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Monday 18 June, 2007

Happy Father's Day Dads!

Clearly we're not very good at updating our blog. Sorry for the long delay between posts. Today is Monday and we leave Barbados next Tuesday. Needless to say, our thoughts lately have mostly been about leaving... what do we want to do with our last few days, what will we miss, what are we looking forward to at home, how fast the time went, how much stuff we brought that we didn't really need, and how the heck are we going to pack it all up. The time really did go by fast, at least it seems that way now. I'm sure these next few days will go by quickly as well.

So, things here are a little busy. Lots of work for me at the university, trying to tie up loose ends and make sure everything here is in order. Lara has been working a lot on different photos for publication and ramping up for self-employment at home. Hopefully we'll get a couple of solid days of sea and sun before we go, but its looking to be hectic up until Tuesday at 7:55 AM when we get on the plane.

Last week we had company - Dave and Vonda visited us from Virginia. Saying we had a great time wouldn't do it justice. They stayed with us here in the apartment (no a/c, no hot water and our toilet was broken for 2 days so we had to flush with a bucket of water), sleeping on an air mattress on the floor of the breezeway (special girl that Vonda), and it worked out great. We saw a lot of sights (the gap, the north point, Bathsheba, a few cool beaches), did some good snorkeling and spearfishing, lots of driving, and of course limed with friends. We were sad to see them leave.

I'll sign off for now. Hopefully Lara will get a chance to put up some pictures before we go.

Love from Barbados, and see you soon!

Pete & Lara

Finally an update...

Saturday 2 June 2007

Hello from Barbados! Its been a long time since we've updated and its been a busy few weeks. Last week we were in Dominica (two islands north of Barbados in the Eastern Caribbean chain) for our anniversary. Dominica is called the "nature island" of the Caribbean, and is roughly twice the size of Barbados, with only 70,000 people (Barbados has almost 300,000). Dominica is very mountainous and lush, has 9 ("potentially active") volcanoes, 365 rivers and dozens of beautiful waterfalls. Flying over it as you approach the airport, you don't see anything except trees and mountains. Very beautiful. The beaches and coastline are rocky (what little sand there is is black) so its not at all typical Caribbean. The island is relatively undeveloped, with only a handful of small towns and villages, a couple of small hotels and compared to Barbados is very poor. The people were nice and the food was excellent and super cheap.

We were there for 7 days (6 nights). We brought only what we could carry in our backpacks, rented a 4WD jeep, and made no reservations except for our first night. We wanted to see as much of the island as we could, so each day after driving and hiking we found places to sleep. We ended up staying in 5 different places (an apartment in the north, a bamboo cottage in the rain forest, another apartment in the south, a bed & breakfast near the capital, then another wood hut in the rain forest), and circled the entire island during our stay.

We did a lot of driving, lots of hiking, saw 5 or 6 different waterfalls, swam in rivers, hot springs and fresh water pools. And of course Lara took a ton of pictures. We also saw a landslide (which completely isolated all the people at the top of one mountain for at least 2 days), and saw a huge tree fall into a river right next to our car. I also almost chopped off my finger in a fan at a grocery store. Given my tendency for accidents, we travel with an extensive first aid kit, so Lara cleaned the wound and patched me up pretty quickly. It was a bloody mess, but I'm fine Mom. And yes, I had a tetanus shot right before we left Wilmington.

When we got home we received some bad news about Jerry the van. Our friend Kerry dropped us off at the airport in the van, and on his way home punctured a tire and the van flipped. Kerry scraped up his arm pretty bad and hurt his shoulder, but is otherwise OK. Jerry on the other hand, is out of commission for a while. So, we now have a little rental car... and likely will have it for the remaining 24 days of our time here. Sad. We miss driving Jerry. Oh, we got the rental car around 8:00 PM on Thursday night, and drove straight to a sports bar to watch a very exciting 2OT Cavs/Pistons game 5. Labron is pretty amazing. I think I'm pulling for Detroit though.

My friend Dave "DK" Kelly and his girlfriend are coming to visit on Wednesday, so that should be fun. I've known Dave since college, when we played ultimate against each other. He went to ECU, who were our rivals. We also played together when I lived in Richmond, and have played on the same team since then. They'll be here for a week, and it will be nice to have company and show them around the island. We'll post some new pictures soon.

Love from Barbados,
Pete & Lara