March 28th, Labadee, 7:51pm
How am I going to make it through the summer without Labadee Friday? Today defined what a Friday should be.
I was up early and in the office by 7:30am, and was encouraged when I saw land at 8am, meaning we were on time. The girls however were not on time, and did not show up until 8:30am, 15 minutes late.
We got all of the tours on the first tender with little problem and off to beach we went, smiles on everybody’s face. I walked over to my office on the beach and as I walked up to the wave hut I saw a familiar face, CARL is back on the beach. He is replacing Nadar as site manager for a couple of months. I did a quick change into my Friday working clothes and then helped Ed get the 9:30am people all checked in and ready to go.
It looked like a busy day as we looked over the sheets for the day, but that was good because the weather nice, the ocean was calm but not flat and everybody was in a good mood. I was on the first tour with Ruth the instructor, and Katie who is training as an instructor as she finally got away from flight line duties.
The first tour of the day was a lot of work as I had the whole range of guests, young punks who were horsing around, old German lady who didn’t want to go more than 4.6 miles an hour and everything in between! I was just glad to get everybody back to the pier in one piece.
My second tour of the day was just as much work as I had the same range of guests. I thought it was going to be one of those days, but my third tour of the day was just about perfect.
I was pretty tired after three tours so I went and grabbed some lunch and when I came back I found I had been volunteered for the 3pm tour, fine with me. It was going to be a small group so Sorin decided to tag along and Maru finally worked up the courage to go with him. At that point Ed decided he wanted to come as well so we had the guests outnumbered. There is nothing like cruising along the coast of Haiti at 4:15pm in the afternoon, with a friend on each side of you, good tunes on the mp3 player, and perfect conditions. It may have been one of the best tours I have had all season.
I also got some cool stuff from my buddies in Kayaks at paradise bay today, lots of presents for everybody back home. I also have quite the shopping list for next week, radio, watch, sunglasses, and flip flops for the guys.
We caught the last tender back to the ship at 4:45pm as I waved goodbye to my office on the beach. Kameliya and I met in the office at 5pm as it was our turn to ring in all the charges for the day. I put a move and some music on for us and we were done in no time, I don’t know why it takes the other two so long.
I had some turkey and potatoes for dinner and now I have about an hour before our weekly game of bridge.
3:47am
That was the longest game of bridge that we have ever played. We had 8 players at the start and we slowly got it whittled down to four; Nick, Dave, Kremmy and myself. I didn’t really have great cards but I played well tonight, it just took me a while to learn bridge. Kremmy and Nick got knocked out so it was down to Dave and myself, if you have never played bridge heads up it is pretty fun. It took about an hour of heads up bridge to determine a winner but in the end I was able to knock out my fellow Canadian. Big thanks to Kremmy who stayed and dealt for us, she is a casino dealer after all, so I left her a little something.
I now have 5 hours to get a little sleep; hopefully no one will knock on my door in the middle of the night tonight.
Haiti's Flag
Map of Haiti