Woke up a bit earlier (9am) and headed up for breakfast. We talked with Victoria, the 'cruise' director about some potential activities. She was organizing a sunset sail for Saturday evening, which we signed up for. We wanted to find out about parasailing and jetskiing, as well as renting a boat to take us snorkeling on Saturday. She wrote everything down and said she'd get back to us at lunch, down at the beach.

We decided to go and see about parasailing on our own, so off we went in a Whaler to Leverick Bay. It only took about 10 minutes to get there, but upon arrival we found that their boat was in the shop, and wouldn't be ready for about 3 weeks. Also, the only other parasailing boat, on Tortola, was also out of commission right now. Apparently things were very busy over New Year's and quite a bit of equipment around the island had been used 'heavily'. No matter; we buzzed around the sound for a while, then headed back for lunch.

The Bitter End Resort.

We stopped of at The Bitter End, a nearby resort, on the way back to pick up some vodka, some cranberry juice, and some sunglasses for Randy. Rick stopped to take some pictures of the cacti they have there. Click here for more cactus shots.

The sidewalk is lined with cactus.

On Fridays lunch is a barbecue down at the beach, so we rode the bikes down, sat on the beach while they prepared things, then sat under the big shaded roof and had a wonderful lunch.

Victoria had set up a glass bottom boat for Saturday, and told us where to go to find JetSkiis. We were anxious to ride them, but once we got there, found that one was out of commission, to be ready by Saturday or Sunday. Oh, well, we didn't have too much luck with speed boats today...

This guy was sitting at the side of the road to the beach.

We went back to the beach, took out a 2 man kayak for a while, swam out to the floating diving platform, and then sat under an umbrella reading for a few hours. The bartender made some wonderful tropical drinks to go along with our relaxing. One called a "Chi Chi" is becoming our favorite.

That's the bar down at the end of the beach.

A little nap got us ready for dinner. As we ate we could watch the lights of the ships in the North Sound reflecting off the calm water. We planned some ski trips for next month, travel to both of our sister's weddings this summer, and talked about potential Europe and Asia vacations later this year or early next year.

When we finished dinner we saw that the moon had not risen yet, so we put on some shorts and rode down to the beach. The road was pitch dark, but after a bit our eyes adjusted and we could just make out the road in the starlight.

We pulled to lounge chairs our from under the umbrellas and set them next to each other on the beach. We sat and watched the stars, marveling at how bright they were and how many we could see. Rick saw a total of 7 shooting stars, Randy saw 2. It was amazing how much it seemed like time had slowed down. All of the usual day to day things had been left back home, and here we could just relax and enjoy the days going by. If that's not paradise, I don't know what is!

We went back to the room and fell asleep around 10pm to the second half of "Toy Story". Gotta rest up for that snorkeling trip tomorrow!