Antigua Vacation, Part 2

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.