Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Swimming with Turtles

On the third day of our sailing adventure we anchored at Tobago Cays for beach time and snorkeling.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was this particular day, when we got to swim/snorkel with sea turtles. They are so beautiful and peaceful.

The water was churned up that day, because of the ridiculously high winds we encountered all week long.  I had almost given up on seeing a turtle at all, when I ran into about four of them! I followed this one for a while until he got tired of being followed and ditched me!

 

Monday, January 14, 2013

Grenada

Greetings!

I have so many pictures to share from our recent trip to Grenada, I figured, "why not start another blog?", since the two I already have are apparently not consuming enough of my time.

Grenada is beautiful. The Grenadines, where we went sailing, are incredible. So many beaches, so little time. The Caribbean has so much to offer - I could stay there for the rest of my life if I could only afford it! (They'd have to import some good beer, but that's another blog.)

As for the island of Grenada itself, we found it to be a welcoming, beautiful island.  Like most Caribbean countries, there is much poverty, but we did see many very nice homes.  As far as tourism is concerned, they need a better marketing strategy to compete with more popular places.  Would we return?  Perhaps.  Would I recommend it?   Yes, we had a great time.

We loved the various islands in the Grenadines, on the sailing portion of the trip.  My favorite was Mayreau, just because Saltwhistle Bay is a perfect beach. I could have stayed there for days.  The sailing trip was both good and bad.  Weather played a factor in that, as well as having shipmates we had never met, living in cramped quarters and dealing with personalities.  We did pretty well, but I would think twice before doing this specific sail again.  (I'll do a blog post with a trip review in a couple of days.) 

Now, on to the pictures!!

The first slide show is from our first few days, land-based on Grenada. 
The second slide show is the sailing trip and then the remaining two days on land.

A bit of background for when you get to the "Fort Matthew Pictures":  

The Fort was built from 1779 – 91, as a siege fort to withstand an invading army for a period of 6 months. In the 1970's through 1987 it was used as "lunatic asylum". Now there is a small bar that operates there. Had a kind of eerie feel to it, especially when bats started flying at night!!

And in the second video at the end, we attended "Fish Friday" in the fishing village of Goyuave - home of Kirani James, Olympic Gold Medalist.  The town sets up a small street festival every Friday night with music and every kind of fish you can imagine.  It was one of my favorite parts of the trip.