Andy and Darcy’s Blog

I’d like to announce our new food blog, eatdrinklivewith.us. The intent is that we’ll blog about food and wine and enjoying it. Hopefully with some good pictures and commentary to go along with it. So hop on over there and check it out!

Here are a few pictures from the Tobago airport. I didn’t take any more since I was in a bad mood after the security checks. And there wasn’t much to see other than airports.

Today was Paula and Ben’s wedding. It was a great wedding and a great party. Just look at the pictures.

Downtime before the wedding

Before the guests arrive. There is a steel drum band to the right.

Yay, panorama mode.

Eventually, I decided I wasn’t in a position to get a good photo of anything, but here is the best I can do!

Toasts. Speeches. Congratuations.

The limbo. There is no chicken dance in Tobago.

That is the bride and groom in the pool.

Go here for a slideshow of all of the photos.

Today we went driving around the island with some of Ben’s and some of Paula’s family. We caravanned with 3 vehicles, one of which was driven by Andy. We stopped at anywhere that looked scenic!

From the low lands, we went north and cut across the island to the fishing village Castara. On our way, we saw a lot of rain forest.

Next we headed to Englishman’s Bay, where we met Dexter again, ate lunch, and saw a wedding from a distance.

After that, we saw another beach, this time with beautiful coral reefs and we had a second lunch.

Then we dodged several cows in the road on our way to Charlotteville.

In Charlotteville, they were having a fishing contest. We headed to the beach, which was buried in the midst of the jungle. On our way back we saw the winning fish of the fishing contest, a blue marlin.

We finished the day by having dinner with some of Ben’s friends and family at the Crown Point Beach Hotel.

Here is a link to the slideshow with all of the pictures.

We went on another boat cruise similar to the one on the previous day, this time with a lot of the wedding guests. We all got one two boats. These were glass bottom boats. We had previously tried the clear bottom kayaks in Alaska and were not impressed. But the glass bottom boats in Tobago do exactly what you want! We saw all kinds of coral and fish without getting wet!

We ended up back on the same beach as yesterday for the beach barbeque. Once again, it was fun. It was even more fun with more people (and more rum punch).

Then we went to the wedding rehearsal. The wedding is in a really big, extravagant beach house.

Here is a link to the slideshow of pictures for the day.

Today we went on a snorkeling tour with lots of Ben’s family and our tour guide, Dexter. It started out with us being picked up in the van at our hotel and being driven to the boat launch. The boat launch was interesting because there was a mangrove forest all around us. I have heard that you get interesting bird watching in the mangrove forests.

We got on the boat and headed north on a boat ride that was more fun than a roller coaster. You’ll know you’re seeing this on the slideshow when you get to a series of blurry, poorly framed pictures. On this boat trip, we made stops to take pictures of The Fountain Of Youth waterfall and the fishing village Castara.

We also made stops for the snorkelers to jump in and look at the reefs. Normally, I would be snorkeling, too, but unfortunately I had an ear infection.

It was probably due to the fact I didn’t jump in, but today was my first experience with sea sickness. They had cast a fishing line and were slowly creeping forward, and it really hit me. After that I felt so much better. We eventually headed out to No Man’s Land to have our beach barbeque. This was one of those beaches that comes out beautiful in every photo.

After the beach bbq, we went to Nylon Pool, which is a huge sandbar in the middle of the ocean. We all got out of the boat and walked around in waist high water. It was pretty neat.

For dinner, we went to Marcia’s. It was really good. Sorry for the blurry pictures, but I was too hungry to care!

Here is a link to the slideshow for all of the pictures.

Today we went back to the House of Pancakes. I have decided that they make the best corned beef hash ever there. Just ask Andy.

Then we went to Store Bay Beach followed by Pidgeon Point Beach. It was clear and very warm. Being a Minnesotan that is completely unaccustomed to the warm weather (at least in this season), I was sweating, and my sunscreen kept running into my eyes. That was uncomfortable. Andy swam, I waded in, and we both took some pictures. It is hard to take a bad picture here!

That was today. For dinner, Andy made pasta with clam sauce and curried basmati rice with grocery supplies we had got at the Penny Saver a few days ago.

Today we had breakfast at the House Of Pancakes. Andy had the pineapple pancakes and I had the corned beef hash. Both were very good, and the corned beef hash was so good that Andy wants to go back.

We also went to Pidgeon Point Beach, a beach that we can see in the distance from our hotel. This beach has a lot of very shallow waters, and it is the only beach that charges an admission fee. It is very popular and probably worth it.

We tried lining up a tour for one of our following days. It was very hard to get ahold of any tour company in Tobago, but luckily we met a guy on the beach. We actually met Dexter Henry, who makes tours happen. We decided to go with a beach/snorkeling/sight seeing tour on Wednesday. We heard some people from Wisconsin are in the same tour so we have to assume they are some of Ben’s family that are here for the wedding. It’s a small island.

Here is a slide show of all of my pictures.

I woke up exhausted, which is odd because I slept a lot on the planes yesterday. So we slept in, but only until about 8:30. It was dark when we got in the previous day, so we saw our first glimpse of the ocean out the window. It was beautiful.

We spent this day exploring the immediate area. It is also muggy and warm, and that takes some getting used to. The beaches are everything you could want. There are areas where the ocean is crashing on rocks. There are also tannish sandy beaches. I took lots of pictures of flowers and plants as well.

We also picked up our rental car. In Tobago, you drive on the left. We thought we might get a car with a steering wheel on the left, but that was on the right (backwards), too. It was really weird to drive on the left hand side of the road, even for the passenger. But you usually had enough time to think things through – the speed limit for the whole island is 30 mph.

We tried some local cuisine, conc with dumplings and crab with dumplings. The same curry sauce was on both dishes. The dumplings were like very large, very thick ravioli (with no filling).

I also tried panorama mode on my camera for the the first time. I think it is really cool, and I’m probably going to take many more pictures in panorama mode from now on. The picture you’re seeing below is my first. If you want to see all my pictures, you should really go here. There were too many to blog about it.

The Tobago posts begin today.

This was our first time in the deep south (not counting Texas). We had a 5 hour layover in Atlanta, so this probably doesn’t even count. It wasn’t very exciting, except for the drama at our gate because Delta decided to leave 12 people that were coming in on a connecting flight, and they were mad. I would probably be too…because the plane was right outside, still connected to the doorway and everything. Ouch. So we watched the drama, and we watched the planes go by until we boarded our plane to Tobago.

If you want to see all of the pictures (and that might be a few or a zillion), then go here.