Our first stop
Trip Start
Apr 25, 2010
1
5
11
Trip End
May 06, 2010
Where I stayed
Royal Carribean - Jewel of the Seas
Labodi, Nord, Haiti
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
We booked two excursions on this stop so we got off the boat at 8:00AM to head to the Dragon's Breath Zip Line. This is the longest zip line over water in the world at approximately 2,600 feet long. The zip line starts at 500 feet above sea level and brings you all the way down to the beach. We met with our safety instructors and they gave us a brief lesson on using the zip line and the different ways to position your body on the way down. Then they put us on a short zip line for practice nicknamed "Little Dragon". If you've never been on a zip line it is quit a rush. After the practice run we hopped in a jeep for the ride up to the "Big Dragon" 500 feet above sea level.
When we got to the platform at the top of the mountain the view was priceless.....see pictures.
Royal Carribean has done good things with the Haitian peninsula that they own. There were a lot of locals hired by Royal to help with various tasks around the peninsula. We were told by our instructor that they make more money in 2 weeks than they would normally make in a whole year. After getting hooked up to our zip line it was time to take the ride down at a whopping 45 miles per hour. You can't really tell how fast we are going on the video but we were definitely going very fast and it made you feel weightless....see video. The ride down was eerily calm and quiet and pretty
peaceful. This is probably the craziest thing we have ever done in our lives but it was well worth it.
After completing the zip line tour we headed over to Bucaneer Bay (Yaaarrrrr) to catch up with our tour to Malfini Beach. This beach is a completely secluded beach a couple of miles from the peninsula. We took a short 10 minute boat road along the coast and entered a cove that was totally surrounded by mountains on both sides. The beach was about 150 feet wide and had nothing but a small beach bar and some beach chairs. Christine and I grabbed a couple of floating mats and floated around the bay which was very relaxing. There was a lot of nice fish and
coral all around but we didn't have our mask and snorkel so we couldn't go under. They did however have a glass bottom kayak and we rowed around the bay for 20 minutes to check out some of the reef. This was a very relaxing and much needed excursion. After 3 hours of Malfini Beach we were taken back to the ship which was departing at 4PM.
We had dinner reservations for 6:45 today so we headed on down to the Tides Dining Room. At the end of dinner we ended up meeting a very nice honeymoon couple named Ben and Jennifer from West Palm Beach, FL. The boat is loaded with nagging senior citizens so they were also happy to meet somebody closer in age. We ended up hanging out with Ben and Jennifer in the casino all night and we ended up winning our money back from night 1. I was playing Single Deck Blackjack and ended up meeting another nice couple named Dan and Beth from the San Francisco Bay Area who was also on their honeymoon. We all shared the same sense of humor which was nice. We have a running joke that we wish we had the electric scooter contract on the boat. After black jack I hit the craps table with Ben and Dan for an unforgettable round of craps. I've never had this much fun on a craps table and the dealers said the same. We were all pretty overserved and had the dealers laughing the whole night. Christine was doing pretty well at the Roulette table and it was good to walk home with some money. Since we all got along so well we decided to book a table for 6 at dinner tomorrow. They are also booking
the same tour that we are on in Cartagena, Colombia for Friday
