Rested and un-crossianted, I woke again earlier than E, not by the light I was told would stream into our room but from sheer body clock-ness. The sky was brilliant blue and the room fresh, with the screen door providing much better air filtration than the air con unit we never used for fear of exasperating the cold I feared was coming on in my left nostril. Or maybe it was just New Years Eve still lurking.
Left E asleep to get the car, a bit more of a mission than first thought. Budget, who'd told L there were plenty of cars, then told me they were empty and so we got on the hunt for another place. Turned out the place we went to was cheaper than Budget anyway - "Dependable" they called themselves, "Last Resort" probably fitted the description better.
We walked around the little Suzuki looking for dents while the lady marked, and marked, and marked the car picture on our hire forms. I suggested she just colour the whole thing in to save time? She laughed and kept marking. Safe to say, any damage I did to these panels was not going to be noticed. Lucky, as I scraped the very low front on the way out of the damn hire place!
Back at the ranch, E was slowly waking and we got on our way soon enuf, planning on doing a bit of an island tour ourselves. Armed with a map and our very poor sense of orientation, we drove some roads and eventually wound our way into town dodging cruise ship people and angry taxis. The tip we'd been given by some random Americans for a place to eat was way off the mark, so we'd wandered into downtown to find a better option.
Turned out there was a rasta shop/food place that I found some cute peacock feather earrings in, and lunch! Possibly got the only meat dish on the menu (bad rasta, bad!) and made friends with some local that gave us his number in case we needed some help getting around the island, or any "good stuff". We never saw him again.
E needed to urgently check her bank account so we found a bar with wifi, and had a beer while she surfed. Got talking to a random guy who ended up being really weird. Never really got why he was there, said it was to toast his dog's death anniversary - but that wasn't even the weird part. I think it was around the time he started inviting himself to our beach appointment and suggesting we "shoot guns and throw retards into the ocean." Back away. Slowly. It wasn't until we were almost at our car we realised we'd - again - not paid the bill. Oops. Oh well, weird man said he'd buy us a round so I guess he just did. There was no way I was going back there.
After we got out of that hectic little corner of the world, we kept driving and ended up in a random little cove with a Marriott or 2 on it. By this stage, I was kinda used to the fact they drove on the left hand side here with a left hand drive vehicle too - a bit hard for vision with all the bends in the road! And for a US Virgin Island, kinda unexpected. Apparently it was all the Danes' fault. Bloody Danes.
We had no idea where we were on the map or what beach it was we were at, but none of that mattered... it was nice, there was a bar and we were thirsty. When we eventually got served. we asked for "whatever that little bucket was you gave those people" and were promptly given $13 of a delicious but lethal cocktail mix containing at least 5 different rums. 1/3 of the bucket later and we were passed out on our hotel guest-only free banana lounges, enjoying the afternoon sun.
Waking drousy and confused, we decided it was time to leave... Treasure Beach? Mornington Beach? Smiths Bay? Ahh, whatever. There were way too many skinny American tourists there anyway, and it was freaking me out.
Dinner was to be a casual affair, to save some morsel of money since I was running low and E hadn't even bought her bank card, so we headed to the supermarket. The most expensive supermarket EVER. Wow. Have you ever seen somewhere selling pasta, a packet of pasta, for $6.99?? Not even gourmet pasta. Just regular penne. Haaaeeeelllll no. Not that we had much choice. Yup, St Thomas is defo more expensive than St Maarten, hands down.
We bought and prepared a simple dinner, then had a couple of wines with L and B, who we hadn't seen all day. Called it a night early, as St Johns was on the cards for the next day and I promised E I would be waking her at 9am. Gotta make the most of that island!
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