Got up a little early, so just puttered around finishing writing some entries to get all the way caught up. Bernadette got up so we headed out around 9:30. She was still in the stage of slightly being overwhelmed with everything. All I could say was that she picked a perfect place to experience the Caribbean, and found a darn good tour guide. For me, she was a breath of fresh air, not only because she was bit quirky, but being around someone that had some exuberance was nice. I often have to check myself so that I don’t fall into that jaded traveler mode. Sometimes when you travel for a while, you stop looking around and just see as another drudging day of finding a place to stay, how much things are going to cost, where your going to eat, what there is to do, when and how to move on, keeping up on the blog, etc., that you don’t notice some of the most spectacular scenery or miss talking with an interesting person. For that I was grateful to meet her.

We took the long hike and watched as she did the ballerina walk down the 156 stairs to the bay. She just hopped in the water and floated around like she was in a day dream. There was a lady there as well who I had seen in the past. She was now a local with eight years under her belt. She was originally from England and carried the same accent. She told me stories of how she got there and how it was to live in such a small community. What I can gather, her and her husband must have came there on vacations a lot and then finally moved there. Her husband past away but she had to stay because she adopted three dogs and couldn’t bear to leave them.

After a while, I grabbed my camera and went in search of the Spotted Ray and Coral Snake. I did my usual quick whirl to the cliff area but didn’t see a thing. When I got back, I went over the basics with Bernadette and got her set up. She snorkeled around a bit in the shallow sandy area to get used to the equipment. After a while I took her over to the rocky area that had some fish and coral. She did really good until the tide started picking up and she started to get a little nervous. Instead of making her first experience traumatizing, we called it a day and just relaxed on the beach. In town she went to find an internet place to let her friends and family know that she was safe. I wanted to get the entries burned on a cd so I could get them uploaded that day so I could prove that I was caught up. A little later she came back and picked up her things to move to her new place closer to the bay. I took a short nap and then headed into town to find a internet place. For some reason everything was pretty much locked down and nothing was open. I walked around and finally gave up on the whole idea of being caught up. I went back to finish off my frozen cookies and relax. We had arranged to meet at 4:00 to do another snorkel run so I headed off to the pier to meet Bernadette. This time at the beach the rental guy was there so she rented a set of snorkel gear. We hopped into the ocean and headed towards the good area. She was having problems with the rental stuff so I traded her (Yes, I can think of others at times.) We snorkeled around the reef and she even made it to the cliff area. I just prayed that the Ray didn’t show up because I knew she would just freak. I kept checking on her and she was okay, so we did a full lap and headed in. She was now a seasoned pro. We headed into town and split company at her street. I headed over to the dock to Lime out for a while. It was just turning dark so the sky was just turning to flames. It was still a bit cloudy so there were layers of colors. The lower clouds had turned dark, as they got higher they started to turn into flames and occasionally an open patch would drift by and it looked like the blue sky of the middle of the day. I just lied on my back watching the clouds drift by. People would occasionally walk by and stare up to see what I was looking at. I think some of them understood, because sometimes it takes a traveler to remind them to stop and look at the view. Once it was totally dark, I gathered my stuff and headed home. I said my hellos a hundred times to all the people that come to chill out in the evening. Getting to stay in one spot is nice because you slowly get acclimated into the lives of the locals. I have enough Caribbean history in me to fit in just a little.

After getting cleaned up I went back into town to see if there were any food places open. Pretty much everything was closed so I just strolled around. The music guy was out so I asked if he had any DVD’s. He did not but showed me a place that did. The DVD guy was just setting up his booth so he didn’t have any ready to sell, but he said that I could rent one of his originals if I promised to bring it back. Back at my scummy place in Scarborough, a guy was watching Spiderman II, so I got the urge to watch some movies. I had stopped going to theatres and renting movies knowing that they would make good time wasters as I was traveling. Anyways, he did not have it of yet, but he said next week he would have it shipped over from Scarsborough. I decided on Star Wars III instead. With that, the rest of the night I got to quench my need for TV. It was a pretty good movie. I do miss my Dawson’s Creek, Ed, CSI Las Vegas/Nevada. Hey now, you can’t adventure 365 days a year. TV gives you a chance to build up traveling strength. Besides, thats where I gain all of my intellectuality, right off the boob tube. I wonder why they call it that?