the double rainbows of st. kitts

Right away, St. Kitts was far more visually appealing than St. Croix had been. It looked cleaner, more developed, and more colorful, particularly the buildings and homes. There were also green mountains in the middle of the island.

We had an excursion planned for the morning, so we got off the ship first thing and assembled on the pier. Unfortunately, it started raining really hard right as we started the short walk to our transportation, which was an open people-mover kind of vehicle. It had clear plastic drapes on either side, and these were pulled down to protect us from the rain. Under normal circumstances this would have been fine, but the appearance of the first double rainbow I've ever seen in my life made it unfortunate, because the plastic was too opaque to attempt taking pictures. Bummer. We ended up seeing another set of double rainbows shortly thereafter, which was pretty amazing. Two sets in less than one hour, and then to top it off, we literally drove through the end of another rainbow as we made our way to our destination. It was a morning of firsts.

Our first stop was a botanical garden, which had an interesting assortment of tropical plants.









After a short walk through the garden, we were taken to a shop where we saw a demonstration of caribel batik, which is kind of like the Caribbean equivalent of tie-dyeing. I liked the colors and the depictions of laid back island scenes, so we bought a couple pieces of batik cloth which we'll have framed at some point.

We were next taken near an old sugar mill, and then into a rainforest.







We walked in the rainforest for over an hour, occasionally stopping to look at an interesting plant, vines or whatever.

A fungus growing on a tree:


The bark of a tree:


Spikes on a certain type of palm:


Our tour guide talking about the pod of a tree that "smells bad, but the inside tastes good":


Typical rainforest:


Many of the hanging vines are so strong, people can swing on them:


When we were done in the rainforest, we were served refreshments which had been made by our tour guide's wife. Kind of weird, but they were pretty good--banana bread, raisin biscotti.

We had seen a couple of monkeys in the forest, but I was never able to get a picture of one. These caged monkeys outside the sugar mill will have to suffice:



The view from where we ate our refreshments:


When we were done there, we were taken back to town. Becca and I decided to wander around for a while. Things were pretty nice and fairly touristy by the pier, but the situation got a lot sketchier the further away from the pier we got. We wandered by some food stalls, made our way through an open air market (it was pretty dead), and then walked around a grocery store for a while to see what interesting things we could find. It smelled pretty bad inside--frozen meat and fish smell--and a lot of what was inside came from the US, so it wasn't terribly different.

The smells coming out of one of the stalls we had passed were pretty decent, so we decided to go back there and sample the food. The stall was manned by an older Rastafarian dude with long dreads. I asked what he had, and he said it was "good vegetarian food" (standard for Rastafarians, apparently). Since there were multiple pots, I asked him what he recommended, to which he sarcastically replied "some good vegetarian food". I don't mind a bit of sass with my meals, so I agreed, and we got a box of stew with beans, rice, and lentils, topped off with lettuce, tomatoes and cucumbers. It turned out to be a lot blander than I was expecting, and also had been flavored with coconut milk, which was interesting and unexpected. It was good, and I'm glad we tried it out. Here's a photo of Becca pounding some:



We were pretty tired after that, so we went back and took a nap. Afterward, we wandered around the top of the ship so I could get some photos. The weather had cleared up quite a bit, so I got some decent photos of St. Kitts and Nevis, its sister island.













Nevis is in the distance, with its peak covered by clouds:


As was the usual on this cruise, we had dinner in the sit-down restaurant. I was trying to have a lighter dinner, so I had a cod fritter, Asian consomme and grilled wahoo fish for dinner. It was all pretty decent, if a bit more seafood than I would typically like.

In an unfortunate twist of fate, I had to join a conference call while we were at sea later that evening. I somehow got a cellular signal that was land-based, but I'm sure the call will still cost my employer a fortune. It sucked that I had to do this while on vacation, but one small benefit did some out of the call. It's this photo:



It doesn't really look like it, but it's the moon. I noticed that the moon was coming out from behind the clouds toward the end of the call, so I pulled out my camera, put on my macro lens, cranked up the ISO to 12,800, and took this photo. If you look at the bottom of the photo, you can see there's an island there. It couldn't be seen with the naked eye, but my camera caught it. I guess that's where the cellphone signal was coming from. Cool.

All in all, St. Kitts was pretty decent, and a way better place to visit than St. Croix. I'm sure we only scratched the surface, but what we saw was OK. I'll give St. Kitts a B-.

St. Croix: America's third world

I woke up early the first morning of our cruise and got some pretty decent photos as we made our way to our first stop, the island of St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands.





Becca had a snorkeling excursion planned for her time in St. Croix, but I hadn't booked anything, so I decided to take it easy and wander around the port, Frederiksted. After marveling at the modernity of Puerto Rico (our cruise started there), I was surprised to find that St. Croix was very much a third world kind of place. Buildings were run-down, streets and other places were dirty, and the level of development was generally low. Frederiksted is just a small town--less than 1000 people--but still...It just seemed odd to me that a US territory would be so third world. We would go to the main city on the island, Christiansted, later in the day, and although it was much bigger, it was still very third world.

I started out my walk by walking along the beach next to the pier. I walked by an old Danish fort, and then as far as I could go until I reached private property. The fort was colorful and interesting to look at, but not open to go into. The beach was small and a bit dirty with trash, but the water was very clear.







Nice view of our ship from that beach:


Typical Frederiksted:




There were lots of churches in Frederiksted, and I heard singing coming out of at least three (it was Sunday morning).



I wandered up a hill toward a large Catholic church, and found a cemetery nearby, so I decided to have a look around. I was surprised to find the cemetery full of trash and not very well kept up. It was almost like people came to the cemetery to party and then didn't bother to pick up the trash after they were done.





I didn't see anything else of interest as I walked around town, so I headed back to the pier and hung around for a while, taking the occasional photo and enjoying the warm weather. Temperatures were in the 80's and I had worked up quite a sweat while walking around town. A couple of locals talked to me while I was in town, and I was somewhat surprised (not sure why) to find that they sounded like Jamaicans. This would be true for every other island we visited as well.



One of my favorite photos from the trip, taken from the pier:


I think Becca had a much better time snorkeling. I had given her an underwater camera for her birthday, and she got some pretty decent photos during her adventure. Maybe I'll post some later. Anyway, we decided to take a shuttle to the main town of Christiansted after lunch, convinced that there would be something more interesting to see there. I took this photo of a storm in the distance as we walked off the pier:



The 20-minute drive wasn't particularly interesting, but we did see some signs of development: Wendy's, Kmart, a Home Depot under construction, an oil refinery, a rum distillery. Sadly, Christiansted was pretty dead and not terribly exciting. We walked along the pier in town for a while, and the weather was pretty decent for photos. The only thing there that looked decent was the beach at the nearby cay, but we didn't go over there or anything.







After walking around and sweating a lot for an hour, we decided to catch the shuttle back to Frederiksted. We waited for what seemed like an eternity, sweating it out in the sun with a few of these:



There are "wild" chickens all over St. Croix, and we'd see them in other places as well.

Back in Frederiksted, we found a small "fast food" place to have something to eat. I wanted to get the dolphin burger that was listed on the menu, but Becca wasn't having any of that. So, we settled on sharing a shrimp burger, onion rings and fries. I had never had a shrimp burger before, but it was pretty decent. Interestingly, the shop was owned and run by some Arabs (St. Croix seems like an unusual place for such people to end up), and the Arab kid working the counter provided the worst customer service I had ever received. Since Frederiksted isn't exactly highbrow, it wasn't a big deal. Still, we quickly left after finishing our food. The place had a shady vibe.

That was it for our St. Croix adventures. All in all, I would say that St. Croix was my least favorite of the islands that we visited. It was, by far, the dirtiest and seemed the least developed. Development is not important to me, as long as there are other redeeming qualities in the place. St. Croix didn't have much going for it on either front. I'm giving it a D+ as a place to visit and would neither go back there nor recommend it to anyone else. Pictures of the other islands in the USVI make them look much nicer and more vacation-oriented, and I'd definitely be interested in visiting them. Someday...

wandering in the snow

After nearly ten years of residence in the frozen north, I decided to buy some snow boots yesterday. Being bored on a Sunday afternoon and intrigued by the neighborhood trees and "hill" and stuff, and with the temperature being a toasty 20F, I decided today would be a good day to try out my new boots.

There's a hill near our home--you can see it if you walk into our driveway and face east--so I headed there first.


The near-perfect path through the trees on the hill suggests to me that they were planted rather than naturally occurring.


This winter has been a great one for people who like winter sports. Snowmobilers are not an uncommon sight in my neighborhood.


I walked down from the hill and along the fence toward a grove of trees toward the end of our neighborhood. The snow was mostly packed, which was nice.


I took my telephoto lens in hopes of seeing some of the local wildlife, but these tracks were as close as I got to that. Bummer.



I decided to cross the two frozen ponds and then head for home. This is where the snow was deepest and most unpacked. It was about two feet deep in some places, which was fun considering the fact that I wasn't wearing snow pants and didn't have clamps or bands on my pant legs. Anyway, I've always had a fascination with cattails (I thought they were hot dogs when I was a kid), so I went wandering through the frozen cattails and beaver mounds.





Wandering around in the snow is a pretty decent workout. It takes a fair amount of effort to maintain your stability, and the deeper the snow is, the better the workout. All in all, good times.

traipsing about on a frozen lake

It's been a few weeks since I did any serious shooting, so I was getting antsy for something to take pictures of. We were going to go snowshoeing yesterday, but the little lady got sick and we had to abort that mission. Too bad--it would have been a first for us, and I had been planning on taking my camera. Still, inspired by this idea, I decided to head over to a lake near our old apartment to have a look around.

I was pleased with what I found. It's been a while since the temperature was consistently above 15F or so, so the lake was completely frozen. There were a few ice houses and cars on the lake, too--a perfect opportunity to get close to something I've previously only seen from the freeway. Also, I don't think I'd ever walked on a frozen lake before, so that was another first for me.

I was ill-prepared for the weather. It was 8F and breezy on the lake. I had jeans, a sweatshirt, gloves, running shoes, a beanie with a face mask, and that's it. My head stayed warm, but the rest of me was pretty frozen by the time I finished my 20-30 minutes out there.

I primarily stuck to the area of the lake that had been plowed, but did go off the path for a few minutes to get closer to the trees.



Like I mentioned, there were a few people out there, but it was extremely quiet--quieter than any place I've been in a long time.





As you might expect for a lake in suburbia, there are some really nice homes around the lake. The patio furniture under the leafless trees here made for a cool scene.



Most people on the lake had ice houses of some kind; these guys, however, were out in the open.





I don't know how long they were out there, but that must have made for a pleasant afternoon.

I wanted to walk further on the lake, but not having any boots for the snow, I decided to turn back. I noticed some big cracks in the ice on the way back to the parking lot, and the faint smell of charcoal being burned. That's right--someone was having a barbecue out on the lake.



Once I got back to the parking lot, I started wondering why I hadn't just driven my car out on the lake like everyone else. I had never done this either, and without the little lady at my side to freak out about the idea, I decided to drive out on the lake for a couple minutes, just so I could say that I had--nevermind the cracks in the ice I had just seen. Not a bad way to end an interesting adventure.

the salton sea

The Salton Sea is a large saltwater lake that sits atop the San Andreas fault. It's in the vicinity of Palm Springs and Joshua Tree National Park, so I decided to drive the little lady over on Thursday afternoon to have a look around. A big storm had just finished, which made for great photos.





The area around the Salton Sea consists of farmland and virtual ghost towns. Once upon a time, the Salton Sea was apparently a resort area. It's fallen on hard times in recent decades, and most people have moved away. The shore was mostly deserted; every nearby building was run down, and every establishment had gone out of business. Kind of depressing.





The Salton Sea is saltier than the Pacific Ocean or the Great Salt Lake. The salt is killing off the fish, and scientists believe that only one species will be left in the near future. In any case, there were dead fish all over the shore, which added to the eerie vibe.



A rainbow appeared just north of the lake while I was walking around the shore.





Somebody parked this old Chevy pickup near the shore--a perfect addition to the scene.











I wanted to go back to Joshua Tree when we were done with the Salton Sea, but it was getting late in the afternoon and there was no direct route from the Salton Sea, so after driving around for 30 minutes looking for one, I gave up. I did stop to take a few more photos, though.