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Greta's blog (Day 9, February 24th 2017):

Our last full day in paradise… my does time travel fast! The morning started out as it always does… breakfast in the room (eggs scrambled with bacon and hummus, plus a piece of bun toasted with peanut butter and/or chutney).

We headed down to the beach at 9:15 because Mike wanted to sign up for the 10 am waterskiing. Once we got there, we discovered that 10 am start time means 10 am SIGN UP, so we wandered the beach for 30 minutes and noticed the crabs running about on the rocks. At 10 am, Mike signed up as the first skier, but was told all the water ski lessons were first. This seemed to involve training on land until past 10:30 and then the beginner skiers trying out their new skills on a boom and then behind the boat. All of that is fine, but it would have been nice to know that Mike wouldn’t have been skiing until nearly noon that day. We’d have tried to get in a bit of watersports (kayak, SUP, or windsurf) during the down time. But all’s well that ends well, and Mike can now say he skied in February. It was a big ski but at least they brought out the big boat (200 HP outboard with the rope on a pylon, much better than the trainer boat that only had a 115 on it).

Back to the room to pack up and then we headed to Pigeon Island National Park for some hiking. There were the ruins of Fort Rodney, complete with two “hills” to hike up. The first one wasn’t too bad – and we got a great view of Martinique. The 2nd hill was a challenge to say the least. It was just a scruffy dirt/rock trail to follow, which seemed almost vertical at times – even more so than the resort – but with much less footholds. We did make it to the top though and got another great view; it was definitely not a family-friendly-safe-as-can-be-in-the-US type of trail. We are not going to hike the Pitons, as they were described as quite treacherous, and with Mike in the not best of health yet, this seemed to be more than enough for us at this time!

As we got back to the bottom, we found the Barnacles Bar in hopes of a fancy fruity drink but it was more of an English Pub (complete with being housed in an old stone building from the 1700s -- Captains Cellar, it was). We did order some crab curry for a snack, though. It arrived in a bowl brimming with curry sauce and some local crabs cooked up inside (we’d seen some running around on the rocks earlier today). It was a bit of a challenge, to say the least, to get the crab meat out w/o one of those little crab forks or a shell cracker, but we were hungry & determined! The gal working the place later brought out some bread to sop up the rest of the curry which was great because it was outstanding!

After a light late lunch, we walked on the short last hike of the island to see the shore-line sights (cave seemed to be fenced off), and then back to the resort we went. We took it easy for a while as the hike was quite strenuous for us, and even too the SHUTTLE back to the room to “relax” a bit. Greta easily got in her 10,000 steps for FitBit that day w/o requiring a walk at the end of the night (probably a first) – she hit 10K at the top of the tall peak, so that was pretty cool.

We saw a decent sunset from our balcony but the real show started 10 minutes later. The whole sky was aflame with clouds & pink & orange & purple. What a great show for our last night here. Finding a place for dinner is always a challenge and tends to take almost an hour to figure out, as a lot of places are either very pricey, not necessarily open, or you just can’t find a website. Finally Greta remembered the sign she’d seen nearly every day we’ve driven advertising the “Sunroof Chinese Restaurant”. It’s about a mile from our resort, and completely empty when we got there. But the food was amazing! The owner had us all to himself, so he was incredibly attentive (although he seems to be the kind of man who’d be that attentive no matter if there were many other patrons as well). We got vegetable spring rolls for an appetizer, and these were amazing. We followed that up with an order of fried rice with orders of Chicken Curry and Shrimp on a Hot Plate. Both were incredibly good! We got a huge order of everything and really just inhaled it all. Why this place is not packed is beyond our imagination. It’s not exactly next to any resort, but it’s so good, it should have plenty of customers. The reviews we did find on Trip Advisor were all great, and we added our own. Honestly, it was one of the best meals we had on the island and probably one of the least expensive as well.

After that, it was back to the resort. Greta got a “100+ staircases” award on FitBit – that was a first and probably the last for a quite a while. It was a great way to close out our last day on the island before packing up in the morning.

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Last updated: Fri, Feb 24, 2017.
Copyright © Mike vanMeeteren, 2017.