We had to pack up all our luggage because when extending our stay we were told we would have to move to another room. We didn't know what room that would be. We left our packed bags in our room, with a note about the food in the refrigerator, for the staff to move for us.

Liz stayed at the Westin -- a day at the pool.

Beth and I went snorkeling at Waterlemon Cay.

We hitchhiked from the Westin. Our first ride was from a couple who had already snorkeled at Waterlemon and were now headed to Caneel Bay. The woman was a hospital administrator for a non-profit in Connecticut that cared for AIDS patients.

Our second ride was from a man in a work pickup truck. Beth rode in the front with the driver, and I sat in the back. I was going to stand and hold onto the railing, but he called back to me, "Mike, you gotta sit down or I'll get a ticket." (He knows my name, I noticed.) He and Beth talked about Farah Fawcett's and Michael Jackson's deaths. He drove us to Peter Bay, where we could see and hear house construction going on up the mountainside.

Our third ride was from a middle-aged lady with a young boy. I sat in front and Beth was in the back seat with the boy. At one point, the boy surprised me by putting his hand on my shoulder. I think he wanted to tell me something -- I don't remember. Beth told me afterwards that he "mauled" her the whole way, all touchy and grabby, and with his finger in his nose. The lady dropped us at Cinnamon Bay, where she was having a family gathering.

The roadway was rather quiet. A taxi to the Leinster trail probably wouldn't be too bad from this point, we thought, so besides sticking our thumbs out, we decided to flag any taxi that passed and ask what it would cost. Very soon, a taxi appeared, and he said $5, so we hopped in. He took us past Maho and Mary Creek, to the point where the road turns inland toward the Annaberg ruins and ends. We were at the Leinster Bay trailhead.

From there we walked. The trail followed the shoreline closely, sometimes right beside the rocky shoreline itself, other times under a canopy of small trees along the shore. We walked for a while.

When we came around Annaberg Point, the shoreline leading to Waterlemon was revealed ahead of us. I pointed out to Beth the point we were heading to, the same place we went last year, the point on the shore closest to the cay. She looked and said under her breath, "You've got to be kidding." She was tired today, and we were only a third of the way along the trail.

We reached the woods behind the sand beach, and I saw some snorkelers ashore. They told us they'd seen turtles just off the beach. We went past the sand beach. The Johnny Horn trail branched off to the right and climbed up into the hills. We cut to the left and came out onto the rocky shoreline.

Pelicans were diving for fish. We picked our way over the rocks, past other snorkelers or their gear, to a big rock that I thought might be the same one we parked on last year. We put down our gear and pulled out the big portobello mushroom sandwich from the Mango Deli and split it.

As we ate, we watched water wash rhythmically through the rocks and snorkelers glide through the water between the shore and the cay.

It was 12:00 noon when we started putting on our snorkeling gear. I hung my backpack -- with our cameras inside -- from a tree branch with a cable lock.

We picked our way around the scattered stumps of coral in the shallow water and started snorkeling toward the cay. In water about 20 feet deep, we saw a small, dark ray about 2 feet long, moving along the bottom. Beth's mask was fogging and she wasn't seeing very well.

Very soon after the ray passed, we saw two large turtles, each about 3 feet long, swimming along the bottom. One turtle had a yellow fish (sharksucker?) on its side, hitching a ride. We stopped swimming and watched them awhile.

A current seemed to be moving counterclockwise around the cay. We drifted away from the cay whenever we stopped.

Beth stopped to clear her mask. It was fogging up and leaking. She needed to rest, so we headed for the sandbar jutting out from the near side of the cay. The water became very shallow -- hardly more than a foot deep -- approaching the sandbar. I swam most of the way through the shallows, then clambered up onto the sandbar in my fins. Beth was walking in slowly from father out. The bottom was stony and we wore our fins when walking in the water.

I waited for her. There was a breeze. I was cold. Some other snorkelers were on the sandbar. They said there were beautiful "cathedral-like rock formations" at the far end of the cay. A lady asked me, "Did you see the 10-foot spotted ray?" I asked her where she saw it, and she pointed toward the area we had just swam through. We just weren't there at the right time.

Beth and I continued snorkeling along the left side of the cay. There was a huge school of fry swimming in formation. Some large (1 foot) silver fish swam around the school of fry. Occasionally one of the bigger fish would dart into the fry. I assumed the bigger fish were feeding on the fry, but it was all too fast for me to actually see anybody getting eaten.

There was lots of coral. We were nearing the far end of the cay.

Beth stopped several times and took off her mask to clear it. Every time we stopped, we drifted away from the cay. When I stopped, Beth said, "Go on, go on." But I said we should stick together. I knew she was tired and saw she was having a lot of trouble with her mask.

The current was getting stronger. I said to Beth, "Let's go back." She agreed, so we turned back toward the sandbar. I started back. I looked to one side of me and the other for Beth, and not seeing her, stopped and bobbed up. She was far behind me.

Beth saw me and called, "Mike, help!" I quickly swam back to her. She was a little panicky. "I'm stuck. I can't move." She thought her life vest was caught on something. I looked underwater and saw nothing around her.

"You're not caught. It's the current," I said. I could see the surface of the water rippling with the current. One area of water seemed to be moving one way, while another was moving more or less crosswise against it. Where the two currents met, I could see a kind of "seam" on the surface.

"Just breath and kick!" I said to Beth. We dunked under and started working against the current. I put my hand on the small of her back and pushed, probably not helping much except for moral support -- but it felt good to be in contact, stick together.

It was like swimming in a swim tank, working hard but not getting anywhere. We began to make slow progress and gradually overcame the current. We were winded and breathing hard through our snorkels.

Coral and rocky shoreline everywhere to our left, but then I saw a little sandy patch among the coral. We were able to stand up there. We stood in the water, maybe waist-deep, catching our breath and calming down. The rocky shoreline of the cay rose in front of us. It wouldn't be easy but, I said to Beth, we could try to climb up there. Beth said, no, we could swim around to the sand.

We wound around pedestals of coral, making our way toward the sandbar.

When we got to the sandbar, we climbed ashore and sat down on a rock and rested. After a while, we continued our swim to the shore. We were feeling more at ease, the current wasn't so strong here. I suggested we veer to the left into the grassy area and see if we could find any more big critters. But we didn't find any.

It was ten minutes to 2:00 when we reached land. We'd been out almost two hours, with a couple short rests. Beth never complained. We packed up our gear. I stepped in closer to the dense bushes to change out of my wet trunks -- barely out of sight of anyone on the shore, but probably in plain view of anyone in the water. (They had their faces in the water anyway.)

"You saved my life!" Beth said to me. It was an exaggeration, but it was our scariest moment. It was good to have a buddy out there in the wet wilderness. If the current had been stronger, we would have had to go a different way, maybe continue around the cay and come around the other side.

We walked back down the Leinster Bay trail to the road, where we stopped for a snack and restroom break. A tour taxi stopped there; the driver pointed out Tortola in the distance to his passengers; ten seconds later, he drove on. Another tour taxi came, and the driver let his lucky passengers get out for a minute.

The water to our left, in Mary Creek (it's a long, narrow bay but it's called Mary Creek), looked as shallow as a puddle. There was a big rock on the shore there, good for sitting on or leaning against and the only shade nearby, but we were wary of some bright red ant-like bugs that were busy on the ground around there. Some of them seemed to be carrying comrades butt-to-butt, like a truck towing a car, going about their way.

We started sticking our thumbs out right there, at the end of the stone wall, but saw that we were missing out on traffic leaving from a parking lot a little farther down the road, so we walked down just past the parking lot.

A young guy and gal in a small rental Jeep stopped and offered us a ride. The guy pulled a lawn chair out of the back seat to make room for us and tried to cram it in behind the back seat from the back window, but it didn't seem to fit there. So Beth and I squeezed ourselves into the back seat with all our gear. Beth had to sit cross-legged behind the driver's seat, and I had to hold the lawn chair in front of me. But we didn't mind and were grateful for the ride.

The guy told us they had been hitchhiking just yesterday -- for the first time in their lives. And Beth and I were the first hitchhikers he had ever picked up. He was nice enough to drive us all the way to Mongoose Junction, dropping off his girlfriend along the way because, he explained, she had to get dressed for the beach anyway.

Beth and I went into the Friends of the Virgin Islands National Park (Friends VINP) store. We each bought a necklace with a replica of Taino Indian artifacts excavated from Cinnamon Bay. The face on Beth's necklace was called "Wild," after the last name of the archeologist who found it. Mine was called "Bill," for another archeologist.

We walked just past Mongoose Junction to "I Scream" and ordered smoothies. The heavyset black woman behind the counter was nice but complained about the heat. "Oh, it's so hot!" I asked for water. She brought bottled water. I said, can I just have some tap water instead? She warned that the tap water was not good to drink, so I let it go. Beth and I sat there and sipped our smoothies.

A young white man from the bar or restaurant next door ran out and sprayed a chicken with a spray bottle. The lady scolded him, "Leave those chickens alone!"

"They're on my tables!" he countered.

"They're not your tables."

"My customer's tables. I'm going to spray them with ammonia!"

Beth sympathized with the woman, saying to her, "They're not hurting anyone."

We took a taxi back to the Westin. I liked the music the driver was playing. When we were paying him, I asked what kind of music it was. "Broken calypso," he said. The band was Cool Session Brass. (I later identified the song that caught my attention: "Big Gyal Rule.")

Beth and I asked for new room keys at the desk. The man there asked for our IDs, checked his computer, then said he couldn't give us keys because neither of our names were on the reservation.

I phoned Liz and left a message, but then we found her at the pool. We were in our same old room after all, and Liz had our new card keys in the room. We all walked back together.

The three of us went to the Mango Deli for pizzas for dinner. We sat and ate at a table outside. A fearless little chicken walked right up, looking to us for crumbs.

Beth bought me key lime pie from the deli.