THE TENTH LESSON

The last few days have been taking time to DO NOTHING! It's so foreign to us. But so has this whole trip...and not just because we've been in other countries. It's a completely different way of looking at travel. Can you really just not plan something and have it work out? That happens to other people but not to us. Or so we thought.

A final test came today when I rented our car for the return trip tomorrow. Two hours prior to pickup! In fact, pickup isn't even the word for it. They actually drop rental cars off to your hotel here. Budget had no cars left, but EZ (ever heard of that one?) actually did, and literally in the final hour, we booked it. Good thing. We drove all over creation - on the left hand side of the road, adding new meaning to the word "trip" - just looking for a place to have a last dinner. And tomorrow it will have been a good value to rent even for just the day since taxi to the airport 1 1/2 hours away would run just as high and give us no flexibility to explore.

Today, we took a water taxi up to the cruise boat you see down the page and over to Pidgeon Island a place of strategic significance for the British navy in the 1700's. It was a climb to the outlook, but gave us a 360 degree view of the bay and all the way to Martinique. We stopped and had a cold one (which tasted really good about then) and then Debra and I went on one last warm-water binge: we bobbed in the ocean, went to the pool with the overhead jets, and then soaked in the spa overlooking the harbor inlet before going back to the condo to jump in the plunge pool to take it the sunset you see above. No one will ever feel sorry for us again!

Tomorrow, we plan to visit a plantation, an 18th century hot springs, and have lunch overlooking the Piton mountains that jut straight out of the sea (see http://www.ladera.com/). Then on to the airport for flight back home. We learned our lesson. Travel without intensity was not our undoing, after all. Now it's time to fly...and park.