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December 17th, Saturday - St. Thomas, USVI
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The Fisher-Boyle family has been enjoying our time with
Gran and Gramps Fisher so much that it has been
difficult to find the time to write an update. Zia
is anchored a few hundred yards off the hotel beach and
we have been spending as much time as possible with mom
and dad.
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We
have been mostly hanging at the beach, but we did
venture off on the boat twice, once to Charlotte Amalie
to do some shopping, and once to enjoy the beaches on
St. John. The first trip was much more successful
than the second, although both were challenging in their
own way.
Commerce in the downtown area of Charlotte Amalie is
focused entirely on the cruise ship industry.
Jewelry stores, duty free liquor stores, and souvenir
stores lined Main Street. Open doors spit out a
blast of frosty air from the well-conditioned spaces
inside. Merchants hung out on the sidewalks in
front of their stores, enticing you to come inside.
Taxis asked if we were going back to the ship.
Tour guides offered us fabulous deals on island tours.
Dozens of ladies wanted to braid our little girls' hair.
The streets were throbbing with shoppers from the three
cavernous cruise ships docked in the harbor that day.
It was chaos. Within minutes all 6 of us were
ready to be out of there, but we had a mission and the
Zia crew was going to have one miserable Christmas if we
didn't accomplish it!
When in doubt, eat. We made our way to a quiet
restaurant off the main street. There was a
surprising lack of restaurants which we attributed to
the all-inclusive nature of the cruise packages.
Over lunch we came up with a plan. Joe would gas
the dinghy, and pick up the two-way radios we had
inadvertently left on the boat. We would meet him
at the dinghy dock and then regroup. In the mean
time, I went off to see what I could find for the girls
in the souvenir and clothing shops along Main Street.
Gran and Gramps supervised the girls as they spent their
accumulated fortunes on Christmas presents for friends
and family. After that marginally successful
foray, Joe and I appealed to Gran and Gramps to take the
girls for an hour and a half while we took the dollar
bus to K-Mart. We knew we could find the types of
gifts we needed for the girls there. Gramps was
skeptical about the dollar bus and our timeframe, but we
insisted. You would not believe how expensive
private taxi rides are here on St. Thomas. For the
six of us to go to Charlotte Amalie from the hotel, for
example, would have cost $72 one way. It was only
a 6 mile trip by water and couldn't be more than twice
that by land.
K-Mart was, well, K-Mart. We found everything we
wanted, or mostly everything. The dollar bus
dropped us off within two blocks of the store, picked us
up just across the street, and deposited us right in
front of our dinghy, all for, yes, $1 per person each
way. We were elated. Gran and Gramps had fun
watching the girls charm the ladies in the expensive
jewelry stores. "What is the cheapest thing you
have?" asks Juliana. After hemming and hawing the
salesperson finally asked how much she wanted to spend.
"Five dollars." That brought a chorus of giggles
from all the ladies working in the store. The
girls did manage to find lots of goodies to buy for the
various people on their Christmas lists. We all
climbed back into the dingy and back onboard Zia with a
feeling of accomplishment mingled with exhaustion.
Our next adventure with Gran and Gramps on Zia started
out quite promising. We had a nice mellow breeze
as we raised our sails and made our way past Christmas
Cove, through Current Hole and towards St. John.
We had set a course to Trunk Bay, which is part of the
National Park Service land that covers the entire
northern coast of the island. They maintain an
underwater snorkeling trail that we had heard was really
fun for the kids. Unfortunately, the swell was out
of the north which not only made the snorkeling cloudy
but the anchorage rolly. Rolly and Gran Fisher do
not go together. The minute we hooked up to the
mooring ball, things started to go bad. I was
inside putting together a lunch buffet so I didn't
notice until it was too late. I beseeched mom to
hop in the water, and this did make her feel better, but
only for as long as she was swimming. The minute
she got back onboard, she started feeling queasy again.
She had weathered the trip to Charlotte Amalie
perfectly, so I guess we all were operating under a
false sense of security when it came to her seasick
tendencies. She had been taking Dramamine for the
last few days and we figured she would be fine. No
such luck. We hightailed it out of there as
quickly as we could and deposited her back at the hotel
to try to recover. We all felt bad to see her so
miserable but were extremely impressed at her
willingness to give it a shot.
I
have had requests for warm tropical pictures, so I will
add a few from the past week, including one of Joe that
is quintessentially Jose.
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Lots of love,
Christy, Joe, Cassie and Juliana
Next entry
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Many thanks to our
friend Craig Homenko for his assistance in setting up
the website.
We also would like
to thank our buddy Scott Brunner who has been kind
enough to host the website on his server.
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