'Destin'ations old and new :)

Oh man, its been a month since the trip to Florida already and I still haven't put it up. Well, I did have to edit/filter out the photos (which was awaiting the month end), plus upload them before I wrote this post, so that I don't have to upload them twice :-p. Excuses, excuses. Per kya kare? I have so much to write and literally very little time. Wonder what would have happened had I actually been working?

Anyways, we went to Destin, Florida, the Gulf coast, on the Labour day weekend. We had been to the same place about 3 years back before Snugli was born and para-sailed there. Though it was cold when we went that time, we loved the clear waters and white sand beaches and wanted to go there again. Well, the time was now :-D.

Sri did suggest camping at a lake around 2.5 hours south of us and trying some adventures there, but Destin seemed more attractive. The only thing we were worried about was the much talked about oil spill and the impact there. But after much research it seemed like that was alright. And so we packed the 3rd September 2010 day and headed out afternoon on the drive. I'm not going to put up the route map again, its pretty much same as the previous one (except that we didn't go to Pensacola at all this time).

Driving with an almost 3-year old Snugli is much easier these days. I mean I hardly need to pack any food except for snacks, because she's not fussy about eating stuff on road - loves pizza, pasta and tacobell chalupas (and one of these can be found almost any place :-D). I did take some toys and books for her, but again she enjoys seeing stuff on road (points to every damn thing from water tanks to power lines). She recognizes hotel rooms, gas stations (petrol bunks) and various restaurants, points them out and shouts until we make a response. For eg:

"Amma McDonald's. McDonald's. McDonald's! Amma Kelsitha? McDonald's" (Kelsitha means "did you hear?")

That can be a bit frustrating, to say the least :-D. But it does have it uses ;-). Also she loves music of any kind - so basically its easy to keep her occupied on the road :-D. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is going to be so for a while :).

As we generally do, we drove halfway to a town in Alabama (having dinner on the way at Woodlands, Nashville, TN - vegetarian South Indian food, yummmmmm :-D) to stay for the night (the time from then onwards in central standard time, so an hour early compared to home). The view outside the hotel the next morn before we left:




We drove all morning and it was after lunch that we reached our hotel in Destin. The order of business for the day first? Jet-skiing!!




We were worried about Snugli's reaction to the entire thing. But well, at first she sat in the front and fiddled with the controls, wreaking havoc on an already bothered Sri (he wasn't really getting the hang of it, plus was worried about losing control and dunking all of us in the deep ocean :-p). After sometime we had to transfer her in between us (she switched the jet-ski off when it was moving pretty fast causing Sri to panic :-p). Sri, free of her, was able to be more confident and things had just started to get interesting when Snugli, safely cocooned by my arms, promptly fell asleep on the speeding jet-ski! I was amazed! We are brave, but she is the ultimate :-D. After that, we were able to speed to our heart's content for more than half an hour and the girl didn't stir an ounce :-p. I wanted to get in the driver's seat, but well, didn't want to go into that circus with her asleep :-p. Here's us after the "ordeal" :-D.




After that, since we were already drenched, we just went to stroll on a beach :).




Night after dinner, we again went to a beach to enjoy the waves and the breeze in the dark. I did take some night photos, but nothing worthy putting up (Damn! I really need a wide angle lens ;-) :-D).

The next morning, the agenda was to head to a beach and do some kayaking if possible. One thing about the area is that you just have a single lane road most places and the place can get crowded very easily. I mean, everyone wants to go somewhere, especially to the beach :-D. Is is any wonder when the beaches look like this?




We did ask about the oil spill (worried after seeing some dark stuff on the beach, which turned out to be algae :-D) and found out that the spill reached Pensacola, but not Destin and no, they weren't affected that much.


We took a chair and umbrella rental for the day and settled down to enjoy the water. People were swimming, tanning, kayaking and jet-skiing. I call this - "The hare and the tortoise" :-D.




I took some photos, then stashed away the DSLR safely and set out to enjoy the water :).







(the above snaps were taken from a cheap point and shoot)

Snugli had a wonderful time playing in the water (as you can see) and then playing with the sand.




She would gather the sand up and go to the edge of the water to generously donate it all to the ocean (Kereya neeranu kerege chelli :-D), hehehe. Later she even collaborated with a boy to build a tunnel :-D. Sri picked up lunch from a nearby tacobell and we made a picnic of it on the beach. Relaxing under an umbrella on a hot day at the beach is something else :).




Sometime later, we rented out a kayak and went kayaking for about 45 min.




It was a lot of fun (though rowing is a bit of a hard work), but the sun was pretty harsh. So we didn't linger a lot. Sri did do some solo kayaking later for about 10 min or so.




We stayed for some more time, but then had to get back to hotel for a shower and a cleanup. We had a sunset cruise planned for the evening, so after resting a while, we headed to the pier to catch the boat (named "Kokomo" of Destin Snorkel sunset, dolphin and fireworks cruises).




The cruise started out pretty fun. The sunset views were pretty fabulous plus there was a flight show bonus :).







Here's us :).










One more sunset view :).




Form then onwards it all started going bad :-\. The dolphin part of the cruise started after sunset, so you can imagine the disappointment. We did see a couple of dolphins, but they weren't really in the mood to play, they were on their way somewhere. So that whole part wasn't really as much fun as we hoped it to be. Plus after that there was a long wait (more than an hour) for the fireworks and guess what, there was no cruising. The owner simply took the boat around in a no-wake area (means idle speed) and showed buildings ("Hello, we can see those from the car" :-p) for about 15 min.




After that he halted at a place where fireworks were supposed to start and then nothing for an hour! He had drinks available for everyone, but the cruise is advertised as a family cruise and there was literally nothing for the children (we had taken some snacks but it was almost dinner time). Plus there were singles and couples on the boat who thought nothing of smoking around the children (had we known, we wouldn't even have booked the cruise). There were a couple more families like us, but I felt it was a singles/couples cruise rather than a family one. So yeah, if you are planning to go on one of these cruises, please make sure about these stuff :).

Finally got to see the fireworks at about 9PM..




Had dinner at a Pizza hut and called it a day :).

The next morning the plan was to go to another of the beaches, stay a while and then head back on our way. So thats what we did..




It was hotter and sultrier than the previous day and Snugli just wanted to get into the water (which we didn't really plan on :-D).




So yeah, taking photos turned out to be a struggle, because she just didn't want to :-D.




Anyways, soon we said our byes to the place and were on our way out. We took turns driving for more than 8 hours and got to Nashville for dinner (yeah woodlands again, yummmm :-D) and stay for the night. We had to get up at around 4 AM the next morn (since its 5 AM at Lexington) since Sri had to go to work and took turns driving back home :). Reached home by 8 AM, back to normal chores and life :).

This was a very nostalgic trip. Most of the places we recognized, even remembered our hotel from last time. Plus it was wayyyyyy better in September than April when it was chilly and uncomfortable. We'll probably go there again if we get a chance :-D. Sometimes it feels good to revisit memories and make a second version :).

Camp rocks :)

Since I have already given you a clue about this in my last post, I don't think I have to mention that no, this post is not going to be about the teen movie :-p. After 3 years, we went on a camping trip. It was obviously Snugli's first camping trip, unless you count the fact that the last time we went I was pregnant ;-).

Well, the story happened on 13th August, Friday, that too pretty late in the day. We have been planning to go camping right since the start of summer, but something always came up (its funny how things always come up in summers and there's absolutely nothing to do in winters :-p). That day we faced a tug of war between going and not going. The weather was predicted to have rains in the night and camping is certainly not fun with thunderstorms (well, I disagree, but I digress :-D). When we checked at about 6Pm in the evening, the weather prediction had miraculously (yup, I am being sarcastic :-p) changed to clear skies :-D. After a little bit of to and fro, we simply decided to get going.

Packed up all we needed, bought the rest and got to the Lake Kincaid park (where we camped 3 years ago). We liked having the lake right next to the camping sites and thought that with Snugli around, the place would be a known devil scenario :-D. Plus the place has proper restrooms (albeit a bit far from the camping site). We were able to find a site (without advance booking) and started setting up stuff. Everything was smooth except that there were clouds near the horizon and it got dark pretty fast.

It was amazing how we put the tent together in a matter of minutes (another thing you never forget once you learn how :-p).




It was a little too dark to get stuff ready for cooking in the fire, but that part was manageable. The parts that weren't were the heat (it wasn't pleasant in any way) and Snugli's bewilderment. She was not really scared, just that being outside in almost total darkness with the sweltering heat was a strange experience for her. There were a few times when she hung onto me and refused to let go. But I did manage to distract her with the stars (that was one of the reasons we went - for me to try and photograph stuff ;-) :-D) and chirpy cricket sounds :-D. We somehow managed to eat up our usual camp diet of roasted corn, roasted veggies, roasted panneer and roasted burgers in the dark (we made a note of lanterns as things to buy for the next camp trip :-D). Later pumped up the bed and settled down for the night.

Or Sri and Snugli did ;-). I got up at around 2 AM to first catch some more meteors if possible (I saw around 25 meteors on the previous night, but no photos since I don't really have a lens wide enough top cover the entire sky :-\) and photograph the dark non-light-polluted skies. I did catch about 5 meteors, but again no snaps. It was literally Murphy's law :-p. So presenting the Deepthi's corollary to Murphy's law -

"If your camera is pointed to a specific part of the night sky, then the probability of meteors appearing in that particular area is much much much lower (almost close to 0) than that in the rest of the sky".

Sad, but true :(. Anyways I did manage to capture some pretty pics including this one of the Pleiades star cluster and emerging dawn (click to enlarge) :).




And one of Jupiter, the biggest "star" in the pic below (Before you jump to correct me, I know its a planet :-p).




I did take lots and lots of snaps (I think I was up for more than 2.5 hours! But the thing is without a tracking mount (which is helpful in contradicting earth's rotation), the only way to take good pics is by taking multiple short exposure photos (minimum 25 of each object!). I still haven't gotten to the post processing of images, so maybe will get back once I do :).

Went back to bed and got up after 8:30 AM :). After finishing our morning ablutions, Snugli got to play in the playground for a while..




And then we had breakfast at camp (yeah, I took the photo with a timer, had to run to and fro from the tripod :-p)..




Snugli enjoyed the morning camp much much more than the earlier evening (she surprisingly slept well and didn't fuss at all in the night). Here's her posing from the tent..




We then proceeded to dismantle the camp and head home :). All in all the trip was pretty much a success. It was great that the adventure lamp is still burning brightly within us and Snugli enjoying most of it was a bonus :). And photographically, it was another successful experiment :). Here are 2 daytime snaps I am pretty proud of :).







Very much looking forward to camping once again before winter sets in :).

BTFYA 8 - South Africa and Mauritius

Last but one post of the Back-to-five-years-ago series. This actually happened 5 years and 3 months ago in Feb 2005, but well, I couldn't really put up this in Feb, as things were beyond my control then. Well, better late than never :).

One of things you do after you get engaged and are about to get married is decide where to go on your honeymoon :-D. Well, my first choice was and is Switzerland (still haven't gotten that wish :-p), but any place in Europe is no fun at all in the month of Feb ;-). I hadn't been outside India except for a Nepal (Kathmandu and Pokhran) trip with my parents, so I said anything was fine. When Sri suggested South Africa, I have to admit I thought it strange. I mean I had never had SA in my have-to-see-in-my-lifetime-tick-mark list :-D. But well, as I found out more about it, the more I was excited :). So we thought we'll head to South Africa and then to Mauritius for a couple of days.

Not only that, when I met Sri I told him that I want to bungee jump once in my life. Well, his wedding gift to me was a bungee jumping chance in SA :-D. We decided that we'll go and then take it from there. We never told either set of parents that we were even considering anything like that :-D. The secrecy was fun and if we didn't jump, then they would never even know about it ;-).

We got married on Feb 4th, spent the next couple of days in Hyderabad (where we had another reception ceremony) and were back to Bangalore on 12th. We had the flight to Johannesburg the very next day on 13th.

I always say that you don't know a person until you have lived with him/her. So basically we learnt each others' quirks only on this trip and it was enlightening to say the least :-D. On the flight (I think it was 5 hours long), I woke up to see that Sri wasn't in his seat. After waiting for more than half an hour, I started getting worried thinking he maybe having some stomach problems. Then I get up and look back and guess what I found. My hubby found some empty seats and was sleeping quite comfortably :-D, hehehee :)). Yeah I did try to strangle his neck once he got up, just because he got me so worried ;-).

We landed in Johannesburg on the 14th of Feb and flew to Capetown from there. We took a walk around the hotel and we visited the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront at the Table Bay. The table bay faces the huge Table mountain and its simply a beautiful place. The waterfront was like any pier you see in US, but since I was seeing a pier for the first time, everything was fun. I think we had lunch at a Thai place, another first :). All in all we roamed around the place for quite a while. Another surprising thing then was that the sun didn't set till about 7:30 Pm which was a big deal for me than. I remember being so thrilled that the sun is high up in the sky at about 6 PM :-D.




The next day we went on a tour of Capetown and surroundings. Our first stop was the table mountain. The mountain is named so, because it has a level plateau (of about 3 km side to side) and has cliffs named Devil's peak and Lion's head. You can see 3 main things from the top - almost the entire Cape town (with the table bay), Robben island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for almost 27 years and Signal hill which acted like a lighthouse for many years there. The signal hill is famous for the noon gun (which is fired at precisely 12 in the noon).

We climbed on to a rope-way and got to the top. The weather was another plus point of SA. It was very pleasant even at the top and we spent a long time walking around and seeing the views all around.




After that we got down and went to the Cape point. We took the Flying Dutchman Funicular (an uphill railway) to an old lighthouse and then had to climb steep steps to get to a place where the Cape point could be seen. They even had markings in various directions showing how far it was to various places in the world from there (I remember New Delhi being one of the places, but I certainly don't remember the distance :-D).




From there we got down and moved a short distance to get to Cape of Good Hope. Unlike what many people think, the cape is not the Southern tip of Africa (we thought wrong too!), but it is the extreme southwestern tip of Africa. The cape point as well as the Cape of Good hope are both in the the extreme southwestern peninsula of Africa, while Cape Agulhas is the actual southernmost tip.




I felt pretty proud to have visited one of the most talked about places in history :). We went on to visit a penguins colony in Boulders beach and then had lunch there near the beach. Spent some time near the beach and just like that our tour of cape town was over :).

On 16th Feb, we rented and car and started driving (well, actually Sri rented and drove the car :-D). Our plan was to drive to Port Elizabeth and visit a couple of places on the way.




I had never been on a self-driving trip before and didn't really get the charm of it until we did this. The comfort of stopping anywhere you want and visit any place for how much ever time you want to is something else and somehow the trip has been the basis for all the driving trips we have gone on here in the US (hope to continue the same once we are back in India). We stopped for lunch at a place called Mossel Bay (Point B on the map) and spent some time at the beach there. Then drove to Oudtshoorn (Point C) where we'd stop for the night.

The hotel at Oudtshoorn was named La Plume and right opposite to it across the road was an ostrich farm. The big tall birds were majestic and they were oh so curious about the two of us (we were the only people lurking around). We knew that their kicks are pretty powerful and wondered whether the fences could actually stop them ;-). Still I wanted to pet them :-D. Well, I did get my wish the next day :-D.

Next day, 17th Feb early morning we headed to the Cango Caves. The caves were beautiful and we had loads of fun since we took the adventure tour of the cave.




The adventure tour was another extreme thing I have done in my life. It had climbing precarious steps, moving sideways in narrow spaces, crawling and sliding through natural rock openings. It was absolutely thrilling :-D. You can see the entire tour here on this page :-D.

We next went to Cango Ostrich farm, where I got to feed an ostrich :). The ostrich eggs are so strong that they can bear lots of weight on them (we both took turns to stand on a set of eggs!). Well, we could have also ridden an ostrich, but both of us said no to that (I wonder why now :-D).




We had a good time and then visited the Cango wildlife ranch which was right across the road from the farm. It was a pretty normal zoo except that we could pay and touch leopard cubs/tiger cubs if we wanted to. I really wanted to, but it was pretty expensive, so couldn't :-\. From there on we drove to our hotel in a place called Wilderness. The route from Oudtshoorn to Wilderness was on mountainous region, so it made for awesome views on the way.




We reached Wilderness in the evening and went to Knysna (point D) to take a sunset cruise at the bay there :). Knysna is pronounced "Nice na" which was apt for the place :-D.




We came back and stayed at Wilderness. Our hotel was right next to a beach and I remember going there in the dark, sitting on a couple of steps in light rain with Sri and feeling really blessed to be there :).




The next day was the D-day. We went to the Bloukrans bridge where a company called Face Adrenalin operates the world's third highest bungy jump (it was the world's highest when we went there - 216m). We didn't even know whether we'd do it until we went there. I remember seeing the bridge and muttering on the way to myself that I must be crazy :-D. We actually wanted to jump in tandem (harnessed together :-D), but sadly they had only solo jumps. We paid up and then there was no going back :-D.

I was the second person to jump off the bridge that particular morning, the first being a member of the operating team (Sri conveniently dumping the honour on me by saying "Ladies first" :-p). We were bound with harnesses while the team members told us how exactly the jump would happen. People have the tendency to hold their breaths and they told us that we have to try and breathe :-D. I remember being crazy scared all the time, I guess the expression on my face says it all :-D.

I still get goosebumps watching the video :-D. It has been the most amazing experience of my life so far. There is about 7 seconds of pure terror and when the rope (which is elastic) pulls you back, thats when you know you are alive and the adrenaline rush after that is huggggggge ;-). They pulled me up and I was jumping up and down :-D. Next was Sri's turn :).




I still tease him saying that he didn't actually jump, but the guys there pushed him :-D. Here's us all ecstatic :).




We didn't really know what to do with the adrenaline, so we immediately went to the Tsitsikamma National Park where we hiked it off :). We took the waterfall trail which is almost 3 km one way (so hiked for 5-6 km in total) and we had to literally climb rocks to reach the water fall. And it was beautiful. The water fall faces the ocean and it makes for a wonderful view. Here's me sitting in front of the ocean..




Sri was sitting facing me with the waterfall behind him, so you can imagine the scenery :).




Well, we went back to Wilderness for the night and next morning drove to Port Elizabeth. From there, we flew to Johannesburg and stayed the night there at a Casino (don't remember the name sadly :-D). Still don't know how or why it happened, but we were upgraded to one of the highest suites there :-D. And the suite was like a huge mansion. Man, some things you never forget :-D.

Next morning, 20th Feb,our 6-day SA trip came to an end as we flew to Mauritius. Somehow Mauritius felt like a letdown after SA, mainly because of the weather. It was very humid and sultry weather. Sounds nice ;-) :-D, but believe me, it was uncomfortable after being in such pleasant weather all over SA. We had a package tour for Mauritius which included stay in a hotel called Les Cocotiers which had a beach and a 3-day tour. The beaches there surprised me with the serene water and almost no waves. Its almost like the island is actually in a lake :).

The first day tour consisted of going to the Grand Baie (Grand Bay) which was a pier and had the typical attractions of a pier.




The tour had about 6 couples all Indian and all on their honeymoon :-D. Yeah it was a love fest alright :-D. From there we went to the Pamplemousses Garden, which is seen in most Indian movie songs :-D. We even saw trees planted by various Indian prime ministers and presidents there :-D.




And that was that for the day. The next day we went to several places. We saw Dutch ruins, a model ship making factory and a Lord Shiva temple. We also visited the Chamarel Waterfall..




And then went to a dormant volcano crater known as Trou aux Cerfs. Well it didn't look anything like a volcano :-D.




Supposedly this volcano could become active at any time within the next thousand years :-O.




Our next stop was the 7-coloured earth. This was fascinating - at first look it looked like a mud dump, but its actually volcanic sand reflecting off different shades of colours..




We do look tired, don't we? :). That was it for the day.

The next day was the pièce de résistance :-D. We were taken to this beautiful island called Île aux Cerfs (french meaning "deer") by boat. The island had beautiful blue clear water and white sands. We really enjoyed the water and the environment. Though it was crowded and there were no deer to be found, it was still pristine and lovely :). No photos though :(.

Well, the next 2 days we could do what we wanted, but we basically lounged at the hotel and relaxed. I wanted to go para-sailing and do another activity called undersea walking, but well, I twisted my ankle a bit when playing on the beach (it wasn't as bad as it sounds), so Sri absolutely refused the para-sailing idea :-D. Meanwhile we didn't have water shoes and the water in the deer island as well as our hotel had these sharp thorns (don't know what they were) and somehow Sri had these multiple thorns embedded into his foot. So he became a total baby about it and hence we couldn't go undersea walking either :-p. I spent one whole evening tending to the thorns in his foot :-p. Romantic, isn't it? :-D.

I have to admit, we did enjoy a couple of beautiful sunsets at the hotel beach :).




And then we returned to reality, hehehe :)). Back to Bangalore and to our lives together. But soon, we had to move to US and the initial years were something of a long honeymoon ;-).

I still remember how weird I used to feel when calling Sri my husband at that time - the word tasted so new and different :-D. And the phase certainly wasn't all fun - I had never been away from my parents so long, away from my country so long. There was also lot of initial adjustments to each other going on, so there were some weird phases around :-D. It was certainly a period of transition :). Also we did tell our parents about the bungy once we came back and got nicely scolded, hehehe :). I love telling people "We bungee-jumped on our honeymoon" purely for the shock value and the expressions on their faces, hehehe :))).

Writing this post has been more fun than I thought it would be. I had to research quite a bit because we don't have the itineraries anymore and we don't have photos of every place we went to. So I kept asking Sri, did we stay here or there. Did we go here first or there? :-D. Since Mauritius has a French influence, I didn't know the names of most places we went to :-D. With internet, its not impossible to find out stuff these days, thank God :). I loved reliving the memories and got all nostalgic. Has it really been 5 years already? And we have a toddler too! Time sure feels like a whirlwind sometimes :-\.

Well, I really wanted to write this post as this was a major part of our relationship. Once more post in the BTFYA series and I'm done. It should be up soon :).