Thursday, September 21, 2006

We are on the move again! We are en route from our little paradise of Castara for the town of Plymouth. We are hoping to spend some time on Turtle Beach and perhaps see some of the hatchling turtles make their way to the water. Again, not quite sure what to expect when we get there but are excited about seeing something new.

We spent six wonderful, relaxing days in Castara another small fishing village on the Carribbean side of the island. Life seems to move at a much slower pace here than back at home and it has taken us some adjustment time to get in to the groove of "liming" away our days. We are now quite proficient at waking up late, laying on the beach for hours, swimming carelessly, and taking it easy. We met a Swiss couple who was spending a couple of weeks in the tiny village before they head home after a year of doing volunteer work and travelling in Cusco, Peru and throughout South America. It was really encouraging and interesting to hear their stories! The man who ran the "beach resort", Ancle, had travelled to Guyana before and said that although it was severly underdeveloped it was a beautiful and had a lot of potential. Very exciting!

Once again, we have a ton of good pictures to show everyone but are unable to post them while we are on the move. We will have them up and running in a couple of weeks. Hope everyone is doing well and that those of you who attended ACL are recovering nicely!

Love you all and we will write again soon!

Jessa and Blake

Saturday, September 16, 2006

Hi Everyone,

We hoped to post more at the beginning of the trip but there was no internet access in the last village we visited. So here we are now. We left Charlotteville today and are now in Castara. Charlotteville was great. It's a small fishing village on the north end of the island and is really charming. It has one main beach, Man-O-War Bay, and a secluded beach called Pirate's Bay that you have to hike to. Both are beautiful but Pirate's bay was stunning. It's real desolate except for a shack where Sun Sun rents chairs (but he's never there) and another shack/house where Jungle Man lives. We got to know him because I helped him carry a big board that he is going to make into a wood carving table up to his home. He was interesting and insisted on giving us something for our troubles, we accepted a bag of chips even though we didn't want to take his food but we were worried he may take offense to our decline.

I can go on and on about Charlotteville but the sum of it is, this is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen, it's better than a post card or an island movie. The people are so friendly and even anxious to offer assistance.

We plan to attach pictures at some point but the internet is to slow for now. We will write about Castara later (that's the beach I can hear out side our door right now), but it's great so far.

Keep the comments coming when you can. We love them.

Blake and Jessa

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Hi everyone!

We spent our first night in Port of Spain, Trinidad on Monday night at a Marriott Blake booked with his points...Thanks Smuckers! It was nice, although Port of Spain is a bustling, busy town and not very eye appealing. We left the next morning on the ferry for Tobago.

We opted for the "slow ferry" and were told 8 hours. Hmm...so we spent the extra 4 dollars and sprung for a cabin. It was simple and nice to have some of our own space. The ferry itself was a nice surprise with a comfortable deck, complete with a bar where we taste-tested Stag, the second best TT beer. (We prefer Carib.) After only 6 hours, we made it to Scarborough, Tobago where we knocked on the door at Jacob's Guesthouse (9:00 PM) and asked for a room. They showed us to our incredibly simple accomodations for the night. We got what we paid for at $20 a night. We learned that we are able to sleep comfortably with no AC, in super high humidity, with only a single fan for breeze. Guyana here we come! Apart from the roosters, blaring music, tropical birds, barking dogs, and torential rains the night was very peaceful.

We are now waiting on a bus to head out to Charlottesville where we are hoping to spend a week on the most beautiful beach in Tobago, Pirate's bay. We are very excited!

We love the comments and personal E-mails, so please keep them coming! We will post pictures when we get the chance. Love you guys!

Sunday, September 10, 2006


Well the first phase of our trip begins tomorrow morning when we board our plane to travel to Trinidad & Tobago for a little island adventure before we get to work in Guyana. As you may or may not know we were delayed leaving to Guyana because of "issues with the upcoming general elections." This was very disappointing as our original August 5th leave date was postponed until October 10th. Many of you might wonder why you attended a going away party for us over a month ago but we didn't see a reason to cancel a good party. We have certainly found a bright side though, and will be spending a month on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. We will make sure to post good pictures and stories of this trip over the next few weeks.

But for this post were saying goodbye, to family, friends, and co-workers who we will all miss beyond words. Tomorrow morning we will close one huge chapter of our lives and open a new and exciting one. We look forward to staying in touch with everyone and sharing stories back and forth through this blog, e-mail, and if available the random phone call.

I think you should be able to post comments and replies to these postings, if not I will work out the kinks at some point.

Please help us stay in touch with your lives as we share ours. Here are a couple pics of our last night.

Miss You Already,

Jessa and Blake