Pina Coladas, Speedboats, and....a Hurricane??

Well, a lot has happened over the past month...Jim and I tied the knot (Woohoo!), and spent a lovely honeymoon in St. Lucia...complete with an encounter with Hurricane Tomas!  Here's a little photo montage of our adventures in paradise...

 Monday:  The first picture of the trip...BANANA!!!  Jim's favorite fruit of all time.  St. Lucia's biggest export is bananas.

 First night in St. Lucia--steel drum band!

 And fire eaters/limbo dancers...this was impressive.

 Eating REAL fire.

 The view from our little oceanfront villa.  Just a few steps away from lounge chairs on the Caribbean Sea!

 Our honeymoon oceanfront room...pretty spiffy!

Rings on the beach!  We basically spent our entire Tuesday doing nothing but relaxing and snoozing on the beach.  Jim took four naps in one day...record!

Dancing on the beach...he was pretty excited about being there!

Tuesday night sunset looking out at The Pier restaurant from just outside our room. 

Dinner at The Pier.

Tuesday night is Casino Royale at The Halcyon...Sandals has a program where they raise money for the island.  Our real money gets donated and then they gave us "funny money".  We were pretty excited about attending the auction with our funny money...too bad our $5,000 didn't get us ANYTHING...

There were cats all over the resort...they especially loved meal times.

 On Wednesday, we visited a rainforest and went on a little gondola tour of the with a guide.  It was a little scary, but pretty cool!  We saw all kinds of cool plants and bugs, and giant hummingbirds!

Heading up to the top of the rainforest.

 View from the top.  Amazing!  You could see other islands from the treetops.  Unfortunately you can't see them in these pictures...you'll just have to take my word for it!

Kodak moment!

They have magnolia trees in the St. Lucian Rainforest! 

Another shot from the top.

After the gondola ride, we went on a nature hike through the forest floor...

 ...where we saw these GIANT caterpillars!!!  Apparently, they are so big and slow, they only move off the plant where they hatch if and when they eat through all of the leaves on it...epitome of laziness!

Heading back to the resort from the rainforest.  Not the best picture ever, but this gives you a little description of how tiny the roads were...this was considered a 2-lane road...scary!  I am not exaggerating when I say there were multiple times I saw my life flash before my eyes...St. Lucians are NOT good drivers!  And they drive on the wrong side of the road...

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On Thursday, we went on a Joe Knows speedboat tour of the island.  It was pretty cool!

Marigot Bay--this is where the original Dr. Doolittle was filmed.  Interestingly, it's also the safest place on the island for boats and other water crafts when there are hurricanes...I wonder if it was full on Saturday???

So beautiful.

At the two Pitons.  These are the highest points on the island.

One part of the Joe Knows adventure took us to the drive-in volcano where they insisted that we coat ourselves in sulfur mud.  The islanders claimed it was healing and would cure any skin ailments.  The more I think about it, the more I think it was totally a gimmick to watch tourists slather themselves with black mud that doesn't fully come off for several days...I mean, I began to think they weren't kidding when they kept screaming, "Once you go black, you never go back!"  It took DAYS to get it all off!

Cocoa plant before it's fully matured and harvested for chocolate.  When it's ripe, it's bright yellow and the seeds actually taste a little bit like mango...the inside of the seeds is what becomes chocolate.  You better believe I brought back some fresh cocoa sticks.  We've already tried out some of it grated into fresh hot cocoa...DELISH!!!

This is my FAVORITE picture from the entire trip...the beach at Soufriere in the foreground, the volcano in the background.  Pure paradise.  I think I'll submit this to a postcard competition...maybe I'll win a free trip somewhere!  It's also nice to have this picture, considering that Soufriere was by far the hardest hit town on the island...it no longer looks like this!

Leaving the Pitons by boat.  It was beautiful, but we had to continue on to more adventures.

Lover's Cove, the sight where they filmed Pirates of the Caribbean...I can still picture the skulls dangling down inside.  It also looks like a high-heeled shoe!

This is the sight where we went snorkeling, at the base of the Pitons.  We saw all kinds of beautiful fish and sea creatures.  I love snorkeling!

                                    

One of the highlights at staying at a Sandals resort was the fact that they have a "stay at one, play at three" policy.  We stayed at the Halcyon but got to explore the other resorts and see some different sites/views of the island.  Unfortunately, we didn't make it to the Regency (thanks, a lot, Tomas!!!), but we had a great time at The Grande.  Here we're hanging out in the piano bar after our day with Joe Knows.  There were lots of people gathered around the piano singing along, and I really wanted to join, but I just couldn't bring myself to go over there! 

On Friday, we decided to spend the day at The Grande.  Lunch on the beach...sipping a fruity beverage...I could do this EVERY day!  Although, it was nice to get away from the pina coladas eventually...having several of those a day is a sure way to put on the pounds!  I just couldn't help myself...I love coconut and pineapple, especially the combo!

Relaxing on the beach at The Grande...little did we know Hurricane Tomas was only a few hours away...

Enough Said :).

Beautiful sunset just before the hurricane hit.  Looking at this, you'd never know what was coming...

Beautiful sunset and super sweet tans! 

Night out at The Grande.

Dinner Friday night at the Japanese Restaurant.  At this meal, the lady next to me said, "Did you hear that we are supposed to get a tropical storm tomorrow?  I'm not sure but that's what I heard."  Yeah, there was NO notice from the hotels letting us know that there was a storm coming...

 Saturday arrives...we can't go on our shopping excursion to the Craft Market.  When asked why, the tour guide said that everything was closed because of the tropical storm...so the lady at dinner was right.  Thanks a lot, Sandals for giving us a little head's up!

Since they wouldn't take us to the Craft Market, we just went to the Sandals gift shop instead! 

It was really raining, and these were the only white-caps we saw the entire trip...the sea was typically so calm!  I believe this was right before I saw one of the grounds workers pull an ENTIRE palm tree down the path right in front of our room...and that's the point where I thought, "Hmmm, I think this is worse than just a tropical storm...should we be worried?"

This was the cat that hung out at our room the entire week.  I named him Theodore.  It's obvious in this picture that he's VERY peeved that we didn't let him inside during the hurricane.  I really wanted to, but Jim insisted that it was not appropriate to let a WILD CAT into our room...I don't think he was wild at all!  He frequently curled up in my lap when I was sitting on our patio reading my book, and he was quite friendly!

When we realized that the day was shot because of rain, I got really excited about the possibility of watching college football (they got American channels!).  And of course, just as ESPN's College Game Day started to talk about the Auburn v. Ole Miss game, the cable went out!  Bummer...BUT, Jim decided we should play some poker for sugar packets.  Various tea bags were later added to the pile to count for more "money".  It was quite entertaining, actually.  I rather like playing poker when there is no real money involved...

This is an after-shot from the hurricane...as you can see, the water that was once so crystal blue is now mucky and brown.  That's because of all of the rain water.  We didn't actually stay in our oceanfront room during the hurricane...after much persuasion, the front desk finally agreed to temporarily move us to a room that was farther back from the water.  When we were moving, Wendell (hotel staff extraordinaire who came to our rescue during the room transition) warned us that we were going to get a little wet.  HE WASN'T KIDDING!  As we started walking, the water got deeper and deeper...at one point, we were walking through a 1-2 foot rushing current.  It was so hard to walk I had to take off my flip flops because they were sticking to the ground.  I'm so glad I didn't step on anything!  The next morning, when we woke up, I was fully expecting to see the same amount of standing water waiting for us outside.  NOPE!!!  Where did it all go???  Well, now you know why the ocean is BROWN...

The beach, post hurricane.  I was sure that we weren't going to be able to get into the water after the hurricane.  And we weren't supposed to, because of all of the debris, etc. in the water and on the beach.  But of course, there were some stupid people staying at the resort who went in.  Seriously, people...you don't know what's lurking under that murky brown water!

 Aftermath of Tomas.  This looks pretty bad, and it was, but it would have been SO much worse had the grounds crew not been working the ENTIRE day of the hurricane.  Thanks, guys!

 This Smallest plane I've ever been on, and hopefully will ever be on.  I was pretty scared, but hey, it got us to San Juan safely...This was our third of five flights the day we left and got home.  Thanks to Diana, our wonderful travel agent, we were able to get out on Wednesday, November 3rd, only two days after our original departure date, and WELL before Delta told us they would be able to get us off the island.  We ended up flying St. Lucia to St. Maarten, St. Maarten to Tortolla, Tortolla to San Juan, then from there to Atlanta and on to DC...longest day of flying ever.  SO GLAD TO BE HOME!!!