Ground Control to Major Tom . . . January 11

David Bowie

1947-2016

Gone, but not forgotten

The US Virgin Islands are sort of the US and sort of not. My cell phone works here. The people here are citizens, I think, but they can't vote. They drive on the left side of the road, but most of the cars are like American cars, with steering wheels on the left side.

I had a lot of bad karma today, but I won't go into it. For some reason, a lot of different things, all day long, didn't go well. They were all fairly trivial - nothing to worry about.

We woke up in Charlotte Amalie. Who was she? I think she was a Danish princess. When we were in Copenhagen we saw a Charlotte Amalie Palace, if I recall correctly. I'll try to remember to look it up later. 

Charlotte Amalie is the capital and it is on the island of St. Thomas. The other islands which make up the US Virgin Islands are St. John and St. Croix. Auto-correct prefers St. Croissant. It's not a bad idea.

Our destination today was Magens Bay. It is on the other side of the island from Charlotte Amalie. We went up and down a narrow winding road in a "safari". 

This is a "safari," but it is much nicer than the one we were in. This one is new and has seats that are not torn and a microphone that works.

We stopped at a lookout known as Drake's Seat. It is said that Sir Francis Drake would sit there and watch for ships he could attack and plunder. He was a privateer, which is a nice way to say he was a pirate working for the British government.

Magens Bay, as seen from Drake's Seat.

Magens Bay is supposed to be one of the top ten beaches in the world according to National Geographic. What makes it so special is azure water, fine sand, a horseshoe bay, and national park status that has restricted development.

What makes it not so special is going there on a day when there are more than three ships in port.

After a couple of hours at the beach we went back to Charlotte Amalie.

There are more jewelry stores per square foot there then anywhere else in the world, I would hazard to guess. I was not in the mood for jewelry, so we stopped for lunch at the first place we saw. This was probably not the best way to go about it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. We sat in a sidewalk cafe in an alley. The alleys are nice little pedestrian shopping alleys. There was a breeze, and the noise and fumes of motorized traffic did not reach us. We had refreshing tropical drinks and panini sandwiches.

This is what a mango daiquiri with practically no rum looks like. On the left is a rum punch, which did contain some rum.

We walked around some of the alleys and streets for a while and then sought out our safari transportation back to the ship. After some confusion we found the place where we were supposed to wait for the bus and someone who knew what was going on. At this time we learned that we were going to go back on an old junky looking boat.

The diesel fumes were pretty bad, but we got seats on top. It turned out that the boat trip was narrated, and it was rather enjoyable and probably much better than being on a safari stuck in traffic and listening to some obnoxious jerk behind us talking about all the money he has and why a whole busload of people who had to wait for him because he was late getting back are uptight.

We returned to the ship and relaxed on our wonderful, sunny balcony until it was time to sail. All aboard was at 4:30 and we were to sail at 5:00. At about 4:45 they started calling the names of those who were MIA. There were 6 or 7. They called a few minutes later, and the list was shorter. They called a few minutes after that and the list was down to one couple. 

We watched the longshoremen waiting for the order to cast off the ropes. A few minutes after 5 they did so. We wondered if the missing couple had returned when we were not looking, or if they had been aboard all along and had been located. We wondered if the ship would wait a few minutes for the couple. Once the ropes were releases the ship began to move away from the pier slowly. Just then two people came running through the terminal area and onto the pier. We had a good view of this dockside drama, but once they got to the pier and ran along the side of the ship, we weren't able to see them, so we didn't know if they made it before the gangway was pulled up. It seemed unlikely.

As the ship moved farther away from the dock it began to pull out into the harbor. Shortly we cleared the dock and could then clearly see a very empty dock . . . Except for the port agent and a two other people.

I thought I knew what bad karma was. Here is what it really looks like.