San Juan, Puerto Rico

After the Virgin Islands it was on to San Juan, PR.  Mom and I had decided when we booked the cruise at Christmas that we would do zip lining.  We were hoping that she would get to do it on her 77th birthday but that didn't work out.  She had to settle for the day before her birthday!  We took a short bus ride to the rain forest and got geared up.

We probably should have thought this out better.  Mom has bad knees, I am a smoker and the first hill about did us in.  We weren't sure we were even going to get to do this.  Straight up hill for maybe 200 yards?? We were quit pathetic.  Once we conquered the first hill the rest wasn't as bad.  I was so glad to see the first platform.  I must say that I really sucked at zip lining!!  I was really good at coming down, except when I started going head first instead of feet first, and when I couldn't stop, and when there were trees at the end of the line.  Mom was awesome she did so much better than me but didn't take as good a picture!

Me just not getting the hang of brakes!

hill that kicked our butts!

easy part of the hike.

Mom doing awesome

After we did the zip lining we headed back to the ship and did some shopping.  Found some cool clothes, saw some great sites and as I did in ever port I found jewelry!

Black and White beach

there were a couple stands like this that dressed you up
 like a pirate and  load you up with birds.

The actual boat used as the Black Pearl

The Virgin Islands

After hitting the Bahamas we took off to the Virgin Islands.  We landed in St. Thomas and then we stood around on the dock waiting for our excursion of the day.

Mom and I decided to do a dolphin swim.  This required us to actually go to the British Virgin Islands rather than the US side.  While we were waiting to hop on our tour boat we met a gal Gina who just was a hoot.  We made her join in on the family pictures!!! This first green boat had us thinking we were going to have a great ride to the BVI... boy did we guess wrong.

This was our actual boat... it had so much oil dumping into the water it was unreal!!!  We decided to hop up on the upper level seeing all the billows of black smoke just gushing from it.

We had a blast with a little boy on the top, we got him throwing his hands up in the air like it was a roller coaster!  We arrived in Tortola BVI at the customs building after a 45 minute trip and I immediately was chewed out for not having a shirt on.  Sheesh, the excursion director told us to wear our bathing suits.  I had my suit and a sarong around the waist.  Major indiscretion apparently.  He let me through after making sure I knew he wouldn't let me in HIS building again if I wasn't dressed properly.  Even though our tour guide can give us a tour and leave his fly down the whole way through. Good thing I had clothes in my hiking pack!  We then hopped on a bus to the dolphin area and boy these island drivers can drive the hell out of a vehicle in some crazy places .

The dolphin swim was amazing! We immediately got in the water with the dolphins.  They did a ton of tricks for us and jumps.  They kiss you, pose for the camera but letting you grab their fins and ride on their tummies was incredible.  I have tons of pictures from it but decided it wouldn't be prudent to post all gazillion of them!