St. John, January 2006
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I ran out of time to make sandwiches for the road. In a last-minute rush, I impulsively stuffed the whole loaf of dense, nutty bread into my carry-on bag. A lucky move, because I didn't anticipate I'd be living off that loaf for the next 24 hours. I took a taxi to the student union and caught a bus to O'Hare Airport. At the union, a young woman lingered outside the bus, hugging and kissing her boyfriend, before boarding. She sat behind me and quietly sobbed during the trip. She talked quietly on her phone a while then asked me if she could use my phone briefly after hers died. When she returned my phone, I asked if she was going to be alright, and I gave her my poetry book to read. Although it wasn't a cheering book, I thought it would distract her a while. She looked brave when we exited the bus. From O'Hare, I took a taxi to my parents' apartment and stayed overnight. Saturday: 2400 Miles Away Back to O'Hare. Flight to San Juan. Swooping over San Juan, I saw scattered dilapidated high-rises and rusty rooftops. Connecting flight to St. Thomas. I peeled off layers of clothing as I got closer to my destination. In the crowded, open-door baggage area of Cyril King Airport, I looked for Angie, expecting her to have arrived first, but Liz called to me out of the crowd. While Liz guarded our luggage by an open doorway, I went back into the thick to search for Angie. The agent said her flight had just arrived, and I spotted her walking away toward the baggage area. I ran after her but peaked over her shoulder to be sure it was her before hugging her, lest some resembling stranger scream and have me arrested for assault. Angie should have been first to arrive, but her flight was plagued with delays - an hour to get through security, an hour on the runway, etc. We were ushered into a taxi that took us to the ferry at Charlotte Amalie. We clambered up to the top deck of the ferry for a choppy, bumpy 45-minute ride to St. John, which came into view as soon as we rounded the point. St. John: towering green out of the sea before us. St. John: pelicans, palm trees, bananaquits, mongooses, land crabs, cactuses, iguanas, wild donkeys, mendicant cats. And the dreaded gongola. At the dock in Cruz Bay, we were shepherded to a typical St. John kind of taxi - a pickup truck converted with open-air seating in back with a roof over it. We wound along the north coast, climbing steep hills with ocean vistas. The road seemed to rise at a near 45-degree grade in places, then descend as sharply. We snaked through the green forests like a roller coaster, slow on the steep parts and fast on the level stretches. The air was warm and fresh and salty.
White knuckles in the back of a taxi See St. John in 15 minutes : view from a speeding taxi We arrived at the resort, Maho Bay Camp, a little before sunset. The accommodations were eco-tents and eco-studios, with solar-generated electricity, scattered across the wooded hillside and linked by wooden stairs and boardwalks. We registered and moved into our tent (for the first night only), about half way between the heart of the camp - registration cabin, information stand, store, ceramic and glassblowing workshops, pavilion and restaurant - and the foot of the camp - the sand beach of Little Maho Bay. We went down to the beach and into the clear, aquamarine water. Then to a delicious gourmet dinner in the pavilion. (Dinner for three, about $50.) We returned to the beach at dusk. The moon was full. We went to bed in our tent to the chatter of nocturnal tree frogs (which we heard everywhere each night but never saw) and crickets and the crash of the surf.
Our tent cottage : with beds and electricity, on a raised wooden platform Sunday: Baptism We went for a swim. Had breakfast at the restaurant and talked to Hamilton, a taxi driver, about his planned excursions to various beaches this week. Then we took the Goat Trail through the woods and down to Big Maho Bay, another beautiful sand beach with turquoise water. Back at Little Maho, Angie and I went for a short swim. Liz, Angie, and I caught a taxi to Cruz Bay for groceries. First, we had lunch at a deli in the Mongoose Junction shops. Then, while Liz went shopping, Angie and I went to the National Park Visitors' Center and looked at the 3-D topographical map of the island. We met up with Liz and hurried to the Starfish Market for groceries. To save time in the store, we split up like running backs in a ground game. Back outside we found it had begun raining. We walked in the light rain through the slick streets back to the taxi stand by the docks. We made it to the shelter of Frett's Maho Taxi (Christopher's taxi) in time to wait out a heavy downpour. We watched passersby until the ferry came in and Maho-bound passengers were loaded on our taxi.
Sudden downpour : dropping the plastic "window" on the side of the taxi Back at Maho, we moved our belongings from the tent to a Harmony studio much higher up on the hillside. We needed a camp map to get there: from Registration, up the stairs past the store, down Maho Street (a boardwalk), up the stairs around the pavilion, past the restaurant and up the stairs, left on Lizard Lane, right, up the stairs, left on Pea Hen Parkway, up stairs, up Morning Dove Pass (stairs), left on Lost Donkey Walkway, right, up the stairs, up more stairs, up more stairs, left on unnamed boardwalk, right, up stairs, across drive, up more stairs, up more stairs, left on boardwalk, then ... DOWN some stairs, to the lower unit of our duplex. Liz and I had agreed one thing we both wanted on this vacation was some much-needed physical exercise. We got our wish. There were over 450 stairs to climb from the beach up to our studio. From the studio, well over 200 stairs down to the restaurant, or about 300 to Registration. In a typical day, we made three roundtrips - between our studio and the beach, the restaurant, the store, etc. Easily 1,500 stairs a day, 10,000 in a week. (The camp store sells "I survived the stairs at Maho" T-shirts.)
Stairway to Harmony
Angie on Lizard Lane Our new home had a private bathroom, kitchenette, and
balcony with a high view of Francis Bay (including Little Maho Bay),
Mary Point, and Whistling Cay, but was too far for the sound of normal
surf to carry. At the pavilion after dark, there was an "Introduction to Maho Bay Camp" slide show and, behind the slide show, a sky show - flashes of lightning over the sea. More rain.
Monday: Northern Swell Breakfast in the studio (no toaster, so I microwaved frozen waffles - soggy, yet at the same time, surprising tough), coffee at the pavilion. Liz went to Cruz Bay for shopping. Angie and I walked the road to Francis Bay. An unusual Northern Swell brought high surf and strong undertows and roughed up the beaches on the northern side of the island, where the most beautiful and popular beaches are. Angie and I walked along the beach, dodging the bigger waves. We had not brought our swimsuits, so we ducked in the trees, stripped, and took a quick dip in the rough surf. We walked back to our studio. Bananaquits and other little birds came to the branches around our porch to beg for food - a habit they must have picked up from previous tenants. After lunch, we went "downstairs" to Little Maho and walked along the beach to the rocks separating Little Maho from Francis Bay. We started to climb the rocks to get a look at Francis beach, but the rocks were too sharp for our bare feet. Angie and I both had headaches and rested in lounge chairs on the porch. The late afternoon sun warmed my legs. When Liz returned we all went down to the restaurant for the complimentary dinner conceded to us for the grimy kitchen and porch furniture we found when we moved in. Angie had Mahi Mahi, Liz had steak, I had Creole King Fish stew. I went back to the studio with Angie, then returned to the pavilion to rejoin Liz for some live Reggae music. Liz introduced me to Pat and Jim, former Chicagoans living in Iowa, who sat with us.
The Caribe Tide leaves for St. Thomas Tuesday: Charlotte Amalie We missed Hamilton's taxi to Salt Pond Bay this morning. Salt Pond Bay, being on the south side of the island, would hardly be affected by the Northern Swell. Having coffee in the pavilion, I met Heath and Wendy, sitting at the next table. They told me about beaches they've visited. While Angie did laundry at the camp, Liz and I left for Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. We took Frett's taxi to the ferry in Cruz Bay. In the taxi, Nancy, a woman who had been to Maho Bay about 14 times in the last 20 years, was heading for the airport and home. She talked to some other passengers about transportation on the island - taking buses - and about the future of the land lease - ending in six years - at Maho Bay Camp. At the dock in Cruz Bay, we joined a swollen crowd of people and baggage standing in line for ferry tickets, then we stood in line to board. On the top deck of the Ferry, Liz sat next to Nancy, and I sat next to an intern from the Maho Bay Camp ceramics workshop. She was from Connecticut and had been living on St. John for several months. Her internship will continue through next summer. She was on her way to the airport to pick up her mother, and she recommended a restaurant, Cuzzins, in Charlotte Amalie. Liz and I got directions to Cuzzins from a man at dockside and went there for lunch. We had conch fritters, Mahi, and shrimp. It was good but not great - all deep-fried. Then we went to the open-air market by Emancipation Gardens Park and walked up and down the tightly-packed rows of tents with their cheap jewelry and clothing. I bought a cap for $5.00 (my only purchase of the day). Liz paid an old Rastafarian sitting by a tree to take his picture. Cabbies asked if we wanted a taxi "back to the ship," assuming we were cruise passengers. Across the street, we looked around the local folk art gallery. Then we headed down the main street and its shopping alleyways. Stopped in an art gallery on main street. Then into the quaint Royal Dane alleys, where we sat in a small quiet courtyard to share a snack bar. We spent some time in David Hill's gallery, where the artist himself was working on a painting. He stopped working to talk to us about some of his etchings and how they evolved. He flirts (or maybe sometimes has an affair) with the abstract but always depicts a clearly-discernable subject - like his brightly-colored seashore that, close up, looks like a neon nightmare but, blurring your eyes, melts into a shoreline mottled with brownish weedy rocks in perfectly realistic, muted colors. A very talented, enthusiastic, and friendly man. In another shop where Liz bought scarves, I admired the shelves and shelves of black and white Chulucanas (Peru) pottery of different shapes and geometric designs. We returned to St. John on a smaller ferryboat that pitched and kicked up spray and roared in our ears and spewed fumes. We spent a half hour in Cruz Bay before the taxi left and arrived at Maho Bay around sunset. Ate leftovers in our studio.
After dark, Angie and I attended a slide show in the pavilion, presented by a funny and entertaining National Park guy - about reef life, particularly about the animals of the reef that many people mistake for plants: coral, sponges, sea worms, etc. "If you go diving and see something amazing that you can't identify," he said, "the camp store has sea life books, but they're too expensive. Just say, 'I'm thinking of buying this book,' and look up what you need." "If you see something the next day that you can't identify, go back to the store and say, 'I'm still thinking of buying this book,' and look it up." At the studio, Liz, Angie, and I joked about our "beatnik" upstairs neighbors (an older couple, really rather conventional and affluent looking) and their "folk" music (someone was playing a guitar, and a woman was singing). Liz joked about the long pointed stick and two shorter sticks (of unknown function) leaning in the corner of our unit - that I can hold the neighbors down with the "spear" while Liz and Angie beat them with the "clubs." I called them our "neighbor sticks." Liz called them "persuaders." (The music was really quite pleasant and stopped before Quiet Time, anyway.-)
Salt Pond Bay 0.2 miles, Drunk Bay 0.6 miles
Wednesday: Salt Pond and Coral Bay Along with other Maho guests, we took Hamilton's taxi to Salt Pond Bay on the southeastern tip of the island. Hamilton dropped us off on the road, and we walked down the short trail to the beach. Angie and I snorkeled for a little while. We saw a long slender silver fish, about 3 feet long - barracuda? And small fish, some of them an indigo color. (Heath and Wendy snorkeled and saw a stingray.) Liz, Angie, and I walked a short trail over the dunes and along the pond where salt is harvested and where thousands of tiny flies basked in patches along part of the shoreline. We hurried past them, into the low shrubs, around towering cactuses, and climbed up to rocky Drunk Bay, with its dramatic plunging rock cliffs and violent surf. Rocks everywhere, big rocks and lots of small rocks. Then we noticed that the way some of the small stones were arranged, they looked like human figures - heads, arms, legs. We looked around and saw more figures, big and small. We turned around and saw they were everywhere, like a crowded arena, lone figures and groups, families with small children. Some simple figures, and some detailed - with eyes, hands, fingers, genitals. Leave your effigy in stone when you go. We had to hurry back to the road to catch a bus to sleepy Coral Bay for lunch. We ate at Island Blues, an open-air bar and restaurant on the waterfront. Liz had a blackened Snapper BLT, and Angie and I had jerked pork quesadillas. We went to some shops down the road. After browsing a while, Angie and I sat in the courtyard, between an open-air bar in the front and a café in the back, each playing its own recorded music - a sort of battle of the bands that clashed (pleasantly, not too loudly) in the middle. Some Beatles, some Stones, and "Dark Side of the Moon." The three of us loitered on the balcony outside the grocery store, one of us wandering off for a while, then another. Liz was developing a bad headache. Eventually it was time to wait for Hamilton to come by and pick us up on his way. We waited across the road from Island Blues - after I retrieved our leftovers from the restaurant - amid weeds and cars and junk. Hamilton came, we hopped aboard and rode back to Maho.
Coral Bay from our table at Island Blues
I went down to Little Maho beach and swam. The water was a little calmer, the beach had reclaimed a little more sand, and more people were on the beach and in the water. When Angie and I tramped down to the beach with a group of people after dark for the Stargazer presentation, the tide was coming in. Some people took their shoes off, rolled up their pants, and got wet. I didn't, and edged closer and closer to the treeline as the waves advanced. Scattered clouds temporarily obscured patches of sky before sliding off, but the stars were bright as our presenter pointed out the Milky Way, the Andromeda Galaxy, stars and constellations. Shortly, Angie and I went up to the pavilion to watch the beginning of "March of the Penguins."
Vacant beach house on Maho, and tougher-than-rock coconuts Thursday: Cinnamon Bay We had coffee at the pavilion. Angie brought me down to the dive shop to see the cats, who jumped in and out of the equipment return slot, two black and one tiger that we'd seen down there before, romping and tagging each other. (Maybe one of these was the black cat who was spellbound at a crab hole on the beach, groping in it up to his armpit.) We rejoined Liz and took the Goat Trail through the woods and down to Big Maho and walked along the beach. Tried to break open a coconut by throwing it against rocks - no luck for these city slickers. We continued walking, past Maho and up the road, over the shoulder of the mountain and around the road repair work, and down to Cinnamon Bay. Cinnamon Bay - a big, beautiful, windy beach with a smoothly meandering shoreline and a National Park campground. The day see-sawed between sun and rain. We walked along the shore to the east where the sand ended in a rocky heap. We jumped into the water and body surfed, the waves rolling us like dough on a plate of sugar. I was well sugar-coated: sand in my hair, sand on my face and in my trunks, pockets full of sand. On our way back to our spot in the sand - by the driftwood and dead tree rooted in the sand below the waterline, we stopped in the beach shop. It began to rain. Angie hurried back to move our belongings to shelter under the trees. It began to pour. Liz and I waited it out in the shop. We lunched in the Cinnamon Bay restaurant pavilion and fed bits to the resident cats and kittens (before we sat down, some of the felines were up on an unattended table with their faces in plates of food); then we returned to the beach for more sea and sand. A bee stung me when I was putting on sunscreen. At the sugar plantation ruins across the road, Angie sat with our bags on an old stone construction while Liz and I looped through the woods on the nature trail. One sign showed a gongola - the dark brown millipede that can sting and cause temporary blindness - the same 3-inch-long bug Liz spotted previously on a railing at Maho Camp.
Cresting the shoulder of the mountain : pause on the way to Cinnamon Bay
Rocks at the end of Cinnamon Bay beach We hired a taxi back to Maho and had dinner in the pavilion. As usual, delicious all around, we agreed. After dark, Angie and I attended a slide presentation by the National Park shark lady, Carrie. Some sharks can grow 50,000 teeth over their lifetimes. Carrie used to feed sharks at an aquarium. One time, her mother came to watch through the glass. A shark bit her arm and got its teeth stuck in the chainmail she was wearing. Because of the chainmail, she was unhurt, but her mother was horrified when Carrie started thrashing around, trying to unhook the shark.
In the pavilion at Maho Bay Camp Friday: Maho Bay Beach In the morning, Liz went to Cruz Bay, and Angie and I went to Big Maho beach. We swam. We walked on the rocks along Maho Point. Angie turned back, but I kept going as far as I could without getting my sandals wet - almost to the tip of the point, where a pelican (one of the pelicans who fishes at Big Maho) was preening. I saw a sea urchin with white spikes, nestled in the rocks. Liz had just returned on the taxi when we ran into her by the registration cabin. After lunch, I visited the pottery workshop, then caught up with Angie and Liz at Big Maho beach. I swam across most of the beach, parallel to the shoreline. And I walked up and down the beach and took pictures. After Angie went back to camp, a large iguana joined Liz and me for some sunbathing in the sand.
Maho Bay beach
Proud iguana : 3 or 4 feet long, standing about 6 feet from me Angie and I had dinner at the pavilion. Later, Liz came and we shared our plentiful dinners with her. Then Isabel and Frank joined us at our table. They saw sea turtles, a nurse shark and a reef shark when snorkeling. They live in Manhattan. Frank is a marine geology scientist at Columbia. He studies river sedimentation - the Hudson estuary, for one. He is from northern Germany. Isabel is a sociology and media professor at Hunter College in Manhattan. Isabel said she gave her class an assignment to spend a week without television. The assignment led to the breakup of at least one marriage (apparently watching TV together was all that had held the couple together). Then Isabel unhesitatingly admitted she enjoys television, and we talked about favorite shows. Keep the TV if I can have St. John.
Saturday and Sunday: Epilogue I got up at 4:00 a.m. (2:00 a.m. Central Time). I ate some granola and finished packing, with a bag of dirty laundry in my suitcase. Said goodbye to Liz, whom I could not help but wake up, being in a one-room studio. By flashlight, Angie walked me partway down the dark driveway. (Yesterday, I made arrangements for Christopher to pick me up at 5:00 this morning - at the end of the Harmony Studios driveway so I wouldn't have to lug my luggage all the way down to the usual pickup point by Registration.) I phoned Christopher at 5:00 from the bottom of the Harmony driveway. No answer. I took my carry-on bags down to Registration (where he'd be checking for any other passengers) and called him again. No answer. Time was passing before the first ferry. I decided to call the taxi dispatcher and get another cab. He said someone named Claudius was on the way. So I hauled my suitcase down to Registration, too. Claudius came; I hopped into the back of the truck. He rolled down hills and sped over level road. The cool night air whipping through my hair felt good. I had no bearings in the pitch dark. I wondered if he was going the right way, or if we were going to circle the wrong way around the entire island, scouring it for additional passengers, and get to the ferry two hours late. West 20 said the sign, the only meaningful thing that appeared out of the dark woods. Shouldn't we be going east? No - west - that's right. We pulled into the Cinnamon Bay parking lot - no one was waiting there, so Claudius pulled right back out on the highway. At that moment, I recognized Prett's Maho taxi (Christopher) go by, headed towards Maho. So Christopher would have been 40 minutes late picking me up, and I didn't feel bad about calling another taxi. A dozen or so people sat in the waiting area on the ferry dock. Finally a woman announced that we would have to go to the Customs dock to board the ferry because someone had forgotten the key to the ferry dock gate. We lugged our baggage across the parking lot to Customs. A barge with garbage trucks pulled out of the channel, and the ferry pulled in. It was after 6:00 and still dark. The ferry to Red Hook is shorter than the one to Charlotte Amalie, but the taxi ride to the airport is longer from Red Hook. I piled into the airport-bound taxi with the other dispirited tourists. We drove on in the dawn, eventually passed through Charlotte Amalie, and soon afterwards were at the airport. Lines for checking in and going through Security and Customs were almost nonexistent. I'd certainly beaten the crowd. Before I knew it I was sitting in the airport cafeteria with a $2.60 cup of bad coffee and over two hours before my flight. In the waiting area, I closed my eyes to rest and tried to shut out the usual bad news on the televisions. "Flew into Miami Beach BOAC, didn't get to bed last night …" I was fighting a bad headache by the time I got to Miami. Had lunch in an airport restaurant with a swordfish mounted on the wall and customers packed in like sardines. I sat at the bar with a hefty burger and a dubious tomato slice - road food. Then hurried to the opposite end of the airport (almost to the other end of Miami, too) to make my connection. A radar power outage around O'Hare delayed us briefly before landing (it was not a good sign when we made a right turn over Lake Michigan). I wanted to catch the next bus to Madison, so I hurried to baggage claim, and waited. Some people from our flight got their bags, I think. Others waited. Started looking around at other conveyors. Started mumbling. Started looking at each other. We waited an hour. No bags. An airline employee appeared and scanned some of the tags on the bags going round and round, the bags that seemed to belong to no one. People went over to the Baggage Service desk to file claims. I got in line, a long line, there. It didn't move. I left. I called a cab and spent the night at my parents'. I learned my father had been in the hospital two nights before; one doctor suggested a pacemaker, another said not yet. The next morning, I had breakfast with my parents at IHOP on the way back to O'Hare. Some black customers at another table spoke in Caribbean accents. At the airport, my suitcase with the dirty, damp laundry was waiting at Baggage Service. I caught my regional bus. A pilot and I were the only passengers; along the way he got off and two women got on. Madison. I huddled in my layers of shirts and light jacket as I waited in the wintry Wisconsin air for a city bus to take me the last few miles home.
Friends of Virgin Islands National Park The Friends of Virgin Islands National Park is dedicated to the protection and preservation of the natural and cultural resources of Virgin Islands National Park and promotes the responsible enjoyment of this unique national treasure.
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