When we got out of the taxi, I think we were corralled into taking the 11:15 ferry instead of the 11:00 with a different ferry company, although we didn't realize it at the time. A man told our driver the name of the 11:15 ferry company, and he relayed it to us. I think we asked specifically for that ferry at the ticket counter.

We bought our tickets for the 11:15. Beforehand, we had thought the ferry was at 11:00, not realizing there were two ferry companies running around the same time. By the time the 11:00 started boarding, we knew. Liz or Beth asked at the ticket counter and was told that the 11:00 cost $1 more than the 11:15. So we let it go.

Liz and Beth took turns wandering outside. Liz found a man lying under the window outside, unconscious. I was just on the other side of the window, sitting on a bench in the station and eating leftover pizza.

When the 11:15 was called, we went through the metal detector at the customs gate. The customs lady bitched at me because I had to empty all the stuff out of my cargo shorts. "You should have done that before!"

Out on the dock, we waited with the crowd while the ship unloaded cargo, pulled up, turned and backed stern-first up to the dock. Then we boarded.

We sat on the top deck in the sun. We chugged out of West End -- Tortola on our right and Soper's Hole, Frenchman's Cay, on our left -- passed a small, uninhabited island with a sand beach, and very soon St. John was on our left. We sailed around to Cruz Bay and landed at the US Customs dock.

We lined up along the building and passed through Customs quickly.

We found Frett's taxi. A woman named Sonia was the driver. She agreed to take our big luggage to Maho without us for $2 per bag. That freed us up to go grocery shopping. (Beth and I kept our smaller wheeled luggage.)

We walked to Starfish Market. Beth and I were able to leave our luggage at the Customer Service desk. Each of us ran around the supermarket, shopping - rice cakes, juice, bananas, etc.

We checked out and sat in the mall a little while, making trips to the washrooms in turn. We stuffed our grocery bags into and on top of our luggage. Liz's sparkling water exploded, getting her shoulder bag wet.

We walked back through the streets, past the construction at a busy intersection, the shops, cafes, and bars, toward the dock.

Frett's taxi wasn't back yet, so we wandered around among the crowd in the small park across the street from the taxi stands, looking at the jewelry, clothing, and souvenirs in the vendors' tents.

When Frett's returned, we climbed into the open-air taxi and waited a while until the next ferry disembarked its passengers. Some more people got into the taxi.

We drove through the busy streets, past Mongoose Junction, and up the big hill onto the North Shore Road. It was late afternoon.

When we came to a stop at Maho Camp, I made a beeline for the registration desk, forgetting all about paying Mr. Frett. (Later, Liz and Beth told me they were mad at Frett because he had quoted a cheaper rate and then upped it after we arrived.)

We didn't get our old tent and had to take our second choice, just downhill from our old tent. The young lady at the desk told me they had had unusually heavy rain last week, and so there were a lot of mosquitoes.

(I remember seeing a notice on the bulletin board about coping with the mosquito problem. It said that swatting them at least had psychological benefit -- "retribution.")

The mosquitoes were fierce. We had to move in and unpack, but we had to slather ourselves with insect repellent pretty soon, too.

In the tent, we found clumps of dirt on the windowsills. Maybe the heavy rains had washed gunk down from the trees and roof. Beth swept them off with a broom. There were holes in the screens. Beth got duct tape from the office and patched up some of the holes. (But there were still gaps between the doors and door frames, and in the floorboards.)

It was hot and humid. I had to run down to the beach for a quick dip to cool off and get the sweat off. I temporarily escaped the mosquitoes during the brief time I was in the water. (But later Liz said she took a dip to escape them, and they followed her into the water.)

After some settling into our tent (I had barely begun to unpack), we moseyed up to the store, where I dropped two books into an empty space in the bookshelves (reverse shoplifting - shopdropping). By the Activities desk, I put our names on the sign-up sheets for Hamilton's taxi trips to Salt Pond Bay and Haulover Bay later in the week.

We continued up to the Pavilion for dinner. Beth said she was not going to pay $17 for a bowl of rice, the vegetarian option for the evening. Liz just got a salad. I got the rice bowl, and it was such a large portion, I split it with Beth (we split the cost, too). Beth said the rice was better than she expected. We swatted mosquitoes as we ate, which didn't make for a leisurely dinner. "There's one on your forehead!" We ate and got out.

Back down in the tent, I was hardly unpacked or organized. I pulled out food and toiletries and started putting them helter-skelter on shelves, but somehow my head or my heart wasn't helping. The mosquitoes, the humidity, and the dirt threw us off balance.

I said to Beth I didn't see how we could be prepared, logistically or psychologically, to go off early the next morning for a full day's outing on the National Park's guided Reef Bay hike. We decided to forget it. It was my third trip to St. John and the third time canceling plans for that hike.

We got ready for bed. We ended up in the same arrangement as last year, with Liz on the sofa, me in the bed by the porch, Beth in the other bed.

It was still hot and humid. We had one dirty fan. (The person at the desk told Beth to check back tomorrow about getting a second fan.) Liz sacrificed herself and said to point the fan toward the beds. We moved the table over by the electrical outlet, put the fan on the table, and turned it toward my bed. It blew little bugs onto my bed.

It was too hot and humid to sleep. Later in the night, the fan had cooled the top part of my body. But the other half against the bed felt clammy and wet. I tossed and turned and tried to sleep. Exhausted, I finally dozed a little before dawn.