Living South

Returning from our cruise we made all the final arrangments so that we could feel relatively confident about leaving the house and especially leaving Linda's parents. On the parental side, Linda took great care to inform everyone where we were, how they could contact us and then she worked a schedule where her brother and sister would be visiting, staying in our house and providing the parents some family contact.

The visits give the family chances to see each other and it provides important coming and going from our house. Everything will go smoothly involving their visits as long as I remember to shut off all the house security alarms and cameras before they arrive. If I don't do that, well, to say the least, they will get some surprises.

We flew into Mexico just a day or so before Christmas. It was good to get back to our little town of Melaque and as soon as our taxi dropped us at the front door of our casa, we ran into our first friends, Geo and Zoe who live on Vashon Island back up in Washington.  We said quick hellos and climbed the steps up to our apartment where we would reside for the next three months.

This year's living experience is something we have been talking about since we left Mexico last year. Our apartment is located downtown in the heart of the San Patricio business district. We have always stayed at the far east end of Melaque and walked to this area in the evenings to enjoy the happenings centered around the Jardin (central plaza). Living in this area never occurred to us until our friends Jacquie and Grant ran into a connection that opened up the possibility of renting the two apartments.  We checked them out, making sure they had the amenities that we wanted and sealed the deal.

At the time of writing this post, Linda and I have been in the apartment for three nights and are 85% settled. The amenities we had looked for when searching for our three month home were very simple. The place needed to first have a comfortable bed. No sleeping on the floor for me this year. A good shower with pressure and a clean updated kitchen area. Our casa has all this plus real good air conditioning (A big bonus!)

Moving in has been a little bit of an experience. First, you need to realize that we are arriving during Christmas, and everything is a bit tougher because the locals do honor Christmas on Christmas day. To Mexican families, Christmas Eve and Christmas day are times to gather and be with their families. It is an important holiday, but they don't get as involved in all the commercial stuff as we do up north.

At our arrival, everything that needed attention took a bit more time because of the holiday. For instance, we needed to have the gas turned on to the kitchen stove. Not a big deal. Then we also needed the hot water turned on. I didn't know about this until we took late showers in cold water. Again, no big problem and this was fixed the next morning. I was able to fix a couple plumbing problems dealing with the sink and shower by removing particle screens from the two heads. This gave us some much needed unimpeded water pressure in the bathroom.

These are all little problems that were solved and we moved on.  Today Linda contacted the lady who cleans and supervises the complex and she scheduled a day for her to come in and do some light cleaning. This is a good perk for us and it provides Rosa, our super, additional income which is sort of an expectation of her job.

Our To-Do list is basically down to two items at this point, we need the internet fixed and with that, we will then have access to television if we want it (not a very important item, but it would be nice).
Putting all this together, we find that our casa is a very nice spot. There are two-bedrooms, Linda and I have each taken one. This works out very nicely because the beds are very comfortable, but also Mexican short and not very wide. My feet hang over the bottom by about three inches. Sleeping in separate beds is not our first choice, but by doing so I am able to sleep diagonally in the bed and my feet don't have to hang over the bottom.

The two bedrooms have separate air-conditioner units and this lets us control the temperatures for each of our personal choices. I like to sleep a bit cooler then Linda does and this works out great.
In the late afternoon, we turn on the air conditioning and cool off the apartment. Then we go to bed and during the night shut the air conditioning off, and sleep with the windows open. This allows the air to flow and by morning the entire apartment is very comfortable. We do our morning thing and then when we leave we shut all the windows in the place and keep the AC off. When we return, we turn the AC back on. It does not take very long to cool the entire apartment down. We can then move about our place in cool comfort.

All this is very different from prior years where we depended on the ocean breeze to provide our cooling. There is a breeze up on our roof, with a small swimming pool, but shade is a bit hard to find in the later afternoons.

Every day we get up, Linda runs or walks and I make coffee. It takes me a while to wake up and by the time Linda gets back to the apartment I am ready to chat about the upcoming day. We usually have breakfast and then go to Las Palmas (our friends' property) to play pool volleyball. As we play, we hear all the scuttlebutt within our gringo community. Linda usually sets up evening plans and so our day is scheduled.

The group of friends we have developed is wonderful, amazing folks. Arriving in Melaque you are welcomed back with hugs and handshakes. Everyone is so nice. As we walk the streets we run into the many local Mexican friends that we have established over the years. They are so loving and we have come to look forward to seeing them all every year.

Our living in Mexico is now in full swing. Jacquie and Grant arrive today. We are getting invites out for dinners, our bodies are sore and tired from our daily volleyball workouts and life is good. Each morning I look at the framed quotes hanging on the walls of our casa and smile. One says LIVE LIFE, LOVE and be HAPPY and the other says Welcome to Melaque, your home in Mexico!

St. Barts

During the night we set the hook at our anchorage in Gustavia Bay in St. Barts (258 nautical miles from St. Lucia). When I awoke the sun was streaming brightly into our stateroom. I went out to the veranda and was greeted by a beautiful view of St. Barthelemy (St. Barts). I walked inside and got a drink of water, my camera, and some flipflops. By the time I returned to the views, huge clouds had rolled in and the wind had picked up immensely.

With this wind came a downpour of rain and I scampered back into the cabin. We waited for the call allowing everyone to go ashore for their planned day on St. Barts. Our plan for the day was to relax and take a short tender ride to the port, walk around and then return to the ship. The goal was to set foot in the town of Gustavia, act like the rich and famous and then return to the ship spending the majority of the day relaxing.

From our research about this island, we had found that it is the most expensive port that we would visit on this cruise. The local government has worked hard to establish this atmosphere of wealth and luxury. To do this they actually restrict the larger cruise ships from entering the port. Cruise lines like Carnival and Disney are not allowed to visit, keeping the riff-raff (LOL) away from this very expensive island retreat. Because we are basically not members of the rich and famous class, our venture into this world would consist of a tender ride to the port, step off, step on the tender and return to the ship. I overheard a fellow onboard the ship talking about the cost of a ball cap in this port and he said that a $10 hat on other islands would cost you $50 on this one.

The ship's crew launched four tenders and almost immediately the winds and the waves created havoc. Our ship's Captain came on the intercom system and made a very hard call for him. The tenders were called back and he made the decision to haul anchor and cancel all shore visits. The wind and waves were just too much for the tenders to operate safely. The ship went into Plan B mode and so our two-day return trip to Miami was extended to a three-day motor back to the US.

It was a bit disappointing to not be able to rub elbows with the yachting class, but we could understand the safety aspect of the shore excursion cancellation.

Plan B for the ship's crew, however, meant more work. Everyone had to change their schedules because the guests were not able to get out of their hair for the day. Activities were quickly added to the schedule, food and drink areas had to double their staff due to the crowds wandering about, and the cabin crews had to speed up their cleaning of each room. It was a big hardship on the crew.

Linda and I met Jacquie and Grant up on deck 5 and played a round of trivia challenge with about 30 other guests. The fifteen questions were all Christmas orientated and we did very well missing only 2 of the fifteen, which earned us 2nd place. They gave us a card that they called Big O Points. I guess you can collect these points and then turn them in at the end of the trip for small gifts. We will probably not collect many of the cards since we are on our final few days and just now learned about this process. The weather cleared as we headed away so the outside activities were not curtailed.

St. Lucia

Set among the Windward Islands of the Lesser Antilles lies the island of St. Lucia (211 nautical miles from Antigua). This is one of Linda's bucket list stops and she has been anticipating our visit for many years. I believe we first heard about the beauty of this island when we were first traveling and staying at Sandals Resorts in Jamaica about 25 years ago. Friends had visited the Sandals in this volcanic paradise and had raved of its beauty. We soon found Mexico as our go-to land for sun and exploration, but Linda never did forget about what she had been told of this island.

We disembarked our ship at 8:30 AM and met our host, Cera, who then lead us to our driver/guide for the day, Bumpy.  Bumpy immediately helped us into the van and explained that 80% of the men on St. Lucia went by nicknames. His birth name was Benedict, but for as long as he could recall everyone knew him as Bumpy.

Our port city was called Castries and Bumpy quickly drove us south out of town where we would spend most of the day driving between beautiful overlooks to the many tourist attractions of the island.

Driving the roads on this island is not for the faint of heart. Not only are you driving on the opposite side of the vehicle and the road from the US, but the roads are narrow and windy beyond belief. There were times that I actually had to look away because the traffic was moving so fast and the roads were so tight. Bumpy was an amazing driver and though we went into, and out of, some extremely close quarters, he never seemed to be ruffled and calmly maneuvered us through.

We traveled through the towns of Anse La Raye, Canaries, and Soufriere, stopping for photos and listening to Bumpy's historical insight. One of his stories pointed out and explained the women washing their clothes in the river just south of Soufriere. Many of these women had access to clothes washers and dryers, but they continued to go to the river because it was a meeting place for gossip. As we were told, these women know what is happening, who is sleeping with who, and what is going on all the time and they get this information through this gossip network.  He told us that if we were to move to this area, the first thing that Don and I should do is to buy our wives a new washer and dryer. This way we can keep our personal business private and out of the gossip network thus keeping our marriage healthy and happy.

From the stories Bumpy related, we decided that in this country the men still feel that they are the top dogs, women are looked upon as lessers and it is not unusual for a man to have several girlfriends as well as a wife. Men prefer that the women work, do the home chores, and raise families. A good man will provide, but many prefer to be provided for. Bumpy told us that he lived in his mother's home, (she had passed away) with his Aunt whom he considered his mother now. We gathered that he had many girlfriends, but was a well respected and known driver/guide in this community.

After our long conversation dealing with gossip and laundry, we drove to the Tet Paul Nature Trail. This area has been developed because it is located between the two Pitons. The Pitons, Gros Piton (2610 ft.) and Petit Piton (2438 ft.) are must-see natural peaks. We hiked the circular trail and took photos at each platform. Our guide, Lisa, was very knowledgable of the plants and trees that we passed. The entire hike took about 45 minutes and was well worth our visit.

The nature trail was the farthest point south that we drove on the island. We drove back north and stopped at the Torialle Water Fall which is a heritage tourism site. We quickly took some photos and then were chased away by about 30 German tourists (We are not "crowd" people!).

As a bit of a surprise, Bumpy wound deep into the town of Canaries and picked up some hot bread and then continued on to another spot where he purchased cheese. He called the bread wings chicken legs and we placed the cheese in the legs and ate them warm and fresh. It was a very nice touch and absolutely delicious.


Bumpy then drove us to another overlook that gave us a magnificent view of Marigot Bay. This bay is a shelter site used when hurricanes strike the island;  it is very sheltered. It also has been the backdrop to many movies, such as Dr. Doolittle and Pirates of the Caribbean.

Our final stop was at an overlook that had the entire Port of Castries as the backdrop. Bumpy took several group shots and then drove us back to our ship. It was a wonderful way to check off one more thing on the bucket list.

Antigua

Our ship made port in St. John's, Antigua (102 nautical miles from St. Maarten) this morning. Antigua is the larger of two islands grouped together forming what is referred to as the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. Barbuda is the sister island in this group. These islands continue to reside under the flag of Great Britain. English is the dominant language spoken on this island which makes it a very popular yachting destination.

German cyclists ready for a ride around the island.

We were met as we left the boat by a very small gentleman dressed in a very bright colorful vest. His sign read "Laurence of Antigua Tours" and displayed a small camel in the lower corner. We introduced ourselves as we loaded in the van. Our group consisted of Jacquie, Grant, Linda, myself and two guests from our ship, Alan and Shirley.

Our van was a very nice vehicle with the distinguishing camel decals and "Laurence of Antigua Tours" written in large typeface across the front window. We loaded in and our driver began his narration. "I am Laurence, your guide for the day!" he said. Wow, the company owner would be our guide. Laurence definitely was proud of Antigua. He explained that his vest was made of the colors of the flag of his nation and that he wears it every day to represent the love for his island. The only day that he does not wear the colors was the day that the island celebrates its independence. On this day everyone wears the colors, so he prefers to not dress like everyone else as his tribute to the day. A very odd tribute in my view. As Laurence drove on, his narration was chocked full of island trivia and humorous notations.

We drove south for approximately thirteen miles to Blockhouse Hill, an 18th century British Fort. From this point of land, you could look east (left) and view the Atlantic Ocean and then look west and gaze out over the Caribbean Sea. Walking left you are hit with very strong winds from off the Atlantic, but step fifteen yards right and the winds were almost gone! Walk to the right into the winds and you could gaze out and spot a very large home belonging to Eric Clapton, the famed guitar player. The block remains of the fort spread out along the road to the northwest. There are only shambled remains to this fort but stepping back you can use your imagination and piece together the layout. From that, you can see why the British chose this point for protecting the region.

Back in the van we backtracked a few miles and took a left turn leading to Shirly Heights, a historical overlook offering a sweeping panorama of English Harbor. Restored blockhouse buildings from Fort Shirly form a cluster where we walked to the edge and viewed the harbor full of sailboats and yachts. Laurence pointed out a rooftop below where British royalty had stayed during their visits to the island. We would get more info on this at our next stop.

Nelson's Dockyard, our next destination, was once known as the Antigua Naval Yard but was renamed to honor Admiral Horatio Nelson after they restored the yards in 1941. A cute young guide named, Valentina, met us at the entrance to the dockyard and gave us a 20-minute tour of the area. She did a very good job of explaining the area around us and went a bit more in-depth into the visitations of the Royal Family. She also pointed out a working sail loft and a bakery. Of course, when the tour was over, we swiftly went to the bakery and bought several treats. Yummmy!

Laurence rounded us up and we drove back to the port entrance. Linda and I did some shopping. Jacquie and Grant had a bit of excitement brought about by a dropped wallet, but all turned out well. When they went to the dock security access point they found that a good samaritan had turned the wallet in. There was a bit of panic, lots of relief, but in the end, no harm was done.