Southern Caribbean Cruise Day Five

CURACAO ISLAND

We arrived early in the morning at the very colorful island of Curacao. We had a very full day planned with an excursion from the ship. Once we got onto the tour bus we headed to the other side of the island and went to the home/museum of Yubi Kiridongo. He is known on the island and throughout the world as "The Bumper Man". He is an artist that uses recycled items, mostly car bumpers and parts, as his medium of choice. Here is a picture of his very colorful house.

We were welcomed into his yard and introduced to Yuri under this huge canopy of plastic crates. Amazing that he had them all wired together using old wiring and it provided great shade and was a very "happy" place.

He had tons of stuff that he had created using all sorts of things. We got to tour inside and outside of his house. The yard gave new meaning to "yard art". He decorated every blank space with some creation. Here are my favorites.
Here we are with Yuri. He was even asked to create for the the past Olympics.


Next we headed off to the Hato Caves. These are enormous caves that many of the slaves used to hide from the plantation owners. They are really big and even have the fire soot marks on the ceilings from the fires used by the slaves while they were in hiding, sometimes for many months.

Southern Caribbean Cruise Days Three & Four

AT SEA

This was a sea day and very relaxing.  Don worked most of the morning on a picture directory for the people on the Martin Cruise.  It was a lot of fun to see old acquaintances and put names to faces.

I went to the scrapbooking class and saw Ashley and Yamari there.  Afterwards we got tickets for the ice show on board.  

We took advantage of the free day to lay out by the pool for a little while and then got ready for "Formal Night".  

DAY FOUR - ARUBA

We decided to go scuba diving in Aruba.  For two reasons - we were coming up on our two year mark for diving and wanted to keep our certification curren

t and secondly they had Nitrox.  (A higher concentration of oxygen for divers).  We had a blast.  It was great to do a wreck dive in fairly shallow water.  The Antilla Wreck was awesome and we were both glad we went diving in Aruba.  

Here is a picture of the Aruba coastline from the scuba boat.

Here is Michelle with our Dive Masters - Silvae and Nathalie

After our dive we went back to the ship for lunch and then headed into town to buy the Gouda Cheese.  What a deal and yes you can bring it back into the US as long as the wax isn't broken.  

Southern Caribbean Cruise Day Two

ALL ABOARD

We arrived at the San Juan, Puerto Rico airport at about 10am and caught a taxi to the ship. The paperwork all said that we couldn't board until 2pm, but we were on board, eating lunch and making new friends by 1:00 pm.

Here are our first friends of the cruise:  Yamari and Ashley. Yamari's family (27 people) were on the cruise to celebrate her quince (15th birthday).  They are from Puerto Rico.  We saw their family many times throughout the week and absolutely loved seeing them and exchanging emails.  

Our suitcases were delivered to our cabin by 3:00pm which is unheard of, but we were not complaining a single bit.  We unpacked and set up our stuff.  

The best cruise packing idea I got off the internet was for this shoe organizer.  You hang it on the inside of the bathroom door in your cabin and put your toiletries in it.  It was the best $5 investment and saved a lot of time searching for brushes, toothpas

te, hair gel, etc. 

After unpacking we decided to head down to the Royal Promenade for a little walk.  Of course, they had the Cafe Promenade open so we stopped by for a little dessert. That's where we met Yuri, from Peru.  I didn't realize before that the sandwiches, scones, pizza and desserts at the Cafe Promenade were included in our cruise.  I thought you had to pay extra for them.  Needless to say, we stopped by many times during the week to visit Yuri and have a little dessert.

Southern Caribbean Cruise Day One

We just got back from the Martin Cruise and we had a great time visiting with the Martin family and the other Martin dealers.  It was wonderful to be cruising in the Caribbean again.  We were on the Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas ship and it was awesome.  We had great service and the food was outstanding.  

While waiting for our red-eye flight at LAX we met a really neat lady named Alveta.  We visited the whole time and were so happy to see her at the "Just Imagine" shop on St. Thomas.  It makes you understand just how big the ship was when we didn't see here for the entire week, until the last day.

We came prepared for our flight, using eye masks, ear plugs, pillows and blankets we were able to catch a few zzzzs while on the 7 hour flight.

Give Away to the First Five

Another fun blog game! (I'm trying to see if anyone reads my blog - so here we go. )

The first five people to comment to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It might take a few weeks.
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. I don't even have a clue what it's going to be - until I know who you are.

Just a fun way to find out if anyone is reading this blog.

Don's Green Thumb

Don has been busy at work, but has also been making very good use of his time at home.  Upon our return from our mission he was called to be the Family Preparedness Specialist - he loves this kind of stuff.  Actually we both love this kind of stuff.

I've been the gardener most of our married life, but Don has recently become very involved in it. This is an amazing thing, since he's allergic to grass and a lot of plants.  So allergic that we had the grass in our backyard replaced with cement a couple of years ago.  While on our mission his health dramatically increased and now he is in the garden every day.  Oh, but then the problem of gophers and no ground to till was not going to stop him.  We call it growing "food". We go to the plant store to look for "food".  It's actually quite fun.

This has been a great joy for me to share this time outside in the yard with him.

His project this week - old whiskey barrels.  We bought four of them and he put in drainage holes with tubing, wheels on the bottom so they roll around and then he painted them white for me.  They are so beautiful and watertight. 

We planted tomatoes in all of them.  Roma tomatoes, Early Girl tomatoes and cherry tomatoes.  

Then it rained, and rained and rained some more.  Then we had a really cold night, so they got to have covers on them that night.  

Here they are tonight.  Still alive and so in about three months if you come visit, we will probably be having something with tomatoes in it.

By the way, lettuce and squash are next.  We'll see what he comes up with next.  As for me, I'm still working on the weeds and dead growth in the back yard.  My strawberries in the front are doing great and we should see a nice harvest this year.