So Long e_Cubed...

Man,
It took me long enough to get around to it, but here is the next installment of my blog.
My band e_Cubed played at the "Battle of the Bands" at OSU. We played around 6:00 in the evening in front of about 300 people. It was an awesome experience. Egos were so high afterwards about our performance that we all got in a clash over who had done the best and the band had split up by the following morning. Well, not exactly. We didn't have ego problems, or clash. Really, Ben (our saxophone guy) moved away and we all agreed it wouldn't be the same without him, so we did split up.

So, here are some pictures of the show.

Ben is on Saxophone,
Aaron is on Bass,
Lee is on Drums,
and I of coarse am on Guitar and Vocals.

Cruise 7 Miami Florida

Well, All things must come to an end, and so did our cruise. But it was AWESOME!
We descided to check out some stuff in Miami while we were there. Here is an alligator checking us out while we check him out.

We went to the only "official" air boat ride place called Coopertown Air Boat Rides. It was definatly a cool experiance, we pulled up to this gross looking resturant/general store and bought our tickets, then while we waited for our air boat guide to come back from a current tour we got to look at the reptile exibit of five huge alligators. Pretty much they were just sleeping in the sun, but they were pretty cool to look at.
After waiting around for like fifteen minutes we hopped on board the air boat and were off. We followed one open canal until it dead ended and occasionally stopped to see a floating gator.
















































After the ride we got to hold a baby alligator, they are surprisingly soft.









After that we just hung around in Miami until our flight home the next day. What a SWEET trip.
That is all, no more cruise info from me, I suppose it is about time that I finally finished blogging it (I have finals next week).

Cruise 6 Cozumel Mexico

Cozumel was cool (in a hot sort of way).
We docked and got off the boat and got directly on our smaller ship to go snorkeling.
It took about an hours boat ride to get were we were going. Along the way we saw some flying fish, they were freakin' awesome.
When we got to the reef, we all hopped off the boat and drifted in a large group along the current over the reef. The water here was much deeper than at Grand Cayman (and my ear really hurt if I tried to dive down), so it was not quite as cool of an experience. We did get to see a sea turtle which was neat.


Once we got back to shore, we took a taxi into town and shopped around for several hours and then headed back to the ship. We were feeling pretty tired after all the days in port. The next day was the last day of the cruise and we spent most of it relaxing and soaking up the sun before the inevitable journey back to P-Town.

Cruise 5 Grand Cayman

Next Stop George Town Grand Cayman!

Here instead of coming to port, we had to tender (which here means we had to wait in line to get onto a small boat that takes about forty-five minutes to get you ashore.).

Here is a picture of some Turtles that awaited us upon arriving on the pier (most people had to pay for pictures, not us.). Once ashore we hopped two piers down and got on a party/pontoon boat to go snorkeling. One of our guides had a british accent and he was pretty funny.

Here is a Pirate Ship that we passed on our way to snorkeling. Snorkeling was pretty fun but not quite what I expected. We got to go for half an hour at a reef which was pretty cool and we saw a whole bunch of colorful fish and some rather large scary looking ones. Then we piled on to the ship and we were supposed to go to a wreck, but because of choppy conditions we had to go to another reef somewhere else close by. The first reef was more interesting. Jessica got stung by some small jelly fish(ouch!), and I swam too far under water without equalizing my ears properly (it was plugged and hurt for a full week, I will elaborate further in another blog).
Oh Yeah, also, if you are going to go snorkeling, make sure that you shave your face (guys) the morning of, otherwise your goggles leak like crazy and you spend most of your time emptying the salt water out of them. Turns out if you don't empty them out every other second salt water goes in your eyes and you can't see anything for a couple of minutes.

After snorkeling we got to hang out in downtown George Town and shop around. We saw some neat fiber glass lizards just hanging around. Here is Jess with the first one we saw.
















Shopping was ok, but it was the same old touristy stuff, and you couldn't really barter. I tried to lower the price of a couple things, but the workers just laughed at me. Oh well, it doesn't hurt to try. If we go there again, I think we would try to rent a car or scooters to check out some surrounding areas. HEY LOOK! A scooter just like ours! What are the Odds of that???
















The crappiest thing about tendering is trying to get back on board the cruise at the end of the day. We showed up Two Hours early to try and beat the rush back to the ship, only to see that the line for our ship literally went ten blocks down the street and out of sight. So we got an iced coffee, shopped around some more and then chilled by this fountain while we let the suckers wait in line.




















































SO LONG GRAND CAYMAN!!!

Cruise 4 Jamaica Continued... The Chucka Adventures!!!

... So after our episode of being frightened in down town Montego Bay, we hopped in a taxi (which was ironically driven by a man that had worked in Portland OR for a nine month stint. he said it rained every day and he would never go back, sounds like he came during the wrong nine months...) and were whisked away to the pier to await our excursion.

OK, this was our most expensive excursion, but it was by far the coolest!
It was called "Chucka Ocean Safari" and it sure was!

We took a 45 minute taxi ride through the country side (which I really enjoyed, though I didn't think that I would) and arrived at a beach and small dock. We hopped on a party/pontoon boat and headed out to sea. Our Jamaican guides were really friendly and welcoming. They were in their twenties, and really easy going. They made a game out of asking us questions in "Jamaican Patois" or "Jamaican Creole" or better known as just "Slang". They would ramble out this gibberish type sentence with the accents of a question and just look at you anticipating an answer. Then after whatever lame response we would give back they would laugh and then tell us what they had said. We really enjoyed it and it never seemed to get old no matter how many times they did it.


So, anyway, once we made it out a while we anchored and eventually climbed onto our individual "chucka" boats. They look kindof dorky, but they were actually really fun to drive. I got to drive for half an hour one way and Jessica got to drive it back. The water was really choppy which made it fun, especially if you throttled up right at the crest of the wave.

The best part was when Jessica got to drive back. She was not quite strong enough to operate the throttle, which means that I got to reach around her and manage it while she steered . This entailed anticipating where we were on a wave and how she was going to steer while heaving to and fro. We were dying of laughter the whole way back, especially when we would go full throttle, it was great.

To top it all off, on the last corner (I had throttled up during the middle of the sharpest part of the turn), the seat gave way! This is us checking out the seat right before we got off. We heard this loud crash as the seat shifted, Jessica had to do the equivalent of a wall squat for the minute back to the party boat, I just sat uncomfortably on the shifted plastic. It was fine, the worker just shifted the seat back in place, I guess it had come free of its housing, thats all (I guess it happens often???).

So next, we got to go snorkeling off the party boat. The Jamaican tour guide lead us around a coral and would show us various sea creatures. First he found a sea cucumber (man that thing looked hilarious!), then a sea urchin and so forth. I saw a huge stingray just chillin' at the bottom. That was quite fun as well.

After snorkeling, we went back to land and to the ship and we were on our merry way!
Ahhh, Cruisin' is Great! I wish I were there now.

Cruise 3 Jamaica

Jamaica was our next stop, and was the most interesting stop on our cruise.
I really wanted to go to a downtown location and check out what Jamaica was all about.
The ship told us that the best place in Montego Bay was a five minute taxi drive away (to be fair they also said that Jamaica was probably not the best place to shop). So we piled into a taxi for $5 a head and were promptly dropped off at the "city center shopping" location.

Here is a picture of the center. Up close it looks more like a two story pawn shop, there are bars on almost all the windows, and every other shop was closed (as in non-existent). So once we looked at all ten shops that were there (and they had all the same type of tourist stuff), we decided to walk a little ways down one street to see some more shops. We were the only white people around (which just means that we really stood out), the streets and alleys were very dirty and scary, and the people were quite pushy in trying to sell things to you or trying to get "tips". There was one guy that decided he was our "guide" and was leading us to some better "shopping" place. I am sure he just wanted a tip, but there is always the distinct possibility that he wanted to lead us somewhere and then take our money once where he wanted us. So after being there for about ten minutes total, we had had our fill and were ready to get going. We announced to our "guide" that we were heading back, and on our way we were stopped by an old man with no teeth who recited us some poem about a king and a queen in love (oh don't forget he really just wanted a tip). Luckily a taxi driver saw us and rescued us by coming to get us.

Here are some more pictures of the scary area.
Ok, it may not look to scary here, but I assure you that when you are there, you feel quite exposed, and everyone knows that you are a little lost tourist out of your element. And it seems that everyone looks at you like you have a ton of money that you are just dying to hand over for no reason.


So we went back to the ship and awaited our excursion...
I will post on that a little later.

Cruise 2 Haiti

Royal Caribbean has purchase a private beach on Haiti, so basically this was a resort like beach area with lunch provided.

This is our monstrous ship and one of the many swimming areas. 

And though we enjoyed our stay on this small peninsula, Haiti was probably our least favorite of the stops along the way. 

It was however EXTREMELY relaxing (and hot).

 

We went on a walking tour to learn a little about Haiti... turns out we saw an old buccaneer trading posts and a wild dog.
We spent the rest of our time relaxing and a little swimming.












Behind us here is were I tried to snorkel, but it was way too shallow and corral-ie so I promptly got out and swam in a better spot. 

More to come latter.