Tuesday, 15 April 2008

Day Three: Tortola

Apologies for the slight delay in blogging, I was meant to do it over the weekend, but got distracted by something else, which I'll get onto shortly, but in the meantime, lets blog with photos (oooooh!)


Getting up on board the ship is easier than you think. Theres absolutely no need to set an alarm clock, because every day you get to a new island at about 7am, so by 6am all the ropes and pulleys are moving around, getting ready to dock at whichever port you are arriving at, so we all woke up at about 6ish to various banging and machinery noises, which was pleasant as we got a chance to get out on deck and see the approaching port.
We had breakfast and met up in the Marquee with all the other people on tours and were led out onto dry land! (that sounded better at the time, I admit!). So, off we went in our various groups to the tour bus. Now, when I say tour bus, you immediately think of a coach or such like with windows, air con etc, but this is more of an adventure to say the least. It was an open-sided bus with little in the way of safety measures, in fact the tour guide did remind the people on each side of the bus to hang on to the metal posts as he went round corners, as they would fall out! (Thankfully my aunt had already bagsied that seat!)

Anyway after about half an hour of bouncing along the rugged coastal roads, we stopped off and took a few snaps of some pelicans and of the stunning view (view 1 of 150 million):















Now, fascinating fact, fact-fans. That little island, just past the yacht is called Dead Mans Island, and the legend goes that when the island was a trading port, in times of yore, pirates used to try and get onto land to plunder the locals for whatever they could find. Only problem was, that this area of the ocean is very shallow, and so pirate ships were destroyed trying to negotiate the rocks, killing hundreds, so the inhabitants of the island took their bodies and buried them in an uninhabited island, and built a Mausoleum for them. Decades later, a plague devastated the vast majority of the population of the island, and so they buried those poor souls next to the pirates, in a seperate Mausoleum, so you can imagine the ghost stories flying round there! This is also where the idea for the Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Mans Chest was thought of, see!

Next stop was a Harbour called Pussers Landing, in Sopers Hole Wharf, which is a stunning little port where most of the rich-boys toys, otherwise known as yachts, are moored, as demonstrated here:



















Next up was the long drive over the mountains to Cane Garden Beach. The journey there was as much fun as you can have in an open-sided bus, as there were so many tight hairpin turns above sheer cliffs, that we were glad to get there in one piece! Along the way, however, we stopped off to get some local flavour at the 'Bomba Shack'. Now, unfortunately Bomba wasn't in, but the general idea of the Bomba Shack was to advertise and sign people up for every party boat and beach barbecue on the island, as demonstrated, quite brilliantly here:
































In case you are wondering, that is ladies underwear nailed to the top of the Bomba Shack, god love Bomba!

Our last stop was Cane Garden Bay, and it was well worth waiting for. You had to walk through a massive bar area to get to the beach, whilst Bob Marley played at full volume, which was played pretty much everywhere we went to, don't know whether that was just for the tourists, but it was great to hear! Anyway, I think the beach was worth waiting for:












After about an hour on the beach, we came back down through the mountains and back to the ship, which by this point had been joined by another, american ship, which amused us as we could do the 'our ships bigger than yours' game, which never tired over the whole 2 weeks!

















Next Stop, St Maarten, and one of the greatest historical alternatives to war ever!

The Normal Blog Bit

Now, the reason for the delay in blogging over the weekend was that I decided to upload all my videos of the cruise onto DVD. Simple, right? Wrong! Basically Windows Movie Maker didn't want to talk to the CD/DVD converter, then the DVD converter didn't recognise the DVD in the joint CV/DVD drive (The Benq drive that you installed, Gaz), so after 2 days of trying I'm just gonna shove it onto video and buy a seperate DVD drive to do it at a later date.
At the same time I was trying to upload all our photos to the Boots website so we could have all our photos to put in albums and show them to whoever wanted to see them. Easier said than done, the Boots website kept crashing, the software kept telling me off for 'interrupting' the upload, and it took the best part of 9 hours to upload 350 photos! Absolute nightmare, then I had to do the same for my aunts photos on the sunday, marvellous!

I finally ordered them and they came on Tuesday, completely out of the order we'd set out! So thats our weekend sorted then! Although I'll have to steal myself away to go and see Villa thump another hapless relegation-threatened team, who just happens to be the feckless Blues, on Sunday. Bring them on!!!!!
Finally, a word from Celebrity Corner. Now I know this segment has been somewhate bare over the last few months, but I doubt me telling you how I've seen 'that fella who was on casualty a few years ago. Y'know, the one who fell off a ladder and broke his leg', would do you much good, but this time I can put a name to the faces of the two legends in their own right who I saw last week.
First up, the silver-haired Blue Peter legend that is, John Craven, who I saw in a tunnel by the Mailbox!













Ah, I remember the days when news was real news. Not the rubbish you get now with death and destruction everywhere, but cats saving dogs from badger holes on John Craven's Newsround!

Last, but by no means least, the even more legendary Martin Laursen getting into his Aston Martin along Colmore Row!

Up the Villa!

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