So when I had the chance to go visit China I didn't think about it twice, even if it was in the bitterly cold month of February in Beijing. It can't be as bad as Chicago in the winter I thought, and I was so wrong. My first sight seeing experience in China involved walking in the Forbidden City with high winds at 20 degrees fahrenheit. Trying to do sight seeing in that weather was one of the worst experiences of my life. After this, I was a little bit more prepared when I had to go to the great wall, so I put on six layers of clothing and brought my chinese army hat, which was the only hat I could buy in the only store opened in Beijing during Chinese New Year week. 

   We went to a section of the wall in Badaling, which has the most preserved section of the wall. The wall was beyond my wildest expectations. The chinese don't make such a big deal about it but they're starting to recognize its tourism potential.

“This was the place where you have to do your shopping”, the girl in the boat’s advertising channel said. The shops in downtown Charlotte Amelie are amazing”, “You get an additional $2,000 tax-free allowance”. I thought if I really wanted to save money on my shopping I would take a $20 cab ride to Michigan Ave, instead of taking a $2,000 cruise.

When we woke up, the day could not have been better. It was very sunny (the way is supposed to be). After waiting for the immigration process we headed out to downtown Charlotte-Amelie to try to find good deals on tours. We saw the sailboat tour we wanted to get from our ship making a stop in downtown to pickup some people. There weren’t many tours going to the little island we wanted to go, so we joined this tour. Turtle Cove, a little beach on Buck Island off of St. Thomas where they had shipwrecks and you could swim with sea turtles. On our way there we heard music on the sailboat that sounded really cool after hearing nothing but oldies in our cruise ship (if I heard the Shrek song one more time I would either shoot myself or jump from the ship). We started snorkeling, swimming over a sunken boat. There was some mysterious “X-files” like story behind this sunken boat, but I was too busy looking at the fishes to hear the whole story. I touched a sea urchin and held it above water as it was holding on to my hand. Britney did it too. We didn’t get to see any turtles because the sea was too rough in that side of Cove Island.

This was a bad day since we opened up the curtain from our room and saw that it was pouring outside. “Antigua: 365 beaches, one for each day of the year”, the booklet said. Too bad today was our only day here. We jumped on a cab after being harassed by dozens of tour guides offering their services. We ignored them all and went out of the port area. We decided we would go to the other side of the island and visit some historic sites.

We saw an awesome view of the bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Our driver, Lawrence, pointed out the two houses that Eric Clapton owns in this island. I was able to bargain with Lawrence for a discounted tour, thanks to Britney’s uninterested attitude towards our tour. Later I found out that she wasn’t pretending, she truly wasn’t interested about the whole thing.

The cave exploration was incredible. Well, first we did a hike that turned out to be more fun than what I expected. I though it was great that it was a natural trail, not like the easy-to-walk, paved and lighted trails in the U.S.

We had a wonderful day. Our day started walking the port of Phillipsburg, a harbor known for many things including “Guavaberry”, a local drink that we had to try many samples before giving our stamp of approval.

  After shopping and trying all the local flavors we headed over to the french side of the island to do some naked snorkeling. This type of snorkeling is great for the tourists and marine life. This allows both animals to view each other “au natural”.

  I specially enjoyed snorkeling with the naked people. Specially when I looked up and viewed not quite a full moon but a half moon with the other half inside the water. All jokes aside the snorkeling was beautiful. We viewed many species of fish: bright blue fish, zebra fish, clown fish and Bob the retired machinist from Cleveland.

  Another point in snorkeling: I thought I heard someone yelling “HELP, HELP”. I looked up out of the water but I was just a goat in the island making loud noises.