|
Steve slept on the couch rather than pulling out the murphy bed. Our room didn't have room darkening shades, so we noticed the light very early. We blocked our faces and managed to sleep until 9 am. When we finally got up, we were looking forward to taking nice showers. This was when we discovered that there was no water. Here we go again. We made coffee (with our bottled water} and sat on the patio and watched two groundskeepers pruning the sea grape and palm trees on the beach. One guy was standing atop the sea grape tree, hacking branches off with a machete. The other guy dragged the branches across the beach and put them into the back of a truck for disposal. It was all very quaint until the machete guy started running a gas-powered trimmer with a really high pitched whine. We ate our cereals and compared the nutritional info: Cap'n Crunch's Peanut Butter Crunch (capncrunch.com) vs Post Fruity Pebbles Wholesome Sweetened Rice Cereal with Artificial Fruit Flavors - now BRONTO-BRIGHT (TM). We had a lot of laughs. Because we planned to just take it easy today and hang out on the beach here at the hotel, Steve called Heidi to schedule a massage, one of his favorite relaxing vacation activities.
We finished our coffee and cereal and headed down to the beach. We found three chairs in the shade and put our stuff down. This was our seventh consecutive Thanksgiving trip to Secret Harbour, and it was now like a second home for us. Secret Harbour is a beautiful little quiet bay. The beach is open to the public, but chairs are reserved for hotel guests. There is a dive shop which rents snorkel equipment as well as sailboards and kayaks. The water is a gorgeous turquoise, and there is a dock that you can swim out to. The sea grape and palm trees provide shade on the beach, and employees groom and rake the beach several times a day. It is such a comfortable place; the scene is so familiar to us. There are gorgeous villas on the hillsides overlooking the bay. One in particular is a bright gleaming white and it shines in the sun. I always joke that I want to retire to that house. We went into the ocean, The water was beautiful and warm, and we just floated around and chatted. We thought back to last year, when, on our first dip in the ocean, Roger dove in the shallow water and cut open the bridge of his nose. Ouch! Note to self, no diving here. We wished that Gina and Roger could have accompanied us again this year. They had originally planned on it, but had to cancel their reservation. We watched the iguanas on the beach, climbing trees and scurrying along the sand. When we got out of the water, we were all hungry. Steve volunteered to walk down the beach to the Blue Moon Cafe to get us some lunch. He returned a little while later with chicken sandwiches with lettuce, tomato, and cheese. There had been three choices for side dishes, and Steve was proud of himself for asking for one of each, so that we could choose or share as we saw fit. However, when we opened the containers, we saw that they all had Cajun fries, so no decisions needed to be made after all. We ate them while sitting in our beach chairs. At 1:30, Steve went to his massage. Craig and I went back to the room and hung out for a while, flipping through the tourist magazines. We called Tiffany and told her our room number, etc, and that we would like to get together when she had some time. The phone rang soon after and it was the front desk, asking if "our friends" had shown up. Our friends? Marty? Tiffany? Oh, they meant Gina and Roger. Somehow they hadn't made a note of the fact that Gina had cancelled her reservation, and they were still expecting her. D'oh! We explained that they weren't coming this year, and had cancelled their reservation. This wasn't the last time we would have to explain this to the front desk, and when we got home we told Gina and all had a good laugh over it. Steve came back very relaxed an hour later. At 3:30, we headed down the beach to the Aqua Action Dive Center to rent snorkeling equipment for the duration of the trip. We stopped at the Blue Moon and got a round of bushwhackers. When we got back to the room, we had a message from Tiff saying she had gotten out of work and was on her way over. When she arrived we sat in the living room and chatted. It was great to see her. She talked about how her company had changed its name from BOB (Breathing Obervation Bubble) to BOSS (Breathing Observation Submersible Scooter, which we thought was a more appropriate name. They had undergone a lot of changes in the last year, and seemed to be doing very well. We started to get hungry, and at 6:30 we walked down the beach to the Blue Moon Cafe. I left a message for Marty telling him where we were, but after he got out of work and did some errands, he wasn't feeling up to a night out (especially since we would all have to be up bright and early for the annual Cap'n Marty's Island Hop tomorrow). We got a nice table overlooking the ocean and ordered bushwhackers. Craig, Tiff, and Steve split crab cakes as an appetizer. I had some pumpkin bisque soup. For my meal I ordered two appetizers. I got the crab cakes ( a perennial favorite), and something new: jerk pork and pineapple johnnycake with cilantro sour cream. The johnnycake was so good (and filling) that I only had room for a bite of crab cakes, and took the rest back as leftovers. The johnnycake was basically a dense fried dough. It was topped with a little pile of jerk pulled pork, and had the cilantro sour cream on the side. It was absolutely delicious. The pork was more sweet than spicy, and the whole thing was so unique that I really enjoyed it. Craig got one of the specials: pan-seared mahi in habanero mango sauce with fungi. That's one thing about St Thomas, they take their sauces seriously. Almost every dish we have eaten on the island has come with some sort of amazing sauce which totally defines the dish. We had a nice time and sat at the table chatting for quite a while. None of us had room for dessert. We headed back to the room and continued our chat there. Tiff, being used to the warm climate, was very cold due to the air conditioning, and she cuddled up in blankets on the couch while we chatted. Tiffany stayed until 10. By now we had water and we were able to take much-needed showers. We noticed that we had gotten more sun today than we had intended, and that we would need to protect our skin a bit more when out on the boat tomorrow. Craig, Steve, and I stayed up until around 12:30. On our first trip to St Thomas, we had been introduced to reggae and blues digital music channels, and these had become the soundtrack of the trip. Now, we have digital music channels via cable TV at home. We love the blues channel, and we recorded about 6 hours worth of it on a video tape before leaving for the trip. We popped the tape into the little TV/VCR combo and listened to the blues until bed. |
      |
|
 |
|
 |
