The Passing of Cucaron, and Other Adventures

Tonight, we came back to our hotel to discover a tragedy. We found Cucaron floating in the swimming pool, very near to a sunken rock with string tied around it. These are considered to be very suspicious circumstances:

Back to this morning's adventures though. Our driver picked us up at 10ish in the morning. We saw real breadfruit growing in a real breadfruit tree. It's much more appealing sliced and fried and on my plate, but nice to know where to find it.

 Once we got to town, we walked around the boardwalk-style area and explored little alleys of tiny shops for a good hour and a half or so. While we were near the beach, we saw windsurfers, and I became insanely jealous:

 The birthday girl herself, in the best birthday spot around - San Andres!

 Dee's not the only one who had a fantastic day though. I found an amazing new dress at a random tiny hole-in-the wall shop, and then a few blocks down the street was a shoe shop, with the perfect shoes (in my size) sitting in their display window. I had heard we'd be going out to a concert of sorts tonight, and this seemed about perfect:

 Then we went back out to the beach area for some refreshment.

Limonade de coco is still amazing, just in case anyone was wondering. After that, we headed to one last shop: one with guaranteed handcrafted items, by local artisans. Basically a gallery for local artists, at very reasonable prices. A few people got souvenirs at at that shop, and then it was back to the hotel to blog before the boat ride.
Our boat ride earlier was fantastic: Richardson and Noel took us on a party boat/barge sort of thing with benches all around the edges and a dance floor in the middle. Just before we got on the boat, we sampled a few coconut sweets, which I found to be fantastic. The DJ on the boat taught us a few dances and had a dance contest to break the ice, and then the boat was off to cruise around the East side of the island. We got some great views and danced and laughed, and then Noel told everyone it was Dee's birthday (oh yeah, today is Dee's birthday!) and the whole boatfull of vacationers (about 50 people) sang "Cumpleanoz a Dee".

At dinner tonight, Lesley (who had spent the whole day diving and photographing fish) demonstrated her appreciation of the scaly little dudes by transforming this:

 into this:

 After dinner, the staff surprised our birthday girl with a cake. Candles here are awesome - there was a giant sparkler sort of thing that is surely illegal in the US. The frosting is beaten with egg whites, so it's light and fluffy, but holds its shape without being too greasy or sugary. Wonderful.
Manuel, who had helped our SCUBA divers earlier today, brought over a slideshow later, that he'd put together of photos from the day. They watched it together on our hotel patio.