Saturday, June 27

First Weekend!

It's the weekend and I “slept-in” to get up just after 7:00am. Yeah! I made my coffee this morning now that I've got filters, cream, and coffee. I made it way too strong, but it was still delicious, even though it's Maxwell House. I'm not sold on the cheap beans, but they will have to do for now. The Sahara Dust still hung heavily in the air and made the horizon nearly disappear as I viewed out my kitchen window. Dwight and I loaded into the truck and made our way for the reefs sometime around 8 o'clock.

We made our first stop for snorkeling the Hawksnest Beach. Not only was there a wedding ceremony going on at the beach, there were TWO. About 100 yards from one another, there were two couples either saying their vows or rehearsing (with just two people and a photographer, it's hard to tell). The snorkeling at Hawksnest was better than at Trunk, on the whole. We started out on the far western side of the reef and made a plan to head east, but the tide must have been low while we were there, because most of the reef was a fire coral deathtrap, with less than two feet between the reef and the surface. We halted and changed our plan and instead plotted a course in deeper (and less interesting) waters. The rest of the snorkel went well and I snagged many photos, no sunburn, and a few videos.

After Hawksnest, we headed west for an undisclosed location. There was a short hike to a major landmark and then a longer hike to the beach. It's a location I'd like to keep away from the prying eyes of tourists, lest the corals get destroyed by ignorant snorkelers stomping on the reefs. If you're nice, I'll tell you where I went. The second snorkel of the day was the most exciting (of the two) and I got lots of amazing views of a lot of fish, with a particularly high incidence of seeing trumpet fish and fireworms (read: wormy-looking aquatic millipede-like creatures). I swam past some locals fishing off the shore and noticed their mono-filament tangled in the corals below. So much for leave no trace ethics being a universally accepted practice. We still need to do a lot of work on keeping people informed on how much they really do impact the environment, and not just on land.

After two snorkel trips, we headed back along Northshore Road for Island Paradise. Dwight and I parted down our separate driveways, grabbed some lunch, freshened up, and rinsed our gear of all the sticky and crusty saltwater. We revved up the engine again and set off for the East End. We drove as long as the road would take us. The end of the road seems to float right around Sloop Jones' studio. He's a local artist and his main attraction seems to be hand-painted clothing. The colors he uses are amazing and the designs are unique. His clothes are not something you could just pick up from your local sweatshop in China, that's for sure. I didn't buy anything during my first visit of his studio, but I have a feeling my Mom may like a few of their items. I'll have to add a photo of a shirt I saw at his studio just so you can see the awesomeness yourself.

We cruised from the East End down to Coral Bay and somewhere along the way I became the happy owner of The Swatter I, Model HTC-2801. It's the most fantastic invention, EVER. It's a small tennis racket, with pizazz. Imagine, a tennis racket with a built in bug zapper. That's The Swatter. I have one and it definitely has two AA batteries and I have already zapped a few mosquitoes into blue zappy frying bliss. I think I will keep The Swatter at arms-length from now on in the USVI.

We stopped off at the Catherineberg Ruins on the way home. That is a must-see spot if you're going to come visit me. Annaberg Ruins are also spectacular and the site has a great view, but Catherineberg is just cool. The unpaved and unmaintained (relatively) road to get there is also worth a drive, but only if you're tooling around in a 4x4 and don't mind a few bumps along the way.

The day came to a close after we returned from Catherineberg and I started getting caught up on loading my photos into my laptop. There were lots from this morning and even more from the past few days. That reminds me, I have a small rant... My Olympus Stylus 1030SW is the worst camera I've ever purchased. The camera is not waterproof. I haven't even taken it as deep as it is quoted to withstand. The LCD does not work. The camera gets power, turns on, takes photos, and those photos can be loaded onto my laptop. However, the LCD does not illuminate, nor does it provide any feedback, at all. There is no viewfinder, so without an LCD, there's no way to know if your picture came out looking they way you wanted. I'm pretty into photography and I like having a working camera, so having a camera that half does it's job, well, that's just annoying. I will have to scout around town to see if the duty-free cameras around the USVI are a good deal or if I need to just resort to using my 7.1 megapixel ancient Canon point-and-shoot. Sad panda face.