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Day 7; July 3rd – We eat our breakfast bars and decide to head to Magen’s Bay. We had not been here before, so we were all excited to see it! A lifeguard instructed us to snorkel on the far left side of the beach. 
This was THE BEST snorkeling I had all week, much to my surprise! Many, many schools of fish, barracudas, a school of what must have been tarpon (they were HUGE, 4 ft, gray/silver, big eyes, and rather “stupid” looking) and even a NURSE “FISH” (don’t tell HMG this was a nurse SHARK). This was GREAT! We hung out here a good 2 hours or so. Should have stayed longer (read on)! Stopped at Udder Delight for some ice cream cones for the kids and an Udder Delight shake for Mom. WOW! All that I had expected! Hit Drake’s Seat on the way back. 
I would show the rest of the pics from here, but they were accidentally deleted 🙁
On the trip back to Coki was the only rain we encountered the entire trip. We should have heeded this message from above, who knew this was foreshadowing (read on)? At any rate, Coki was PACKED with cars. We couldn’t find a spot near the beach, so we doubled-back up and down the hill to park on the side of the road. Mistake (read on)! The afternoon was great at Coki – this was formerly a favorite for all. We had lunch at a little beachside shack - - chicken kabob for me and jerk chicken sandwich for ODH. Notice I never say what the kids have, as it’s ALWAYS a cheeseburger! So, around 3:15 pm we head back to the car. It’s a little suspicious as we head down the hill in that a “kid” is hanging around the car behind ours and sets off their car alarm. He promptly runs away. Hmmm. We get to our car, and open the trunk to find all the wet clothes in the back bunched in a pile. Not the way I left it. Hmmm. HMG screams when she finds the rear window completely shattered! What the @*ck? Luckily nothing was stolen. I had put my blackberry in the VIOL forum koozie (why I don’t know – to keep it cool?), and they didn’t see it! SO, the FORUM KOOZIE SAVES THE DAY! I called 911 to connect me to the VI police to file a report, worrying the whole time since we didn’t elect to get insurance on the car. Oops. Meanwhile I manage to slam ODH’s finger in the door, further adding to his frustration. Oops. ADD boy is looking around for big rocks that could’ve been used to smash the window. He wants to give “clues” to the police since he believes they will want to track down the culprit. So sweet. Forty-five minutes later the police show up to file a report. She tells us this isn’t the best beach to visit in the afternoon, and that Magen’s is a better beach for tourists. No s*it Sherlock! So we try our best to clear the glass from the seats so we can make it back to the Marriott (and ODH can go back to Budget). The kids squish together in the front seat (which is fairly clean), and I gingerly sit/balance in the back on a piece of cardboard trying not to move.
So, we try to rescue the remains of the day at the pool while ODH makes the long trek back to Budget. He returns the car with no issue, although we are still awaiting the damages from this. If anyone from Budget is reading this, please have mercy on a bunch of hicks from the sticks! At any rate, they have no car to give us for the remainder of the vacation. So we have to taxi it.
ODH returns, we clean up, and head to The Shipwreck Tavern in Havensight as the kids have been eyeing the big shark in the front. 
If you heard my post prior to leaving, we decided to extend our vacation by another day to include the 4th of July and not tell the kids. This is the moment that we tell them we’re staying for another day! Needless to say, they are ecstatic at the prospect of seeing fireworks on the island! We have uneventful chicken sandwiches (burgers for the kids of course) and head home. Taxi fares to/from the Marriott to Havensight (maybe a 3 mi trip) are about $25 each way for the 4 of us. We can’t afford to go anywhere else, so we buy some juice for rum punches to drink in the room. Pretty sure this was yet another night in which I fell asleep with a drink in my hand. Fairly sure we watched Deadliest Catch on Discovery. Positive I didn’t make it all the way through.
You really have a great sense of humor, but that's so sad about the car. Coki is the only beach that I think anybody should be a little bit careful about. As far as parking, it can be very hard to find a place to park. The few times we were directed into the parking lot behind the Mailman (a place to eat). I felt more comfortable there and I really feel like nothing would happen with the car. I understand your problem about parking though. It's tough.
Also, a word of warning for anybody snorkeling at Coki. If you're looking at the water and go off to your far left side it can be very hard to get back in. The current there can be swift and we were stupid enough to not wear fins. All of us had a hard time getting back in.
Thanks again LLBL for posting another trip report.
That really stinks! I would have been so mad! You'll have to tell us what they charge you for that incident. We did get the extra insurance. Which actually ended up costing us almost as much as the weekly car rental. I didn't think we would need it on the next trip, but maybe we will.
KK....i guess we all take our chances. In all the travel that we've done, we've only had a problem once. It was supposed to be taken care of by our insurance company. Well, they never took care of it and when we went to buy a car it came up on our credit report over a year later without us even knowing about it. This was the same trip where US Air lost our luggage (we never got it back to this day), husband got hooked in the arm on a fishing trip, I locked the keys in the trunk of the car and we had to call the rental agency and i broke my toe on an uneven pavement. While we were trying to call US Air about our luggage, husband pulled up to a phone which was on a stand like thing. Instead of putting it in forward, he put it in reverse and ripped the mirror off which in turn dented the right passenger door. Definetly our trip from hell.
Rental car companies make great profit off that insurance policy they offer. Agents are schooled to offer it. It basically covers the "down time" of the rental vehicle while it's in repair, and yes, that can add up. It's a crap shoot whether to take it or not, but it usually does cost the same as the daily rental rate.
Sigh!!
I wish I had known and we could have all crammed into the van and buddied around instead of your guys using taxis. You should have called - we could have at least delivered groceries or take-out to you guys....or had you over to the villa for dinner. At minumum, we would have delivered bottles of rum!! Good friends would do nothing less 😉
Thanks for the tip about snorkeling left side of Magens - never tired that! We'll try it next time.
They had NO other cars?? Hmmm.....I'm suspicious about that one.
Blu,
I'm equally suspicious of the fact that they had no other vehicles. Taxis can really add up there.
P.S. Can we have you,Blu and family up to dinner, homecooked at Calabash next spring? Love to cook!
Connie, LOL I guess you needed extra insurance for that trip. Probably some extra life insurance too at that rate. 🙂 I bet you get some laughs thinking back to that trip!
An update. Saw the charge for the Budget rental car on my VISA statement. It looks like they just charged me for the week (even though we only had it for 6 days), so it appears we didn't get "hosed" on the deal. When hubby returned it, they seemed very nonchalant about it.
Since you paid by credit card, you may have extra coverage through the credit card company, in the event that you get charged later. A quick call to the credit card company's customer service would tell you!
