Tour Day

Joni and I took a few tours around my new home. We began Thursday morning in the school "bus" driving into St. George to visit a fish market, spice market (complete with haggling vendors), Fort George, and finished up with a walk around a marina. The day was VERY warm and there were so many things to take in that we were thrilled to return to my dorm and enjoy a little rest time.

Emphasis on the little, here.

Shortly after we go back to campus, we had to pack up our things, refill our water bottles and get on another bus to head far out of town. This second tour of the day took us to a nutmeg production facility. After learning much about mace and nutmeg (which come from the same seed), we piled back into the buses and drove to a beautiful waterfall.

Some of our tour guides and classmates went ahead and started swimming in the cool water, and even a few went cliff jumping into the 18ft deep pool. We returned to the buses from the rocky river and were suddenly immersed in a tropical rain storm. Huge droplets of water were rapidly falling all over us, in January! For a Minnesotan this was somewhat disorienting. Honestly, two days before the thermometer registered nineteen below zero, and now I was drenched in a rain forest.

Our tour was running late, and the guides said it was about a half hour drive back to campus (which would get us back with 15 minutes to spare before our next event). An hour later, we were just outside the campus gates and were forced to head directly to the lecture hall, with damp shirts and sand in our shoes.