Sunday May 13, 2007
It is our last full day at Biras Creek Resort. It is funny how we have never slept in and this morning is no different. The sun woke us up around 7:00 am and we got ready for our day. We headed to breakfast. Dave has his usual Biras Omelet and I had the chef special. It reminded me of tortilla espanol. It was quite good. We made a video tour of breakfast and the paths we took during the days we were here. I sure hope the video turns out alright. All in all it is about an hour long. Some of the animals showed off for the camera. There is a lizard with a fan tail and when we were taping it, its throat came out and it showed off an array of red and yellow colors. We had never seen that before. We then went and read on our room while we waited for our massage appointment. We got a complementary 30 min. couples massage. We got there and I had a lady do me and to David’s surprise a man for him. LOL Boy did he feel uncomfortable. But Dave just took it as, “how to give Beth a massage.” I told my lady medium pressure… but when it came to my shoulders it seemed as if she was on full force. I guess I had some knots in them because that is where she concentrated on the most. It is when I got up when the massage was over that my shoulders felt terrible. They were so sore. Oh well. I’ll remember to say something next time. We headed back to our room to video our room and put on our sunscreen. It was not time to shop. We went to Bitter End Yacht Club to take a look at their souvenirs. They had a bigger shop then Biras. We bought Eric a pirate coconut heat. It is hilarious. I hope he laughs when he sees it. Lunch was going to start soon so we hiked back to our resort. It takes about a half hour to get there and back. On our way a heron was on the road. Dave tried to take a picture of it, but it was too quick. We quickly went to our room to drop off our souvenir and took our bikes too lunch on the beach. I had scallops and swordfish and Dave had swordfish and beef dipped in bbq sauce. The food was great. Especially the chocolate chip cookies! Yum! Also to eat we had some sort of creamy sweet cole slaw, beets with mint, spiced papaya, pasta, and fruit with so sort of sweet spice on it. There was a strawberry custard tart. We tried it but it didn’t have much flavor; which surprised me because everything we have eaten there has had much flavor. We then had more shopping to do so went took a visit to our shop. The shop, again, was closed because the worker was on lunch. So we had to wait an hour for it to open. We sat at the marina dock and ordered conk fritters. They were good. They looked like hush puppies. They were spiced with peppers and fried. You dip them in tartar sauce. They were good but I still had no idea what conk actually tastes like…but maybe that is good. After that snack the shop was open and we bought some gifts for people. Unfortunately their art pieces were not very good. So we had to go back to Bitter End to do more shopping. Boy we did a lot of hiking today! We finally got all of our gifts and headed to the beach. We had all of our snorkel and underwater stuff with us. Dave really wanted to get a picture of the starfish. And to our surprise 3 starfish were quite near the shore! Two in particular were only feet away. Dave go a picture of them underwater and I was able to take a picture of it with Dave holding it! For a moment we were concerned it was dying because when Dave put it back in the water, it just floated. Hmmmm…. But with patience Dave watched the starfish blow the air bubbles out and sink to the bottom and flip itself over! It was sooo neat! We snorkeled around a bit and played with the fished that eat near the shore. We saw a fish that darted in the sand and kept trying to hide itself. Dave suddenly yelped! A crab pinched his foot! He was able to get a picture of it. It was a little white crab that hid itself under the sand. Then as we were about to leave, I went to get us towels and I hear Dave say, “Get the camera!” We I got there I saw he found a real conk! We took pictures of it. It was sooo gross looking. It reminded me of something in Men in Black. It was not time to get ready for dinner. But first we had to drop off our snorkel fins at the rental. Then we went back and took a shower and got dressed for our last dinner at Biras Creek. For our appetizers, I had duck leg and Dave had grilled tuna with grilled zucchini. We had strawberry slush I the middle. For dinner I had a pork chop and mash potatoes and Dave had the citrus red snapper on cuscus. For dessert I had toffee pudding and Dave had cappuccino custard with rum and raisin ice cream. Dave said that his looked like canned cat food! We had a lovely last evening! When we got back to our room we did something we really didn’t want to do: pack.
Saturday May 12, 2007
Another early morning around 7:30. This day wasn’t going to be very busy. We got dressed and headed for breakfast. We tried their banana fritters but they were not very good. But the fresh fruit today was really good… especially the pineapple. Dave tried some of the dried fruit and it was good too. The dried pineapple was like candy, very sweet. After breakfast we went to the souvenir shop to buy some more sun screen. We then went on a 
were you put your foot or you will slip. Actually both Dave and I slipped once. But we didn’t get hurt. The views were amazing. You could see island after island and just as far as your eye could go. We saw lots of lizards, goats, grasshoppers, and we might have seen the elusive pigmy gecko. Dave took a picture of it so we can tell for sure later. We saw lots of hermit crabs which was very funny being at the top of the mountain. At one point Dave saw a little green snake that jumped at him and tried to bite him. Fortunately Dave had seen it in time and was able to jump out of the way, thanks to all the times he’d seen the crocodile hunter do it. The snake was harmless anyway, just trying to get away. Dave was so sweet he helped me up and down the steep slippery rocks. We visited lovers leap but the view wasn’t as fantastic as some of the over views we saw. The trail ended by the ocean and we walked back to our villa. We took a shower because we were covered in sweat. It was really hot up in the mountain. We got ready for dinner and headed out. For our appetizers I had some sort of shrimp salad and Dave had five spice duck salad. For dinner I had tuna and Dave had swordfish. For desert I had molten lava chocolate cake and Dave had frozen soufflé. The calypso singer was back tonight so we enjoyed his singing while we ate. We then headed back to our room. Dave read Robinson Crusoe and I read The constant Princess until it was late and we went to bed.
Friday May 11, 2007
Dave arose early at 5:00 am to try and get some pictures of the sunrise. Unfortunately it was very cloudy and he even saw a storm coming in. It was too bad that the sun wasn’t as pretty this morning. He came back to bed after awhile and we both woke up around 7:00 am. We got ready for our breakfast. Dave had buttermilk pancakes and I had eggs. While at breakfast we saw the black humming bird and this time Dave had his camera ready! Then we left on a trip to Anegada. I sure was glad that I had on my patch because the ride over was very bumpy! We got off of the boat and saw 10 gars. They are long skinny fish with long skinny mouths. It smelled like dead fish because there were lots of lobster traps in the ocean. We piled in a truck and zoomed (quite fast) across the island. We saw goats and cows and donkeys. We got off and made our lunch selections and then went to the beach. Our guide told us our boundaries and said that in one area sea turtles would munch on the sea grass. We put on our snorkeling gear and headed for the ocean. The water was the perfect temp and there was a lot of beach. The sand was hot and very soft. We went out to find turtles but we didn’t find any. The waves were strong and pushed us parallel to the beach. This was good because it took us to an area with lots of cool looking fish. There were these white fish that followed us everywhere … at that time I didn’t know why but one nibbled on my toe. It didn’t hurt but it surprised me. There were parrot fish, a long big gar, yellow headed wrasse, and blue with brighter blue on its fins fish, blu
e striped fish. We just could not find the sea turtles. We got out of the water because it was about lunch time. We took a quick walk and found dried sea biscuits. We went over to the restaurant called Big Bamboo. I had lobster. It was quite different than lobster from
Then after our tour it was time for dinner. In between or appetizer and dinner we had lemon slush. I had scallops and Dave had chicken. After we got back dave put lots of aloe on my bum because it was very burned.
Thursday May 10, 2007
I awoke to a beautiful sunrise… the clouds were hot pink …it was only 5:30. It was magnificent. I went back to bed and got up around 7:00. Dave tried to get a few pictures of the sunrise but by the time he got everything ready the nice colors were fading. This morning we got ready for our excursion to the Baths. While waiting for the boat Dave spotted 3 Wahoo’s (at least that’s our best guess) swimming in the nursery. They were almost 2 feet long. They were long and skinny. We also saw a red centipede in the rocks of the nursery. Mike the manager told us, while we were waiting on the boat that the actor Morgan Freeman frequently eats at Biras’s restaurant and that Catherine Zeta Jones and her husband, Michael Douglas, came to dinner there on News Years! There were four other couples with us. We had a glass bottom boat to see under! It was so pretty. I felt good on the way to the baths. We almost got caught in a light shower.. our guide let the squall go ahead of us so we wouldn’t get rained on. Our guide told us some awesome information about the island. On our way we passed a villa worth 5 million with 100 rooms. It was owned by a 
hough. Then he went walking down a path and tried to take pictures of lizards and crabs. Then we met up and he tried to take a picture of a rainbow and the sunset. We then went back to our room to change into our evening wear. We walked to dinner and a dj was setting up for the evening. For our appetizer I had lobster/mango tian, and Dave had this very thinly sliced beef with cheese. We’re not sure if the beef was cooked, or even if it was supposed to be. It was definitely different. For dinner I had red snapper with lemon cuscus and mango salsa, and Dave had Wahoo with garlic mash potatoes and asparagus. For dessert I had raspberry brownie and Dave had banana bread with ice cream and caramel sauce. After dinner we went to bed. It had been a long day.
Wednesday May 9, 2007
Another early day. We woke up to the sun shining into our room. We went to breakfast and we both had the Biras omelet. We then booked the rest of our adventures that we wanted to do for that week. We had to get everything together that morning because we had a snorkel trip at 9:30 that morning. While we were waiting for our boat we saw two small sea turtles. They popped their head up out of the water a few times before diving into the water. Dave got a few pictures of them. We went with another couple on their honeymoon: Laura and Trevor. The waves were choppy and the reefs were swelled so we could not go to some of the places that our guide, Shawn, wanted to take us. So we went to 
icture of me next to a statue of a skeleton pirate! It was fun! On our way back to our room, dave fed an iguana! It was so cool. One of the workers gave us some tips on how to feed them. We got a couple of pictures of it. Maybe later I will be able to feed one myself. After we came back we road our bikes to the gift shop. We saw many neat souvenirs for friends and family and of course us. We ate lunch at the castle. We both had tomatoes and mozzarella for the appetizer and beer battered mahi mahi with spicy potato wedges on the side! It was definitely scrumptious. For dessert Dave had raspberry parfait and I had pecan pie. We then went back to the room and got ready for a hike. We road our bikes to the beach and left them there while we hiked around the salt water pond. The only cool thing we saw was a couple ducks. It was VERY hot! Dave asked if I was wilting and I definitely was. So we took a rest on the beach. I stayed in the shade and dave rested in the sun (hoping to get a tan). After a short nap, we took a kayak out into the bay. We rowed by the mangroves and saw a type of king fisher. It was white and blue/gray. As we were heading back to shore Dave spotted a sea turtle. He said it was larger than the ones we saw earlier that day. It was time for tea so we went back to our room, got a shower, and got ready for our sunset cruise. Well, the beginning of the cruise was really nice. The scenery was beautiful. But unfortunantly, I got sea sick. It just hit me like a rock. As we were heading back though I began to feel better…or so I thought. We got ready for our dinner and ordered. Dave and I got the grouper spring roll. Dave gobbeled it all up! The smell irritated me and I began to not feel good again. But before we left I got my lobster tail and Dave had his lamb. I was really not feeling good again so we got our dinner taken back to our room. I was able to eat most of my lobster but then I went to bed. Not the best ending to our day but oh well….
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Our full first day! It started quite unusually by Dave and I waking up around 6:00 am. We went back to bed for an hour and arose to the sunshine and the sounds of the waves on the shore at 7:00. It was so pleasant! We got up and began our day. We first got a shower…. In our outdoor shower that is big enough for two. It was warm outside and it seemed as if we were showering in the rain. We got dressed and I had to wear a shirt of David’s because I still did not have my clothes luggage. But by the time we were done dressing, the receptionist called and told us the good news that they had found my luggage and it was on its way, I should have it later on that morning! Hurray! We finished dressing and preparing for our first day and I saw a small crab outside our window… The adventure begins. We walked outside and the tide was high, but we were still able to walk along the shore. It reminded me of an ancient coral reef. There were fossilized coral all along the walkway. We were not able to catch a picture of the crab but we did see that the pool was one of our neighbors. We checked it our and I found that the water was quite cold. We headed to the castle for breakfast. We were greeted by friendly faces and lots of birds in the air. It seemed it was their feeding time too. We sat down and ordered our breakfast: eggs over hard with bacon for me and a special extra good omelet for Dave. There was also an assortment of fresh juices. I had pineapple and Dave had guava juice. I tried a version of oatmeal…it was cool with fresh apples and coconut in it. We had fresh fruit to go with it all. While we ate a couple of black headed seagulls did a song and dance for us. They sounded like Aunt Judy doing an impression of a peacock. There was another type of bird that was brown on top with a white speckled brown underbelly. For being a dull looking bird it has the nicest song we have heard so far. Also, while eating Dave saw a black humming bird. Sadly, we were too slow to take a picture of it. Maybe next time… Our table was right on the edge of the lookout of the dining room and we were able see the dock. We saw a variety of birds. Pelicans were diving into the ocean and grabbing their breakfast. We saw thin yet large black birds flying high as if they were turkey vultures. After breakfast we went and signed up for our excursions for the rest of the week. We went back to the room to and then went out to explore the island on our own before the tour. We saw a variety of flowers and took lots of pictures. Suddenly….there it was… right in front of the Iguana Crossing sign … and large iguana! It was sooo cool! We took many pictures of it and continued towards the dock. The water around the dock is the perfect area for baby fish to grow up. 
We saw baby barracuda, a bumble bee fish, striped fish, yellow fish, red fish, and schools of fish. Lots of really neat fish! Dave changed lenses on the camera and we went to get a close up of the iguana we saw…Suddenly on the way we saw a blue striped lizard! It got away too quick before Dave could take a picture. No worries though mate…we soon found out there are lots of blue lizards. There were two iguanas instead of one by the iguana crossing. They didn’t seem to get along much because they kind of snapped at each other. We continued down the path toward the gift shop and I saw a snake…it was about 2 feet in length and gray. We saw a red lizard and a cute crab coming out of a hole in the ground. Dave got pictures of it before it went in its hole. There were many lizards in this part of the trail. We saw a beautiful yellow bird who sang upside down. Its song wasn’t too impressive. By the housekeeping house, we saw a large hermit crab. It was scared to come out of its shell, but when it knew we weren’t around it began to walk around. We turned around because we didn’t know how far the gift shop was. We would wait for the official tour to show it to us. We waited for the tour by the dock, but David found out that it started in a different area. Maria gave us the grand tour and showed us the marina, gift shop, tennis courts, beach, the many nature trails, plant nursery, helicopter pad, and took us back to our villa. We arrived with my luggage waiting in our sitting room! I proceeded to unpack and change into shorts and a t-shirt. We road our bikes to the marina. We got our snorkeling flippers and as Dave went to take a picture of large sail boat…I looked out over the dock and saw a HUGE fish. I thought it was a shark at first because of its massive size. But we found out that it was a tarpin. There were 4-5 of them out there. They were 4 feet long and silver in color. I have never seen a wild fish that big before. It was awesome. We road our bikes back to our villa and got our snorkel stuff together for our next adventure. Off to the beach we went. We picked a nice set of lounge chairs under a cabana, right in front of the giant chess set. We put on our snorkel gear and headed into the warm water. It was the perfect temperature. We swam out and soon the sand gave way to waving sea grass. Dave saw a small fish but didn’t know how to let me know. After surfacing we figured out the best way was to just yell “HEY!” under the water and get the other person to look at you and then point towards what we saw. We decided to swim out to a floating platform that was suspended farther off shore. Soon the land under us dropped off deeper. Suddenly I felt a frantic tapping on my leg and saw Dave pointing straight down. I saw a large dark shape…then I realized what it was. A huge stingray, at least 4 ft across! And there…another one. Two of them swimming below us. Its hard to judge distance underwater but probably 20 ft or so. I hurried to the platform, not sure I liked the stingrays. We rested a few minutes on the platform, and rinsed our goggles out. Dave wanted to swim over toward the mangroves along the edge of the bay but I was hesitant to get back in the water. Finally Dave got back in the water, so I followed. He took my hand as we swam back and I felt safe. We saw a stingray again on the way back, maybe a different one, maybe one of the two we had seen. Once the drop off turned back into shallow water again I spotted a large starfish. It was orange and probably a little larger than a foot across! We explored some more. We saw lots of sea urchins, many covered in mangrove leaves that had got stuck to their spines. We occasionally saw small fish darting among the sea grass. There wasn’t much over by the edge of the mangroves, not that we could see at least. We did see a huge school of tiny fish that we tried to catch, but off course they just darted here and there, just out of reach. We headed back to shore. It was lunch time! An outdoor barbeque was being set up. The brown speckled birds we had seen earlier were trying to help themselves to the salad and fresh fruit table. Some people went ahead and started because the didn’t want the birds eating their food and they got in trouble for starting early. AWWWW, tsk tsk. When the meat was ready Dave and I both got grilled chicken with barbeque sauce and grilled mahi mahi. The mahi mahi was delicious. We sampled a variety of things from the buffet table including an orange yam or sweet potato like vegetable, asparagus, egg plant, peppers and pea pods, cuscus, pineapple, watermelon, guava, and Dave stole a plum from the fruit display centerpiece. We also had a couple of cookies. After eating we wanted to rest a bit before snorkeling again. We tried the hammock but I had forgot my skirt bottom and the ropes hurt my legs. We decided to play chess. I tried my best but Dave won, as always. At one point Dave went to the rest room and while he was gone a lady passing by offered to help me switch all the pieces around! I laughed but decided to play fair. After the chess match we decided to go snorkeling again. We went out and saw some fish, including a blue and yellow one. Then dave saw a conch shell! He went to pick it up but when he turned it over there was a huge hermit crab inside! He dropped it quickly. We swam on over towards the mangroves on the opposite side of the bay from the first trip. Dave saw some bigger colorful fish but while trying to communicate to me a lot of sand got kicked up and blocked our vision. We decided to swim on. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw a dark shape. I turned to my right and saw a barracuda starring right back at me. I grabbed Dave and he saw it too. It must have been two feet long! It swam slowly along starring right at us the whole time. Finally dave stood up and it darted off. We were both relieved. We swam back away from the mangroves. Then I saw another large starfish. It was a lot like the one we’d seen earlier. Dave saw a teeny tiny little blue fish. It was soo cute. I decided to get out of the water because my goggles were acting up. While I was taking off my fins Dave popped his head up and said he had seen a little white crab trying to bury itself in the sand so he couldn’t see it. We decided to head back so as not to miss tea time. We showered and change and went up to the pavilion where we found almond cupcakes, banana bread with chocolate chips, some kind of chocolate cookie. I had earl gray hot tea to drink with mine. We sipped our drinks and snacked as we decided what to do next. We went back down to the dock and saw the regular fishes. We also saw what looked like a brown heron, with orange legs. It had a long neck and looked funny when it stretched it out like a slinky. We took a look at the snooker table and game room and then headed back to the room. We transferred the 246 pictures taken so far today and then changed into our dinner clothes. We both looked smokin’ hot. For our appetizer we both had tiger shrimp with a spicy chili drizzle, and grilled pineapple. For dinner Dave had a steak of grilled yellow fin tuna in a cream sauce. I had beef with a special wine sauce and mashed potatoes. In between we had strawberry sorbet. Yum! For dessert I had blueberry ice cream with a rich butter cookie. Dave had rum baba: a sponge cake soaked in local rum with spiced apples on the side. Dinner was delicious! The atmosphere was created by a calypso singer. It was very romantic. On the deck of the castle we stopped to view the stars and saw a shooting star that fizzled out. It was such a sight to behold! We walked back to our room…turned out all of the lights and watched the stars. There were so many. Never have I seen so many stars.
Monday May 7, 2007
Rise and Shine! It’s vacation time! Dave and I rose early at 4:00 am. We were up and ready and got our last minute items in our luggage. Right on the dot, my mom was at our door (4:30 am) to take us to the airport. It seemed as if our walk to the terminal was forever. We got there in plenty of time to take off. We sat somewhat together… in the same row across from each other in the isle. Off to
The trip over was long but as soon as we got to Biras Creek Resort it was all well worth it..
I better get my clothes tomorrow!!!
