Rental Adventure
Wednesday’s adventure started with a search for mountain bikes. Laurie called the place we had walked to the day before, but they said they didn’t have any available to rent. We walked to a sales stand at the hotel next door that we had seen the day before when out and about, and they called a few other places to see if anybody had bikes. One of the suppliers was not answering the phone, so we opted to go to breakfast and wait to see if they would call us back with bikes. We began talking about alternative possibilities to get us to the Hooiberg Mountain, such as taking a taxi or renting a car. At breakfast we got the call the bikes were available, but we abandoned the bike idea and went for a rental car instead.Pete and Tom walked across the street to the rental car place and got a jeep.
Our adventure started with Hooiberg. With a lot of side roads and Tom navigating with the map from the rental car company, we thought getting there should be no problem. Finding street signs proved to be difficult so it was hard to find where we actually were on the map. Eventually we made it. Thank goodness we didn’t try to get there on bikes! Over 500 steps up and we had a marvelous view of the entire island. In addition, Laurie, Vince, Ryan, and I set out to find the geocache that was on the top. The GPS was off a bit but we were able to make the find! Back down the mountain we went.
Our next planned destination was to Baby Beach on the southern tip of the island. Along the way I kept an eye on geocaches to see if we could nab and nearby ones. Unfortunately the geocaching app did not provide us with a detailed map as it normally does when I’m using it with web access at home (which could have been useful in getting us to our destinations and to the caches). I found a cache we were getting relatively close to and used the compass to navigate us there. With a few wrong turns down some dead end streets we found it. The location was a beautiful lagoon where the water was magnificent colors of blue. Alissa found the cache and after a couple of photos (which ended up not turning out because the camera was on the wrong setting) we were on our way to find Baby Beach.
Along the way we stopped at another cache at a memorial for men at sea. I quickly found the cache and we were able to get a group photo in front of the anchor. Back on the road to Baby Beach! We made it to the beach where the kids swam for a bit and we walked to the far end of the beach where we found a restaurant that was themed from the Flinstones.
We had burgers that weren’t all that great, but nice to sit down and take a break. After lunch we were back on the road to find some caves that the rental car company mentioned. We drove in the direction that we thought and headed for some off roading. Circling a couple of times and stopping to ask a local coconut salesman at the end of the road for directions (thanks Vince for translating for us), we still never quite found them. I think we were on the right path, but time was running out as we needed to get back to the resort to get ready for our 7:00 dinner reservations. We made it back with just enough time to be showered and ready for dinner.
Dinner was at the Caribbean themed restaurant of the resort. Tom and I had the surf and turf dinner that consisted of a steak, piece of shrimp, and tiny scallops. It was ok, but really enjoyed sitting outside for the meal. The temperature and breeze was just right. After dinner we had a drink and was off to bed!
