Erica's #76 - Go to a Music Festival and Mel's #37 - Go on a Cruise

We really blew this one out of the water - not only did we make it to a music festival, we went to a floating music festival on a cruise ship in the Caribbean with a very fun group of friends!  Ahh, Cayamo...

All ready for our "Bertscursion"!

It's hard to describe Cayamo - it is somehow more than just a music festival, and more even than you would expect from a music festival combined with a cruise vacation.  Cayamo is a magical thing, almost a living, breathing entity in and of itself.  If you haven't been, you just don't know.  We'd been once before, back in 2010, and, while it remains as one of the best vacations we've ever taken, Cayamo 2014 definitely topped it!  Spending Cayamo 2014 with 8 other people who we'd now consider great friends, even if we hadn't met or spent much time together before setting foot on the boat, made this time around even more unforgettable.

Cayamo features musical acts around every corner from about noon until 3am (if you know where to find the late-night jam crew) daily - there really never is a dull moment, except for that part where you stumble back to your cabin, exhausted from another fun-filled day, and rest up a bit so you can tackle the next day.  We spent our mornings reading on the sun deck, and were cleaned up and in our best beach-wear, ready for seemingly endless hours of listening to some of our favorite music acts, old favorites and new sounds, by early afternoon.

We saw some really high quality music on the ship - Buddy Miller, Kris Kristofferson, Brandi Carlile, Humming House, The Lone Bellow, Erin McCarley, Lucie Silvas, Stephen Kellogg, Max Gomez, Hey Marseilles, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Ricky Skaggs and Bruce Hornsby, The Secret Sisters, and Shawn Mullins.  There are probably others that I've left out, but there is never a lack of talent on Cayamo!

The crew at Foxy's

Cayamo's port-of-call this year was Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands.  On our first day in port, we had an excursion booked with all of our friends on the boat to see one of our favorite bands, Humming House, play a show at a beach bar called Foxy's on the island of Jost Van Dyke.  What a day that was - you couldn't ask for a better location for taking in some amazing music - frozen rum drink in hand, toes in the sand, a beautiful Caribbean-blue bay lapping at the shore just yards away.

Day two in port found our group catching a cab for 10 to the other side of the island, to a little place called Brewer's Bay.  I should mention that Tortola is a very hilly little place, and the cab ride was slightly harrowing, but we survived.  The views were astounding as we crested the high points on the winding road across the island.  Most of our group spent a good portion of the day in the water playing some version of catch, or a slightly modified version of hot potato we termed "tap-tap".  Throw in some beach-side brews, a little soaking up the sun on the beach, my swim to the middle of the bay to drop off my message in a bottle (blog on that to come later), and ending the day with lunch in a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the port, and you had ten happy people climbing back on the ship to sail away from the islands.

Brewer's Bay

We sailed away from Tortola to the sweet sounds of The Lone Bellow (another of our favorite bands) on the pool deck.  It eased the pain having to watch the beautiful shores of BVI fade into the sunset, knowing that we were now headed back toward home and real life.

We pretty much had the best week ever on this trip, no exaggeration.  We couldn't ask for better company, better weather, or better music to be surrounded by.  I'll leave you with a few highlights, including photos:

• These people:
  
• Our pal Mis singing in the Atrium backed by Brandi Carlile during Brandioke
  
• The Humming House dance party in Bliss Lounge that lasted until about 5am Friday morning (the morning we returned to Miami) - there's a dance party somewhere in that dark photo!
  
• Cagney's Steakhouse - delicious!
  
• Floating around in the Caribbean
  
• A stage with this backdrop
  
• The quarter-pusher machine in the casino - "FREE" bubbly!

  

  "It's like Plinko, but sadder"

• Cards Against Humanity
  
• Seemingly endless buckets of these - Bar Serveeeece!