May 17th- St. Thomas
So honestly I didn’t have a lot of plans for today. I thought I wound spend the majority of the day doing some work on the moving rig and a little bit of relaxing. That was until Ryan called me last night asking for my help. Apparently he was supposed to go on a tour with Matt (the Club O2 director- basically a day camp for 12-15 year old) but he really didn’t want to go with him. Ryan promised that he would spend some time with Matt because it was his last two weeks and he had been delaying it for months. Apparently they were to go out on a champagne catamaran and go snorkeling off of St. John (one of the neighboring islands). Ryan begged me to go with him so he wouldn’t have to deal with Matt’s constant bickering. I decided what the hell and signed up for the tour. Because it was booked through shore excursions there would be a slight fee, but I didn’t care much because hey! It’s all the free champagne I can drink and I got to go snorkeling off of an island with sting rays and sea turtles and it was on a catamaran. The only bad thing about this venture was that we had to get up pretty early to catch the cab and maximize our tour. We booked the 9:30 tour because it was the only one he could get on (for the discounted rate) but hey, gotta make do with what you have anyway. Apparently later in the night Matt decided to back out because shore excursions were unable to comp his ticket and he didn’t want to spend at least some cash to get on the tour. At this point everyone was kind of like “whatever” and they really didn’t want to deal with his bickering the entire trip anyway. We got off the ship at 9:00 to head towards the taxi. Taxi is a strong word to use because it was basically a F-350 with the bed outfitted to fit passengers. I thought the truck was a little bit weird because the driver side was on the left side (is that how it is in the states? I can’t remember) and they were driving with the yellow line on the passenger side (like I said, I can’t remember). I didn’t want to bring my camera because we were going on a ship (which we were told that we would have to swim ashore) and I spent way too much money on a DSLR to get it wet. I totally regretted my decision. The island reminded me a lot of Hawaii because it was very hilly and it had a lot of rock formations that looked volcanic. The “taxi” driver said that the islands were indeed volcanic so my thinking wasn’t quite too far off. The driver scared me a bit because it was exactly like a roller coaster ride to the pier. At some points we couldn’t even see the bottom of the hill because it was so steep. This was not, however, like driving a took-took in the mountains of Thailand. The truck was diesel so it was definitely meant to carry passengers up hills and such. Gawd, there were banana and coconut trees everywhere. I just wanted to tell the driver to stop so I could climb a tree and pick a ripe banana and coconut. I loved it. Once we arrived at the marina we didn’t really know where to go. We just followed the guide to our ship and boarded it quickly. The ship was a catamaran so it had two runners and a raised middle. We were allowed to go anywhere on the ship except for the netting near the bow. Originally we decided to stay near the stern but quickly made it to the front of the ship. I really think I have fallen in love with the seas because I love the view and even the motion of rocking back and forth. The seas were a little rough (it was cloudy) and I loved every toss and turn (I’m hoping that we really get a rockin’ onboard the Liberty with hurricane season and all). Normally he would just use the sails but the captain wanted to maximize our time snorkeling so he used the little outboard motor. The journey didn’t take very long, about 20 minutes to get to the snorkeling spot. The ship had a little ladder that they could lower so you could basically walk into the sea but that’s not fun at all. The captain also opened the back of the ship so whoever wanted to could dive off the back of the ship. There was a really long line to walk down the stairs so I opted to just jump off the back of the ship. They had to give us these inflatable neck things (somewhat similar to water wings) but I guess it’s a safety thing. The water felt great, it was a little colder than in the beach in Miami but still wonderful and crystal clear. You could see the bottom (which was about 20-30 feet in depth) pretty easily. I bought an underwater camera before heading off the ship so hopefully the pictures will actually turn out. The captain said that a few feet away there was a kelp forest and sometimes you could see sea turtles there. We made our way over there first. Sadly, the kelp forest was not very tall (it looked more like kelp grass) so we didn’t find any sea turtles. One of the people in our group discovered a sting ray, but it was well beyond where I wanted to swim. After about an hour or so snorkeling we headed back to the catamaran. On the way back the crew broke open the champagne and just drank until we got back to shore. I struck up a good conversation with one of the guests that lives in Atlanta. We talked about how “nasty” the winter was and my personal take on Atlanta-ians driving skills. The journey took longer than the trip out mainly because we just used sail power. It still was very relaxing and the fresh air was wonderful. After we made it back to shore we climbed into our little taxi and headed back to the ship. We headed back through the markets that are everywhere right when you get off the pier. At this point it was about 2 o’clock and we hadn’t had anything to eat so Ryan decided it would be a good idea to go and get some sushi near the pier. I didn’t mind because I love sushi and its been a while since I had some. The restaurant was really nice and it even had a sushi conveyor belt. I had some mussels and sashimi. Delicious. I guess I can say I ate with someone famous because Hally Berry was there too! (well, not the REAL Hally Berry, but our waitress shared the same name) The sushi was great but we had to eat it pretty quick to get back to the ship on time. The rest of the day was pretty ordinary. Two shows and a pretty late night.
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