Business Trip to the South

I've never been to the South before (not including Florida), so I was excited. The trip spanned 5 days and covered 4 cities: Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Hilton Head, and Savannah. Here's a recap of my trip in pictures, with a few sentences to string the story together.

Day 1 and 2: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

I arrived in Myrtle Beach and went straight to the store. Day 1 was rainy and cold, so all I did was work and eat. Here's day 2:

The store is in a complex called Broadway at the Beach. It's not quite on the beach, but there is water there. And sea gulls.

Most of my time on these trips is spent in the stores. The second store I visited in Myrtle Beach is in Barefoot Landing. It has a lot of mosquitoes.

All those specks in the sky are mosquitoes.

I don't leave the store until it closes, so it's almost always dark.

Day 3: Still Myrtle Beach

I woke up early (a la 5:30am) to catch the sunrise on the beach.

The moon was still up, but the sun wasn't yet.

Not bad for a point and shoot, huh? (Using the Canon G7X):

I ran through the pier over to hang out with some sea gulls.

The sun peeked out from behind the horizon and rose much faster than I had anticipated.

I ran over to the pier to try to get an artsy shot between the pillars.

I ran back along the beach.

Hey look! My footprints!

I went back to the hotel and slept for a few hours, then spent the entire day in the stores. At night, I drove down to Charleston. Before entering the city, you cross this bridge.

That's all I saw of Charleston because the next morning, I woke up early to drive down to Hilton Head.

Day 4: Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Most of the drive was pretty uneventful. Pretty. And uneventful.

The store is old but the manager and staff are fantastic! They suggested we grab lunch at Chow Daddy's - and now I recommend it too. It was so good!

I had the pulled chicken over mashed potatoes and it was ridiculously good.

Unlike Myrtle Beach, this store closed at 6, just before sunset. So we headed to the beach.

After dinner, I worked from the hotel for a little bit and then headed back out to the beach at midnight. I've never taken pictures of stars before. Here's my first attempt:

Pretty cool, huh?

Can you see the big dipper in this one?

Day 5: Savannah, Georgia

Morning came way too fast, but I got up and drove to Savannah. On the way, we (I was traveling with Janelle at this point, the Regional Sales Director for the area) stopped at a French bakery owned by the Hilton Head manager's father. It was a treat! 

We got a warm welcome at the Savannah store too.

Did you know that Savannah has one of the largest St. Patrick's Day celebrations in the world? Right? Well Del Sol has a pirate cut out that they repurpose as a leprechaun for the celebration. Needless to say, it attracts a lot of photos.

I spent the whole day in the store, with the exception of eating shrimp and grits (yum!) for lunch. We shut down around 7pm and passed through this square on the way back to the car.

From here I drove halfway back to Myrtle Beach and then the other half the next morning to catch an early afternoon flight back home to New York.

Here's the video of the whole trip:

Snorkel Adventure in Klein Bonaire

For those of you who think all I do is go to the Caribbean and play all day long, here is some fodder to support your argument.

For the record, there was no ship in port today and the store was closed. So we couldn't work. This was my first full day off EVER on a Caribbean business trip. And we made the most of it. Check out the video of our experience here, or scroll down to read more details.


"We", by the way, is Justin and me. Justin is the Regional Sales Director for this area. We decided to team up on this trip to get more done and it's been highly productive. You'll see him in pictures below.

After a great breakfast at our hotel, we picked up water, sunscreen, and snacks at the supermarket and then headed downtown. We took the water taxi "Kantika di Amor" across to Klein Bonaire at noon. In the picture above, we're standing on Bonaire, but you can see Klein Bonaire in the background, just above the roof of the boat. ("Klein" is Dutch for "little" - it's a little island).

The water taxi takes about 20 minutes to get across to Klein Bonaire and they drop you off at No Name Beach. The front of the boat drops down so you can just walk off onto the soft sandy beach.

For only US $15 return, it's a great service and makes for a cheap and awesome day trip.

No Name Beach, from what we hear, is the only true sandy beach in all of Bonaire. As this is the first and only beach I've ever been to on Bonaire, I can't dispute that. All boats bring their passengers here because it's the only spot on the 6+ mile circumference (about 10k) of the island that doesn't have coral reef protecting it.

So we walked up to the north end of the beach and snorkeled around. It was nice, but not spectacular. Lots of fish, a few corals I'd never seen before. But the colors weren't as bright as I was expecting.

So we played on the beach for a while and ate some food and then hiked down south to Buoy B (No Name Beach is at Buoy A. It's a rough walk.

You walk south because the current (albeit a weak one) runs north. So when you finally get in, you can drift (slowly) back to No Name Beach for your ride back. By this point, Justin had seen a turtle and gone off to swim after him. Later I found out he swam into an eel. I kept going because I wanted to see more of the reef.

So the reef runs pretty much unbroken around the entire island (except for No Name Beach). However, there are small sections every once in a while, maybe 5 to 10 feet wide, where you can swim through it. As you can see in all of the water pictures above, the light blue/teal water is the shallows. Then the dark blue is the deep ocean. The reef divides the two, with no middle ground whatsoever. The second you cross the reef, the bottom drops out and it's very intimidating. Only snorkel Klein Bonaire if you're really confident in your swimming and snorkeling abilities. Because once you cross the reef, you can't get back in.

So if you run into trouble out there, you don't really have any options. Because if you try to swim through the coral, you'll end up in worse shape than whatever the problem was you were swimming away from. Plus there's fire coral here, which I had never seen before, but it's COOL.

I saw tons of fish and lots of different types of coral. Besides the regulars - Parrotfish, Sergeant Majors (the zebra striped fish, there's one in the pic above), a few French Angelfish (love them!), the Blue Tangs (Dori from Finding Nemo), and all the others - there were a few sightings that got me particularly excited.

First, turtles are always exciting.

This was the third (of four) turtle I swam into today. He was the most photogenic and least camera shy. I also saw a sting ray (always fun) and a flounder. But my personal favorite from today was a giant purple lionfish. Let me rephrase that. A LIONFISH.

When I first saw it, I thought it was a fan coral. But when i saw it move, I knew. And had to get a closer look (it was about 35 feet below me - my camera has a depth gauge). When it saw me dive, it retreated into a nook in the coral. I couldn't find him when I got down there, so no pic. :( [It looked just like this.] It's probably for the best though. They're so venomous and I'm stupidly curious, so things could have gone downhill quickly. And remember that part about not being able to get back to shore because the reef blocks the path?

By the way, Lionfish aren't native to the Caribbean so seeing one here is rare. They're an invasive predator that destroy everything and kill all the fish and are basically the worst thing to happen to life in the coral reefs. But my goodness are they pretty.

I got back to the beach and found Justin and we took our pic on the beach for the corporate newsletter (Justin is in Del Sol flip flops, shorts, shirt, and hat. I'm in Cariloha sandals and shirt, Del Sol shorts and sunglasses - we were definitely reppin' our brands).

We caught the 4:30 water taxi back to Bonaire, quick dropped off our rented mask, fins, and snorkel at Dive Friends, and then went back to the hotel for showers and de-sanding our bits and pieces.

We caught the sunset...

...and grabbed a bite to eat at the PureOcean restaurant at the Divi Flamingo resort.

It was a great day off. Now it's back to work.

Maya Bay Camping

That was fun.

Maya Bay came to fame by being the beach featured in the Leonardo DiCaprio movie called, "The Beach." It is ridiculously pretty. Super soft white sand, clear turquoise warm water, protected and surrounded by giant limestone cliffs, and even coral reefs and secluded side beaches to explore and enjoy. It is surreal in every way. The only downside is that everyone wants to be there, so it is crazy packed with boats and tourists all day long. So we decided to overnight there.

We booked this tour months ago, but when we showed up, they didn't have us on the list, and they were fully booked for today. Apparently, an error had switched our 12/1 (December 1) to the Thai version 12/1 (January 12). We were heartbroken and tried to reschedule, but it would only work for us today. Fortunately, they let us on, a little overbooked, but not so packed that there wasn't enough room or supplies for everyone.

We boarded the boat, met our tour guide, Boeung, and set off on our adventure.

Maya bay is on Phi Phi Le, the island just south of Phi Phi Don, where everyone stays. Our first stop was the Viking caves. You can look this up if you want to know more about it.

Then we went to a little bay on the outside of the island to do some snorkeling. It was very low tide, so we couldn't get all the way into the bay, but it was pretty and fun. Here are some under the sea pics.

It started to pour soon after we finished snorkeling. Already wet, I stayed out to take video of our entry and first view of Maya Bay. The rain let up just as we were rounding the bend into the bay.

We anchored our boat and hopped on a small plastic speedboat that took us in to shore.

There were still quite a few boats there from the day, but just as promised, one by one they all left the island, leaving the beach just to us.

Dinner wasn't for a few hours still, so we hiked through the jungle to the other side of the island, where you climb a staircase to see this little island. Another couple from our boat was there so we had them take our picture.

Back to the beach, we found it completely deserted except for our group of 31 people.

After sunset and the beach went totally dark except for starlight, we headed to a clearing in the jungle for dinner. There's a snack bar there with some shelter during the day, so our group takes over the area at night. We set out beach mats and were soon treated to rice, veggies, and Panang curry chicken. All of it was very yummy.

I had two plates. After dinner, they get the party started by giving everyone a free bucket of alcohol.

Boeung introduces a drinking game, which is crazy confusing but ends up being really funny and interactive. It's a great icebreaker. People kept refilling their buckets with various mixtures of vodka, rum, coke, and sprite, which are relatively inexpensive. People got loud, funny, and giggly.

Isa and I watched and laughed and helped explain parts of the game to our new Chinese friends that didn't understand certain things like "truth or dare" or "never have I ever." Things got a little more exciting when the staff brought in some crabs and let them loose in the middle of the group, and then caught them again and positioned them on a tree, where they remained and watched guard over us for the rest of the night.

After a couple hours, we went back out to the beach to look at the stars. It was too dark to focus on anything, so I had to just set the camera on manual and hope for the best.

A little later, they made chicken wings (very good, I had about 10), and people broke off into smaller groups playing different games, the Russians remained in the corner cuddling and chatting away. The Welsh and other drinkers went on to other drinking games. And Isa and I and the Chinese group got into a game of darts. 

Just before midnight, we caught our plastic speedboat back to the boat, staked out spots for sleeping (Isa and I slept on the bow under the stars), and then turned off all the lights and jumped into the water to swim with the glowing plankton. You don't think Maya Bay could get any cooler, but then this is the icing on the top. It's beyond way too dark for my camera, so forget about pictures. Just know that it's an experience you must have for yourself.

We slept under the stars.. More stars than I have ever seen before. It was amazing and wonderful and honestly makes you not want to close your eyes at all. We didn't finish swimming with the plankton until about 1am, and I'm sure it was almost 2 before we finally fell asleep.

We woke up around 6am, just before sunrise. The sun rises on the other side of the island, so no hopes of seeing the sun rising out of the ocean.

We had a small fruit breakfast before being shuttled back to the beach before the tour groups arrived. 

Sure enough, they all started pulling in around 7:30 or 8am, and it was packed before the sun even hit the sand. We got the whole group together and took a few pictures, one of which is the obligatory jump in the air pic.

But wait! There's more! We ferried back to the boat for a breakfast of toast, eggs, fruit, and juice/coffee, and then Isa and I took out one of the kayaks to go exploring.

We parked on a deserted beach and explored a little bit...

...and then paddled out under the cliffs.

Others snorkeled while we kayaked, but when we got back to the boat, it was sadly time to leave the island. 

One last picture before leaving Maya Bay...