Girl's Trip - Day 2
Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2011 11:56 pm
Monday Oct. 31
I woke up early with the sunlight streaming into my room. My head was pounding at first - the scale had tipped to the f-ing moron side for breaking out the rum after Lime in the Coconuts and wine! I couldn't stay in bed though and had to get up to look at the view again. After a cup of coffee I got moving better and made a breakfast of bacon and eggs. No raw bacon out of the hotel bathtub for us - it was nicely browned and crispy from the stove in our villa. We invited Mr Bill to join us on the deck - he'd been pouting in the suitcase because we hadn't involved him much up to this point. We shared some of our breakfast with the cat that lived under the bench on the deck even though the villa instructions had specifically stated not to feed any stray animals. He obviously didn't stray too far because he was always there whenever it was meal time! We decided to name him Hootie because the night before we had been talking about how Hootie had gone from singing with the Blowfish to doing country music. He was a pure black cat with yellow eyes....how perfect for Halloween!
After cleaning up the dishes we packed a lunch and headed off to Maho. We headed up Gift Hill Road and took the long way around to show our friend Chris some of the sights. She'd only been to St. John once on an excrusion from a cruise ship that had stopped at St. Thomas. When we got to Maho we saw that the dilapidated building on the beach had been completely redone and there was now a parking lot and two other new buildings. I think the sign said one of them was an "eco-toilet". I never checked it out because to me that's just a fancy term for an outhouse (ick). It did look nice from the outside however...well, as nice as a fancy outhouse can ever look.
Snorkeling that day was phenomenal!! There were millions of silversides forming huge clouds in the water. They attracted a large number of big tarpons, several Southern rays and barracudas of various sizes. There were at least 50 pelicans on the rocks to the left that spent the entire day taking turns at dive bombing the water boiling with fish. It was almost disorienting to be enveloped in a silver cloud of fish. The sun was shining brightly that day so the rainbow reflections off their scales was a dazzling spectacle. When the "cloud" would suddenly turn in unison and dart off in a different direction you would know that the tarpons were nearby. It was so much fun to watch them glide past because they would follow you with their eyes almost as if to say "Do you eat here often?". There were probably 10 to 15 tarpons in the range of 3 to 5 feet long and they circled the bay constantly. I started to recognize which ones were which after a while, especially the one I had dubbed "Scabhead" because.....well, he had this big scab on his head near one of his eyes. The tarpons would get so close to the beach that even the people who weren't snorkeling were able to clearly see them. The barracudas simply sat suspended in the water not moving much. They just seemed to be watching the rodeo of fish, rays and birds much like myself.
There was some sort of odd algae bloom the day we were there - or at least I was hoping it was algae because it was hard to avoid sometimes. You could see a strip of green/brown water slowly being pushed down the shoreline. It was pretty smelly too - sort of a fishy, mucky smell. Luckily it drifted away from where we were sitting so that by the time we ate our lunch we didn't have to deal with it. As I sat there eating my BLT and mango licorice (yum!) for dessert and looking at the view all I think of was "How lucky am I???". I could have been home looking at 22 inches of white stuff through my window while huddled under a blanket.
We enjoyed a few more hours of beach time and then decided to head back to the villa. There were a few sprinkles, but once those passed we spent a little more time in the pool. I decided to call home again to see how things were going. I told Hubby that it was 85 degrees and I had just gotten out of the pool.....he groaned and told me to stop torturing him. He'd spent the prior night huddled in bed under multiple blankets with our two dogs for warmth. He spent his waking hours in front of the fireplace huddled under afghans with the dogs and tried to pass the time by reading his Kindle by candlelight but it was starting to run low on power so he wasn't sure HOW he'd be able to pass the time. He'd talked with someone from work and they were bringing in a huge generator on a flat bed truck to supply power so he was hoping that the highways were cleared enough to make it to the office the next day. He was worried about leaving the dogs alone in a cold house so he'd arranged for someone with a generator to pick them up during the day for a few hours to get warm. I felt bad for him, the dogs, and everyone else suffering through the mess. The damage to the trees sounded horrific and made me sad to think of what things would look like when we got home.
After pool time we got cleaned up and dug out the items we'd brought to fashion Halloween costumes for the bash at Skinny Legs that night. Val was a voodoo priestess, Lori was a vampire victim, Chris was a devil and I decided that I'd call myself a Jumbie. I didn't want to haul much in my luggage so I'd simply bought a pair of glasses with spring-loaded eyeballs and a pack of stick-on scabs and figured I'd come up with something. I added an orange and black sarong over my clothes...... who's to say that Jumbies don't dress that way? Have you ever seen one???? Me either. Some of the costumes that night were great - there was a jellyfish, a lionfish, a fat personal trainer, a hillbilly hand fisher, an "eye-pad" (a giant feminine napkin with a big eyeball", a couple dressed like William and Kate at their wedding and a firefly with a tail that lit up. There were lots of others that I can't remember. I don' t know if they were mostly locals or if people were crazy enough to lug those elaborate costumes along with their luggage. I didn't want to have to limit the room I had for my swimsuits. We ran into Goldendaze and her husband again - it's sorta nice to actually run into someone you know on the island!
We didn't stay long because it was very crowded and I was driving so I couldn't enjoy myself TOO much so I'd be able to make the drive back from Coral Bay. When we got back to the villa we behaved ourselves....no rum this night! We had ice cream on the deck while watching the stars. Before long we were all yawning.....goodnight tree frogs, hello bed.
I woke up early with the sunlight streaming into my room. My head was pounding at first - the scale had tipped to the f-ing moron side for breaking out the rum after Lime in the Coconuts and wine! I couldn't stay in bed though and had to get up to look at the view again. After a cup of coffee I got moving better and made a breakfast of bacon and eggs. No raw bacon out of the hotel bathtub for us - it was nicely browned and crispy from the stove in our villa. We invited Mr Bill to join us on the deck - he'd been pouting in the suitcase because we hadn't involved him much up to this point. We shared some of our breakfast with the cat that lived under the bench on the deck even though the villa instructions had specifically stated not to feed any stray animals. He obviously didn't stray too far because he was always there whenever it was meal time! We decided to name him Hootie because the night before we had been talking about how Hootie had gone from singing with the Blowfish to doing country music. He was a pure black cat with yellow eyes....how perfect for Halloween!
After cleaning up the dishes we packed a lunch and headed off to Maho. We headed up Gift Hill Road and took the long way around to show our friend Chris some of the sights. She'd only been to St. John once on an excrusion from a cruise ship that had stopped at St. Thomas. When we got to Maho we saw that the dilapidated building on the beach had been completely redone and there was now a parking lot and two other new buildings. I think the sign said one of them was an "eco-toilet". I never checked it out because to me that's just a fancy term for an outhouse (ick). It did look nice from the outside however...well, as nice as a fancy outhouse can ever look.
Snorkeling that day was phenomenal!! There were millions of silversides forming huge clouds in the water. They attracted a large number of big tarpons, several Southern rays and barracudas of various sizes. There were at least 50 pelicans on the rocks to the left that spent the entire day taking turns at dive bombing the water boiling with fish. It was almost disorienting to be enveloped in a silver cloud of fish. The sun was shining brightly that day so the rainbow reflections off their scales was a dazzling spectacle. When the "cloud" would suddenly turn in unison and dart off in a different direction you would know that the tarpons were nearby. It was so much fun to watch them glide past because they would follow you with their eyes almost as if to say "Do you eat here often?". There were probably 10 to 15 tarpons in the range of 3 to 5 feet long and they circled the bay constantly. I started to recognize which ones were which after a while, especially the one I had dubbed "Scabhead" because.....well, he had this big scab on his head near one of his eyes. The tarpons would get so close to the beach that even the people who weren't snorkeling were able to clearly see them. The barracudas simply sat suspended in the water not moving much. They just seemed to be watching the rodeo of fish, rays and birds much like myself.
There was some sort of odd algae bloom the day we were there - or at least I was hoping it was algae because it was hard to avoid sometimes. You could see a strip of green/brown water slowly being pushed down the shoreline. It was pretty smelly too - sort of a fishy, mucky smell. Luckily it drifted away from where we were sitting so that by the time we ate our lunch we didn't have to deal with it. As I sat there eating my BLT and mango licorice (yum!) for dessert and looking at the view all I think of was "How lucky am I???". I could have been home looking at 22 inches of white stuff through my window while huddled under a blanket.
We enjoyed a few more hours of beach time and then decided to head back to the villa. There were a few sprinkles, but once those passed we spent a little more time in the pool. I decided to call home again to see how things were going. I told Hubby that it was 85 degrees and I had just gotten out of the pool.....he groaned and told me to stop torturing him. He'd spent the prior night huddled in bed under multiple blankets with our two dogs for warmth. He spent his waking hours in front of the fireplace huddled under afghans with the dogs and tried to pass the time by reading his Kindle by candlelight but it was starting to run low on power so he wasn't sure HOW he'd be able to pass the time. He'd talked with someone from work and they were bringing in a huge generator on a flat bed truck to supply power so he was hoping that the highways were cleared enough to make it to the office the next day. He was worried about leaving the dogs alone in a cold house so he'd arranged for someone with a generator to pick them up during the day for a few hours to get warm. I felt bad for him, the dogs, and everyone else suffering through the mess. The damage to the trees sounded horrific and made me sad to think of what things would look like when we got home.
After pool time we got cleaned up and dug out the items we'd brought to fashion Halloween costumes for the bash at Skinny Legs that night. Val was a voodoo priestess, Lori was a vampire victim, Chris was a devil and I decided that I'd call myself a Jumbie. I didn't want to haul much in my luggage so I'd simply bought a pair of glasses with spring-loaded eyeballs and a pack of stick-on scabs and figured I'd come up with something. I added an orange and black sarong over my clothes...... who's to say that Jumbies don't dress that way? Have you ever seen one???? Me either. Some of the costumes that night were great - there was a jellyfish, a lionfish, a fat personal trainer, a hillbilly hand fisher, an "eye-pad" (a giant feminine napkin with a big eyeball", a couple dressed like William and Kate at their wedding and a firefly with a tail that lit up. There were lots of others that I can't remember. I don' t know if they were mostly locals or if people were crazy enough to lug those elaborate costumes along with their luggage. I didn't want to have to limit the room I had for my swimsuits. We ran into Goldendaze and her husband again - it's sorta nice to actually run into someone you know on the island!
We didn't stay long because it was very crowded and I was driving so I couldn't enjoy myself TOO much so I'd be able to make the drive back from Coral Bay. When we got back to the villa we behaved ourselves....no rum this night! We had ice cream on the deck while watching the stars. Before long we were all yawning.....goodnight tree frogs, hello bed.
