We had hoped to do laundry close to the hotel and then be free to go to Road Town for the day, but we were told there was no laundromat we could walk to. There was one by the gas station, a mile up the steep hill that goes over the mountain to the south coast. I suggested we do our laundry in Road Town. We anticipated the burden of having to carry our laundry around while shopping, but we glossed over it. I didn't anticipate that we'd be hot and tired after doing laundry and just want to return to the hotel and get our second wind.

South Shore Road, the now-familiar taxi ride to Road Town

So we went to Road Town but didn't spend the time shopping and sightseeing that we'd intended to. Dave's Taxi drove us to a laundromat. We put our clothes in the washers.

The laundromat had a doorway marked "Employees Only." Later we would stop at the doorway and ask the lady in charge for change. She would gesture us in, and we would enter the forbidden area and get change from her.

The washroom in the laundromat had a sink but no running water. Beth and I went in search of a washroom with the basics.

Next door was a grocery store. We went in and walked all around but didn't see a washroom.

We crossed the street to a coffee shop, more like a coffee counter, with pictures in dusty cardboard boxes in the back of the shop. Through one doorway in back it looked like a stockroom and had an "Employees Only" sign. Through the other doorway it looked like an office -- we saw a desk. The lady behind the counter was talking on the phone, and we didn't wait. We just left.

We asked some men on the corner where we could find a washroom. They said three buildings back and upstairs there was a restaurant. We found the restaurant, but it was closed. It was still mid-morning.

At the other corner was a gas station.

On the way there, Beth spied a donkey and had to get a picture. She asked the small man holding the donkey's reins if she could take a picture. "Who are you?" he asked suspiciously. Just tourists. "What you give me?"

How about a dollar? "Two." Beth paid him and expected him to step aside, out of the picture, but he remained next to the donkey. "Get on," he said. No way! Beth just stood on the other side of the donkey, and I took some pictures of them.

When I was done shooting, he gestured me over. Now it was my turn, and Beth shot me with the donkey -- and the man, of course. He was giving us our money's worth.

As we walked away, Beth heard another man, who had been standing nearby, chew out the small man -- for charging us, Beth thought.

We continued on. At the gas station, we found no toilet paper, no soap, no paper towels, and barely a dribble from the faucet.

So we crossed two streets, kitty-corner, and entered a building where there was a pharmacy. Before we entered the pharmacy proper - we could see it was very small - a woman who appeared to be East Indian asked, "Can I help you?" She directed us to a department store that had washrooms.

We went through the hallway, out the back door, across the street, around the corner, and across a parking lot to Bolo's Department Store. We walked around inside and then asked a clerk. Washrooms were on the second floor, she told us.

The closet-size men's room was hot. Graffiti covered the inside of the door. There was running water, soap, paper towels.

Along Main Street, Road Town

Meanwhile, Liz was wondering where in the world we were. All she knew was we had gone next door to the grocery to use the washroom. She went next door and asked someone if they had seen "a tall blonde man and a blonde woman" who had used the washroom. Liz was shown the washroom, and of course we weren't there. (We hadn't asked anyone in the grocery store for a washroom. That, it seems, was where we went wrong.)

When we got back to the laundromat, we unraveled to Liz the story of our Washroom Odyssey.

We left our laundry spinning in the machines, and the three of us walked up to Main Street, a block away. After a short walk down Main Street, Beth and I let Liz go shopping and exploring further, and we returned to the laundromat. Near the laundromat, Beth and I saw the man riding away down the street on his donkey.

A lady doing her laundry gave us a tip on the best dryer, one that dried the quickest. She saw me eating a rice cake and said she'd seen people eating them before but had never tried one. I gave her and her 3-year-old daughter rice cakes. Afterwards, the 3-year-old came back to me again and again - very cute - saying, "Can I have more?" So I kept giving her more.

We had to muster quarters for the machines. I put three quarters on the table to have them handy. When the little girl saw them - they were at eye level and in easy reach - she took them. I said to Beth, "Hey, she took our quarters."

Beth calmly asked the little girl, "Did you take our quarters?" She shook her head "no." I was standing behind and nodded my head "yes" to Beth. Beth said gently, "We need them. Give them back" - and she did. (We immediately forgave her; she was only 3 years old; she may not have even realized that the quarters belonged to us.)

Later, Beth said the mother scolded her daughter outside the laundromat. Beth thought it was for continuing to ask for rice cakes. We didn't think she knew anything about the quarters incident.

Liz returned, and we packed up our laundry into our bags.

Liz on Main Street

Serendipity Bookstore

Liz took Beth and me down Main Street to a bookstore she had found, Serendipity Bookstore & Internet Café. I gave the girl inside two books. She thanked me and said she liked poetry. We didn't browse, just left.

Then we went to an art gallery down the street. We stood in a room with a dozen or so paintings by different artists. Liz said, let's each pick out our favorite and then see if we can guess each other's favorite. Beth and I both guessed Liz's, a large, expressionistic painting of three snazzy men. I guessed Beth's, a still life. I selected three favorites, abstracts, without ranking them. Neither Beth nor Liz guessed any of the three.

We spent some time talking to one of the ladies in the gallery. She told us it's cheaper to flag down a taxi on the street than to call for one.

After that we went back to the Rite Aid next to the laundromat to pick up groceries before heading back to the hotel. We shopped. Liz checked out. Beth got in line. I got in line. Beth had technical difficulties paying with a traveler's check. So did I. Finally Beth's transaction was done. I waited, probably ten minutes, while a manager worked with the cashier to figure out how to ring up my checks. The register key meant for traveler's checks was not programmed for traveler's checks. She eventually rang one check up as a personal check, and then the register wouldn't accept the second check. "Why don't you just ring it up as cash?" I suggested, and so she did.

When I finally got out of the store, Liz looked very discouraged. Some men hanging around had asked her if she wanted a taxi. She said yes. Then the men said all the bags would cost extra.

I remembered what the lady in the art gallery had said. "Let's just flag one down on the street." About five seconds later, a taxi stopped in front of me, and I asked him how much to Sebastian's. $30. "No, too much," and I started to walk away, fully intending to flag down another. The driver immediately said $25. "OK," I said, and we piled in with all our laundry and groceries.

With tips, we ended up giving him $29. We would have made it $30 (just like the trip out) but I thought $29 would make a point.

Lunch at Sebastian's

Beth and Liz on the way to our room on the second floor

We had lunch at Sebastian's, on the porch overlooking the beach. Liz had a burger, which she liked. Beth and I each had tasty, tangy veggie wraps, which we really liked, too. After lunch, Liz decided to take a nap. Beth and I decided to snorkel right there at Little Apple Bay. We went back to the room and got ready.

We started at the west end of the beach, near the rocks. A school of thousands of little fish swam in unison past us. We were mesmerized. We snorkeled almost as far as the restaurant and then back again. Along the way we saw scattered little families, maybe one or two 2-inch fish with a bunch of 1-inch fish in each family.

When we got out, we found that the tide had moved in and touched our beach bags. We hung around the rocks piled up against the sea wall under the villas. Beth said that a gull was eating what looked like a dead animal. A moment later, I found the half-eaten flesh taken by the surf. With a stick I fished it out of the water and identified a lizard's leg in the mess. I was going to fling it back to the gull, but he had flown away. I put it on a rock, hoping he'd find it later.

I climbed on the rocks and looked at the flotsam from the sea: sea fans, human litter, a large, dried coconut. I threw large rocks on the coconut to break it open - until I saw it was infested with ants. The inside of a smaller, dried coconut was black, rotted-away. Life and death on the beach.

I handed a green coconut to Beth, because she had been teasing me about climbing a tree to get one for her. I think it was the tree climbing, not the coconut, she wanted.

Liz was still napping when we returned to the room but was up before we finished taking showers.

We planned a trip tomorrow to Anegada, so I went to the hotel desk to ask if they'd heard a weather report. The lady at the desk smiled, "We don't listen to weather reports. We wake up and if it's sunny, it's sunny, if it's rainy, it's rainy. Don't worry, it will be a nice day."