An amazing day - we met this last day with excitement and a tinge of sadness with it being our last island stop. After ironing out a few wrinkles, Holly hit the beach, Brooke and Cooper went to kids club on the beach, and James and I boarded our catamaran for our Haitian Cultural Tour. Labadee is a small segment of land which juts out from the main island of Haiti and is owned by Royal Carribean. It is beautiful with amazing beaches and a ridiculous zip line which there are videos of on YouTube. Our vessel took our group to Paradise Cove where we disembarked into the water and waded onto the small beautiful beach where they had a coconut bar and local Haitians were fishing and harvesting lemon grass for the roofs of their homes. It was very interesting to be exposed to such a beautiful culture. They taught us some Creole and we chanted something like "num buu lea" (I am fine). There were three little girls who were so cute and very polite and threw their arms around me for a picture. We got to take a learning tour of the plants and trees that are used and valued by the people of Haiti. We watched a woman pounding peanuts into peanut butter and we got to try some - it takes about three hours of pounding with a giant pestle and mortar to make it and they add in a little cayenne pepper, so it has a real bite to it. It was delicious. I purchased some coffee after we got to smell the coffee from a different woman pounding the beans and we ate some yucca or cassova (not sure which or if they are the same thing) root bread and watched a man expertly flip the large tortilla-like bread on the griddle over an open fire. I bought some things from the other artisans who were making their crafts sitting right in the sand in the shade of the lush trees including a basket weaver who was weaving baskets and lobster traps and a wood carver who was hand carving pieces of wood onto masks, walking sticks, and figures. It was fun to bargain as we were told by our Haitian tour guides that that is how things are done in the Carribean - and so we did. If anyone ever takes a cruise with a stop in Haiti, we highly recommend the Haitian Cultural Tour. We waded back to our vessel and waved to some fishermen while the ladies onshore sang a beautiful goodbye and thank you song. None of us want to leave and go home, we have loved almost every minute of this trip and cannot wait to do it again and yes we are doing it again, as Awesome James booked another cruise for us today onboard :). I will have to get more flip flops as we had to lay my beloved pink flip flops to rest today. After James and I returned from our tour, we picked up the kids and had a ridiculously good beach BBQ and went swimming, where the kids all got to see more fish. We are back on the boat and heading back to New Jersey. Early to bed... exhausted, but so happy and especially grateful for this experience.