Trip Report – St. Croix – Tuesday, April 13 to Thursday, April 22 – Ten Days is...NOT ENOUGH TIME!!!

Trip Info: 4th trip to STX in 4 years after many trips to STT and STJ. . Returning? Yes, already have our accommodations booked and my new ticker – staying 16 days next March. (If you are on Facebook with me you may have already seen some of the same videos but am going to try to mix it up.)

Part 1: https://www.vinow.com/wwwtalk/read.php?4,108090

Part 2

Wednesday – April 14
I admit that we are really dogging it this first morning. Hubs seems to be giving in to island hibernation – it’s already past 8. We stayed in the green bedroom last trip but are staying in the blue bedroom this time and leaving the green one for our niece and her hubs who are arriving on island on Saturday. The bedrooms are pretty much the same except that the green one has a walk-in closet and the blue one has a bigger bathroom. The blue bedroom also has the queen mattress with the huge sag in the middle, as we discovered last night. Ahhh, togetherness. I am awake first and claw my way to the edge of the raised four poster and, of course, completely miss the little steps to get down. Ouch. I’m determined to have a “get right with you-know-who” session first thing with the Jumbies who I have heard snickering out on the lanai. I brought some Irish breakfast tea so I dig it out and make a cup to relax over on deck while I try to reason with the Jumbies. I have some trouble with the kettle on the Wolf range – can’t regulate the burners – it’s sky-high or it’s off – hmmmm. I start a muffin heating in the microwave and sparks begin to fly as the plate begins to turn. “Jumbies??? You get IN here – RIGHT NOW!!!!!”

The Jumbies are hiding and obviously do not want to hear what I’ve got to say so maybe I’ll just go ahead and hook up the iPod dock to the stereo like I did last year so it will play through the outdoor speakers. OUCH – if I hit my knees one more time on this crazy chair that is in the tiny living room I am going to pitch it in the pool. I have never seen a chair like this – maybe I’ve led a sheltered life. I should have taken a picture – it is some kind of a wooden recliner (maybe Danish?) about 6’ too long, with a long fabric sling seat and two long planks sticking straight out on each side – to elevate your legs?? To me, it looks likes some kind of a birthing chair or something along those gynecological lines (blush). This thing has GOT to go – first on the list of villa makeovers, move this thing into the walk-in closet. My knees can’t take it and there’s no room for 4 people in this tiny living area – going to have to swap out some chairs from the bedrooms. Back to the stereo – the component I need is completely unplugged and sitting on top of the TV cabinet – maybe broken? OK. Tried the remotes for cable, DVD, TV – nothing working. TV does work without remote – cable reception is awful but I can make the dvd work manually. There’s some new speaker mixer box thingie– tried a music cd in the cd/dvd player – nothing and the speaker buttons don’t do anything. Now, this is getting serious. I WANT MY MUSIC and the NBA playoffs are starting and we are expecting a rabid Phoenix Suns fan to arrive on Saturday. Have to come up with some Plan Bs – maybe get some iPod or laptop speakers at Cost U Less? Look into the sports bars on island so we can watch the games and actually see who is playing??

I was aware that the villa’s owner, who lives on island, was taking care of the day to day maintenance himself and that our favorite STX villa people, Vacation St. Croix, were acting only as a rental agent on this property. We wanted to book it anyway after enjoying it so much last year and, honestly, it never occurred to us that things would be any different this trip. But, things seem to be heading downhill on roller skates here. These little issues I’m finding are starting to add up to be downright annoying and it’s still early in the trip. Last night we discovered that we could not close the gate – neither gate remote worked and neither did the button on the control panel. No wonder it was standing open when we arrived and we didn’t have to use the code.

We are not in the group that rents a villa for just a place to sleep at night – the villa and its amenities figure prominently in our total vacation. There’s got to be a killer view, there’s got to be a nice pool, there’s got to be a workable kitchen with decent stuff and, of course, music and TV/video. Each to their own – this is us – offering no apologies for being what some might consider a little bit high maintenance when we choose our accommodations. And, we don’t deal well with disappointment – especially in the first 24 hours.

So, I am now in the pool and floating around peacefully on my new Papasan spring float chair sipping my tea and lamenting my cold sparked up muffin and, I’ll confess, thinking about that weird chair, when I hear a very loud WHACK noise coming from the blue bedroom, followed by some loud expletives and scurrying noises, then another WHACK and ANOTHER, followed by more yelling to match the blue bedroom. Sounds like a Jumbies/Hubs death match going on and I’m kind of worried ‘cuz Hubs is no spring chicken and the Jumbies fight dirty. Hubs finally emerges carrying his flip flop way out in front of him. On the sole is a down but still kicking roach about the size of a Winnebago. Really, at least 2” long and fat and sassy – well, I’ll bet it WAS sassy, before Hubs flip-flopped it. Hubs heads outside to deliver the coup de grace and send the roach on his journey up the River Styxx. He then joins me in the pool - no “good morning, puddin”, no “how did you sleep, honey” – just a sigh and a “WTF???” Hubs then leans back at the outside edge of the pool and regards the recently painted pillars where the new paint is on hit or miss or has dripped without being cleaned up, and with the simple politically incorrect question “Who did this guy hire to paint this place – Stevie Wonder??” – vacation is ON. We both laugh so hard I fall off my float and come up sputtering. Hubs saves the tea mug. I do my impression of the roach still kicking its legs, Hubs tries to whack me with the pool float. The decompression is on full tilt now – we are on island - we can deal with anything. (Just shut UP, Jumbies.)

Things are funny now – even the super roach. Since neither of us have ever encountered a roach at a villa before we figure that it was just an anomaly – probably the only one we’ll see here. We put in a call to Vacation St. Croix to see if they know anything about the A/V setup. Ann promises she will talk to Cliff and see if he can tell us how to work with what’s there.

We unpack enough stuff to get ourselves together for the day and head out to C’Sted to drop some hook bracelets off at Sonya’s for shine-up and then back east to Tamarind Reef for a late lunch at the Deep End Bar. Tamarind Reef is at Green Cay Marina – lots of beautiful boats in the slips. There is kayaking out to the cay, a raised sandy beach, and excellent snorkeling off the somewhat rocky coast. Excellent lunch at the Deep End – they even had a soup for Hubs, who can eat hot soup even on the hottest day. We caught sight of Big Beard’s cat “The Renegade” making its way back to C’Sted after a half day snorkeling trip to Buck Island.

Big Beard's "The Renegade" at The Tamarind Reef from Margy Zuffante on Vimeo.

On our way back to the villa: Buckle up for a fast ride on the left through Teague Bay - view of the Yacht Club and Island Time in the distance, past the entrance to Duggan's Reef Restaurant and The Reef Beach on the left, Good Spirits BBQ, and The Reef Condos and Golf Course on the right, past Villa Amonoka and Villa Madeleine on the right far up Meggie Hill.

STX: East End Road Through Teague Bay from Margy Zuffante on Vimeo.

Back at Island Time we discover that Cliff from VSTX has been there while we have been out and that he has hooked us up in more ways than one. He has reconfigured the A/V components so we can use them and hooked up the stereo receiver so we can have FM, CD and add our iPod dock. The outdoor speakers are now working. He has even written out detailed instructions for us on the convoluted setup for the TV and DVD and noted that the front gate is not working so we shouldn’t even bother with trying to open/close it manually. The cable reception even seems to be better. Thanks, Cliff!

We spent a bit more time just relaxing away the rest of the afternoon in the pool enjoying music, the sun and admiring Stevie’s paint job. Still a bit stuffed from our late lunch we opted to skip dinner and just head a bit west to Mahi’s at Chenay Bay to enjoy the sunset and maybe some live music. Turns out it’s $5 hamburger night at Mahi’s and Jazzy Blue is playing. The place is packed but eventually we snag a couple of places at the bar. I’m still playing with this camera and try to shoot the sunset and water. I tend to forget, though, that it also picks up sound…

Sunset at Mahi's - Chenay Bay, St. Croix - April 2010 from Margy Zuffante on Vimeo.

A few places next to us open up at the bar and we meet Dottie and her friends. Dottie is a very vibrant 87 year old from West Palm who has been living on STX in a condo near Schooner Bay. Her husband has passed away and she is considering moving back to Florida. She came to Mahi's with a couple of her friends to enjoy a burger, the music, and the sunset view. We had a great conversation about living here and what that means in your "golden" years. Dottie sure puts the gold in "golden" - I really enjoyed our conversation and I think she enjoyed giving some alone time to the younger couple who brought her – a friend from on island whose girlfriend was visiting from Texas. Nice folks – we had some good conversations about the USVI – he is in construction and has had projects on all three islands. This was the first visit for the girlfriend. We all agreed that STX has the best restaurants in the USVI, most likely because there is the year-round working population to support them. Along those lines, we ordered some sesame encrusted seared Ahi Tuna bites and they were just like buttah – very yum, and I don’t even like fish too much. These reminded me of tenderloin filet, though – a high compliment coming from this carnivore.

We leave the Jumbies grooving to Jazzy Blue (we hope) and head on back to the villa.

To Be Continued…