The day after Easter, we decided to stay put in Maho Bay because we like it so much.
The mooring ball promised another solid nights sleep and piece of mind
without worrying about a breezy anchorage, not to mention the beach was really nice.
Mark took a jog early in the morning touring
the island at a brisk pace. Along his
run he jogged across some really unique boardwalk-like paths raised high above
the mangrove’s clustered roots then later over an old cobbled road laid down by the Danish.
He arrived back at the boat telling us he had
arranged a driver to take us on a tour of the island and take us to a local
grocery store where we could provision.
We were excited about the prospect of some
time on land. We grabbed our large
cooler and headed to shore in the dingy where David our driver was waiting for
us. David was born in NY, spent time
living in Florida, and much to the thrill of our teenagers, spoke without so
much of a hint of an island accent. They
were relieved to have someone they could easily understand. Of the many words they had to decipher during our time sailing around the islands was the mysterious word "TREE". The first several times they heard it I would stand behind the person talking and hold up THREE fingers in an effort to translate the word for them.
As we drove though the island, it quickly became apparent that our driver knew everyone on the
island. Everyone waved or honked at him.
Our teenagers were even more impressed when David got on his cell phone and ordered them burgers from a local cooking shack
and then drove them strait there to pick them up.
Mark and I didn’t come to the islands for American food so we grabbed the kid's burgers on the run and David drove us father inland for lunch at Etta’s.
Etta's and the Burger Shack were the first of "tree" stops we would make on our tour of the island.
Etta, along with her twin sister Betta, run the
most delicious little food place on the whole island. David told us that on St. John it is hard to
find local food that doesn’t have outside influences infused into the
dishes. But Etta’s cooking was pure
island food. Their cooking was just as savory as their humor--Betta reminding us that she was the favored twin by her parents who revealed it by their name choice for her. Etta and Betta had known David since he was
a young boy and bantered freely with him.
Mark and I joined the fray and these spunky sisters enlivened our
afternoon with amazing food and hearty laughs. (I took a picture with them but it's on my cell phone which was left in Puerto Rico. I've located the phone but the airline is in no hurry to mail it back. If it ever shows up, I'll post the pic. These sisters were awesome!)
The second stop on our island tour was the grocery
store. When all four of us walked into this market, we stopped in utter shock and stared with widened eyes. If
this portion of the post were to be filmed for your viewing pleasure, this scene, the one in which we
enter the grocery store, would be accompanied by the delightful angelic
soundtrack of Heavenly Choirs. And you would see the five of us standing there in transfixed with awe.
The air conditioning was luxurious. Almost too cold for our sunbaked bodies--though Severin was happy to be enveloped in more Oregon-like temperatures. We stood with mouths agape before neatly packed shelves full of real
food. And by real I mean the fake
American stuff. Oreo’s, Doritos, and
mile high stacks of Root beer cans (root beer is almost extinct here on
the islands). Sev even found packages of those nasty circus peanuts and was overjoyed. The kids weren't the only ones basking in the abundance. I was prancing around doing the happy dance among the selection
of fresh baked goods and Mark was overwhelmed by the abundance of fresh fruits and
vegetables in the produce section. Our family skipped gleefully
through the aisles as if we had been living like the shipwrecked Robinson family. It was rather pathetic seeing how we'd only been away for two weeks.
This grocery store was posh by island standards, actually, it was posh by American standards and we were on cloud nine--which is better than cloud "tree".
With our bellies full of lunch and our cooler
full of food, we packed back into David’s open air tour bus to explore the
island. Thankfully we sat beneath a
shady rooftop and the breeze circulated while we drove and kept us from the smoldering heat. We made a stop at the local Middle
School where David Jr. was just getting out of school. He father asked him if he wanted a ride home
and David Jr. reluctantly got in.
At first he was really quiet so as not to
disturb his father’s tour-in-progress but both Sev and Connor started talking
to him about Baseball and Basketball and he lit right up. Soon the "tree" boys were fast friends and by the time we
neared their house David Jr. opted to stay for the remainder of our tour instead of going home.
He began giving his dad a run for his money
by pointing out both the finer and less finer aspects of the island along our tour route. He sounded professional and was every bit as
good as David Sr., perhaps more so, as little David offered bonus
information not on the regular tour. He pointed to the road that drag racers used to illegally race their cars, the location
of the local jail, and the best place to get your car fixed or stop for a smoothie.
David Jr. giving us the full tour
Later he and his father showed us one of the old sugar
plantations on the island.
David Jr. was so awesome that at the conclusion of
our tour we not only paid his father but made sure we gave him a nice tip as well. With that we headed back down the beach to
our dingy, Connor lugging the food laden cooler awkwardly through the throngs
of sun tanning beachgoers.
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