Culebra

Culebra is a little island about halfway to St. Thomas. When we bought our tickets in the morning, they told us that the return ferry was "conditional." Basically, if the weather turned any worse they would cancel the ferry and we'd be stuck on the island for the night, and Isa would miss her flight back to New York the next morning.

We figured it was worth the risk. :)

The ferry ride over was crazy. The people on the top deck were screaming like they were on a roller-coaster. I thought the boat would flip a few times. Way fun.

The island was gorgeous. We went straight to Flamenco Beach, which apparently is rated as one of the best beaches in the world. I beg to differ, but whatever. What do I know about tropical beaches, right? It was pretty, but one of the best, I don't know.


The coolest part of the beach were the abandoned tanks out on the LEFT side of the beach (not the right, as Isa and I found out when we hiked all the way out past the rocks into the bees nests and found no tanks).


At the end of the day, there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the water was calmer than a lake, so we had no problem going home:

Yunque

Yay. Isa came down to visit me. :)

We went out to El Yunque. This is the only tropical rain forest in the US. It was amazing. I've never driven though anything like it before. My favorite part was all the bamboo. I don't think I've ever seen bamboo growing in the wild. It was pretty exciting for me. You know, I'm pretty simple to amuse. :)

We went out and hiked to a waterfall and then continued up (off the trail) along the river. It was fun.

And wait for the video, because I swung from a vine over a river just like Tarzan. It was awesome.

Puerto Rico

Woohoo! I love this island! I've only been here a week but it is quickly becoming one of my favorite islands. The people here are great, the energy level is high, and the island is beautiful.

I've been working a lot, but I just went and explored Old San Juan yesterday. I'll post a video on YouTube shortly, but here are some pics to start out with.

This is El Castillo San Felipe del Morro.


And this is my apartment. Pretty sweet, huh? :)

Caribbealia

Two things really quick here:

1. I'm flying back to the Caribbean on Monday. Just like always, I'm not telling you where yet because my YouTube subscribers read this and I'm not giving any hints yet. (For those of you who don't know, I hold a contest every time I get to a new place and my subscribers get to guess where I'm at and if they win, I send them a free t-shirt). I'm going for work for a month. I'll fly home on March 12th. And then I leave for Italy on the 14th. Fun, huh?

2. I made an application video for Australia's "Best Job in the World." I would be taking care of an island in the Great Barrier Reef for 6 months if I win, which I REALLY want to do, so I would really appreciate you clicking this link and rating 5 stars:

Watch my 60 second application video here.

Thank you so much!! Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!

Snowboarding in New York City

Isa and I went down to the Lower East Side to hang out at Winter Jam 09. This is an annual festival held in NYC (usually in Central Park but for some reason they decided to put it WAY out of the way, although it made for some cool shots for the cameras being right on the river). Red Bull sponsors it and they make a whole bunch of man made snow and build a "Snowscraper," a 9 story tall mini mountain with a sweet jump at the end.

It was a lot of fun. Besides the snowboarders, there was a trampoline show, free sledding/tubing down another little hill, a snowfield for the kids to run around and start snowball wars with random strangers, and free donuts and hot apple cider. MMmmm.

Watch the video all about it by clicking here.

That's how we roll...

So Steve Martin called me up the other day and asked if I could make it to the world premiere of his new movie, Pink Panther 2. I told him I already had plans, but since he's such a good friend, I'd see what I could do to be there. So I rearranged my schedule and I took Isa and our friend Gabby to the premiere.

Ok, so maybe I made up a few of the details above. What actually happened is that we ran into a guy in Union Square giving away free "seat filler" tickets to the premiere. No guarantee to see the show - it's on a first come first served basis. He told us to show up about 2 hours before showtime.

We got there late. Like really late. Like 10 minutes before showtime late. But luckily it was snowing and nobody else showed up, so we still got in. It was AWESOME!! Free candy, free ice cream, free drinks, free popcorn, and the free movie to boot. Can't beat that, huh? Wait, yes you can. Steve Martin was there and so was Aishwarya Rai (former Miss World, now a huge Bollywood star).

Fun night.

NYC Update!

Hey Everybody,

I'm just sitting here in my apartment trying to stay out of the slush and it occurred to me that I never told you about the final decisions regarding our Greece/Turkey trip in March. Well, you know how the news does the New York Minute? Well here's a New York Update in under a minute (as long as you can read faster than me).

We couldn't make Turkey and Greece work. Sad, huh? :*(

So we're going to Italy instead. :) I'm so excited. It will be 7 of us all together. Five from the original Europe trip (five years ago - oh my gosh has it really been that long?) and then two husbands. They're cool too, and we're all really tight, so it'll be a great trip. We'll be spending two weeks there, starting March 15 and going through to the 31st. We start in Milan and go up to Lake Como, then down through Cinque Terre to the Amalfi Coast (Positano, yay!) all the way down to Sicily and back up to Rome. I am so excited to get back to Italy I can't even tell you.

Also, there are several store openings in the works. I'll let you know about them as soon as I know for sure.

And that's all the time we have for today folks, tune in next week for more exciting adventures! :P