On Saturday morning, we had a leisurely breakfast. The big event of the day was a trip to Sting Ray City, where you could swim with sting rays. But we had some time to kill first, so Kate visited with the kittens (there was a cat roaming the resort which had recently had kittens, Kate's highlight of the vacation). Jack and I checked out the table tennis game, which was kind of funny. It was very windy, so we played, but everything I hit would blow back to me, or at least not across the net. He won.
We had a short pool trip. "Count, Daddy, count!" Kate said, as she did handstands and I counted.
We went to the beach. Jack was determined to tackle me in the ocean. I stood there like a tree trunk while he futilely tried to wrestle me underwater. We laughed. Finally I let him drag me over. More laughter.
Took a cab to Sting Ray City. About 20 of us boarded a medium-sized boat that sped out to a large reef with a constructed dock. I got the sense during the introductory video that Kate might be a little iffy about the whole thing. Maybe it's the name: sting ray. She'd touched one before, at the Maritime Aquarium, but not with great relish, and then she wasn't actually in the water with them.
Here, you had to stand in waist-deep water (for adults; more like neck-deep for kids), and a dozen or so giant rays swum about you, looking for food. The employees gave us squid to hold under water, and the rays would swim up and suck them out of our hands like a piece of spaghetti. This was pretty cool and weird, and Kate wanted absolutely no part of it.
Jack was fine with it. He fed a ray, and held one happily in his arms for a picture. We all did, uh, except Kate, who threw her arms around my or Emily's neck and held on tight. And asked to go back onto the boat/dock/dry land.
But finally, at the end, the guy brought a ray up to the edge of the dock, and Kate reached out and petted it. A little, shy smile as she did it. And when we saw the picture of the whole family with the ray, much to my surprise, she had a big smile on her face.
We went back to the resort, spent the rest of the day at the beach and pool, and had a really nice dinner. Exhausted and sunburned, we slept.
Kate slept with her new stuffed sting ray toy, which she named Sally.
Monday, April 13, 2015
Friday, April 03, 2015
Antigua Vacation, Part I
Last week, we went on a tropical vacation, basically the first one we had gone on as a family. The nuances probably don't seem as different from The Cape to them, but they were properly enthused. Even though we woke them up at 4:30 in the morning so we could catch a very early plane. In fact, they were giddy, chatterboxes babbling about everything. Playing with Baby and Puppy, their respective sleeping toys for the trip. Pointing out different things in the sky, buildings, whatever. And a 4-hour plane ride didn't alter that, maybe because they had the luxury of personal TVs on the back of each seat.
In the Taxi from the airport, Kate excitedly noticed everything. "Animals! Palm trees! We're driving on the wrong side of the road!"
We couldn't check in yet, so we changed into bathing suits off the lobby and hit the pool. And as she proves every vacation and would continue to over the remainder of the vacation, Kate is a fish. She jumped off the edge, did a somersault in the water, and climbed out, over and over again. Jack basically did the same, albeit less determinedly, more just messing around. Kate almost seemed to want each jump, each somersault, to be better than the last.
After maybe an hour of this, Emily and I wanted to check out the beach (we've been swimming in pools in New York!), but the kids wanted to stay, and we finally had to drag them away. And when we finally talked them into the beach, and threw down towels and ran and splashed in the ocean, they didn't want to leave there! There were large, circular rafts anchored a little way off shore. They commandeered one and crafted a whole little world where it was a base and there were sharks in the water and they were trying to catch fish while at the same time avoiding the sharks. I think that's it; I didn't have all the rules. But it was pretty cool.
Finally we were able to check in, went to our room, showered and changed. And... then we walked to ANOTHER beach, so they could get their clean clothes wet by jumping in and over the waves that rolled in. Sigh. We stayed there for a while, finding and skipping the flattest, smoothest rocks I've ever seen. And then it was dinner, and stumbling in exhaustion back to the room, and TV, and sleep.
Friday
We sometimes have to work to get the kids -- especially Kate -- to eat good meals, but the all you can eat breakfast buffet was right up their alley. Cereal and eggs and toast and cereal and bacon and orange juice.
After breakfast, Jack and I strolled to the smooth rock beach. It was totally covered with seaweed from the tide; one day we actually saw workers scooping it all up and carting it away. I had figured the tide cleared the beach; nope. Jack spotted a big, black shiny crab, at least he said it was. I figured big was an exaggeration, but then I saw it. Pretty big! We sat for a while hoping it would crawl back out from under the rock it had scuttled under so we could get a picture. I told Jack this story I'd read somewhere about a nature photographer waiting in a tree for three days hoping to get a picture of a rare bird. Jack wasn't overly impressed ("for just a bird?") but we did give the crab a good 10 minutes. (We went back the next day and saw a couple of them.)
We all went to a different pool, the Children's Pool (only 3-4 feet deep throughout), getting there by riding in a golf cart driven by a resort porter. Kate's reaction to the ride: "Wheeeeee!" They played and jumped in the pool for a long time. Kate could turn somersaults in the pool forever. They did handstands on the bottom of the pool, asking us over and over to "Time me!"
After the pool, we hit the beach. (This would be a recurring theme of the vacation, typically followed by another trip to the pool before dinner.) At the resort's beaches, all drinks were free, so Kate and Jack got punch and Emily and I got rum punches. (Jack told a joke: "What's Muhammad Ali's favorite drink? Hawaiian PUNCH!" I didn't even know he knew who Ali was.) At one point we rescued one of those rafts and floated around in it with our drinks. Kate wanted to get hers and swim out to the raft with it. I didn't think she could possibly do it without spilling, and told her so. I was wrong. Five minutes later she was swimming out to the raft, carefully holding her punch out of the water with one hand. Impressive, Kate.
We borrowed snorkeling equipment, which Kate amusingly mispronounced as "Snargling." Heh. We took out a couple of pedal boats, where you would sit in them and let your legs do the work of moving you around the bay. Some cross of having a flawed boat, not having strong enough legs, and maybe the rum punches resulted in a pretty sorry pedalling effort on the part of the two adults. We did better in a second go-around a couple of days later.
After a day of sun and punch and sunburns, we showered, got dressed, had dinner. Both kids looked beautiful.
Next: Sting Ray City!
In the Taxi from the airport, Kate excitedly noticed everything. "Animals! Palm trees! We're driving on the wrong side of the road!"
We couldn't check in yet, so we changed into bathing suits off the lobby and hit the pool. And as she proves every vacation and would continue to over the remainder of the vacation, Kate is a fish. She jumped off the edge, did a somersault in the water, and climbed out, over and over again. Jack basically did the same, albeit less determinedly, more just messing around. Kate almost seemed to want each jump, each somersault, to be better than the last.
After maybe an hour of this, Emily and I wanted to check out the beach (we've been swimming in pools in New York!), but the kids wanted to stay, and we finally had to drag them away. And when we finally talked them into the beach, and threw down towels and ran and splashed in the ocean, they didn't want to leave there! There were large, circular rafts anchored a little way off shore. They commandeered one and crafted a whole little world where it was a base and there were sharks in the water and they were trying to catch fish while at the same time avoiding the sharks. I think that's it; I didn't have all the rules. But it was pretty cool.
Finally we were able to check in, went to our room, showered and changed. And... then we walked to ANOTHER beach, so they could get their clean clothes wet by jumping in and over the waves that rolled in. Sigh. We stayed there for a while, finding and skipping the flattest, smoothest rocks I've ever seen. And then it was dinner, and stumbling in exhaustion back to the room, and TV, and sleep.
Friday
We sometimes have to work to get the kids -- especially Kate -- to eat good meals, but the all you can eat breakfast buffet was right up their alley. Cereal and eggs and toast and cereal and bacon and orange juice.
After breakfast, Jack and I strolled to the smooth rock beach. It was totally covered with seaweed from the tide; one day we actually saw workers scooping it all up and carting it away. I had figured the tide cleared the beach; nope. Jack spotted a big, black shiny crab, at least he said it was. I figured big was an exaggeration, but then I saw it. Pretty big! We sat for a while hoping it would crawl back out from under the rock it had scuttled under so we could get a picture. I told Jack this story I'd read somewhere about a nature photographer waiting in a tree for three days hoping to get a picture of a rare bird. Jack wasn't overly impressed ("for just a bird?") but we did give the crab a good 10 minutes. (We went back the next day and saw a couple of them.)
We all went to a different pool, the Children's Pool (only 3-4 feet deep throughout), getting there by riding in a golf cart driven by a resort porter. Kate's reaction to the ride: "Wheeeeee!" They played and jumped in the pool for a long time. Kate could turn somersaults in the pool forever. They did handstands on the bottom of the pool, asking us over and over to "Time me!"
After the pool, we hit the beach. (This would be a recurring theme of the vacation, typically followed by another trip to the pool before dinner.) At the resort's beaches, all drinks were free, so Kate and Jack got punch and Emily and I got rum punches. (Jack told a joke: "What's Muhammad Ali's favorite drink? Hawaiian PUNCH!" I didn't even know he knew who Ali was.) At one point we rescued one of those rafts and floated around in it with our drinks. Kate wanted to get hers and swim out to the raft with it. I didn't think she could possibly do it without spilling, and told her so. I was wrong. Five minutes later she was swimming out to the raft, carefully holding her punch out of the water with one hand. Impressive, Kate.
We borrowed snorkeling equipment, which Kate amusingly mispronounced as "Snargling." Heh. We took out a couple of pedal boats, where you would sit in them and let your legs do the work of moving you around the bay. Some cross of having a flawed boat, not having strong enough legs, and maybe the rum punches resulted in a pretty sorry pedalling effort on the part of the two adults. We did better in a second go-around a couple of days later.
After a day of sun and punch and sunburns, we showered, got dressed, had dinner. Both kids looked beautiful.
Next: Sting Ray City!
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