Blessed upon Blessed

As if it's not enough that Rick and I have been able to take some great vacations, we have also been blessed to meet some amazing people on our travels. Particularly noteworthy are Patt and Dan Crane.

Backstory:
We met Patt and Dan in 2009 when we were on vacation in Roatan, Honduras. They were staying at the same small hotel (hardly seems like the right word for it, but there's a pic of the main house of the lovely Cocolobo below) and we were fast friends. They live in both LAs (lower Alabama and Los Angeles) and from what I can tell, they are on fabulous vacations about 99% of the time. If they weren't so charming and fun to be around, I would probably hate them. We parted ways in Roatan and became friends on Facebook and about a year later I put a question out (after we had already booked our February vacation) if anyone had ever been to Bonaire. Well, guess who was also planning on being there in February at the same time??? PATT AND DAN!!!

Cocolobo

We hooked back up while in Bonaire (when they could fit us in between all their diving excursions and various other fabulous activities). They were on vacation with their daughter and son in law, Pam and Jon, who happened to be around our age. Pam and Jon are also nauseatingly interesting and are professional sailors or something like that out in Seattle. My awareness of my own lack of interesting tales often made it difficult to focus/remember details of theirs. That, and the wine. Apologies. They had us over for an evening of feeding the eels and Jon (who is some sort of professional chef I think) made us dinner. Saying it was a huge treat doesn't seem to do it justice.

Rick and Dan feeding the eels.

These were real-deal eels. And so you know, eels eat chicken wings. Patt and Dan knew this instinctively. I think they also ate sardines.

I believe the meal was beef tenderloin and some crazy good potato dish. Of course, I have pictures of the food and not the company. I really need to get my priorities straight at some point. We also got to spend Rick's birthday with the Crane clan while on Bonaire and I think it's safe to say that birthday dinner is one of Rick's top five favorite.

So as I was saying, we have been blessed with both great vacations coupled with amazing travel companions. As if that's not enough, we received this in the mail today:

There are no words. I am thankful for a world where such generous and thoughtful people exist and am beside myself to have people like this in our life. Hopefully the Erwins +1 and the Cranes can meet back up in February of 2012. We'll be contacting you for fabulous vacation ideas shortly!