Cruising in the Caribbean

"Mom, we'd have so much fun on a cruise," my daughter Sarah repeated like a mantra for years. Neither of us had ever been on one, and it had never been anywhere near the top of my list when I thought of travel or vacations. But this year she is graduating from high school, so I decided to forget about my fantasy get-aways and go with hers. As is frequently the case with Sarah, her instincts were right on; it was a perfect "mother-daughter celebrate the coming transition in our lives" vacation.
Although we made the initial reservations back in September, if you saw me right before our taxi to the airport was about to arrive, you would have thought I'd just won a trip I needed to be ready for in less than an hour. I was still frantically washing clothes, and I hadn't even begun to pack my photo equipment. It was at that point that I said to Sarah, "I'm not going to bring my camera; I'm too tired and I need a break."
"Mom, how many sunsets can you really photograph anyways?" she responded, reminding me again that the taxi had already been waiting in our driveway for 20 minutes. I liked her thinking, so I hid the best of my camera equipment in my t-shirt drawer, set the house alarm, locked the door and jumped into the taxi -- camera free.
I felt good about this decision for about two hours, just the time it took us to get safely through airport security without a hassle and onto the plane. As I buckeled my seatbelt and the plane began to climb, my stomach sunk: the sunrise was creating the most incredible shades of pink, orange and gold on the heavenly clouds. My camera: How could I have been so stupid? I poked Sarah as we jetted upwards. "Do you think there's a camera store in San Juan?" Annoyed by the possibility of my "photo obsession" kicking in just when she had settled into her teen magazine, she looked up barely long enough to utter, "Probably -- it is a colony of the United States you know."
Well, thank G-d for the spread of capitalism, and the friendly Puerto Rican man we met in the friendly skies, because our very first stop in San Juan was the Best Buy that this stranger had offered to drive us to from the airport. Within minutes of walking into the store, I had purchased Canon's newest Power Shot SD1100 IS digital elph, two 2-gig cards, and a cute little case, that also doubled as a place for my money and credit cards. And, to top off my great fortune, I did the whole transaction in Spanish, which made me really feel like I was on the road! Now I was ready.
My new little camera really surprised me. Although I did miss my big camera and lenses a few times, for the most part I fell in love with the ease of the little one and I had a lot of fun. Following are some of my favorite images...