This was the scene we woke up to this morning.

Welcome to Labadee – Haiti.  The little arm of Labadee is either owned or controlled by Royal Caribbean, so the beaches are full of beach chairs and hammocks and dining areas – which Royal Caribbean run – they even take food from the ship to feed the masses.  It seemed that there were some local people working as “Beach Monitors” – they put the chairs out and put the umbrellas up, that sort of thing, but other than that, you couldn’t get to any other part of the island.

The shop used to tender people to the island, but they’ve since built this little finger jetty which is pretty hard to believe holds the ship, but with such calm waters (at the moment) it was no problem.

With this many people there’s no point in trying to get a photo without other people in it – so thank you to this model family.

I just wanted to add this photo in again randomly – cause it’s not very often that I take a good photo, so I’m going to milk it.

The water was as clear as clear.  This little cove reminded me of Croatia – it would have been perfect to jump in right there in front of the ship, but the rocks were covered with sea urchins.

There were a couple of options for a beach swim.  The ocean side which had a thin strip of clear water and then reef, so you could probably lay down flat and get your back wet (some people were taking that option) or there was the bay side where you could at least swim out of your standing depth if you could possibly avoid bumping into a group from Missouri discussing the downfall of American politics.

Note to anyone wanting to purchase a “Lifeproof” waterproof phone case – do so, it has been a fantastic addition to our gadget collection on this trip.  We got ours from Mitchell and Brown in Geraldton – sure the underwater photography hasn’t been amazing, but that is more likely our skill set.

These photos don’t do it justice – there were at least 3000 people on this very small beach… we found a little spot in the shade thank goodness – every second person had nearly 3rd degree burns on some part of their bodies and yet were still out there in the sun – in a different style of bather so to try to even up the redness.

The chairs and umbrellas were $20 to hire, but since we were only going to have a swim we went without, but if we’d known you could hire these bungalows away from the hoards – we would have done that!  They had shade, a ceiling fan, day beds and people bought you drinks.

This is the beach that we were on.  There were so many water activities to do – you could kayak, snorkel, jet ski, go on boat rides, parasail and play on the bouncy stuff (one young girl bounced wrong and was stretchered out of the water and back to the ship – apparently it was just s whiplash.  There was also a couple of ziplines – when did this become a favourite pastime?  People were literally lining up in the sun in their thousands dressed in harnesses to have a go.

Here’s a close up of our beach and the bungalows we’ll be renting next time.  This photo was taken much later in the day – so times the number of people you can see here by 100.  After our swim, we decided that rather than elbowing our way around a buffet on the beach, we’d head back to the near empty ship and have a relaxing lunch on our own.  We also had the pool to ourself – unheard of!

And as quickly as we arrived, we were away again.

Tonight activities included a bout of musical trivia – rock classics where we didn’t do very well – ML was still amazing – considering they only play an ‘enth’ of the first 2 beats of the song and you’re meant to guess from that she did very well.  However we were left with a gaping hole in our highlighter collection.

With our tails between our legs we went to the main dining room for diner with Migsy and Willy.  The food onboard has been pretty good – especially in the dining room, however tonight was less than ordinary and I know complaining about somebody bringing me free food makes me sound like an entitled wanker, so please know that I’m simply describing the experience – not complaining.

We had a couple of hours to kill between dinner and the evening show – The Fine Line Aqua Performance, so we sat in the piano bar and people watched whilst listening to the dulcet tones of an amazing singer.  We could have sat there all night and listened to him, but the high divers were calling.

I’ve seen a few high diving aqua shows before, but this was completely out there.  It had everything – underwater synchronised leg dancing, stomp dance performers (in the shallow water), high divers, slack liners, high tight rope walkers, an aerial performer – all happening at once.  We got a bit of whiplash ourselves trying to see everything!

These photos don’t do it justice either on how high they were and really how small the pool was that they were diving into.  Amazing!

It’s goodnight from us…. and out duck lip pouts.