Antigua - Heart of the Caribbean?

Antigua is the largest, most developed, and most prosperous of the Leeward Islands. It is a fully independent nation, not a British Territory like Montserrat. It's quite a contrast to Montserrat which is very close, and everyone who was here in 1995 could see the Montserrat volcano eruption from here. It's comparable to the BVI and the Cayman Islands in level of development, or perhaps even more developed than those. It bills itself as a luxury Caribbean resort destination, specializing in weddings, honeymoons, and romantic getaways for couples. It calls itself the "Heart of the Caribbean", though that claim is suspect. I am just staying here one night (because it makes the connecting flights easier and -- I'll admit it -- to increase my country count; I only count a country if I've stayed at least overnight), so I just picked a place at random -- Cocos Hotel. It turned out to be probably the most upscale place on the island. It has individual oceanfront cottages built for 2 or more. They apparently never get singles, because they didn't know what to do with me. Finally, I managed to get a Deluxe Cottage for half the normal double occupancy rate! Most of the other guests are young European jet-setter couples from Italy, UK, and France. The shower is outdoors, on the back balcony facing the ocean. This is an all-inclusive type of resort, with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks included. The type of place people come to get really pampered.

I went kayaking (for exercise) and jet-skiing (for thrills) today. I used a brand new 2008 model jet ski. Jet skis have gotten really powerful! Of course I had to check out the top end -- it maxed out at about 86 kph, which is really flying on the water. I also mastered doing "water donuts". There's apparently good scuba diving here, but I didn't stay long enough to take advantage of that.

Update: My flight arrived here yesterday at 4:25 pm, and my flight leaves today at 4:10 pm -- less than 24 hours so I didn't have to pay the embarkation tax. Ha!

Hot! Hot! Hot!

This is Arrow's "Manshop". You may not recognize the name, but you know him. He's the guy who wrote the ubiquitous "Hot! Hot! Hot!" song. He sells a strange combination of stuff in his shop: snacks, t-shirts, cds, luggage. I did three more dives (#17 - 19) with Scuba Montserrat (extremely cool people and I recommend them highly!), this time with Emmy as the divemaster and Andrew staying with the boat The first one was "drift diving" -- where we just allow ourselves to drift with the current, and the boat follows with us so it is right there when we surface. This way we don't have to expend any energy fighting the current, just enjoy the reefs. The second dive was the Bat Caves, which featured a cool underwater swim-thru between two caves. The female bats are all in the 1st cave and the male bats are all in the 2nd. We talked Charles (a local fisherman) into taking me scuba spearfishing for the last dive. I speared two fish on my first two tries! Charles made me look bad though -- he speared at least a dozen. Great fun! Now I'm going to see if Charles will cook it for me tonight. I was originally scheduled to leave here today, but I extended my stay another day because of the spearfishing opportunity, and because there is a big local music festival here tonight (an all-nighter type of thing).

I'm really enjoying the local specialty here, goat water, a thick goat soup spiced with cloves

A Modern Day Pompeii

An eruption of the volcano here that started in 1995 completely destroyed the south side of the island, including the capital city of Plymouth, which is now completely buried in ash. In this sense it was similar to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii (though the Vesuvius eruption was far more forceful). Today I visited the MVO (Montserrat Volcano Observatory). You can also check the current activity report for the volcano on the MVO website. The first picture is the volcano on Montserrat. The actual glowing lava dome is not visible because it is obscured by the clouds. The second pic shows the steam vents shooting out from the Gages side of the mountain (this venting occured over a period of 2 hours and is mentioned in the activity report for this week). The volcano alert level is currently 4 (on a scale of 1 to 6; 6 means major eruption in progress). The area surrounding the volcano is lush tropical rainforest (in contrast the north side of the island is relatively arid). Yesterday I did another 2-tank dive. That makes 16 dives so far on this trip. Just me and the divemaster. We did a site called "Sea Studio", a reef near Rendezvous Bay and the bat caves (inhabited by fish-eating bats). We saw a GIANT lobster, possibly bigger than the one Qen and I saw under the Rhone Wreck. It's antennae were nearly 4' long! Also saw: peacock flounder, finger-cleaning fish, parrotfish, and many others. It was on this dive though, that I feel I achieved the "Zen" level of diving -- that is, a state of complete relaxation and underwater enlightenment. No fussing with the equipment or repeatedly checking gauges or worrying about how I'm breathing. Just a pure enjoyment of the scuba experience. I used up no more air than the divemaster (Andrew, Scuba Montserrat) who has been diving for 20 years and prided himself on his low air usage. After the dive Andrew took me around Montserrat (often abbreviated M'rat) for a mini afternoon beer crawl and hooked me up with some spearfishermen. I might get a chance to try spearfishing later!

Montserrat -- An Undiscovered Volcanic Gem

When I walked into the Quiet Mon Irish pub yesterday in St. John I didn't know which island I would head to next. So I whipped out my trusty laptop (cutest laptop in the world), and about 4 beers later I decided to go to Montserrat. All the information I got indicated that it is a pretty unique place off the beaten path with very few tourists, and it had an active volcano! (How many islands have you been to with an active volcano?? Ok, not counting Hawaii). Anyway, these are the types of place that appeal to me and it sounded pretty cool. Getting there is not trivial either; it was an adventure and that was part of the attraction too. It took a 6-hop journey: St. John -> West End Tortola (ferry) -> Beef Island (taxi) -> St. Maarten -> St. Kitt -> Antigua -> Montserrat. The first thing that impressed me was the immigration officials. They were actually friendly and said "Welcome to Montserrat!", as opposed to the stern, official businesslike demeanor that is nearly universal around the world. Second thing was my hotel. I could say it's the best hotel in Montserrat but that wouldn't be saying much. It's the only hotel in Montserrat! Still, it's quite elegant. My back balcony opens up to southern views toward the volcano and Katy Hill. My front balcony yields panoramic views of the entire northern coastline. The room even has a kitchenette. It's the best hotel I've stayed at so far on this trip! And it's definitely off the beaten path. I'm told there might be a couple other tourists on the island, but I haven't seen them. Everyone I meet here asks how/why I decided to come here, of all places. I don't really have a good answer for them. I just say something about this place struck me as unique and special, and I decided to check it out for myself.

Although it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to come here, it's clear to me that I made the right decision.

Above and Beyond

While travelling you necessarily interact with numerous service people: flight reservation agents, bus/taxi drivers, hotel workers, vendors, and an assortment of government agents. They span the entire range of attitudes from polite to indifferent to downright rude. Some will even try to rip you off. Very occasionally though, you encounter someone who is beyond merely polite and goes far out of their way to be helpful, without any promise of personal gain. They do it simply because of their sense of humanity and the goodness of their heart. I encountered such a person today.

I had to catch a 12:15 pm flight from Tortola which meant I had to take the 8:30 am ferry from St. John to Tortola’s West End. All well and good, but when I arrived at the ferry office (Inter-Island Ferry Services) the woman there informed me that the ferry boat had broken down and there was no ferry service that day. To emphasize this fact, she pointed out the disassembled engine parts laying out on the deck of the ferry. This was bad news. If I missed the flight it would mean spending another night in Tortola, buying a new plane ticket, changing my hotel reservations at the next island, etc. Now, she was certainly not responsible for the breakdown and there was no alternate ferry she could refer me to. So she was really under no obligation to help me further, and in most cases it would have ended there. But she must have seen the stunned look on my face because she asked me if I had to catch a flight on Tortola. I said yes and asked her what other options I had for getting across.

She then started working on other options. First she called the captain of another ferry already underway from St. Thomas if he could make an unscheduled stop in St. John to pick me up. He said he would try and see if it was possible. Ten minutes later he called back and said it wouldn’t be possible. She then checked the schedules for all the other ferries to see if there was some indirect multi-hop route that could get me to Tortola, such as going to St. Thomas first and catching another ferry from there. There were such routes available, but none that would get me there in time to make my flight. At this point I had almost lost hope. I was ready to walk over to the docks, waving $100 cash in my hand and ask anyone with a boat if they would take me across. This sort of thing works in many cases but it was unlikely to work here because it involves an international border crossing, and there is a requirement to go through customs, fill out an official manifest, etc. But the woman had not given up yet. She apparently had access to a small fast power boat. But there was some question about who had the keys for it. More phone calls to find out who had the key, where that person was, to send another person to track down that person, fetch the keys from him, and then go and retrieve the boat and bring it over here. By this time a few more people showed up, but she was clearly willing to do all this for me alone. She then got in and drove the boat herself singlehandedly (charging us only the standard fare). There was no one else around to help her. When we reached the other side she had to jump out of the boat and tie up on the dock herself.

I was so impressed with her helpfulness and thankful that I made it in time for my flight that I walked over to thank her specially. I handed her a $20 bill and asked her to please accept it with my utmost gratitude — but she steadfastly refused to take it! I told her that she deserved it for all the extra help and tried again to offer it to her but she still wouldn’t take it. She only smiled at me and said “Buy yourself a couple of drinks and enjoy the rest of your trip!”. So I did

For service Above and Beyond the Call of Duty, I am awarding this lady the Panini Service Medal of Honor:

(Mis)Adventures at Coral Bay

[Anyone reading this blog?? If so please add a comment so that I know someone is actually reading what I write. I fixed it so that you don't have to sign in to a gmail account anymore to leave a comment]

Two incredible things happened today. An incredibly stupid thing, and an incredibly miraculous thing. And they exactly canceled each other out!

I made a journey to the far side of the island — Coral Bay — to visit the Skinny Legs bar, a bar well known for its international patronage boating in from all over. The bus ride cost me all of $1 to travel the entire length of the island.

I got off the bus, walked into Skinny Legs and ordered a beer (since where ever I go I drink the local beer, I’ve been drinking nothing but Virgin Islands Summer Ale on St. John). When I reached for my wallet I discovered to my horror that it was gone! I knew it must have fallen out of my pocket while sitting on the bus. That was the stupid thing. As a seasoned traveler I normally protect my wallet very carefully and have never had it lost or pickpocketed — until now. I also know the odds of recovering a lost wallet in foreign lands is very close to zero. This was a disaster of trip-ending proportions! The only saving grace is that I knew exactly where I had lost it.

I sprinted outside to try to catch the bus coming back from the left fork turnaround, but it had already passed by. The bus then continues down the right fork before turning around again to return to the main fork. I then ran back to the fork to catch it on the return trip. Minutes seemed like agonizing hours. Finally the bus returned and I frantically scrambled onboard and ran to the back of the bus where I had been sitting before. And miracle of miracles, there was my wallet sitting right on my seat!!

That’s two miracles so far on this trip(*). I believe a third one qualifies me for sainthood.

* Previous miracle described in this blog post.

St. John Got My Goat!

Today I took the ferry over to St. John in the US Virgin Islands. They are in the middle of their month-long summer Carnaval festival. Too bad I won't be here for the final days in July! I arrived just in time to catch the Coronation of Miss St. John and the inauguration of the Food Fair. There were lots of food and crafts booths. I found one booth that had Mutton Kallaloo.

Linguistic note: they use "mutton" here to refer to goat, whereas we use it to mean sheep. Kallaloo is a type of stew.

That booth was run by Miss St. John's aunt. She proudly wore a t-shirt supporting her niece. The mutton kallalloo was fantastic! It had chunks of goat meat and conch, with spinach and some other veggies, and spices. Yum!! I had been wanting to try goat meat since I arrive in the islands but it was surprisingly hard to come by. None of the tourist restaurants have it. You have to go to a very local West Indies restaurant to find it. But I finally got my goat!

And then a miracle occurred...

I was wondering what to do about my destroyed camera (see my
previous blog post). Buy a cheap replacement camera? Switch to disposables? I had little hope of finding one here as good as the one I had. But wandering around Roadtown I found they had one electronics store, and that store had one model of a good digital camera very similar to the one I had (and uses the same memory cards). Good news! So I got that and now I can continue to blog with pics. But this is not the end of the story. Something truly miraculous happened. Remember that my memory card was rendered unreadable since it was in the camera at the time it went for a swim? I tried to extract the information off the chip at least a dozen times in different ways, and almost threw the chip away in frustration. But I didn't, and I happened to try it once again today and this time it worked!! This means I lost no pictures at all. Hooray!!

Linguistic Note: Here people say "Good night" as a greeting, whereas we say "Good morning/afternoon/evening" as a greeting, but use "good night" only as a good bye.

Partying Is Such Sweet Sorrow or, The Roadtown Blues

Note: This entry is mostly copied from the one I wrote for the Captain's blog at:

http://www.wingandwing.net/wordpress

The only downside of such a fantabulous(sic) trip like this one is that it must eventually come to an end. The mood amongst the crew was somber and subdued, knowing that our 11–day BVI non-stop sailing/partying adventure would end today. But is it really accurate to say the trip has definitively ended if it continues to live strongly in our memories when we relate our various adventures to friends and family, when we review the photos from our trip — each one sparking a distinct memory of experience, when years later someone asks where we got a certain souvenir or memento? In any case the crew split up today to go our separate ways. Moss Landing(*) went with Sadsack Rita and Dive Goddess back to Cane Garden Bay. Captain Cupcake, Twirly Wonder, Guava Bean, and Goat Boy boarded the ferry to Virgin Gorda — leaving me all alone in Roadtown, wandering around a bit dazed and already missing my fellow crew. Although Roadtown is the largest city and the capital of the BVI, it still lacks one thing common to almost every city — traffic lights. That anomaly is about to be corrected, apparently. I found this sign amusing as it seemed to be positively boasting about getting a new traffic light!

My trip continues solo for a another 2 weeks. Tomorrow I plan to visit St. John in the USVI, and then on to other Caribbean islands yet to be determined. My schedule is open and I will play it by ear.

(*) We each had (multiple) nicknames imposed by the rest of the crew. The crew itself had nickname, of which I can only give the acronym: FPCC

Bubbly bliss, Sudden Squall, and Pusser's Disneyland

No pictures for this blog entry (see previous entry for reason). We headed out from White Bay to Diamond Bay for Foxy's Taboo and the bubbly pool. The bubbly pool is a small shallow ocean-fed pool protected from the sea by large rocks. It's supposed to be filled with bubbles from the frothy waves that make it over the rocks into the pool. But we were at low tide so there were no bubbles -- until it started to rain. Each raindrop hitting the surface of the pool rebounded causing a 3" fountain and a bubble. This was quite a cool effect and we lingered in the warm pool for some time even after it started raining.

Suddenly, the rain increased in intensity and the wind powered up to 37 mph. A fairly intense tropical storm came upon us and the Captain made a decision to leave the area ASAP. The place where we anchored was not the ideal place to ride out a storm if it became more severe. The seas turned very choppy, and the dingy caught some air on the rocky ride back to the boat. When I returned to the boat I immediately pulled up the satellite pics on my laptop to see what was going on. There was a fairly strong tropical storm system, but it was a very small and localized, and luckily it passed by quickly. But there were a few moments of anxiousness there.

We then continued on to Soper's hole at West End. Did some souvenir shopping and had more drinks at Pusser's Landing. As soon as we arrived, there was a song playing about the Painkiller drink. There was a drink on the menu called "Jamaican Me Crazy" and I mentioned this to one of my friends and just then a song called "Jamaican Me Crazy" came on. After that, a song about drinking Pusser's rum came on. Someone mentioned that this place was like a Disneyland for rum drinks. And that's really what this felt like.

The guy sitting next to me in the bar asked if I was the same guy in the pirate costume the other day at Bomba's Shack!

Soggy Dollar = Good, Soggy Camera = Bad

Did another 2-tank scuba dive with Drew, Liz, and Qen on the Wreck of the Rhone. It's interesting enough that it's worth doing twice. During the first dive I must confess I was focussed on the technicals of diving, the state of my equipment, how I was breathing, etc. The 2nd time, I was completed relaxed and able to enjoy and appreciate the wreck itself 100%. The visibility was also much better than the first. I saw the big 300 lb grouper who lives in the wreck. Also saw a GIANT lobster -- the biggest I've ever seen -- hiding underneath the wreck. The divemaster was Abby from Blue Water Divers. They came to our boat to pick us up, and dropped us back at the boat. That's one of the coolest things about this place; the whole culture and economy is structured about boating. There is a supply boat called Deliverance that goes from boat to boat and sells you ice, rum, food, and even hauls away your trash. Other vendors come by in rafts to sell crafts and other goods.

After the dive, we returned to Cane Garden Bay for more drinks (what else?). I met famed local musician Quito Rymer at his restaurant Quito's, and bought one of his CDs. Liz managed to swim back to the boat holding a full glass of painkiller without spilling a drop. Now that's talent!

We then set sail for Jost Van Dyke, and the Soggy Dollar Bar. It gets its name from the fact that there is no dock, and so you pretty much have to swim to shore -- resulting in patrons paying for drinks with wet dollar bills. This is also where the famous "Painkiller" drinks were invented. So that's exactly what I did -- swam to shore to the Soggy Dollar bar. That's when tragedy struck. I had been carrying my camera and cash around in a waterproof container. It works great, provided you make sure the container is closed properly. This time it wasn't, and I opened it to find my camera and money swimming in salt water! Regular water is very bad for electronics, but salt water instantly destroys it. It also rendered the memory card completely unreadable, so I lost about 2 days worth of pictures :(

Dinner was at Corsair's (Foxy's was too busy), which turned out to be quite good. I had the lobster at $35/lb (my lobster was 2 lbs). But what is with the music here?? I have been frequently surprised and dismayed at the music played here at the various bars and restaurants. It's sappy duets like Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton "Islands in the Stream", some lame pop or country songs, or other easy listening garbage. In Blackbeard's name, why? With so much good music around, like reggae or other island music genres and good local musicians, why play this crap? We asked the owner Vinnie if he could put on some better music and he said he would. I was pleased when I heard some reggae beats come over the audio system, but my happiness turned to horror when I realized what was playing was just reggae-ized covers of crappy pop songs. It was like Elevator Reggae music!

Lunatics Out In Full Force At Full Moon Party

Caught another barracuda! And it was even bigger than the previous one. We threw this one back too. Hmm, I seem to be catching nothing but barracuda. Maybe it's time to switch lures. No matter, tonight is the night of the Full Moon Party at Bomba's Shack. These parties are legendary, as is Bomba himself. I dressed up in full pirate outfit, with flashing pirate earrings (one of the funniest things was for several days after the party I would continue to run into people who would come up to me and ask if I was the guy in the pirate outfit at the Bomba Shack party!). Here is a video of Darcie spinning glowsticks at the party.

Diving in the Aquarium

Caught my 2nd Barracuda. This one was over 20 lbs, I swear! I had obtained an official fishing license which allowed me to do unlimited fishing for 1 month. I purchashed some fishing line (100 lb test), lures, and hooks and we let out about 90' of line to troll behind the boat. I did a scuba dive in the afternoon at a dive site called the "Aquarium", so called beause of the huge variety of colorful tropical fish, it's almost like diving in an aquarium!

Pirate Invasion!

We left Pirate’s Bight temporarily to do scuba diving. I dove the Indians (large pinnacles that protrude from the surface) with Cupcake and Rita. We returned to the Bight to prepare for our boarding and invasion of the floating boat bar, the Willie T’s. We all dressed up in pirate gear, and rigged a Jolly Roger flag on Qen’s lobster snare. To get us in the right mood, Twirly performed the open passage of Treasure Island. Then we boarded the dinghy and set out for the Willie T’s. As we approached we yelled out nasty threats such as “Arrrrrrghh!” and “Prepare to be boarded, ye scallywags!”, much to the amusement of the other patrons. The captain brought along a flask full of the 15 yr aged Pusser’s rum (definitely the smoothest, best rum I ever tasted. 2^nd best rum is Mount Gay Rum from Barbados), which we all swigged. Took lots of pics on the upper deck, then came back down and started a Limbo line, which got the rest of the patrons excited and they started participating too. By the time we left we were the life of the party and most patrons seemed thankful for our takeover. Including the owner/manager who begged us to return again on Friday when a TV crew was coming to film a special on unusual bars around the world.

Norman Treasure

We arrived today at Norman Island, the basis of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic Treasure Island. “Spyglass Hill” is clearly visible as our boat approaches the Pirate’s Bight mooring. There is fantastic snorkeling at the nearby Pirate Caves. Lots of the brightly colored Parrotfish. Underwater you can actually hear the scraping noise of the Parrotfish chewing the coral. This chewing creates the fine white sand you see on the beaches around here. There are 2 bars here. One beach bar, and a floating boat bar. Today we went to the beach bar (we have bigger plans for the boat bar). When we reached dock, we saw an amazing sight. Some large tarpon fish (at least 3’ long) and sharks (at least 4’ long) had herded a large school of a smaller fish into a very tight group right up against the dock. This group was so dense at first it looked like just the rocky bottom, but when you looked closely you could see the individual fish moving within it. It was basically a carpet of fish, about 3’ thick and 30’ across!

The beach bar had giant versions of popular games, such as Jenga (played with two-by-fours) and Connect 4. We had rum punches with homemade rum that the bartender had made himself. We left the bar with the Jenga game booby-trapped in an extremely precarious state, where the slightest nudge would send the entire tower crashing down.

Cooper's Island

Home of the world's best conch fritters!

!!!Seriously entertaining!!!

Can't resist the Key Lime pie.

Lots and lots of rum drinks.

Franklin gave the Captain's meal free and let us take a picture behind the bar.

IXAT

 
spells TAXI backwards. This is the taxi we took to go to dinner at the Rock Cafe, a restaurant nestled between actual granite boulders in the Baths of Virgin Gorda.

 
Some of my fellow crew mates. Here is a video of our first sail!

Bomba's Shack

A raunchy irreverent bar that is literally a shack. They are famous for their wild Full Moon parties (yes, we are going to that!).

Tortola - Nanny Cay

Our boat, "Kristina". She's a humongous 57' catamaran, with *seven* bathrooms, 8 cabins, and WiFi internet!

Full boat specs

I find I have a hard time thinking of it as a sailboat; to me, it's more like a cruise ship, or a floating condo!

I now start Part 2 of my trip -- where I join up with 7 other friends to sail around the BVI!


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Tortola - Sugarmill Hotel

The view from the Sugarmill Hotel.

Tortola, BVI

Aerial shot of Nanny Cay Marina. Our boat is actually visible on the dock. Here is a 90 sec video of the landing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2BGkb6YlQg