Hettie & Chad December 2011 Trip Report

[Schuttzie]

Great start, Hettie....love your photos!

[spottycatz]

Loving your report 'cause you're at Citronella and we''ll be there in April. Tell us more about the place, pleeese!!!!

[Maryann]

Yay! Thought I'd be going through trip report withdrawals this morning and there you are! I'm a beach girl but Citronella sounds amazing! Looking forward to more.

[Hettie]

I'm glad I've finished writing about arrival day which, although fun, was busy and full of tasks to be completed. Now I will have time for more descriptions, reflections, and anecdotes...

I didn't sleep well the first night, I was torn between not wanting to sleep so that the day wouldn't end and the desire to want to fall asleep quickly so that I would wake up and it would be morning! I kept waking up hoping it was almost time for sunrise, but it would be 2:00 am, 3:00 am, and so on. I finally fell asleep for a few hours straight and woke up around 7:30, I think, which I consider a little late because when in Negril I like to wake up by 6:30-7:00 am so that I don't miss out on a second of the sunshine.

Chad makes the coffee because for some reason I can never get the water/coffee ratio right and his coffee is always perfect. We brought a coffee grinder this time-- fresh ground beans are so much better and a grinder doesn't take up much luggage space. The Round House at Citronella has a cozy little kitchen that is nicely furnished with everything we needed, except a wine glass, which I brought along with me...oh and the coffee grinder.


We had our coffee (mine with a generous sploosh of rum cream) on the verandah with an incredible 180 degree view of the sea and did some more rejoicing and thanking/praising for the 11 full days ahead of us. In the past it's taken us a few days to relax into the groove, but on our first morning we felt like we'd already been there a week. I don't know if it was a newfound comfort level derived from experience or if we just forced ourselves into relaxation using sheer willpower.

After coffee I decided to do some yoga and get the blood flowing. I'm the main photographer in this pair, so I'm usually frustrated when we get home and there are only around three photos of me out of 300-400, so I told Chad I wanted him to take more photos so that I would have evidence that I was actually there. Unfortunately, he chose to take a lovely series of rear view photos while I was in compromising yoga poses which I will not be displaying here or anywhere else. Here are some of the more flattering shots:

Here you can see Sir D's/Firewater/Love Nest (Which is it???) in the background:

And the same pose again...


While I appreciate Chad's effort, I didn't really mean that he should take 50 photos of me doing yoga (and mostly of my butt). Note to self to be more specific in the future...

Wow, this is the first report I've done on the new board and I didn't know about the 10 attachment limit. To be continued...

[Hettie]

Chad took some nice shots of our little yard and the area around the Round House. They have nice gardens with a wide variety of plants. You can also see the stairs that lead down to the private swimming platform.


I don't have any other really nice photos of the inside of the Round House. It's a nice cottage, perfect for a couple, with a full bed in the loft and two twin beds downstairs that we used for lounging or for Chad's snory nights. The ladder leading upstairs is tricky until you practice a bit, especially when trying to move items as well as your person. It should probably be completely avoided when inebriated (good thing there are beds downstairs). The furnishings are all comfortable, sheets are the softest and nicest smelling I've experienced in Negril, and everything is spotlessly clean. The cottages at Citronella are all open air without screens on the louvred windows and I was a bit apprehensive about mosquitoes because I am usually a magnet (to the extent that Chad says that when I show up in Negril the mosquitoes and sand fleas send out a signal to all their brethren that their queen who smells like pineapples and coconuts has arrived again). The beds all have mosquito netting, which we used for the first half of our stay, but eventually got lazy and stopped using them because they weren't really necessary. I don't think I received a single mosquito bite while in the houses at Citronella and only 5-6 bites total, which may not even have occurred on the property. The only reason I can see to use the mosquito nets would be to avoid being the potential target of gecko poop, which didn't happen to us, but we did see some poops around the house on occassion. This didn't bother me in the least, I love geckos and anoles (they eat bugs), and it makes sense to me that not having screens on the windows will allow anything that comes in to go back out.


So, where was I? Oh yes...after yoga I was hungry and we didn't pick up any food in our quick Hi-Lo trip the day before, so we decided to just go next door to LTU for breakfast. We walk in and, of course, immediately see Karl Ricketts because we always run into him within 24 hours of arrival. Much hugs and we all order breakfast to enjoy together. It was getting hot and it took awhile for breakfast to be ready, so soon after eating the water was calling out to me and I was ready to go back to our swim platform for some splishy-splashy.

Captured a nice series of Chad being a total wuss about getting in the water...come on man, it's not even cold! Just go for it for Pete's sake!


It was a great day for swimming and snorkeling, the water was calm, sun was bright.

[Schuttzie]

You guys are so cute....I'm tagging along!

[Jaherring]

I am now a fan of yoga.

[spottycatz]

Round House as well. We're at the Round House!!!!!! This is soooo great, thanks for the photo's so far.

[Lady Jane]

Loving your report and pictures. I need to take up yoga

[Kahuna3]

This is a great report - it has a nice, soothing feel to it.