Houseboating with the Cookes

I’m sitting in Fort Lauderdale airport (free wifi, sweet!) after finishing up on an awesome holiday, houseboating along the St John’s River with my wonderful cousins, The Cookes!

Houseboating has got to be one of the most relaxing things you can do for a holiday. Besides the occasional issue with parts of the boat not working as they should, and of course the stress of not having internet access, there’s really nothing to worry about. Even driving the boat is a relaxing experience!

Here’s a quick summary of some of the highlights of the trip.

• Silver Glen: We spent a large number of our days around an area called Silver Glen Springs. As the name suggests, it’s 2 large water springs, where you can snorkel and swim with hundreds of fishies. The water gets colder as you dive to the bottom of the spring (about 10-12 metres), but there’s a couple of caves you can check out at the bottom – as long as you can hold your breath!

  

  I almost lost my wedding ring down there too; I managed to knock my hand on a rock on my way back up to the surface. Thankfully, after Philip and I spent about 15 minutes diving down, searching for a few seconds, then racing back to the surface for air, Philip found the ring amongst the shells on the bottom. Phew!

• Board games: Much of our time was spent playing board and card games. I especially loved playing a strategy game called The Settlers of Catan, which I’d never heard of before, but thoroughly enjoyed. Fans of games computer-based strategy games (such as Age of Mythology, Starcraft, etc) would love this one.

  

• Playing with the kids: Spending time with Sammy and Dani is always loads of fun, and a week on a houseboat provided us with many hours of entertainment. Whether it was playing games, watching movies, chasing fish, dunking each other, digging in the sand, playing eye-spy, canoeing, or anything else that we could find to do, it was simply great to re-embrace childhood with such wonderful company.
• Blue Springs: As you’ve probably guessed, this is another water spring, but this one was much deeper. There were little caverns to explore all the way down, and a cave right at the bottom which was well out of our reach (+20m). Again, the water was beautiful and clear, and a little bit cool – a perfect cure for the humidity.

  

• Just hangin’ out: Even when things were quiet, it was wonderful to be around family, talking about stupid things, and paying out the Australian guy because of his funny accent and stupid vocabulary (whaddya mean, “Turn it up” isn’t a universal term?!). Oh, and of course it was nice to get some dog-time in with Buddy!

  

I could go on and on about how great the trip was, but my plane is about to board so I’d better cut it off here. I’ll upload some more photos when I land back in New York.

Update: I’m (safely) back in New York, and I’ve uploaded a photo album from the trip. Enjoy!