if that doesn’t sum up my trip to st. croix I’m not sure what will. seriously though, I’ve just spent the past four days in a little chunk of USVI paradise… although once you arrive it’s nothing like being in th states. immediatley when you step of the plane a blast of heat hits you… and I’ve spent two summers in hotlanta, I should be used to this by now… right? the rum punch that the tourism board gives you right away doesn’t hurt your outlook one bit though, and starts me at:
Day 1: my mom, gram and I all pile into my aunts car and hang on fear dear life as she begins to drive on the wrong side of the road… only it itsn’t, because in this one small, backward corner of the united states they drive southpaw style. we head to my aunts house which is this great place in the middle of the island with all kinds of crazy fruit trees growing everywhere (by and by this is making me very resentful of the three dollar mangos I buy at whole foods when they consider them more of a hood-denting nuisance down there). and there are GECKOS, so cute. I freakin love geckos. anyone that knows me well knows I like little reptiles (this of course excludes any genetically engineered aquaitc frogs my misguided friends made a birthday present of… which just will not die). we check in at the Bucaneer, argh matey… no, it’s not even slightly pirate themed, just very relaxing and tropical. more rum punch. dinner at a cute outdoor spot, where the romance of being nestled in a fern gully soon fades as something makes rutstling noises in the ferns the whole night… bigger than one of my cute gecko friends. and wonder of small wonders the guy that is serving us our meal just graduated with a degree in city planning from buffaloe, and is taking some time off in the islands. so I did a bit of networking and handed out my card. I should charge the company two hours to the marketing department. a drink called the painkiller. family tries to pimp me out to nice, but not at all my type waiter. then my 19 year-old cousin and her boyfriend agree to take my ass out (so sad that I have to tag along with a 19 year old who is porbably cooler than I am). so I get in the car and her boyfriend Julio starts talking to me in straight-up island speak… I caught maybe three words. so I do what I do best and fill the awkward silence with empty chatter. I’ll just briefly skip over the encounter with the cops which was only prevented from winding us in jail because there were two white girls in the girl (yes, in this case I am inlcudung myself as a white girl, although I know most of you don’t consider me as such). I tell you this only to segway into a side note about my cousin’s choice in men. Julio is a Puerto Rican, fisherman/cook born and raised on st. croix. he is for all intents and purposes almost the spitting image of my father when he was 22… minus of course the baggy pants and backwards baseball cap. for some reason though my grandmother and aunt… who claim they don’t see color… have a problem with my cousin dating a “colored” boy. uh, hate to remind you all, but my dad is also one of those dirty latinos. I think my gram had even tried to convince herself that a guy named Julio was actually an italian and not a puerto rican… I broke the news to her that no, he was hispanic… and my aunt chimes in with “but he’s very light.” Awesome. it’s not the quality of the guy, it’s what people he’s from. anyway, Julio is very nice and I later find that he will speak to me in perfect english but just wanted to test out how cool I was… apparently not quite cool enough to understand island speak. so, who knew that you could pretty much smoke pot anywhere in some islands, most I’ve been to are more strict, but here they do it everywhere. in fact there is an anecdote that the police finally arested a guy when he had gone just to far and was caught walking across the police parking lot while rolling a joint. hell yeah. these people live in paradise, with no open container laws, and their bars are right on the boardwalk… but in the end it is still just another towny bar in a small town in the US. night ends after too much reggae, too many vanilla rums and cokes (I though my cousin normally drank a lot and was trying to match her, she thought I drank a lot and was trying to match me), and me painting my nails when I got home… which I only discovered the next day when I noticed the color was different. WTF, who thinks of that as the wild and crazy think to do when your wasted. god, what a weirdo,
Day 2:
lazy breakfast. aunt tries to pimp me out to shuttle driver. lazy day at the beach. took my mom snorkeling, which would normally be fine, if my mom wasn’t actually petrified of the water. but of course she doesn’t decie this until there is a coral reef between us and the shore, we’re about 20’ deep and 100’ from the place where we can get back to shore. she had been swimming along holding me until she started getting a little water in her mask and all hell breaks loose. she starts saying “I want to go back to shore now.” “okay mom, calm down.” “I want to stand up now.” “okay, well it’s a little deep for that how bout you try and flip over on you back and relax for a minute.” in the process of rolling onto her back she also starts frantically grabbing for me and her mouthpiece at the same time. I’m trying to keep her calm and explain to her that when she is floating on her back the end of the snorkle is in the water and she’ll start breathing in salt water. this was making not a dent in her panic so I reach up and rip the mask off her and form a little throne for her to float on. finally this draws the attention of my uncle and he comes over and we have to swim the hundred feet back to the opening in the reef pushing my mom on her back like two tugboats. she apologizes for trying to drown her own daughter on mothers day and goes back to shore so I can really snorkle. I’ve come to find I’m a decent spotter of interesting sea creatures… I saw two flounder, a lobster and a puffer fish (yes, this was in the water and not at a legal seafood). I also saw what I can only describe as a water millipede. I could live without that one. strawberry daiquiri. gramma flirts with 20 year olds at the pool… and then attempts to pimp me out. fancy dinner. drink called the cruzan confusion. go to hotel bar afterwards to have drink called a bird of paradise. aunt tries to pimp me out to concierge desk guy
Day 3:
breakfast at the mermaid… of course the name of the restaurant at a place called the bucaneer. trip downtown for souvenirs. I got this sweet ass silver bracelet which is a version of the traditional cruzan knot… somewhat like a claddagh ring you were it one way if you’re taken, one way if you’re single. because a t-shirt printed up with I’m single and looking for love seems a little desperate… I know, I’ve tried. tour of the island. we end up at this place called the dominoe club up in the forest which is famous for two things… a beer drinking pig, who was sleeping at the time, and a local version of moonshine called mamma wanna… they wont tell you what’s in it, but you can bet it’s nothing good… hopefully nothing that would show up on a drug test either. it comes in shot form and that’s all it took. gramma gets pimped out by family to older genntleman hitting on her. dinner on the boardwalk. another painkiller. rum punch.
Day 4: woke to tan on private terrance and try to spot mongoose… like land otters with short legs. more snorkeling with mom. more of mom trying to drown me. last time I’m snorkeling with mom. home, without drinking at all today. although in hindsight that might have been a good idea, considering if anyone caught a view of my hind side they would know why. snorkeling for several hours brought my entire backside to a lovely firey red. who says that’s not fun on a 6 hour trip home. so I say good night to you all and prepare to douse myself in another layer of aloe and lanocain.
back to reality tomorrow.