of the property where we knew we could rent vehicles. We had thought of renting mopeds, realizing the island was pretty small (about 6 miles total) but there were only 3 and they looked more like real motorcycles. So, we rented a Jeep instead, which was really fun. Brian drove, since he has more recently driven on the wrong side of the road.

The guys we rented it from pointed us to a beach where we could rent Hobie Cats, which was Brian's only real desire the entire week. We headed a few miles away to Pillory Point Beach, which turned out to be a great choice. On our drive you could not help but notice the poverty all over the island. I realize this is common on Caribbean islands, but it just seemed like the biggest dichotomy ever...on one side of the car were THE most beautiful beaches I had ever seen, and on the other were the most awful-looking shack homes ever. There were donkeys and wild animals everywhere, the roads were awful (thank goodness we didn't do the motorcycles), and it was just so dirty.

We got to the beach and I was greeted with this. Oh man! It really was this gorgeous, if not more. Definitely the most beautiful beach/water I had ever been to.

It was a resort, but it was a small one, so the crowds were minimal. Right as we got here they announced a snorkeling excursion and we decided to go for it. They would take us out to "the shelf," a section where the ocean floor dropped from 20 feet to 7000, just like that. It supposedly had amazing snorkeling. Before I realized what we were doing we were dropping anchor (Spencer was) and I was in the water. I got panicky for a minute because the fish were literally bumping into me and touching me, thanks to my husband, and to Brian...who were feeding them right next to me. My mask and snorkel were both leaky so once Spencer traded with me (love him!) it became so much better. We wanted to see more cool stuff so we swam a bit away from the boat and the masses of people that had come from the cruise boat on catamarans.

Once we got away a little bit I really enjoyed it. We saw huge schools of fish, made up of over 200 fish, swimming perfectly together. We also saw a sting ray! Beautiful. I know the lady in St. John told us Leinster Bay was the best snorkeling ever, but here in Grand Turk it was pretty darn amazing. We never did see a sea turtle because I think there were too many people. We were glad we didn't come with the cruise excursion...because they ALL had to wear life vests the whole time. :) (Brian and Camille used their new underwater camera and told us they would email us a few good ones they got of us here, so I'll put those up when I get them.)

After snorkeling was done we went back to the beach to hang out. It was just so pretty, and while we had intentions of beach-hopping in our Jeep, we couldn't yet peel ourselves away. Brian got to rent his Hobie Cat. We were all apprehensive to sail with him because he said he thought he knew what he was doing and it had only been 10 years since he took sailing lessons... Camille, being the supportive wife she is, went out with him and once I saw him zipping that boat all over I realized he had had us fooled. We all got a turn, and it was a lot of fun.

Camille and I got pina coladas - the best one I have EVER had, and just relaxed for a while.

We gathered some coral and shells that had washed up in abundance, and decided to head off.

We drove to the lighthouse on the other side of the island, where the water is even more gorgeous (too rocky though), and read about how it is in debate if Christopher Columbus actually landed here instead of Hispaniola. We rushed back to the port with about 20 minutes to spare, in order to shop a bit. We met some people from Utah while getting back on the ship, who we (meaning Spencer) had a run-in with the next day...

We definitely had a hard time leaving Grand Turk. It ended up being the most perfect day. I was so tired that night I barely made it to dinner, but we were just so happy with how it had gone. What a beautiful place.