Thursday at sea was an idyllic drift through lazy bliss. We started at 8 AM with spa treatments. DH got an hour in “the egg” which encloses the guest in an 8- ft long shell that vibrates gently, plays soothing sounds, blows warm air across the skin, and displays lights which are designed to re-tune your alpha rhythms. The only time I ever tried one, I came out convinced that I am an alien. I was chilled, tense, irritable and I had a headache. DH comes out floating in serenity.
So while he was in the egg, I had a hot-stone massage. I am going to put the massage therapist in my next book. Dennell and her mystic stones. You get a massage with lots of oil, and then somehow, magically, the therapist has smooth warm stones in her hands and is drawing them along your muscles, just ironing out the tensions. Then the stones disappear, and all you feel is clever loving fingers. Then the stones materialize again . . .Later in the massage, the warm stones are placed on certain pressure points and left there, radiating warmth into you, while the therapist goes to work on your extremities. Ahhhhh! My hands and feet feel as if they were snarls and knots of stress, and she carefully combed them smooth. I floated out of there feeling as languid as a large iguana on a hot rock.
We just hung out for the rest of the day. I fought with Blogger and burned nearly an hour’s worth of minutes trying to get pictures loaded. But I did, at last, succeed. I have fifty four minutes left, so, depending on Blogger this may be my last post.
As we were headed for dinner, we noticed many people dressed to the nines. So I asked, “Is it formal night?” Yep. We raced back to the cabin and in five minutes ripped out of the casual clothes we were wearing and into the full formal rig. Five minutes!! Damn, we are good! (We bought my outfit in a section of Los Angeles that has become a little India. There are several Indian photographers and officers on board, and they were WAY impressed! )
And then there was this lady in her Nigerian dress. Enlarge the picture. The dress is a stunner. My camera skills don’t do it justice.
Aruba. Ahhhhruba!
We took the tour bus to De Palm Island. What a delight that place is! We did the undersea hard-hat dive, where they give you an acrylic helmet to which they pump air, then three scuba divers walk you around on the sea floor, twenty two feet below the surface. WOW!!!! First of all, it’s just too cool for school to be breathing normally under water. Second, the divers feed the fish so they just SWARM around you. Third, at De Palm Island, they have sunk two dead airplanes and an old bus, where the coral grows,and the fish hang out in secure schools (must be a school bus.) The divers lead you around and show you things: anemones, flocks of fish hiding under the plane’s wings like chicks under a protective hen, and one patient, persistent conch that was dragging his shell from one airplane to the next like a tourist with much too much luggage. And they took pictures and even a short video. Wheeeee! Yes, we bought the CD.
De Palm Island is an all inclusive place so everything was included in the price of admission: food, drinks,alcohol, scuba and snorkel equipment, and all the time you want in the water park. Oh the water park! My inner child just played and played! Slides and water guns and suspended buckets that slowly fill, then suddenly, unexpectedly dump gallons of water on your head. I took all the slides and after I had worked my way up to it, I took the big enclosed tube five times, and SCREAMED the whole way down! It echoes and it feels so good and it was just so much fun! There were no lines to wait in anywhere. After we got exhausted playing in the 80 degree water, we ate in the restaurant, got virgin coladas, and spread our towels on recliners in the shade of rustic thatched shelters, and watched the sparkly, sparkly waves roll up onto the pristine white sand beach, then pull back into the green and blue ocean. I think, when I’m one hundred and ten, and my mind is gone, and they can’t keep clothes on me, I will be back on De Palm Island in my memories, lying in a beach chair next to my darling man, sipping a frozen fruity drink and marinating in contentment.