The Honeymoon

As you already know, Rebecca did an amazing job planning the entire wedding by herself in Washington. Meanwhile, in Texas, I only had one responsibility: The Honeymoon. Rebecca told me that she wanted the destination to be a surprise and that I had complete control over where we would go. At first this was awesome! However, I started to get very nervous after I saw what an amazing job Rebecca had done with our wedding. While Rebecca pulled off an entire wedding, all I had planned was a measly honeymoon! What if we missed our flight? What if there was a hurricane or something?! All I wanted was for my part of the whole thing to go off without a hitch so that my new beautiful bride could relax like she deserved.

We woke up the day after our wedding at the bed and breakfast in Selah. We had a delicious breakfast with the rest of the guests and then headed out. We first drove back to my parent's house in Tieton to drop off Rebecca's dress and my tux. After we managed to escape from my parent's house, we drove to Yakima to run a couple errands before we needed to drive over to Seattle to catch our flight. The plane wasn't supposed to leave until around 5:00pm, so we were not too hurried. After lolly gagging around Yakima, we set off over the pass. So we wouldn't have to leave Rebecca's truck at the airport all week, we decided to drive to my aunt's house in Tacoma and then have her drop us off at the airport. I don't know where the time went, but by the time we were looking for the exit to my aunt's house, we were already late. As luck would have it, we missed the exit and had driven almost all the way down to Ft. Lewis. We turned around and found the exit and finally made it to my aunt's. We immediately got into her car and rushed off to the airport. Five minutes later we were stuck at some train tracks waiting for a train. Just great!

We had time to make it to the airport and board the plane, but only if there were no lines. I couldn't believe that our honeymoon was going to be ruined before we even got there! But don't get me wrong, I still had faith. We got to SeaTac and to the computer kiosk to check in, but of course, it didn't work. Our tickets said that we were on one airline but it was operated by another. We figured that we must have to check in at the actual airline that we were flying on. So, we ran, with all of our luggage, what seemed like a quarter mile, all the way down the the other airline check in station just to find out that we were right the first time. We ran all the way back, which seemed like a half mile, to the first check in station. This time we talked to an agent who checked us in and we were through to security. Our luck had changed. The security line was not long at all and before we knew it, we were at our gate with about 15 minutes to spare. It wasn't the most relaxing way to start our honeymoon, but at least we made it.

Our first flight took us south to Los Angeles. We then flew over night to Miami. Our next flight took us down to the lovely island of Barbados. From Barbados, we flew in a small plane west to Union Island where we were met by Maurice. Maurice loaded our luggage into a small minivan and then drove us down to a dock about 200m away from the airport. We boarded Maurice's boat and headed to our destination, Petit St. Vincent.

The boat ride took about 20 minutes. During that time, the sun went down and Rebecca still didn't know where we were going because we were sitting in the back of the boat facing Union Island. As we got off the boat, Maurice bid us farewell, and we were greeted by the island's staff. We immediately boarded one of the little golf carts that they use to get around the island and we were taken away to our cottage. On the way to our island home, the people driving the cart showed us where the main office was and other important places on the island.

It was hard to see exactly what the island looked like because it was so dark, but it was easy to tell just how small it was. When we got off the boat, we were on the Caribbean side of the island. We drove about 50m over a little hill and arrived on the Atlantic side of the island. This is the side where all of the cottages were. In all, there are 22 cottages on the island. We stayed in cottage number 8, which was right on the beach. As we arrived at the cottage, they showed us how to use the flag system. Near each cottage, there is a bamboo flag pole with a yellow and a red flag. When you have a request, you fill out a request form and slip it in a little container attached to the flagpole. You then raise the yellow flag and the staff will oblige to your request. If you don't want to be disturbed, you simply raise the red flag. Our cottage was huge. It had one room with a sitting area and a bathroom on one side and then another room with two beds and another bathroom on the other side. In the middle was a patio with a table and some beach chairs. In between our cottage and the beach was a hammock, and some more beach chairs.

Immediately after we arrived at our cottage we ordered dinner. The second thing I did after we arrived was walked through a screen door. Two sides of our cottage were sliding glass doors with screens on them to keep bugs out. At night, the screens were really hard to see and so I walked right through one of them busting the whole screen out of the door frame. Not to worry, we simply filled out a repair request and shortly after, a man came to replace the screen. I was told not to feel bad. The man said that it happens all the time and even Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, walked through a screen there.

After the excitement with the screen door, we had to concentrate on more important things like breakfast. Every night, you fill out another meal request for breakfast. You tell them what time you want to eat and they will bring whatever you want to your room. Of course, if you preferred not to eat at your cottage, you could always go to the restaurant for a meal. We had our first dinner that night delivered to us. After finishing our dinner, we got some much needed rest.

The next morning, we woke up to our breakfast being served on our table just outside of our bedroom. After breakfast, Rebecca went for a walk around the island as I went to the main office to plan events for the rest of our stay. After that, we walked over to the Caribbean side of the island for some snorkeling. We got pretty hungry while snorkeling, so we caught a ride back to the restaurant just in time to get some lunch. That night, we got dressed up and got a ride over to the Caribbean side again to have a nice dinner on the beach. When I planned the dinner, I just thought that you get served dinner at one of the little tables at the beach, which you do. However, they also have a whole bunch of lanterns hanging up all around the table. It was awesome! We got there a little early in hopes of catching the sun set but we missed it. The dinner was great and the atmosphere was unbeatable. It was paradise.

Every morning, including the next morning, we had breakfast delivered to our cottage. It was awesome! You could get almost anything you could think of. We also liked having it delivered because it would force us to get out of bed so we wouldn't spend our whole vacation sleeping. After another amazing breakfast, we got ready to go snorkeling on a tiny sand spit just a few minutes away by motor boat from our island. We got to the small island with all of our snorkeling gear and a picnic basket that was made for us. We spent about 2 hours snorkeling around the island and just hanging out on the sand. When we got to the little island, there were a couple small cruise ships anchored just off shore which made the island a little crowded. Eventually, the ships and the people left leaving the island to just the two of us. Sadly, our ride showed up shortly after to take us back to our main island.

That night, I planned to have dinner served to us on a dock on the Atlantic side of the island. Prior to our dinner, we strolled over the the Caribbean side again to try and see the sunset. We made it there in time, however, the sun set behind another island so it wasn't as good as we had hoped. After hanging out on the beach for a little while, we got a ride back to the other side for our dinner. The dock had lanterns leading us out to the end where there was a little covered area where we would eat. After a few minutes, our dinner was served. The Atlantic side of the island always has a good breeze which was a little bit annoying but helped to keep pesky bugs away. After dinner, we strolled down the beach back to our cottage. We stayed up for a while playing card games. We eventually went to bed in order to get some rest for our plans the next day.

We got up on Thanksgiving, our last full day, and again ate a delicious breakfast. We got all of our snorkeling gear together and put on sunscreen and headed down the the main dock. We were taking a ride on a schooner out to the Tobago Cays for some great snorkeling and lunch. The wind was blowing against us the whole way out to the cays so it took quite a while to get there. Once we got to the cays, we got off the sail boat onto a small motor boat and went up to the best snorkeling spot. We swam around for quite a while looking at all of the coral and fish. At one point I spotted a huge fish and swam over to Rebecca to ask her if she wanted to see a really big fish. We both swam back to see the big fish and that's when she realized it was a shark. We didn't spend too much time looking at it and quickly swam away. After seeing the shark, we got some crackers to feed the fish. Some of the fish were very aggressive. One was so hungry it bit Rebecca's finger and actually broke the skin.

After feeding the fish, we went snorkeling in a different spot where all of the turtles hang out. We saw so many turtles! It was amazing. After we had enough snorkeling, we boarded the schooner and had a great lunch. After lunch, we headed back home. The ride was a lot faster on the way home with the wind to our backs. We headed back to our cottage and cleaned off and get ready for Thanksgiving dinner. We decided that we should have dinner at the restaurant with other people at least once while we were there and what would be a better time than Thanksgiving? The dinner was great. You could order anything and everything on the menu that you liked. They had all of the traditional Thanksgiving foods and more. After dinner, we went back to our room for our last night in paradise.

The next morning, we got up and packed all of our things for the trip home. After breakfast and lunch, we boarded Maurice's boat and headed back to Union Island. We got on the same small plane and flew the hour trip to Barbados. Although we were on our way home, our honeymoon wasn't over yet. We had one last night in Barbados before we headed back to the United States. After landing in Barbados, we took a cab to our hotel right on the beach. Our room was brand new and quite nice. We watched tv for a while and then had a nice dinner and desert by the beach at the hotel restaurant. I think the best thing about the hotel was that they had an air conditioner right above the bed. The next morning we took a cab back to the airport and started our long journey home. Everything went smoothly and we made it back without a hitch.

I couldn't have asked for a better honeymoon. Everything went as planned and Rebecca got to relax in paradise. I just wish we could have stayed a little bit longer.