Greg is retired 3 years this month, Feb. 2020 and I will follow in April. The time has flown by as you may have noticed while following this blog. This winter in the ADK has been pretty quiet, the big snows holding off and temps up and down but averaging mostly in the 20’s. Since our return from hiking in Utah we’ve been snowshoeing and cross country skiing as weather permitted. (See previous posts “If it’s October we must be in…”, “A Geologist’s Dream”, “Navajo Saying”, and “Finale”, October 2019). There’s been a lot of rain inbetween the moderate snow falls making for yucky conditions so we caught the good snow as we could, but hey! there’s always a brewery to visit or friends to dine with. Greg and I have both been in PT; I’m thinking my golf swing will be amazing after I fix my neck and shoulder discomfort. I joined a gym in Lake Placid which has a great swimming pool and all new equipment. Despite working out alongside world class and very young Olympic athletes (not an exaggeration) my shape is still round (also not exaggerating) and I’m not looking any younger, but I feel good!
Speaking of ‘flying time’, we booked a February get away last year that I now find myself enjoying: a month in St. Thomas, USVI. Greg, my daughter Christina, and nephew Reed scoured the AirBnB website last Feb. and found this amazing place perched on a hillside overlooking the ocean and the Charlotte Amalie harbor. The first week we hosted Greg’s brother Bob and wife Tina and son Reed. Niece Blaire and hubby Ryan stayed nearby. Dave, a family friend, also joined us. Christina came too. Dan and his new wife, Anna, coincidentally, are living on STT for this school year so we get to visit with them for the whole month. Dan took a position as a Behavioural Analyst for the VI Board of Education, filling a role that normally requires 3 people. He develops behavioural plans for children all across the island in the public schools. The poverty and lack of a good public education system here are mind-blowing while Dan is doing his best to rehabilitate physically and emotionally traumatized children back into the classroom. It’s good to have family here to offer a distraction from the tough job he has to do. It also helps to have his insight into the best bars, beaches, and bushwhackers.
From our balcony on the hillside of Estate Bellevue we observed enormous cruise ships being guided into the harbor by the harbor pilots as well as sailboats and ferries and pirate-flagged tourist schooners passing by throughout the day. Night kayakers lit up the ocean with non-descript fluorescent blue blurriness. Ridiculously enormous yachts with helicopters on their top decks cruised into the harbor. We watched paddleboard yogis warrior-posed right into the water while green turtles surfaced nearby. A Coast Guard ship collected, repaired and reset giant navigational buoys. We observed all these comings and goings on the emerald and sapphire blue waters with our binocs and rum punches and sunscreen. It was glorious.
Despite the usual trouble with the car rental (another strongly worded email to the car rental agency, this time Budget, was met with the usual “we try our best thanks for your email we’ll do better next time but not now…”) we picked up our car, a Nissan Pathfinder. Not a cool Jeep Wrangler as promised but at least this seated 7. You may recall from Final Jeopardy a few weeks back the USVI is the only place in the US where they drive on the left (mostly). For Greg this wasn’t a problem, though going up and down windy, steep hills on single lane roads with 2 way traffic was a problem for me. So I sat in the back and supervised from there. Everyone was happy-ish.
Our first few days DanAnna showed us around: Magens Bay Beach and pool lounging for the weekend, Mafolie for a nice dinner. Ah, the fresh fish and rum drinks! We visited the VI equivalent of Costco to stock up for the family’s arrival, filling DanAnna’s Ford Focus to the brim with vittles and booze. We also visited ‘the Italians’, a partyhouse/warehouse where (forgive me for stereotyping) some island Mafioso types (think open shirts, bare beer bellies, lots of gold jewelry, and cigarette smoke) host an open-house/warehouse where visitors shop for authentic Italian foods, pomodoro, wines, olives, etc. Anyone can sit and have lunch or dinner in the anteroom surrounded by tins of biscotti and chocolates and wine bottles and boxes and boxes of pasta. Of course, you can also sample the wines while shopping, with favorable results for the ‘negoziante’. So fun!
Christina was the first to arrive; how I love to see her smiling face! We dined at Oceana that night, right on the harbor across from Water Island. Swanky and delicious!
The next day our Bebernitz family arrived. As soon as they were able, they shed the black tee shirts and jeans and the Rochester winter and started soaking up sun. And Rum. The house we rented has a covered verandah and also a covered porch with a pool in-between so we could spread out or come together as desired. A puzzle was started on the huge dining table but no matter, we ate meals outside on the verandah. Evenings were spent in town (kids) or home (parents) and everyone was happy. One day was spent in town shopping (girls) or at the bars (guys) and lunch (all – fish tacos). Charlotte Amalie has duty free diamonds and jewelry as well as the usual tourist amenities. I wasted time at a skin care place almost getting suckered into buying all natural skin care which apparently is made from cat poop. Thanks to Christina and Tina for rescuing me! (To be frank, I didn’t know it was cat poop at the time…) We visited several jewelry stores and how they plied us with rum punch to loosen the purse strings. Blaire and Christina each came away with the VI hook bracelet to add to their collection, without the aid of ‘liquid courage’.
We also went night kayaking at the Marriott Frenchman’s Resort located below our house. St. Thomas is still recovering from hurricanes Irma and Marie 2 years ago (see blog post “Just a Dream” Mar. 2018) and this hotel as well as many other places are still under reconstruction though the condos and beach were open. We were chaperoned by 2 guides as we paddled fluorescently lit ‘glass’ bottomed kayaks in the bay. Who could say ‘no’ to kayaking with electric light bulbs on water? We sighted Tarpon, needle fish, brown rays as well as jelly fish, sea urchins and best of all, green sea turtles!!! We also got a little history of the area which I couldn’t hear because Christina and I were laughing the whole time. Ryan and Blaire were performing Olympic paddling moves and bested everyone in speed time trials. Greg kept asking “where? where?” everytime a turtle was seen. It was fun and worthwhile. We ended with our first (but not last) taste of Bushwhackers (aka Humdingers in Greg-speak), basically an adult chocolate milkshake with rum.
Some of us spent the next day back at Magens Bay Beach. This is a truly beautiful beach with white sand and such clear, blue, quiet water and not busy at all. We could almost see DanAnna’s apartment from here, also on the north side of the island. They enjoy their spectacular view and the apartment is convenient to Anna’s temporary job here on St. Thomas as a zip line guide (she’s taking a hiatus from her career as a special educator.) Back to the beach, however: there was sunshine interspersed with occasional sprinkles so we spent all our time in the water. It was so calm we could see needle fish swim around us and more turtles came to visit. After a few more bushwhackers and considerably pruned up, we headed home.
On Saturday we took the first car ferry over to St. John and drove across the island to Salt Pond Bay for a hike. The roads on St. John make St. Thomas roads look like super highways. Severely pounded by the hurricanes in 2017, St. John is just starting to show signs of life and the community is tight knit and supportive of each other. We passed sidewalk community rummage sales and herds of goats as well as washed out roads and new composite telephone poles (which provoked an extended analytical discussion by the engineers and chemists in the car). The parking lot of Salt Pond was filled with Jeep Wranglers; our small SUV looked lonely by comparison. The beach was quiet and small but inviting. Immediately behind was a rust colored salt pond. We hiked further to the blue cobblestone beach, blue rocks pounded to sensuous ovals by the surf. The receding surf sounded like… well, it sounded like round cobblestones rolling down hill in water! As an aside: Greg’s family homestead is a cobblestone house in apple country outside of Rochester, NY. The same shaped cobblestones but red and brown colored and harvested from Lake Ontario. We hiked another mile or so over the larger beach boulders and up the desert-like hill past the cacti, very windy cliffs, and pounding surf, finally arriving at Ram’s Head with a spectacular 360 degree view of ocean and St. John and the BVI. The hike back was downhill and faster, thankfully, as the heat and humidity were starting to melt me.
We lunched at Mongoose Junction in Cruz Bay (delicious fish tacos, which we have been hunting the whole time), then spent the rest of the afternoon at Trunk Bay Beach. This beautiful beach has a guided snorkeling park just offshore, though many of the plaques describing the sea life were overturned and the fish were few and far between. More evidence of substantial hurricane damage, I guess. Did I mention that Greg and I honeymooned on all the USVI 39 years ago? The numbers of fish have declined considerably and coral reefs are suffering for any number of challenges: hurricanes, global warming, reef-unsafe sunscreen, and human interference in general. We enjoyed the beach as it is still beautiful, then headed home on the ferry.
Our intent on Sunday was to visit Water Island for brunch and beach, but the annoying presence of ever present throngs of cruise ship passengers foiled our plans. We headed across island to Sapphire Beach for brunch at Sudi’s (it was ok for food, but Greg certainly enjoyed the bottomless mimosa’s (5!!!!!)) then went down to the beach. The young adults in the family loved this beach for the proximity of the beach bar and availability of Truly’s alcoholic seltzer. Not my favorite beach, but certainly the water was still turqoise blue and inviting. We also visited nearby Margaritaville for, you guessed it!, Margaritas!
After laying around the pool all day the following day (some went shopping), we headed back to Red Hook for dinner at Outriggers (the fish tacos were ok, we’re still hunting the best…stay tuned.) Pre-dinner drinks were enjoyed at Duffy’s Love Shack, the trendy parking lot dive bar with funky ceramic drink cups which we got to keep! “Yes, let me stick my (paper) straw up this pink pig’s a**”!
After the bulk of the Bebernitz’s returned to northern climes, the remainder enjoyed dinner at the Caribbean Fish Market. Not a fish market at all, but an upscale restaurant on Cowpet Bay where we had the best meal on island to date! Tamarind calamari, paella, crab-stuffed lobster, wahoo, grouper; everything was delish! Not sure that island life is conducive to healthy eating but we’re trying!!!
Now Christina has returned home and we have a few days alone while DanAnna go to work. I’ll update the blog again soon! Time to relax…
My new reality 