The last few months have led Erin and I around the islands and Jamaica -

 

Curacao - This is a country where the governer decided his headaches were due to the white coloured houses and ordered the country painted in pastels.  Upon arriving it is impossible to feel hostility in a city bathed in pink, blue, orange and yellow.  Curacao neighbours Aruba, with a third country Bonaire off of its coast.  Tied in with ST. Marteen this makes up the dutch caribbean (St. Barths may be one as well).  The people are mixes of dutch and latin american.  Papiamento is the local language though everybody speaks dutch, spanish and english as well... fluently.  Not much of a beach island though.  I presented at a launch of BlackBerry there - great party.

 

Barbados Trip - I had a whirlwind trip of the Barbados and the eastern caribbean.  I showed up at work and was asked to get to Barbados that day.  An hour later I was off to the airport to catch a flight.  I landed in Barbados and was subsequently asked to go to St. Lucia the next day.  We went to St. Lucia - landed at 3pm, jumped in a car with a guy from BlackBerry and we proceeded to drive up and down the same street for 4 hours doing drive testing.  We then went back to the airport and flew back to Barbados.  In the airport I got a call from Air Jamaica telling me that their flight was canceled the next day.  I therefore had to switch to a 6am flight the next morning.

 

Treasure Beach and Negril - Erin's parents came down and we proceeded on a cross country adventure of some of the sleepiest parts of Jamaica - combined with one of the partiest areas of Jamaica.  We drove through the south coast of Jamaica, stopping for a bath in milk river (most healing water in the world), stopping then in Lil' Ochee for fresh lobster (to die for lobster), then ended up inTreasure Beach.  We took a boat ride on a small fisherman's boat with a 74 year-old fisherman and heard countless fisherman tales - stopping at the Pelican Bar which is on a sandbar 2 miles out in the ocean.  Dolphins flipped around our boat and we learned valuable lessons such as that if dolphins are around there wont' be sharks - dolphins apparently top sharks in the heirarchy as the dolphins are quicker and will thump the side of the shark and drive it away.  Also dolphins often have a funeral ceremony where they keep bumping the dead body of another dolphin up to the top of ocean for several days.  We then ventured up Black River where we ran into a few large crocodiles, dark water and creepy mangroves.  In treasure beach we enjoyed the sleepy, relaxed nature of a country town not huge on tourism. 

 

We traded that for Negril after a couple days.  Unknowinly to us it was spring break - the peak of drunken college mayhem in spring break.  Negril changed my mind - not all Americans are fat, in fact there were very few fat americans there - it was quite shocking.  The beach in Negril is amazing, 7 miles of white beach and turquoise water.  We went snorkeling and saw turtles, eels, stingrays and more... it was amazing.