RealHoneymoons.com» nature

The natural beauty of the Caribbean’s St. Lucia

Allyson — Wed, 19 May 2010 13:13:56 +0000

Katie and Robert were quite happy to spend most of their St. Lucia honeymoon lounging and relaxing at Ti Kaye Resort. But they did get out to see some of the Caribbean island’s natural beauty with a Sea and Land tour.

They got to check out views of the island from the water, as well as visit Diamond Botanical Garden in Soufrière and check out the volcanos just like another honeymooning couple Chris & Kim did on their trip to St. Lucia.

They took a dip in the natural hot springs and then grabbed lunch at a local restaurant. Katie’s said the native flowers “were really pretty.” The one above is a lobster claw.

Epic Trunk Bay on Saint John, USVI

Allyson — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:02:34 +0000

RH note: This week we’re happy to feature posts by Andy and Shaira, who honeymooned on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. John in August.

Andy says: A particularly worthy destination – not to be missed under any circumstances in fact – is Trunk Bay, named by Condé Nast magazine and National Geographic as among the world’s most beautiful beaches. This crescent -shaped swath of white sand and transparent, azure water will bring out the inner Jacques Cousteau in even the most virulent land-lubber. One can literally see the tropical fish swimming amongst the coral from the beach and there is a one-a-kind underwater nature trail designed to be followed via snorkel.

The water here, as with most of the island, is calm and free of strong currents meaning that even novice snorkelers can focus on the incredible views (though life guards are stationed there as well). One can lose track of time in this underwater portion of the national park (a warning: I emerged after several hours in the water, having been so taken by the scenery that I failed to notice a very serious sunburn which formed on the small of my back after swimming face down for so long).

In the end, the only problem with St. John for us was that we didn’t get to see everything. In many ways, this trip just scratched the surface. There are many miles of trails, and many unspoiled beaches, most of which are only accessible with a combination of hiking and a rented car (we lacked the latter, and cabs are only practical for half the island). To sum it up, from what I know about a lot of the Caribbean, if you haven’t been to Saint John yet, you won’t be disappointed, but once you do go, you are likely to be spoiled.

RH note, again: Many, many thanks for Andy and Shaira for taking the time to share their planning and experiences on this beautiful to the Virgin Islands.

Caribbean hiking on Saint John

Allyson — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:26:23 +0000

RH note: This week we’re happy to feature posts by Andy and Shaira, who honeymooned on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. John.

Andy says: For all of the good seafood and tropical fruit to be eaten, the real attraction here is nature. In a fitting story for Saint John, the National Park was donated to the US Park Service by Laurence Rockefeller who bought the island earlier in the century after admiring it from his yacht. This has led to the vast majority of the island being protected, accessible only by hiking trail (including several pristine beaches). Trails lead directly from Cruz Bay into the hinterlands. One easy hike (1/2 hour) from the park headquarters in Cruz Bay will take you to the aptly named Honeymoon Beach, which on the day we visited it, we had to share with just two other people.

It is hard to put into words the kind of beauty these places hold – let me just say that when you are here you find the essential – and still pristine – source of all of the television and magazine clichés of the “tropics” you are used to seeing all of the time, in real life (perhaps a bit like being in “Lost”, except there is no man-eating smoke or rampaging, gun-toting hippies). It’s amazing.

A word for the wise though – resist the lazy decision to wear your sandals or flip-flops on these trails: the terrain can be rocky and most of the island is steep inclines and descents, so hiking requires both the right shoes and fair physical condition.

Another great trail is the Reef Bay trail. Although we are pretty hard-core do-it-yourself types, taking the guided version of that hike with a ranger/archeologist is really great. The theme of the hike when we took it was the “edible jungle” so we worked our way through the tropical forest eating incredibly bizarre nuts and plants (including a so-called “natural protein-powder” found in seed pods that tastes identical to bananas). The hike also includes some poignant reminders of the Caribbean’s history of conquest and empire: there are pre-Columbian Taino petroglyphs and the ruins of a sugar plantation (including the slave quarters). The plantation buildings are particularly striking and eerie – they are teeming with bat colonies and the 19th century machinery used to process cane sugar is still present.

From here the walk concludes at a pristine beach, where you rendez-vous with a waiting boat, joining it by way of a rubber zodiac (or if you happen to be a tri-athlete, swimming out to it, as some apparently do). The skipper of the boat, incidentally, is also worth chatting up: he’s a retired coast guard captain who sailed around the world from California only to end up on the island towards the end of his voyage; one of many visitors to Saint John, it seemed, who happened upon the place and never left.

More to do on Seneca Lake

Allyson — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 12:43:26 +0000

The Finger Lakes region offers so much for mini-mooners and travelers who need some time to relax and unwind. 38-mile long Seneca Lake, the biggest of all the lakes, offers shores packed with activities. There’s obviously the wine we’ve been mentioning, but there’s also plenty of hiking, antiquing, history, boating and fishing to keep you busy, as another couple Mark & Christi discovered.

Getting tired of wine? Check out the Crooked Rooster Brewery in Watkins Glen, at the southern tip of Seneca Lake. With eight varieties of their own beer, they’re a great alternative to the wineries. Their Wildflower Cafe next door offers a great range of foods to suit burger lovers and vegetarians alike.

If you’re up for a sail, check out Schooner Excursions which runs boating excursions from Watkins Glen June through October. Morning, afternoon and sunset sails are available and you can BYO favorite wines.

Safari lessons for newlyweds

Allyson — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:13:12 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

Our last stop to Ngorongoro Crater’s ancient collapsed volcano was a good way to round out the trip. The crater boasts one of the highest concentrations of predators in Africa, but has less than two dozen of critically endangered black rhinos. We saw a fair number of big (and little) cats (though not much in the way of chases or kills though) and one black rhino.

We also hit the nearby Olduvai Gorge, where fossils of hominins (possibly your grandfather from 1 million generations ago) were uncovered by the Leakeys. We passed, however, on taking a tour of a Maasai village after many reviews noted it had been so commercialized the encounter had all the authenticity of a Disney exhibit.

In the end, our eight days in the country were only enough to get a small taste of the country and the continent. We encountered plenty of travelers who had been stricken with the Africa bug and were on their n-th trip back. That’s easy to understand.

The sheer scale of everything, from the thousands of wildebeest and zebras to the unending plains, is hard to wrap your brain around. But it’s the way life has been for long before we were around and will be for long after we’re gone.

If that doesn’t give you a good perspective to start married life, I don’t know what will.

RH Note, again: Huge thanks to Greg and Kim for sharing their story. Readers, if you haven’t checked out Greg’s other images at Flying Fur Photography yet, they’re a must!

Watching the cubs in Serengeti

Allyson — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 17:20:49 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

Serengeti National Park. Yeah, this is the mother of all safari parks and it didn’t disappoint. Lions, hyenas, dead zebras (lions seem to prefer a bit more protein for breakfast than the dry Weetabix we ate), jousting juvenile elephants, stampeding wildebeest, gazillions of Thomson’s gazelles and pooping hippos.

Within an hour of arriving in the Serengeti, we were mesmerized by the antics of a group of lion cubs playing on and around a kopje (a rocky outcrop) while the females and a male dozed in the high grass. Despite being there with half a dozen other safari trucks, it wasn’t hard to get lost in the moment.

The vastness of the Serengeti means you can’t see it all in a couple of days. We spent about 2 1/2 days there and just scratched the surface. After our first full day, we drove to the northern Serengeti where we had the best stay of our trip. More on that this afternoon.

Elephant encounter in Tarangire

Allyson — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 11:57:51 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

About two hours southwest from Arusha, Tarangire National Park this park is known for its herds of elephants. And we saw plenty of them. Big bulls. Little babies. They wandered so close to us at one point we were able to hear the crunching of dirt under their feet and the munching of acacia leaves in their mouths.

When one of the mothers flared her ears, blasted her trunk and started heading toward our vehicle, Joseph our guide was quick to start it up and back away. Once we were a bit farther away, the elephants went back to their business.

This was also where we discovered that tsetse flies have learned to follow safari trucks and when they bite, it feels like a hyena ripping at your flesh. The honeymoon card did not work with them.

There are tons of other animals in Tarangire besides elephants and we got to see many of them, from a male ostrich whose neck was red to attract the ladies doing a mating dance to a baby zebra trying to nurse with its clearly fed-up mother.

First sightings in Arusha

Allyson — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 14:00:00 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

Arusha National Park is smaller than some of the better-known parks but that means it usually has fewer crowds. We hit this reserve the morning after arriving in Africa and the rush of our first sightings of zebra, cape buffalo, warthogs, giraffes and other creatures actually in the wild as opposed to a zoo enclosure was incredible.

The highlight here definitely was getting out of our Land Cruiser and going on a hike with one of the park rangers. (He carried an AK-47 in case any buffalo took exception to our jaunt through their grazing pastures.) Watching lumbering giraffe from a car window is one thing; standing in the grass while nearby these long-necked herbivores dined on lunch is quite another.

This point is probably obvious, but having a good, knowledgeable guide can be the difference between an okay trip and a spectacular one. Do some research to ensure you get an experienced one.

Wild Kingdom honeymoon in Tanzania

Allyson — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:02:01 +0000

RH Note: This week’s posts are written by guest blogger Greg Saitz, an incredibly talented writer and pet photographer. He chronicles the honeymoon he and his wife Kim took in Tanzania.

Going to Africa for our honeymoon was one of the smartest things my wife and I have done so far as a married couple. Well, that and buying matching pink Snuggies. (Stop judging us.)

There are plenty of people whose idea of honeymoon bliss is sitting on a beach at an all-inclusive resort sucking down fruity drinks while watching other newly married couples suck down fruity drinks. Nothing wrong with that, but not our scene.

When considering where to go for our honeymoon, we thought about the arc of a typical marriage: a house, kids, commitments, responsibilities. Looking ahead, we saw lots of excuses we could make for not shelling out a good deal of cash and flying more than 15,000 miles to take a vacation.

In that sense, the decision was easy. But we spent a good deal of time researching our trip, from picking the country – Tanzania – to the tour company that took us on safari, Good Earth Tours. Make sure you’re getting involved with a reputable operator, because once you’re sitting in the middle of the Serengeti, making changes is not as easy as calling the front desk.

We knew we didn’t want to rough it too much, so we were booked into mostly mid- to upper-range lodges with the exception of one night in a luxury tent camp when we really got spoiled. More on that later this week.

We also arranged for a private safari, meaning Kim and I were the only people in the Land Cruiser with the guide/driver. The cost wasn’t that much more than a group tour, and the benefits of being able to go wherever you wanted whenever you wanted were enormous.

During the trip, we played the honeymoon card a few times. My wife used it to try to get upgrades to first class on our flights from Newark to Amsterdam and an 8 1/2- hour backbreaker to Kilimanjaro International Airport in Tanzania. It didn’t work, but the flight attendants did give us glasses of champagne and a collectable ceramic house we later discovered had whiskey in it.

I had better luck with “we’re on our honeymoon” at one of the lodges where we stayed after our first room had a bug issue. (I even brought the remains of a large but squished creature to the front desk to help plea my case.) The next night, they upgraded us to a magnificent, two-floor suite with sweeping views of the Serengeti.

Canadian beauty on display

Allyson — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:51:46 +0000

A visit to the Pacific Northwest wouldn’t be complete without a border crossing. Eric and Marisa headed up to Victoria, British Columbia for the last leg of their honeymoon. He says, “Victoria was probably the most romantic place we visited.”

“When we got off the ferry, we drove to Sea Cider Farm & Cider House, where we had an outdoor tasting overlooking the beautiful farm, complete with waitress service and salt-and-pepper chocolate and toasted pumpkin seeds. They don’t sound like they would go with an alcoholic cider, but the pairings were amazing.”

They took a whale watching trip, which Eric says was “incredible, but very cold and windy.” How could it not be amazing, getting this close up to wild orcas? There’s a whole host of companies that offer the trips.

Mostly they loved the calmness and natural beauty that Victoria has to offer. There are tons of great parks in the area.

Many, many thanks to Eric and Marisa for sharing this epic road trip honeymoon with us. The photos and stories make it hard not to wish I was there right now. Seems fitting to end the week with this great shot of Eric looking forward to his life with his new wife.