Playa | Wandering Monshors

After a long period of not traveling due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we decided to escape to the beach. We visited Florida’s panhandle as a family for the first time back when we lived in Tennessee, and it became one of our favorite spots to enjoy beautiful beaches with clear water and soft, white sand.

This was our first trip there as a family of four, and we were excited! With masks and hand sanitizers, we boarded three flights that finally took us to the Destin-Fort Walton Beach Airport, got our rental car and off we went to find our vacation rental.

As soon as we got settled in, we walked across the road to Crystal Beach, where Benji experienced true soft, white sand, and Peter dove straight in the water, and didn’t get out until we headed back to the apartment.

In the following days we realized that the fact that we could just cross the street to head to that beach was not ideal from 8am to 5pm, since the buildings all along that shore set up umbrellas and chairs for rent (at very high prices) and we weren’t able to set up unless we were right on the high tide line, which wasn’t the most convenient. So we decided to only head there in the evenings and instead were able to discover some great beaches in the area.

We visited Henderson Beach State Park a couple of times. For a small fee we were able to enjoy an extensive shoreline were we could set up and enjoy a great beach. At this point Benji had given swimming in salt water a try, and he, like his brother, was hooked, so we spent most of our time swimming and enjoying the waves and warm water.

Just a few miles down the road from where we were staying we found James Lee Park. Getting there before 10am allowed us to find a parking spot by the Crab Trap restaurant and just walk down to a great beach with lots of room to play in the sand and sit in the sun.

We also went to Norriego Point a few times. With its protected waters, it was the perfect spot for the littlest one in the family to enjoy the water safely while Papi taught big brother to snorkel.

Ben got to go scuba diving early one morning, and fishing another, and him and Peter enjoyed a Snuba tour, where Peter finally got to try his first step towards scuba diving (Scuba starts at age 10, but Snuba will take them starting at 8 years old).

There are so many destinations we want to experience in the US and the world, but these shores and beaches always seem to call us back, so until next time!

In a recent visit to Venezuela we decided to take a few days off from visiting with family and friends to experience the Los Roques archipelago. Declared a National Park in 1972, Los Roques is located about 128 kilometres north off the coast of Venezuela and has around 350 different cays or small islands magically decorated with coral reef, mangroves, white sand, and impossibly beautiful turquoise waters.

El Gran Roque is the largest island and also the only one that is populated, with around 1200 people living there. It has its own little air strip, a church, a school, one vehicle (the garbage truck) and a handful of unpaved streets where people walk barefoot on the sand.

That is where we landed after a very early 40-minute flight from Maiquetia Airport’s National Terminal on a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander, a very small plane operated by Chapi Air.

We made it there safely, but most likely we will not be flying with them again (my fiance has flown this plane before and he was not impressed, to say the least). The largest airline flying into Los Roques is Aerotuy, I think we’ll give them a try next time. Once we landed, Miguel from the posada (B&B) El Paraiso Azul was there to greet us and help us carry our stuff to the place we would call home for the next 2 nights. Once we paid the park fee (different for Venezuelan citizens and foreign visitors), we were officially in Los Roques!

We arranged our entire trip through this posada and that worked well for us for this first visit; we were also lucky enough to have the place to ourselves during our stay. There are many posadas in Los Roques, and they all seem to be very well-organized, offering a package which includes all your meals, non alcoholic drinks and transfers to the closest cays including chairs and a very-much-needed umbrella. After we ‘checked-in’ we were informed by our innkeeper Lucia that trips for the cays left at 9:30 am and dinners were at 7:00 pm. We changed, put on tons of sunblock (bring lots of it!), went off with Miguel to find Juan, our ‘lanchero’ (boatman) for the day and then we were off to Madrisquí. Once we got there Juan set us up with the chairs and umbrella, set our cooler with food and drinks in the shade and left us to enjoy this view for the day… absolute heaven!