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!