Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Turks & Caicos - Day 1

Our trip was to begin with a flight at 7:50am which unfortunately required a start to the day at 3:45am as we had to get to the airport just after 5:30am. When Laura and I proceeded through security we were separated as my ticket had been flagged for a special security check! Us Australians are very dangerous apparently. Ironically, I managed to get through security before Laura despite the detour of being felt up by a female security officer!

Anyway, even though we left on the very important American holiday of Thanksgiving where you might expect a lot of people flying home, the airport was relatively empty. You may wonder why this is an interesting enough detail to mention in my blog. Well the reason is, I felt I needed to set the scene for another celebrity encounter. (You know how I love those!). After clearing security, Laura and I had some serious time to kill, so we decied to explore the limited number of retail outlets at the airport terminal. In Australian airports I am used to the plethora of duty free purchases to be made and I had purposely not packed the camera I brought to the US because I was keen to get a much smaller one that I could fit easily into my handbag so I could take it out with me all the time in NYC. Imagine my surprise, when I discovered the absence of electrical equipment at the duty free store!

But I guess you aren't really all that interested in that, you are probably wondering about my celebrity encounter. It's not that interesting, really. It's not like I saw Madonna or Brad Pitt. Laura and I were walking through the fairly empty airport when I spotted a rather vertically challenged, lone white haired man that reminded me of Richard Dreyfus. So I said (loud enough for him to hear) as he passed us, "That guy looks like Richard Dreyfus", and in acknowledgement of the fact that he was who I said he looked like, he said " Hi". That was it. I know, I kinda built it up to something big. Maybe the Baby Boomers reading this will be more impressed.

Back to the camera situation. (Who would've thought I could write so much and we haven't even taken off on our flight yet!). As neither Laura nor I had brought cameras with us, we were now in somewhat of a bind, with potentially no photos resulting from our trip. So we went to the newsagent and bought a couple of disposable cameras. We continued to walk around and walked into a music store, surprised to see that they stocked digital cameras! I was even more surprised when Laura asked the man in the store about getting a bulk discount if we bought 2 cameras. Laura kept bargaining this guy down further and further to the point where I could see there really wasn't a great deal of margin left and I was starting to get a bit embarrassed by her relentlessness to reduce the price even further. I stepped in and said "that's a good price" which I was heavily chastised for afterwards. But I must admit, Laura is very talented at haggling in a way that the salesman feels obliged to comply in her favour! In a short time we had gone from no cameras to 4! We promptly returned our disposable cameras.

We arrived at the Club Med village in Turks & Caicos just before lunch and we were amazed at how turquoise the water looked. Perhaps that had something to do with the name of the country! I didn't realise that Turks was part of the British Commonwealth and was happy to see cars driving on the left side of the road again!
That afternoon we joined a game of softball. At school I played first base, so I made sure I played that again. One of the guys on my team, understanding the importance of the position of first base asked me if I could catch. He soon had his answer. I don't often brag, but I rocked that game! I got loads of people out and, at one point I was pitching and the batter hit the ball straight into my rib (I still caught it though). I happened to be batting not long after that and managed to come out of my injury-forced retirement to bat to a cacophany of cheers. Ah, Club Med - it's kinda like camp for adults, but with alcohol and nicer rooms (not too much nicer though!)



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