Copyright © 2002 LeeAnn Heringer
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Copyright © 2002 LeeAnn Heringer
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Chapter Two : A Theme Presents ItselfDid I mention that this beautiful house we'd rented in St. John had a corrugated tin roof? You couldn't tell from inside because the rafters and beams were finished wood. But at 7am that first morning on the island, we had a sudden tropical downpour, where the heavens open and you get a small idea of what it feels like to be a vegetable manhandled by a sou chef. I was sound asleep, so the noise of this steady downpour hitting the tin roof woke me with this groggy panic-stricken idea that the water main had broken. Dean, on the hand, had gotten out of bed at dawn to go running. (Which he did every day on our vacation and I found completely suicidal. The island didn't have many roads and what roads it did have resembled a roller coast ride with hairpin turns, blind corners and sudden crests where you had no idea what manner of goat, mule, pig, or crazed taxi driver was on the other side. How he managed to avoid being run down like a free range chicken, I just don't know.) But Dean, out running that morning, felt 3-4 drops, and by the time it registered that this wasn't just heavy sweat, someone had opened the fire hydrant on him. |
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By the time I got up, Dean had already come back, showered, and left in search of food for breakfast. This is when what we refer to as the Italian problem presented itself. There was no lock for the front door. In fact, there were no formal front door. The main living space with the kitchen/dining room/living room had sliding glasses doors on all sides and screens and the doors had locks on them, but they had been installed very recently and, in fact, not well. So, that not all the sliding doors closed properly. The way you locked the house when you left was a padlock on the wrought iron gate. A padlock that we only had a single key for. Which meant when Dean left, he locked the padlock behind him and took the key so he could get back in. And since the house was built on a steep slope, the only way in and out of the house was through that gate. Which means that I woke up starving in a house with a fabulous view — and it did have a fabulous view of the hillside and the water and the boats anchored in the harbor and St. Thomas in the distance, the name of the house after all was "GrandView" — but there was no food. There was a gallon jug of cold water in the refrigerator, but after a couple hours, I begin to have a very uncharitable thought (because after all Dean was out there somewhere, trying to remember to drive on the left, trying to retrieve food for me). But after a couple hours of admiring the view, I had to wonder if paradise was going to include bread as well as water. (Remember to scroll that way ->>> for the wide pictures.) |
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Of course, Dean did show up very quickly with sacks of groceries and I didn't have to really get serious about gnawing on any body parts. We packed a lunch (I was just rolled in food by this point, but still a little leery about it getting out of my immediate sight) and decided to take a drive around the island. We stopped at a couple beaches, including the famed "Trunk Bay" where they make a huge fuss over the fact that they have an underwater trail. And the beaches there are prefect, the sand fine as sugar, it never gets hot so you can wander around barefoot without jumping up and down going "hot, hot, hot". There's always plenty of shade from the seagrape trees which combined with the modern miracle of chemistry in 30 SPF sunblock can guarantee that you come home as milky white as when you left and the water, even at knee or hip level, is warm and filled with fish. But Trunk Bay is where they taxi-cab in all the tourists from the cruise ships that are in St. John for a day. It has the best facilities as far as lifeguards and toilets and showers and food and drink and you can rent the snorkel gear right there. We hit it between waves of tourists, so I had a chance to get my gear on and get out there and discover this fabulous "guided snorkeling trail" was just concrete blocks with each a picture labelled "coral" or "parrotfish". Unfortunately, I hesitated there having my little "ah, well, this is an underwater snorkeling trail, well, isn't that cheesy" moment which allowed a tour group of 30 to make it out to my location and surround me. I don't believe they were experienced snorkelers, the first clue being that they were all wearing life vests to stay afloat and the second clue was that they kept grabbing onto me to steady themselves. And I don't know about the rest of y'all, but the last thing I want is something large grabbing onto one of my body parts from behind while I'm underwater. I'm sorry, I'm a child of the "Jaws" era. I've never seen a shark in the water, but that little primitive monkey lower brainstem thing in my head KNOWS that sharks are out there and DOES NOT WANT TO BE GRABBED UNDERWATER. Thank you. I had to get that out of my system. So, Dean and I decided to drive the entire 10 miles to the far end of the island just to say that we'd been there. It was a lovely drive. We saw more goats than people which is an excellent ratio. But what we noticed is that every 10-20 feet, every opportunity of a curve ahead sign or a speed limit sign or a mile marker, was another small sign that said "keep left". It was a constant running reminder. But the best one was at the end of the island where you ran out of road, you turn around and going back up the hill, painted on the road like you would find "school crossing" or "stop ahead" here in California, there was painted on the road "Stay Lef Mon". Now anyone who's followed some of our adventures knows that each trip has to have a theme, a watch word, a verbal shortcut, a way to remind ourselves that occasionally despite ourselves we go out and have fun, just not often enough. In this case, if they're going to go to trouble to tell us something every few feet and then still write it on the street in big white letters in a place that must only be seen by a few dozen cars a day, well, obviously "Stay Lef Mon" was the key to St. John. |
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