Team Six: The Pharaohs

Brian & Mike

Team Five: The Sightseers

Liz & Claire

Team Four: The Semiskilled Duo

Amy & Kathy

Team Three: The Franchise

Andrew & Peter

Team Two: The Couple

Chris & Beth

Amazing Race: Bio Bay Edition Team One: The Pros

Abby & Diane

Glowing, Glowing, Gone!

In spite of much wailing and gnashing of teeth, all six of the two-person kayaks finally made it into the open expanse of the BioBay, our bioluminescent destination on our trip to Puerto Rico last month.
All six teams, the Pros (Abby and Diane), the Couple (Chris and Beth), the Franchise (Andrew and Peter), the Semiskilled Duo (Amy and yours truly), the Sightseers (Liz and Claire), and the Pharaohs (Brian and Michael) were finally together again, floating peacefully under the clear but moonless Puerto Rican sky as our guide Maria told us about things that glowed in the bay, the fragility of the ecosystem that supported these life forms, and the history of these wonderful dinoflagelates that have awed and mystified many throughout the ages.
Since it had taken most of us longer than usual to reach the peaceful bay, Maria finished up her lecture quickly, encouraged us to sweep our hands back and forth through the ever glowing waters and then follow her back through the dark labyrinth of the mangrove lagoon.
We went in roughly the same order we had arrived: Maria with Abby and Diane right behind her, the Franchise looking after the Sightseers, the Semiskilled Duo being shepherded by the Couple, and the Pharaohs being pulled by the other guide as though they were floating on a royal barge down the Nile. I don’t think I would have minded the Pharaohs so much if they hadn’t been gloating over their effortless journey while so many of us were struggling to make some headway with our less than perfect kayaking.
Returning through the narrow, winding channel was made all the more fun by the fact that other groups were traveling through in their kayaks on their way to the Biobay. So, in addition to dodging mangrove roots, we also got to avoid the flailing paddles of other similarly inept kayakers trying to pass us. It was, in a word, AWESOME.
We thought that we had all made it through the worst of the lagoon gantlet when suddenly we heard loud yells and saw the formerly smug Pharaohs sputtering and splashing in the waist-deep water after being hit broadside by a kayak from another tour. The royal barge had capsized, and its haughty passengers were being baptized in the glowing waters of humiliation, much to the delight of all onlookers. They were rescued, losing only one sneaker and their dignity. Just thinking of it now brings a tear (of laughter) to one’s eye.
Eventually, we all made it back to the shore. The Pros were exultant in their prowess and in their enjoyment of the bay. The Pharaohs’ mood had unsurprisingly taken a nasty turn for the worse. The rest of us were mostly thankful that our “adventure” was coming to a conclusion.
Of course, while debarking from my kayak, I managed to lose my balance (apparently I have a rather large and low center of gravity) and I fell backwards into the warm water, giving my shorts a good soaking, but other than that, we all seemed physically unscathed by our extreme outdoor adventure. However, its psychological toll is another story…

The Assault of BioBay Begins

When last we left our intrepid crew, now known as the legendary BioBay Battalion, they had gotten almost hopelessly lost on the island of Puerto Rico on their way from Condado Beach to Fajardo. I neglected to mention that “Fajardo” came to be used as many parts of speech on our journey, as our frustration rose. Interestingly, “Fajardo” can be used as a verb, an adjective, and even as an invective, though it is necessary to pronounce the “j” as in “jar” when so doing.
Nonetheless, we had all arrived at the elusive location, and we were ready for our assault on BioBay, the bioluminescent bay for which Puerto Rico is justly famous.
We were quickly introduced to our tour guide Maria, whom most of us would not see again until the end of our journey. She asked how many of us had ever kayaked before, and sadly, most of us raised our hands. Seeing so many kayaking experts, Maria made her presentation on kayaking about thirty seconds long, which, as it turned out, was not so helpful.
Next we had to pair up, since we were going to be in two-person kayaks. The teams for our adventure shook out like this: Team One, the Pros, consisted of longtime camp counselor (my niece) Abby and her protégé, Diane (nephew Brian’s wife); Team Two was the Couple, nephew Chris and his wife Beth; Team Three was the Franchise, son-in-law Peter and nephew Andrew; Team Four, the Semiskilled Duo, consisted of my niece Amy and me; Team Five, the Sightseers, was my daughter Liz and niece Claire; and the final team was the Pharaohs, consisting of my son Michael and nephew Brian.
In our naiveté, we thought that going to see the BioBay would be a nice, calm paddle through the darkening waters to a calm inlet where the dinoflagelates swim. It sounded so sweet, so calm, so non-threatening. Well, we couldn’t have been more wrong.
Although the waters we were paddling through were allegedly only three feet deep, there was the little matter of getting through a mangrove lagoon in order to reach the open waters of the BioBay, a little fact that the guide book neglected to mention.
But not to worry, or so we thought. We had a guide with a headlamp who would lead us through the swamp. And we were wearing life vests. And our kayaks each had a tiny glow stick in the front (green) and one in the back (red). We looked around the beach and saw a bus pull up for another tour company next to ours with life vests with blinking lights, glass bottom kayaks, and lots of real live guides. But hey, I’ll bet they didn’t pay thirty-five bucks a head.
Amazingly, our teams boarded their kayaks and began paddling to our initial meeting point without incident. The Semiskilled Duo began right behind Maria, in the number two position, but was quickly outstripped by all the teams except for the Pharaohs, as we paddled across the opening to the mangrove lagoon.
Abby quickly had Diane trained in kayaking, and the Pros took the lead, right behind Maria. They were so far ahead that we never saw them again until we gathered in the BioBay. Once we entered the lagoon, the channel we had to navigate was narrow and interestingly, since it was pitch black, we had to find our way by a lot of trial and error, since the only light available to us stragglers was the glow stick on the front of our kayak and occasional glimpse of the red glow stick on the back of a kayak far ahead.
The Semiskilled Duo fell way back in the pack, behind the Franchise, the Sightseers, and the Couple. After the Sightseers had a nasty collision with a mangrove root, the Franchise came back to help, and the Couple took pity on the Semiskilled Duo and slowed their pace so we could try to stop running into the roots.
In the meantime, the Pharaohs, in a cunning display of slothfulness, had proven themselves so inept at paddling a kayak that the guide in the rear of our tour had lashed them to his kayak and was now towing them as they lay back and enjoyed the ride.
As bats flew overhead and shrimp jumped into our kayaks, we slowly made our way through the maze of the mangrove lagoon, wondering how this adventure would end.
Next Week: Mine eyes have seen the glowing…

Getting There Is Half the Fun

The acme (or nadir, depending on who’s telling the story) of our Puerto Rican holiday trip was our trip to the Bio Bay, one of the “must-sees” in every tour book I read about the island.
Let us take a moment to give you, dear reader, and some background. The Bio Bay is one of nature’s wonders, a location where microorganisms called dinoflagelates live and when they are disturbed by motion in the water, a chemical chain reaction is set off that results in a bioluminescent glow. According to the website biobay.com, “The defense mechanism starts a chemical chain reaction that results in a blue green glow that lasts as long as the organism is disturbed. It is not like a ‘glow in the dark’ toy that has to be held up to a light and charged up. This is a reaction that occurs because a very specific set of nutrients are available in the water to sustain these little ‘water fireflies’.”
This, of course, sounds like the coolest thing ever, right? Who wouldn’t want to go to see a bay with its own glow-in-the-dark creatures? It was definitely on my list as a destination. There are several Bio Bays in Puerto Rico, one off the coast of Fajardo on Puerto Rico proper, and another in Vieques, a small island off the coast of Puerto Rico, which involves a ferry ride, etc.
So Fajardo it was. I found some numbers to call in the book, and the one that answered was Las Tortugas Adventures. Soon I was talking to owner Gary Horne and telling him that I had twelve people who wanted to sail kayaks into the Bio Bay. We settled on a price and he said he would email me directions. He advised us to wear clothes that we could get wet and suggested we bring towels.
It was about this time that I should have suspected that perhaps we were signing up for more of an adventure than we had expected. Gary tried unsuccessfully to send the directions via email, so he gave me the complicated directions over the phone, which I frantically scribbled. He told us it would take about one and a half hours to get there, and he expected us at 5:30. It was now 4 o’clock. Yikes.
Suddenly, it felt like we were in an episode of “The Amazing Race.” Three carloads of us screamed out of the hotel, filled with nature lovers determined to see an environmental miracle.
But first we had to find Fajardo and Las Croabas Park. Fortunately, two of the three cars had a global positioning system (GPS) and we were able to plug in “Fajardo.” This got us a good part of the way there, in spite of the fact that the GPS disagreed with the way we were going and repeatedly told us to “make the next legal U turn.” Ignoring this command, we reached Fajardo, and even found Conquistador Avenue. We were so close that we figured the last part would be easy, but there were roads that “T”ed into other roads and lots of other things complicated by the scribbling and the language barrier, so by the time we arrived, we had made lots of illegal U turns and were still running late—and lost!
Exasperated but undeterred, we pulled over to ask some locals where the park was and finally squealed into the parking lot, about twenty minutes late. The twelve of us ran across to the Las Tortugas Adventure truck, where Gary and Maria were waiting for us, an intrepid band of BioBay explorers. We couldn’t wait to get our feet wet!

We Invade Puerto Rico

Our family Christmas trip to Puerto Rico, though short, was definitely action packed. You might say the Stabberts stormed Puerto Rico.
In just five days, we managed, as a family or in small to medium groups, to climb, swim, tour, play, kayak, drive around, or eat most of what Puerto Rico has to offer. You have to remember there were 29 of us, so in small groups, we could cover a lot of ground and do a good bit of damage.
I really can’t say enough about the Marriott Stellaris Resort. It was a wonderful place for the entire crew. Great rooms, great beach, great pools, a casino, and they didn’t mind if you walked into the lobby without shoes, which turned out to be really fortunate as our trip progressed.
Several groups went to tour the rainforest “El Yunque”, which is in the mountains of the island. While there are bugs, there are no monkeys in the rain forest. Though I did not partake of this tour, those who did said it was great.
And then there was the great shopping in Old San Juan. If you have been to any other islands in the Caribbean, you may have experienced the narrow-streets lined with shops where the shopkeepers try to physically pull you into their shops. Thank goodness, we experienced none of that in Puerto Rico. My sisters and I were able to find some great, very reasonably priced jewelry in the little shops in the picturesque city.
Many of us took the time to go to El Morro, the old fort of San Juan, now a National Park. The park rangers are very informative, giving a quick history of the island and the impressive fort, built in 1539, which sits high on a blustery bluff guarding the city once known as “Puerto Rico” (the rich port). In the early days, the island was known as San Juan, until city and island swapped names.
And Mom and Dad wanted to go back to Dorado Beach, a vacation spot they had visited in the mid-70’s with their good friends, Jack and Ethel Bennett. We drove them out there on Sunday, finding our way with the help of a sketchy “tourist” map and my husband’s cartographical skills. We sweet-talked the gatekeeper and drove down to the golf club, where they were getting ready for someone’s wedding. I was driving and dropped off my mom, dad, sister and husband. Two little children came up to them, the boy shaking my father’s hand, and the little girl giving my sister a kiss on both cheeks, as she handed my mother a small gift. Sadly, we weren’t there for the wedding, but went upstairs to have a look around and a libation to celebrate Mom and Dad’s return to Dorado Beach.
That evening, as we enjoyed our dinner at Miro, a Catallan-inspired seafood restaurant across the street from the Marriott, we had no idea the adventure that would await the few, the brave, the BioBay Dozen.
We Lucky Twelve were about to enter our own “Amazing Race”, complete with fruit bats, kayaks, map-reading skills, shrimp, soggy shorts, and let us not forget, the lost shoes…

Happy Holidays from Puerto Rico

LIFELINES: Happy Holidays from Puerto Rico!
My mother has had a lot of good ideas in her life, but it would be hard to beat her latest good idea: taking the family for Puerto Rico for Christmas. This idea went beyond being good to being genius.
She had been talking about it for awhile. And, as much as we all love our Callicoon Christmas, having our family celebration in a tropical resort sounded mighty appealing. None of us needed much convincing.
And so it came to pass that on December 20, all twenty-nine of us boarded jets and made our way to San Juan, Puerto Rico.
The families living in the Northeast had to dodge two snowstorms to get out of town, but we did it, by gum! As our Jet Blue aircraft lifted into the sky, we thanked our lucky stars for our fortuitous timing and settled in for the relatively short (3 hour) flight to sunshine.
One thing to remember when traveling in a group is that things take a little longer than you might expect. And by the time we landed, got our luggage (nothing lost!), got some rental cars, found our way to our Marriott Stellaris Resort and Casino, checked in and got to our beautiful rooms with views of the ocean, it was almost time for us to get ready for dinner!
Our resort was wonderful, chosen by my very smart daughter (the doctor!) and it had everything! There were pools, a swim-up bar, a water slide, a beach bar, a hot tub and a great beach, with real waves! Inside the resort there was a real, live casino, the requisite gift shop, a great live band on Saturday and Sunday night, several restaurants and great room service! On top of that, everyone we met went out of their way to be of assistance to us, so it was pretty much perfect!
We had booked the rooms early in September, when my daughter found a deal online. Yet, when I called and emailed the week before we left to find out about our rooms, I received a call from a lovely woman in group sales saying that since we had thirteen rooms books, she would reduce our rate even more! How many places do you know who would do that? And will we go back? Hopefully, yes!
Our dinner the first night was at the Ristorante Tuscany at the hotel, an award-winning restaurant specializing in Italian cuisine. The entire crew of 29 had our own party room for this dinner, which was wonderful. Of course, after having some interesting happenings on earlier trips (like a dinner we had planned that our London hotel had no knowledge of!), we know to ask for email confirmations and to check on the arrangements ahead of time. But they were ready for us and everything went off without a hitch. It was wonderful to see the whole family again, especially Chris and Beth Finch’s little angels, Emily and Peyton. What fun!
Our first day of travel, good food, and family adventure had begun, and after dinner, some of us decided to check out the hot tub, while the boys headed off to the casino! Good times!

Penny Loves the Snow!!!!

Our dog Penny is a snow dog. She has always, always loved the snow. In fact, she loves to swim in it! We wanted to capture the sheer joy of her snow-doggin' on camera!