More Fishing Pics

Here are some more pics from our "deep sea" fishing trip (and I just figured out how to add more than 5 pics to a blog. woah.):

A TEENY tiny tunny :-)

Deep Sea Fishing! ...Sort Of

Wednesday, we stayed up at the house for the morning because we were both a little worn out from the night before, and we had to head into town for our fishing trip that afternoon. We just laid out in the sun and spent some time in the pool. We cooked up another pizza for lunch (and did NOT burn it this time!) - man it was so good... Tom eats those standard, but I rarely do, and it really reaffirmed to me that pizza is my absolute favorite food!

After lunch we headed into Cruz Bay to meet our fishing captain for the afternoon: Captain Chris (who has a sister named Melissa!). He was kind of a rough guy - not very courteous and really hated Michael Jackson. I guess he's a typical fisherman... anyway, it was supposed to be a deep sea fishing trip, but the sea was particularly choppy and there were some storms out in the open ocean, so it was more of a... pretty-deep-but-not-all-the-way-deep-sea fishing trip. Whatever, we had fun!
We set out to go fishing and things were initially going really well - we caught two tuna right away (little tunnies!), and so we knew we'd be having seafood for dinner that night.

I started getting seasick after that, though, and I really wasn't having fun anymore. Tom was still enjoying it, and we actually caught a lot of fish (three little tunny, two TINY little tunny that we threw back, and some mackerel and barracuda that we also threw back). I was feeling worse and worse until I finally threw up overboard... and then I immediately felt better. I realized that it was probably my medicine that made me sick because I took it about 10 minutes after we got on the boat, immediately started feeling bad, then immediately felt better after I threw it up. I will not be taking it anymore on this trip!

All in all we had a fun time and left with some fresh tuna steaks to grill up for dinner. We picked up a few things at the grocery store and went back to feast on our catch. Neither Tom nor I were that crazy about it, though... and in fact, I don't even really want anymore seafood after that meal. It wasn't terrible - I'm sure a lot of people would really like it - we just weren't crazy about it. We had a pretty low-key rest of the evening...

More Trunk Bay Pics

We took a ton more pics of Trunk Bay on Tuesday - here are just a few of them:

More Snorkeling Pics

Since I can only upload 5 pics per blog (lame), here are some more shots we got while snorkeling on Tuesday.

From Dreeket's Bay near our villa:



From Trunk Bay's underwater snorkeling trail:

That's a needle fish - can you see it in the middle?!?


Very cool stuff... the snorkeling trail also had plaques underwater that you could read as you swam along.

Snorkeling & Shellfish Allergies

Tuesday morning, we went down to our private beach again, and this time I was able to swim around looking at fish with Tom because I took one of the snorkeling masks from our house. It was SO cool! There is amazing coral and sealife in our bay. The only thing that made me uneasy was the barracuda swimming around... they don't go after humans, but they're attracted to shiny things, and I had my wedding ring on. We saw a few, and I hid my ring, and they weren't interested in us. We also saw an amberjack and tons of minnows and other colorful little fish.

After exploring the water, we climbed the giant rocks on the left side of our bay. Tom went all the way to a big mountain of rocks on the far end while I once again sunbathed topless. We were supposed to go deep sea fishing Tuesday afternoon, but the boat was having engine trouble, so that got postponed until Wednesday. Instead, we got in the jeep and set out to explore some of the bays on the north end of the island (after lunch - PB&J for Tom and PB&banana for me... mmm).

We drove down but missed the turn for route 20 (there's no sign), so we ended up going all the way to Cruz Bay and hitting the north shore from the other side. The drive on 20 is really cool and jungle-like - narrower and unpaved with tall canopies of trees shielding out the sunlight.

We stopped at Trunk Bay for the afternoon and swam out to its snorkeling trail - Trunk Bay is a beautiful beach with white sand and clear water, and if you swim out to a little island off the coast, there's a guided snorkeling trail and incredible sealife under the water. I'm a big wuss, so I only swam out and followed the trail for a few minutes before heading back to shore (and man I wish I was a better swimmer). Tom stayed out a lot longer, though - he loves snorkeling and seeing everything teeming under the surface. He eventually came back in, and we got some snacks and walked down the beach to some huge rocks at the end. Then we came back, packed up our stuff, and headed home. This was such a beautiful beach – it's one of the most photographed in the world, and we could see why.

We ate dinner at a place called Island Blues that night. It was down in Coral Bay right on the water - really cool view and nice local vibe (they also had a UNC flag like Woody's and a 123 New York subway sign!). I ate a lot of shrimp for dinner even though I recently learned that I had a shellfish allergy... I've never had a problem before, but I've also never eaten that much shrimp in one sitting... more on that later.

We had a nice dinner and came back to play some card games. We were having a lot of fun and it turned into a really entertaining night (with some new lingerie). 0:-) After we fell asleep, though, I woke up again and had to make a beeline for the bathroom. I seriously thought I was going to black out and hit my head on the slate floor in between vomiting spells... my body was definitely rejecting all of that shrimp. I got SOOOO sick... I guess I can have shellfish in moderation (like the two beer-battered shrimp I had at Woody's) but that shrimp po' boy was just too much...

First Full Day in Paradise

Monday morning I woke up before 6 as the sun was rising - since our entire wall is one big window, I had the most amazing view!!
After we got up, we headed down the path to our private beach and spent some time exploring our bay... not a person in sight anywhere. Since it's so private, I decided to go topless, and MAN is that liberating! I might actually prefer it to having a top on. Tom was pleasantly surprised when he looked up from snorkeling and saw me sunbathing topless.

We explored the rocks to the right of our villa and found some cool shells and sea urchin skeletons, then we headed back up to our villa to take showers and head into town (we had to sign our jeep rental papers & decided to just grab lunch and do some shopping while we were in Cruz Bay). The master bedroom shower at this villa is outdoors – it felt a little weird to be showering in open air like that!

On the way to Cruz Bay, we saw donkeys and goats on the side of the road! Later on, we also saw deer, roosters, and cows. And lizards? They're everywhere. There are so many animals roaming free on this island. We must've driven by at least 15 donkeys & goats every time we got in a car.

We ate lunch at a local joint called Woody's, and although the food was pretty standard to Tom, beer-battered shrimp, blackened mahi mahi, curly fries, and a cold beer tasted SO delicious to me! Woody's had flags hanging up from some North Carolina and Georgia schools, including one from UNC.

After lunch, we went shopping for a while in a complex called Mongoose Junction. I got some boyshorts for me and a gift for my parents at a local artist's shop. If we had known how terrible the shopping was going to be in Tortola, we would have done more shopping here. The shops in St. John were fantastic, and I appreciate them much more after seeing the sparse, junky stores in Tortola. On our way home, we picked up some groceries so we could grill out some burgers for dinner. Dinner was good (even though the buns we bought were moldy and we had to use pitas as top & bottom buns), and after a long day of swimming, shopping, and exploring, we were tired and ended up heading to bed early.

It Begins...

Our villa in St. John, The Retreat, is aptly named - we are so far away from everyone and everything! It is totally quiet except for the waves and the crickets, and it's awesome. Well, awesome except for the endless mosquito attacks and the ant colonies constantly descending on our food. I guess that's just something we have to deal with given the openness of this villa. But it's worth it – the place and the views are incredible. (The picture above is just the bedroom building - the rest of the villa is in a separate building through the courtyard.)

We got up early Sunday morning at the Westin in Charlotte, and Tom's dad picked us up for a brunch he and Tom’s mom were hosting at their hotel (The Dunhill). Lots of our family & some of the bridal party were there, but we only had about 20 minutes to visit and eat before heading to the airport. We were both a little sad to leave everyone and put an end to the wedding festivities, but we also couldn't wait to be lounging in total relaxation & seclusion in the Virgin Islands.

When we got on our plane, we found out that Helen Alford, one of my family’s church friends who had been at the wedding, brought some of our M&M favors to the USairways flight crew on our plane to St. Thomas. When we were in our seats (in first class!!!), the crew members all came to say hello, and we got to sit in the cockpit with the captain. :-) Flying first class was sweet because the second we got on the plane they were offering us drinks and snacks. We had pillows & blankets, tons of legroom, and more food than we could handle since we had just eaten brunch two hours before. They fed us lunch complete with a blondie for dessert, and we each had a tiny personal salt & pepper shaker!

After we landed, the various modes of transportation to get from St. Thomas to St. John were seamless. We had a private taxi waiting to take us across St. Thomas right when we got off the plane. Our taxi driver took us to a ferry (you can only get to St. John by water!), and we rode over and met a woman who helped us get our jeep, took us to the grocery store, and led us across the island to our villa. She also bought us a bottle of champagne since we're on our honeymoon. So far, everything is going perfectly.

The Retreat is on the far east end of the island - about 30 minutes from the main town of Cruz Bay. When we got here it was nearing dusk, but we could still tell what an incredible view we had from our villa. Our guide said she thinks it's the best view in all of St. John! We have our own pool & hot tub, and most of the walls are windows that open completely to the ocean air (with screens we can choose to lower if the mosquitoes are bad, and they're bad most of the time). There isn't anyone around within sight - not another villa, a boat, a resort - nothing. It's awesome.

Places close for dinner pretty early in Coral Bay, the closest town to us, so thanks to Tom's smart thinking at the grocery store, we decided to make a pizza for dinner... which we burned. Half of it was still somewhat salvageable, though, so we had burnt pizza and beer for dinner on the first night of our honeymoon. So romantic. :-)

After dinner, we spent some time in the hot tub & pool and then went to bed early - we're already finding that here, early to bed works pretty well... that way we're up by 9am and down on the beach by 10 before it gets too hot (and it means we get a full day of beach/island time). Also, St. John shuts down pretty early at night - there’s not much going on after dark, but we found other ways to amuse ourselves.

Tropical Paradise

In the Virgin Islands, limin' means chilling, hanging out, relaxing... just being at peace with the world. After a whirlwind of wedding planning and the festivities of our wedding weekend, we were in much need of this, and the Virgin Islands was the perfect place for it!

We'll be using this blog to recount our honeymoon to whoever's interested in following our day-to-day activities. We packed a ton of things into our two weeks, so we're going to post each day by itself if you want to skip around. We had an absolute blast, and we couldn't have made this honeymoon so fabulous without help from many of the people reading this blog, so THANK YOU. We loved every minute of it (well, almost every minute... read on to find out more).

Hopefully we'll be posting day one tomorrow, but in the meantime, here's a quick overview of some things we did on our honeymoon:

- snorkeling
- deep sea fishing
- exploring islands with our own dinghy
- rainforest hiking
- eating, eating, eating
- massages at our villa
- day sailing trips
- shopping
- listening to live music
- visiting major tourist spots
- island & beach hopping
- more eating
- scratching bug bites
- more snorkeling
- feasting on a meal from a personal chef at our villa
- relaxing

Much more to come!!

M & T