Traveling with Emily!

Snorkeling Trip

We had a pretty fun day. We started this morning with a snorkeling trip that we organized yesterday with a guy named Kevin. Bill has now dubbed him Sketchy Kevin. He told us he would take us to a beautiful snorkel place with lots of coral and showed me a picture that was probably taken in Hawaii. We got to the beach and he introduced us to his brother who came over with two fishing harpoons. A younger guy swam out to get a very small fishing boat that is clearly their fishing boat and not designed for tourists. There was no water or snacks provided and I’m very glad we had our own snorkel gear because the stuff stored in a compartment under the boat bench did not look sanitized. They dropped us off in the water near some volcanic rocks that must equal ”corals” for Kevin and we snorkeled in pretty murky water for about an hour and a half.

Despite this, it was still a fun trip. It was a good day to be in the water and it gave both of us a chance to try our our new equipment. Bill has new fins and I have new goggles and snorkel. My new equipment is fantastic! The goggles don’t fog up or cause a bruise on my forehead. Bill is going diving tomorrow and I’m going along to snorkel and we are hoping for better water quality. We saw several puffer fish, a couple of starfish and a variety of other smaller fish so it wasn’t a bad trip today. Costa Rica isn’t the best place for snorkeling but I already knew that.

This afternoon, we went boogie boarding again. That’s super fun but it takes a lot of energy. I got sunburned this morning and that always makes me tired. We ate supper at a little restaurant right on the beach. I had garlic shrimp and Bill had fried fish and we watched the sun go down while we ate. I had guanabana juice with my fish. It’s a fruit of some sort but I have no idea what kind. The juice was white and looked like milk but tasted like some sort of fruit juice. It was good.

I’ve had lots of opportunities to speak Spanish here. In most places, people prefer to speak their good English rather than listen to my mediocre Spanish. Here, they would much rather deal with my mediocre Spanish than speak English. I’ve gotten a lot of compliments on my Spanish, but I think it’s only because people are relieved that they don’t have to speak English. A shop owner I talked to earlier wanted to know if Bill spoke Spanish. Bill is darker complected than me and I think the guy though I had married a Mexican and learned Spanish that way. Bill wants to learn Spanish so he can tell people I met him in Mexico and he’s trying to get a Green Card. Every evening while I’m typing this blog, Francie, the server at our restaurant, comes over to talk to me. Tonight she’s wearing a Santa hat and a string of Christmas lights around her neck. She’s super nice and I’ve enjoyed the conversations.

I talked to a shop owner earlier today about the mask situation here. There is a mask mandate for all of CR. Shop owners are required to wear them and required to make customers wear them. If the police come by and see people without masks, they fine the shop owners and can shut down businesses for 15 days. Everything here is open air, even the grocery stores usually have the front of the store mostly open. Nothing is air conditioned so it’s scorching hot for the employees who are wearing masks all day. The shop owner I talked to also said that almost everyone here is vaccinated and can get boosters so he’s really frustrated with the continued rules. Lots of shops are already struggling with low numbers of tourists and large, repeated fines or closures are financially disastrous.

I think Bill is working on some pictures he took with his new GoPro so I’ll add pictures to his post once he sends them to me.

Let’s boogie!

Hello faithful readers!

So today I hear you are getting an actual post from Emily, those travel days are hard and it can be a daunting task to have to think when you feel a lot like sleeping! I’m probably more used to typing things up when I’m tired because I have to do it all the time at work. She also has to proofread mine and then post it so it is a team effort to bring these posts to you. I appreciate her making sure that I haven’t messed up!

We were able to get out this morning and do a little exploring!! It’s nice to be able to just walk off and see what goes on and what’s around to see. Basilito is small and Emily says it’s less developed than where she goes a couple hours south in Samara. I think that it’s nice that it isn’t super developed. There are a few resorts to the south a few hundred meters, and a bit past that.

The beach is large! Plenty of room for everyone. We did have to cross the bridge that our hotel is 200 meters south of. The bridge is a one lane steel construction bridge that is not special except for the fact it seems to be the only one and there is a fair amount of traffic that uses it along with people. There are a handful of shops/tiendas and small restaurants/sodas. There are a few regular restaurants/restaurante. I’m looking forward to trying the sodas, they are supposed to be more local type places, the food is supposed to be good, kind of like when on the road stopping at truck stops because the food is supposed to be good. I think there should be plenty of places to try here and if we need anything we should be able to find it. There is a little bigger town about 8 kilometers north of here we may have to check out if we run out of things to do, though we may end up there during our excursions anyway. We have started planning what we would like to do as far as those go. I already have four days of scuba lined up that I’m looking forward to. I’m going to do two tank dives, which is just two dives, one after the other and they move locations. I hope to see 8 different places. Emily is lined up to come with me to snorkel for three of them. We are going to snorkel tomorrow with Kevin’s Tours in the morning.

So we picked this area of Costa Rica because of the Concha beach, it is supposed to have decent snorkeling from shore according to the travel book and several other blogs that I read. So today we made our way to playa concha after lunch. It is a bit of a walk but not bad. The sea was a bit rough to try out snorkeling there, big waves. We’ve decided we will try some morning when it should be a little calmer. The beach is basically sea shells, little tiny bits of sea shells that get everywhere! I’ve had some chaffing, thought it was the elastic but it was shells.

In the meantime the playa Brasalito is the closer beach and has some good waves but not as intense. We spent a fair amount of time there just in the water, then we got boogie boards!! We then worked on riding the waves! We both enjoyed that. We’re hoping to become more proficient at that before we leave. We won’t be able to bring them home without it being a pain so we will donate them either to the hotel or some kids on the beach. We will probably turn some kid into a wave chaser that lives with it’s parents with dreadlocks and smokes weed a lot, who knows though maybe that’s their best life anyway?

We had only ate at the hotel’s restaurant until tonight. It has good food, fair prices that always comes out fancy looking. Tonight though we tried the Indian restaurant a few places down from us. It was very good. I had a chili garlic prawn dish with some lemon coconut rice. Both did not disappoint! I could eat the prawns again. It was a bit expensive, comparable to dinner for two at Red Lobster though.

For high season there doesn’t seem to be an extreme number of people. That’s a plus, things are booked up though so I am not sure if there’s just limited resources or if the bigger resorts down the road monopolize all the excursions. At least the sunset catamaran tours. It seems to be the one to get and it’s full.

I think that I mentioned when we were in Jamaica that I got new sandals, Hoka One One, I definitely will be going back to the Teva’s. They seem very nice and I may like them if we go whitewater rafting but they are not open enough and they have an insole with traction that is rough on bare feet. I like these type of sandals for these travels because I can wear them without socks for casual and then if I need to wear the pants with the zip off legs for certain things I can match socks so it looks like they are all one color and just shoes. I can’t recommend Hoka One One.

So the hotel as I mentioned is a little more rustic than we were expecting, it is still nice. It appears that they have been doing a lot of exterior painting as it is in good shape and some looks newer. It isn’t a new hotel though and that adds charm but contributes to the rustic feeling.

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Hot Water

So, as it turns out, our hotel does have hot water. I almost froze last night in the shower, then Bill told me that his shower water was scalding hot. The hot and cold water handles are switched here. I tried both of them, but apparently, I didn’t let the hot water one run long enough before I gave up and assumed that the water was going to be cold. I’m really glad he figured this out. I probably would have taken cold showers for the whole two weeks otherwise.

We spent the morning trying to organize tours. This has not been as easy as I hoped, but we scheduled a snorkeling trip for tomorrow and the guy we are going with also does turtle watching, jet skis, ATV tours and a number of other things. I’m going with Bill when he does diving so I can snorkel.

We walked over to Playa Conchal today. It gets rave reviews for white beaches made out of tiny shell pieces and clear water. It’s supposed to be good for snorkeling. It is an interesting beach with no sand. It really is made entirely out of tiny shell pieces and the water is also full of tiny shell pieces. It’s also the most dangerous water I’ve ever been in. There are no breaking waves, but the incoming and outgoing waves interact in a way that drags you under and makes it very hard to get back up on the beach. Visibility is low because of all the shells in the water. We didn’t stay there long. Instead, we came back to our beach, Playa Brasilito. It’s not as pretty, but it’s a huge stretch of almost empty beach with very friendly water. It’s really similar to Samara where I usually go. Bill and I bought boogie boards at a souvenir shop and had a blast trying to ride waves. It was really fun and I think we will use the boards a lot. It’s not easy to catch the waves so you can ride them to the shore, but it’s super fun when you hit one the right way.

Brasilito is a lot like our hotel – more rustic than I expected. It’s not as well developed as Samara, but we’ve found several promising restaurants and some grocery stores and little shops. There is only one ATM and it’s apparently out of money right now so we are happy we brought plenty of cash for the time being. I’m hoping the ATM will be refilled on Monday. If not, we may get a taxi to take us to a larger town with more ATM options.

English is not quite as common here as in Samara either. I don’t think the American expat community is as large here and the tourism industry isn’t as developed. It helps a lot to speak Spanish. People will try to speak English but they prefer Spanish. It’s been great practice for me.

Last night, dessert came with our meal so Bill and I ordered brownies. I asked the server, Francie, what the Spanish word for brownie was. She told me that Costa Ricans use the word brownie but brownies come from the US and they are almost always associated with marijuana. It was pretty funny. I asked her if she was giving me extra special brownies but she said I was getting regular chocolate cake instead. Queque chocolate also comes from English with a Spanish spelling.

For supper, we went to a really good Indian restaurant down the road a little ways. It was pricy, but the food was delicious and it was a very elegant, outdoor restaurant. The owner is Indian, but the servers were Costa Rican. They spoke to me in Spanish in very soft voices with masks on, so I had a really hard time hearing what they were saying. Otherwise, it was a lovely dinner.

There is a resident dog at the hotel. There are signs in several places asking people not to feed the wildlife, but our server for breakfast and lunch was feeding the birds and the iguanas who frequent our outdoor balcony restaurant. We had a large fly-like insect in our room today. We though about catching a small iguana and using it as bug control for whatever our gecko doesn’t eat.

Right now, I’m having a cup of tea in a nice sitting area with comfortable chairs in the balcony restaurant. There’s a breeze so it’s very pleasant. Bill and I are considering swimming in the pool for a while. I should probably work off some of my Indian food. I think Bill is working on an update too.

I think Bill has a few pictures but we haven’t taken many yet. Hopefully we’ll have some interesting ones before too long.

Miami not Your-ami

Once again I’m traveling with Emily! We’re in tropical Costa Rica on the Pacific coast. We are just a short distance away from the beach in a local boutique hotel, https://conchalcr.com/They have a fantastic website, it is a little more rustic in person. (Note from Emily: It’s definitely more rustic than expected. I just took a shower and there’s no hot water. That’s not uncommon in Costa Rica but based on the hotel website, I had expected hot water. It was chilly!)

It’s going to be a nice place to stay though I think. It’s clean and a good value. Not to mention that it is not a big corporate owned place. We do have in room bug control, I will have to get a picture of our gecko. There is a restaurant here that I had read was a good one. One of my favorite things so far about this hotel is the address, 200 meters south of the bridge, I have to find out if this bridge is impressive or the only one here.
It’s been a long travel day, up early and in the air just after 7. We had a very short layover in Miami, I was able to get a couple of hot sandwiches for us while they were boarding the plane, I bought a lady a cup of hot water for .50 plus tax because she hadn’t expected to be charged and I was not wanting to wait for her to go get money. They were fairly good and seemed fantastic since I only had Kodiak protein/granola bar for breakfast and those weird cookies on the plane. (Note from Emily: I was so happy he was able to get us sandwiches. It would have been an especially long trip with no food.) When we arrived in Miami there was a boy in the row in front of us that told his sister it was “Miami not your-ami”, I decided I was going to have to use that.

So far I’ve seen a lot of sugar cane, goats and cows that have the look of water buffalo but white. I may have to ask someone or google what kind they are. There has been some palm trees but we haven’t seen the jungles yet. It’s getting dark so we will have to explore tomorrow! Time for supper.

Back Home!

Hello everyone from Iowa!

I’ve been home a day and some hours on each side of it.
I enjoyed getting to spend a little time after Jamaica in Dexter with Emily’s family and friends at church. I told Emily that we should try and do that again if I get enough time.

We had a wonderful fish fry with the fixings after church. I may have over did it at lunch because all I could eat at supper time was a banana Sunday that actually had more than one piece of banana in it! I don’t remember if I mentioned that I started to crave bananas. While in Jamaica they had banana French toast (one piece of banana), banana pastry (no pieces of banana or banana flavor), banana sunday (one piece of banana) banana bread ( I had a piece but it didn’t taste like banana bread to me) and a fresh fruit area with no bananas. I did see bunches of bananas hanging in the little towns on the way to and from the airport.

Monday, Emily and I went to the new aquarium in St Louis at the old Union Station. They turned the station into a very nice entertainment area. Excellent use of the facility. They had freshwater and saltwater tanks. It was very nice. They do tickets in groups every 15 minutes, so you do have to plan for that. I recommend ordering online before you go and pick a time that works for you.
There is a ropes course there that we will have to try. We did the mirror maze but it wasn’t very big and a bit disorienting for some. Kids probably like it though.
Outside they had a big Ferris wheel and some carnival games. If you go into the soda fountain and candy shop they will validate your parking at the candy counter for three hours. The aquarium was just over an hour to go through with watching a talk about sloths and touching the stingrays. The maze was about 5 minutes.

I had a busy day yesterday getting caught up on things around the house. For all the rain while I was gone, my yard wasn’t too bad. I did have to go over it twice to make it look nice.
I still have until Sunday before I go back to being a paramedic so I’m going to see about camping with a friend on his property outside of Gibbs, Mo. It needs a lot of cleanup. It’s a good place for riding my atv, doing some shooting (I have a rifle that needs sighted in) and having a campfire after mowing, picking up garbage and trimming trees.

I’m glad that I was able to get a chance to visit and meets some of our readers!

Back in the US

We made it back to the US! I’m not impressed with Southwest in Jamaica. Getting checked in was a disorganized mess, nothing was clearly marked. We had to keep asking if we were in the right spot. The staff were friendly, the Jamaican people always were that we dealt with.

Our travel agent booked us in the VIP lounge, it does have better A/C than the rest of the airport but the food was terrible. I didn’t eat mine and Emily said after that they were the worst chicken tenders she’d ever had and hoped she didn’t get sick. They do have a open bar if that’s your thing.

Lining up for boarding was equally chaotic as check in. Leaving, both airports had very nice line up areas with signs, Jamaica was a free for all after they gave your boarding group. Maybe Sean-Pierre will be getting a little email from me about maybe getting that fixed since he lobbied for the nonstop service from the Midwest to Jamaica.

I’m glad that I was able to get away and do some traveling. Jamaica wasn’t high on my list of places before and unless I was planning on taking advantage of the the diving there I don’t foresee going back.

We’re going to be a little adventurous here in Missouri before I go back home. We are planning to visit some museums in St. Louis.

We had a pleasant chat with a couple in the shuttle from the resort, made the hour and a half go by. They had done some interesting travel.

Our flight wasn’t bad, southwest doesn’t seem to have planes with video screens in the seat backs. Three and a half hour flight could use a movie. I loaded Spiderman Homecoming on my phone before we left the resort and I was glad that I did. Emily was able to watch it on my phone, we had to share headphones because I have forgotten to put a splitter in my travel bag. My otterbox case has a belt clip on it that works well to clip to the tray table while it’s in the upright position.

For those looking for travel tips, one of the things I do find handy for myself, is my old EMS work shorts. The leg/ cargo pockets have zippered areas that I use for my passport and wallet. One on each side. If I don’t use those I have my Columbia pants with zip off legs that pack easy and are versatile. They also have leg/ cargo pockets, though one is zippered and the other just velcro. I never did use the Columbia pants as we never were able to schedule a night at the fancy restaurant on property because of our different activities, the days it was open and it just didn’t seem worth doing after it was all said and done.

Last Full Day in Negril

Well everyone this trip is winding down. It’s bittersweet, I will be happy to be back home in the near future since I can’t just stay on vacation. I suppose it would be good to go back to work and start looking at what we will do for our next adventure.
We both tested negative for covid so we didn’t get contaminated while here, hopefully it stays that way. We have a direct flight back to St. Louis tomorrow, I’m curious as to how many people are in Jamaica going on our flight. We have seen a few people from Iowa here and a lot from the south.

I do want to take an opportunity to mention that our bags are holding up and that we were able to bring enough clothes for the trip. Emily did need to have some laundry done while we were here, she had planned on that. It is a good option to remember when you are traveling, most hotels will do laundry for you overnight. You don’t have to pack everything when you go!

We tried a new Coppertone Sport sunscreen, it works okay and stays on in the water well, I am not a fan. It is very greasy and worse when you are in the water. I like the Equate brand that is a knock off of the Neutrogena ultra sheer. It has kept us from getting bad sunburns. It’s nice because it is a stick so easy to put on and it doesn’t need to be put with your liquids. Sunscreen can be very expensive in sunny locations, it’s better to bring it with you.

Another product endorsement from me, Nexcare waterproof bandages. I recommend carrying these in with your travel items. They stay on! I would say extremely well, but that may imply that at some point the come off. So far the one I put on a blister from the flippers is still on. I have dove a few times with flippers, swam in the pool, sat in the jacuzzi and showered multiple times with it. Wearing shoes has not rubbed it off either. They were a bit more expensive than some of the other waterproof ones at Walmart, definitely worth it. Get several sizes and keep them on hand.

This morning after breakfast we took a kayak and went out to Emily’s snorkel spot and spent some time looking around. We seen starfish and a big ray that was hiding in the sand. I did see one lion fish. On the way back Emily swam the whole way!
We then hung out in the pool just to relax and not be pushed around by the waves before getting ready for lunch.

The Couple’s resort does not allow the staff to take tips and they watch the staff on camera and they will get in trouble if they are seen doing so. I know that the website says that everything is included, including tips. Hopefully they pay the staff well. The staff has been very friendly and helpful. They are very service oriented. I would like to see a better selection of snacks available all the time. Maybe that’s part of getting the minibar stocked? We didn’t need anything in ours and you have to contact someone to get things restocked. I know some hotels have snacks with the minibar. We should have gotten a list maybe.
Side note, we had the opportunity to chat with an employee here and it does not sound like they are paid well here. It’s possible the pay rate hasn’t changed for ten years. They get paid per day if what we were told is true. While we don’t plan on stopping our travels we do feel that we need to look at traveling more ethically, try and make choices that will benefit a local over a big corporation. There is a lot of money that gets spent here but it goes to the big companies that run the resorts which is not good in a place like this that is a very tourist centered economy.

This afternoon we went down and worked out. I did a chest and abs with a side of bi’s and tri’s while Emily was outside on the gym deck doing hers. It was good timing again as nobody was in the gym and I didn’t have to wait on anyone for equipment. My bandage was still stuck but the bottom had come loose so I did remove it. Since I won’t be wearing flippers anymore I should be go without it.

After Emily was supposed to be doing Spanish but the internet here isn’t good for streaming. We did talk with Sharon and David from back home and it’s cold there. I seen my friend posted that he was worried about his crops. Hopefully it won’t get too cold.

I will probably need to do a post after I get back to Iowa and can go through a bunch of videos and get some pictures from my dives. There will be more sea life to share. I may have to upgrade my camera situation in the future. I still recommend getting a cheap gopro knock-off for using on trips. Mine has worked really well for $20. I do think that it was not rated for whatever the maximum depth I was at. It has a little wiggle in the latch now when I get past 15 feet. It will probably pop open one of these days if I keep diving with it. I will use it for snorkeling and other water sports that don’t involve diving very deep.

Our dinner companions from the other night, Sally and Sean, they took a trip to Rick’s Cafe and Sally was injured jumping off the cliff. I’m not sure how she is, they brought her back here in the boat and took her out on a backboard and after a while there was an ambulance here. I know she was in a lot of pain. The resort makes you sign a disclaimer and tells you that they don’t recommend jumping off any cliffs. We never had the opportunity to do that but I am guessing that we would have if we would have taken that trip. We hope she gets well soon.

I have about finished repacking my Hynes Eagle bag. I just have a few things left to put in it in the morning and I will be ready to leave. We have to go get on the shuttle at 9:15, our flight is nonstop to St. Louis (thanks for lobbying for that flight to our other new friend Sean-Pierre!). We should be in Missouri around supper time!

After dinner we walked on the beach and then went for a swim. I got some pictures uploaded from our snorkeling adventure this morning. Emily got her packing done.

Hope everyone is well!!

Stingray

Bill and I did a really fun snorkeling trip this morning. We took a two person kayak out to my snorkel location, and parked it in the cove I found. The guy who gave us the kayak told us to stay in an area where they could see us, and technically we did that. Bill spotted a huge stingray napping partially covered in the sand. It was spectacular! We could also see where it had been sleeping in other places. It left indentations in the sand, especially with it’s long tail. It watched us carefully as we floated over it, but it didn’t move. I sort of wanted to dive down to look at it more closely, but it’s not called a stingray for nothing so I decided to forgo my natural tendency to try to make friends with animals that prefer to be left alone. I also saw a big puffer fish, and Bill found a pretty large lion fish. The lion fish are beautiful but they are invasive in the Caribbean, which apparently causes problem for the native fish. At lunch, we met a couple who had hunted some during their dive this morning and the resort was cooking the fish they speared. They said the fish were good.

On the way back from snorkeling, Bill paddled the kayak so I could swim back. That was a lot of fun! It’s not safe for me to swim in the open water with out him kayaking beside me because of the boat traffic. The boats would never see a snorkeler and it would be a very dangerous opportunity to get run over. It is safe to swim beside the kayak. Boats can easily see it and avoid it. It was a pretty long swim in open water, but it was a calm day, there were hardly any boats making waves, and I enjoyed the open water swim. I saw a small ray, several huge starfish and some crabs. I also found some sunglasses that someone lost. I had been wanting to snorkeling in some deeper areas, so I appreciated Bill’s willingness to kayak beside me. I’m a good swimmer but I’m slow compared to the kayak. I’m thinking about getting some small fins. I don’t generally like fins and I always turn them down when we snorkel with the group, but some small ones designed for the kind of activities I enjoy might be okay. I frog swim instead of flutter swimming (legs behind you kicking like scissors), and frog swimming seems harder with fins.

This afternoon, we both worked out at the gym. Bill did weights inside and I did a variety of exercises on the yoga deck. It was hot and humid and I loved it! It was a good workout. I was supposed to have Spanish class at 4:30 but my Spanish teacher was late and my internet connection was bad, so my friend, who does Spanish with me, and I decided to wait until next week when I’m back in the US.

We’ve talked to some people in the last couple of days who have told us what it’s really like to work here. The resorts pay people by the day, and their wage depends on how many guests are at the resort. They get paid very little for working very hard and they aren’t allowed take tips. All the staff seem happy and they smile all the time but most of them are really struggling to make ends meet. It’s gotten worse because of Covid, but it’s like this all the time.

In the future, Bill and I are going to look for more ethical ways to travel. In our other vacations, I felt like we were contributing to the local economy and local people. This time, we are making Couple’s Resorts even richer, and they are putting almost nothing back into the economy. The resorts dominate everything here. They snatch up the best land, they keep tourists on the resorts so small business owners can’t engage with the tourist economy, and I’m sure that they control the government too. People want to move up economically, but there are almost no opportunities here to do that. I really recommend that people find a different kind of vacation. Avoid Couples and Sandals. Bill and I hope that we can make some good recommendations in our future trips.

Fire Show

I have very little to report today and it looks like Bill did a long post, so I’m going to do a combination post again today. Bill went diving this morning. I had planned to go snorkeling but the weather wasn’t great for that. It was windy and choppy this morning and it looked like rain all afternoon. It never actually rained, so I could have gone, but since I have to swim or paddle board to my snorkel location, I decided not to chance it. Hopefully I can go tomorrow. I spent the morning in a hammock listening to a podcast, then we took out a catamaran for a little while. We swam in the pool this afternoon. Dinner was on the beach tonight then a fire show that was neat. Bill got good pictures of that. There was supposed to be a dance party after the fire show but no one showed up, which was disappointing.

Bill’s post and pretty good pictures are below.

Good day!

We had to go get our covid tests done today, so we are about done here in Jamaica! Everyone met in the lobby, filled out paperwork then walked in a group to another building on property and waited for their room number to be called then went and got swabbed in a regular hotel room the set up for the procedure.

I did my final dive for a while this morning. It started deep and then came up. I may have been down below my limit some. I think the max was 75 feet though. They seem to do a lot of certifications here. It’s probably a money maker and then they can take the people out and get them to do more classes after seeing what the other people are doing.
I’m probably going to do the lion fish hunting class at some point.
There won’t be much opportunities for good diving back home but I will have to see what I can do.

I’d like to say I am getting good at sailing but I don’t know that just going out and around the bay here is very difficult. The little catamarans aren’t very technical and the idea is pretty easy. Practice is another, I was able pick some places I wanted to see if I could get to and back from and I was able to do that.

I tried to get a better picture of Emily doing the knee boarding but I was late finishing up my dive log and was waiting on my instructor because I wanted to get him a video of him getting a lion fish. I have to do it in the morning.

The hotel did a beach party for dinner tonight. Essentially they took the main dining option and moved it outside on the beach. It was a really nice evening for it. There was a nice breeze and it hadn’t rained.

After dinner we walked on the beach, we even did a pass through the nude beach. Nobody was out and it was dark so nobody noticed that we still had clothes on.

They did a fire show at nine that we went down and watched, it was neat to see. They did a good job entertaining the crowd, though I’m sure they are used to bigger crowds.

The resort has a beach dance party going on with about four people dancing and a few watching. I wonder if all the 10 pm entertainment has the same turn out?

Friday is our last full day in Jamaica. We will be back in the states Saturday. We don’t have to leave too early so that’s nice.

Night Dive!!

Howdy Folks!!
So we have been trapped by the resort vacation package. Sean-Pierre of the Jamaican tourist Board used that terminology and said it is a possibility with resorts like Couples. One of the nice thing about Couples Negril is the scuba is included. I’ve done two more dives this morning and a night dive.
Sean-Pierre is the man that reminds me of Serge in Beverly Hills Cop, he has such a love for Jamaica, traveling and doing fun things. He scuba dove with me yesterday some and he was trying out the skiing before Emily and I did the kneeboarding. He shared some scotch bonnet pepper with me at lunch he had acquired, it’s used a lot here in Jamaica.
The resort traps you by offering activities that are free and the other excursions are a bit expensive. They don’t make a lot on regular scuba because it’s included but, I bet they make up for it with classes for certification. It does make it easy to stay on property and get your money’s worth.
I do like being able to get a small catamaran and just go sailing. I think that they are fun and with practice it would be more fun. The snorkel trips are too short they should let you be in the water longer.
It’s nice that they will teach you how to do all the water sports and then you can just do them. If you were looking for a place to learn a resort vacation to Couples Negril would be good. I’m not sure about value just yet, that’s still to be determined. I am getting some dives in though!
I do think that resort vacations would be fun with a group of like minded people who wanted to share some of the experiences together and some things on their own.
The resort does a lot of loud music late at night for us. We don’t get into the party scene and getting up early to dive those things just don’t go well together. It’s been good to have met some people and have the interactions. Sean-Pierre cheered Emily on when she was doing her kneeboarding. Those things would be fun to share with friends.

So my first dive was with a group that all was able to go deeper than I am currently rated. I’m supposed to be going down to a max of 60 feet or 18 meters for those who like metric. They were going down to around 100 feet. I sort of drifted to about 80 once before I noticed how far down I was. I was able to hang out between 60-70 feet though for most of the time they were doing their thing. They got to swim through a sunken tug boat and there were two people that were doing some skills things for their advanced certification. After that they came up a bit and swam around a reef that was about 80 feet and I just was above them, it worked out okay, I spotted 3 lion fish though I think they only got two. There was a kid learning and he missed the last one and nobody tried again because we were going to do our safety stop. He missed one of the others but the guide got it.
A safety stop is where you go up to 15 feet and hang out for a very long three minutes trying to stay between 20 and 15. The instructors all just stop wherever they are and they don’t move up or down. I have a lot of buoyancy practice to do.

On my second dive we went to 50 feet and I spotted another lion fish for the hunters/ fishermen and woman. It was a mom, dad and son outfit. I may have to give that a try sometime. You see a lot of fish and corals. There was a bunch of lobsters hanging out under a shelf.

We just lounged and relaxed for a bit after lunch. I did get a t-shirt from the resort related to diving.

We had dinner at the grill, the chef did a better job on our burger than the last one did. They were really good. After we had eaten Sally and Sean/Shawn (not Sean-Pierre) who have been diving with me (he actually took class with me) came and sat with us and chatted. They’ve been dating 8 months and seem to enjoy traveling. Sally has done quite a bit. Sean is diabetic, he has an insulin pump, there is another guy that has one that does scuba in case anyone wondered if they could. They live in Austin, Texas. He works for a start up and she teaches at the community college.

This evening Emily and I had night dives. Emily went snorkeling while I went scuba diving. Sally and Sean both were there as well.

The night dive was interesting and less intense than I expected. I did see a lot of crabs but not much was different from the daytime. The dive sight was a new one for me. It was 50 feet down and there was an area that was like a cliff or wall of coral. I would like to see it during the day. I don’t know how different it would look but I would get to see it all at once and not just what the flashlight shows.

I’m going to squeeze in one more dive tomorrow morning and then we have to get our covid test for our return trip home. Sadly that means we are nearing the end of vacation. I was already only planning on doing one more since I haven’t been spending as much time with Emily since they don’t bring the snorkelers to the same places. A lot of the dive sights are just out in open water and is rough on top.

I will get some pictures uploaded and sent to Emily she can post when she gets time.