Active Week

So alot has happened since my last post. I have been really active now that the weather has cleared up and it feels like paradise again.

Last Friday, I got up and got in on a last minute dive before work. We went to Caveel Rock, which is supposed to be one of the best dives on the island, and it lived up to its name. We dove all around this rock and swam through canyons and over gullies. Visibility wasn't great, but there was still a lot to see. Because the rock is a ways off shore there is a lot of larger see life, like schools of squid, Tarpin and turtles. The coral is very beautiful, lots of really large, purple fan coral and bright red fire coral. I got back just in time to get to work, but it was worth it.

Saturday I went to the British Virgin Islands (BVI) with some other 4 hour volunteers. We were on a tourist bout that made several stops on the different islands. First we went to Virgin Gorda to see the Baths. The Baths are granite rocks that were forced from the earth by tectonic shift and these particular batholiths are the only ones in the world with water flowing throughout them. They were really cool, but hard to describe without pictures, which are coming soon. After the baths, we sailed to the east end of the island of Tortola, to a little island called Marina Cay. There we had lunch and went snorkeling. The we sailing to the island of Jost Van Dyke. This island has no dock at our landing, very few roads and lots of bars. One of the most famous, the Soggy Dollar Bar (because you have to swim from the boats to the shore and buy drinks with your soggy dollars) was having a raging party for its 40th anniversary. The party was really fun and we all seriously considered staying and ditching our tour. We came home though and threw our own beach party for one of the volunteers birthdays.

Monday, I went for an epic 3 hr snorkel and saw a bunch of turtles, tried to catch a lobster and got stung by fire coral. The water here is amazing and the sea life is so beautiful. They have done such a great job preserving the reefs within the park and maintaining a healthy ecosystem. However there is an experience to be had on island that is not easily forgotten, happy hour at Woody's. Dollar drinks and loud music, people everywhere spilling into the street and obstructing traffic, it is pretty amazing.

Tuesday I went on a 10 mile hike on the reef bay trail. The trail is famous for taking you to a series of waterfalls where petroglyphs were carved by the Taino Indians, the first inhabitants of the island. The trail also takes you to the ruins of a large sugar mill and to a very beautiful, quite beach where pelicans fish all day. We felt like we managed to see every kind of animal on the island, from pelicans, to donkeys, bats, mongoose, deer, and iguanas. We were exhausted when we got done and came home to crash.

I have been working the last few days and am waiting for my day off, which will be Monday. Work is great and I made a fish taco dish and and spicy shrimp pizza the last two nights that got great reviews. Mark, the head chef, seems to like my work and my food, which is very exciting for me. I am sorry there are no pictures, the computers are slow and it takes a really long time. I miss everyone but am really happy here. Thanks for the comments guys.

First Week at Maho Bay

Maho is an amazing place. I have been here for almost a week at this point and I am so glad that I made the switch. There are fun people everywhere, they are all super nice and there is always something to do, even if it is just hanging out. I am working in the kitchen and so far, everyone I work with has seemed to really like the work I have done. Usually 4 hour volunteers like me are given mostly prep responsibilities, like cutting veggies and fruit. But i must have made a good impression my first night cooking because they let me do the whole fish entree myself and also work as the line cook, cooking the meets and prepping the egg dishes, for the next morning. I have yet to work with the head chef though, I should very soon and I am very excited. He is highly trained at culinary school and I feel like every minute I spend working under him, I will learn something.
A few days after I got here we had a big beach party for all the staff and volunteers at Francis Bay. I have never swam to a party before, but that was the easiest way to get there. We barbecued on the beach and played Frisbee and swam a lot. The water is ridiculously warm and it is great to spend so much time in it. It has been raining a lot the last few days so I haven't been able to go on several hikes I had wanted to do this week, but the weather is going to break soon and we should be good. The mosquitoes haven't been too bad, but after the rain, they will get worse. There are bad ass spiders and millipedes all over and some really cool lizards and frogs, which I don't mind at all because they eat the mosquitoes. I am planning on taking a trip to the British Virgin Islands this weekend and am very excited. I have been taking less photos as the rain has been pretty torrential and I am afraid my camera getting soaked, but I have a few of the camp. The pavilion where we eat, the view from the deck, the kitchen, my buddy Zach cleaning a tent, a lizard, two of my tent and one from the Coral Bay overlook. The first one is a map of the island, so you can see where some of these places are.

Maho Bay Campground

I have officially moved over to the new and improved location for my little adventure. Maho bay is an Eco-tourist site with a bunch of tent-cabins, a kitchen and cafeteria, store, activities desk, and access to several beaches. The part that is really making it for me however, is the fact that this place subsists on volunteer work. If they had to employ all of the people it takes to run this place, there is no way it would survive. What this means for me is that there are a whole bunch of "four hours" (volunteers like me who work 4 hrs in exchange for a place to stay) all around my age. Everyone is really nice and sociable and it seems like a great place to be set up. Wish I would have found it to begin with.

Since my last post, I packed up all my stuff from Elsa's place and moved on up the road to this campsite. I have been set up in a tent with a room mate named Adam who is from Ohio. He is fresh off the plane, so I have been showing him around a lot. Its kinda nice to get to share the little experience I have on the island with a newbie. We went into town yesterday for some groceries and stuff, and just to show him the island in the day time. I hung at the beach and played the ukulele for a while and had a great time with that. The other volunteers are great and invited me to a little potluck dinner they had. Very inclusive community.

I start work today at 1 pm and work about 6.5 hr each day I am on. I will do the prep for dinner and serve dinner as well. The cafeteria here offers about 4-5 different entrees option each night, with a salad bar, on rolling themed nights (Italian night, Asian Night). On the nights I work I get fed and if I buy food, I get 40% off which brings the exorbitant island prices back closer to the states. Still, dinner is $10 so I am trying to budget for other options as well. In the tents we get a propane stove, cooler, pots and pans, jug for free drinking water, bed, electricity and lights. It is a huge step up from where I was at and I am very comfortable here. I am excited to start work tonight.

The campsite also gives us discounts on boat trips, dives and taxis, food items in the store, etc. So I have signed up for a couple dives and am trying to see if there are people who want to take a BVI trip on my day off. I have a hike scheduled, but am going to have to reschedule as I am working Friday morning now. Oh well.

I was checking out the internet cafe, at which I also get half off, to see what it was like and if I can upload pictures, which I can, but haven't taken many yet. So that is my job today and I will try and post them tomorrow. Thanks for all the support, I'm much better off at the new place. The last picture is one I took of Maho Bay yesterday. On the hill, you can see little white tents sticking out of the trees. These are the eco-tents and main buildings of the campsite sticking out of the jungle.

Pictures

So I have finally found a place to upload some pictures. This is a picture of the botanical villas office and kitchen. I took some pictures to show what the place I was staying looked like.

The second picture is my cabin, its pretty large and spacious and has a good view, but there is nothing to do at the place, and there is no one else there.

I went and sat at Trunk Beach for a while, this beach was voted in the top 5 best beaches in the world.

Picture of me at the Peace Hill Ruins, have to get good with the self timer.

Picture of Cruz Bay from the Lindt Point Trail. The boats on the right are the ferries that run from St. Thomas to St. John.

Another self timed picture at sunset on Cinammon Beach.

So far so good. I move to Maho Campsite tomorrow and will have more posts for you soon.

First Few Days Are Rough

In planning this trip, I always intended to do it alone. That was my plan from the beginning and I was ok with that because I wanted the time to be with myself and enjoy that, but I also assumed that I would be in a place with other travelers and like-minded people that I could interact with when I wanted to. That was not the case. The place that I am currently working at is called Botanical Villas Campground. I wish that I could post some pictures, but the computer her is not reading my cameras SD card. The place is much more "rustic" than I expected, and not only am I the only volunteer on the site, but I am also the only person on the site.

The woman who runs/owns the place is named Elsa. She works on the larger Island of St. Thomas and commutes back and forth everyday. This is technically her property and she lives here, but I have to assume that she also lives, or at least stays someplace else a lot of the time, as I have seen her once since our introduction on the day I arrived. I know that she has an elderly mother that she takes care of as well, so its hard to fault her, but I arrived, got shown around the site for about 15 minutes, then I was on my own. I walked to the beach as it got dark and had a swim, sat on the beach and looked at the stars, then came home. I was alone in the dark jungle, on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean.

Needless to say from my build-up, it was a rough night. I was jet lagged (the islands are 3 hrs ahead) and stressed because this was not what I had expected at all. I had hoped to have people around that I could socialize with, that could show me the ropes of this often backwards island, and that I could hang with a bit. Or even if I was alone, I had expected to have town fairly close so that I could meet locals and other travelers. But town is about 5 miles away, about 25 minutes by car and $10 each way. So seemed impossible as well. None of these being present, I got a little stressed and stayed awake most of the night. I was thinking about all the unanswered questions I had about the island and how I was going to explore and get around and do the things I wanted to do. 6 weeks sudenly felt like a really long time.

The next day I got up and did the work Elsa had laid out for me, mop out a couple cabins, clean the bathroom and change some sheets. Also not the work I had expected, but easier than expected. Kinda my first exposure to Island Time. Elsa is local, and like most locals, her clock is wired differently than mine. Four hours of work in island time is closer to an hour and a half, maybe two for someone raised on the Ed Ambauen work clock. So I have been flying through the work and she seems really happy. I went to the beach for a few hours and then hitched into town. I set out and didnt have a lot of luck getting picked up, but undetered I kept walking. After passing the next beach I started to move through a highway project, they are repaving one of the two roads around the island. as I get to the top of the hill I see a bunch of workers and trucks all stopped. The road is blocked by a giant bull dozer and a truck upside-down over the cliff on the side of the road. Yes I took a picture. The workers are working hard to right the truck with the bull dozer, and its working, if slowly. I have to watch, so I start to chat up the boss man and we watch as the dozer operator slowly maneuvers the truck, the rights it onto its wheels, a pretty intense sight. The boss man, who I had been talking to for a while now, offered me a ride into town and bought me a couple beers. I picked up graceries, made phone calls, then caught a cab home.

Today I visited another beach, typically the tourist beach, but its close, so I tought I would check it out. It was crowded, but the snorkling was pretty good, and it was a nice beach to just walk and play the ukulele. After, I hitched a ride into town again to get groceries and check into prices for dives and renting a scooter to travel to the other end of the island one of these days. Hitching is a main form of transport, works best for singles like me, and used by locals and tourists alike. I am still not sure if its gonna work to get to the outlying areas, hence transport via scooter. Elsa gave me a ride back, making that the second time we talked since I arrived.

Due to the lack of others and the fact that this is just not what I expected, I have found a new venue. One of the campsites farther up the road, Maho Bay, takes volunteers and I have negotiated a position in their kitchen. I will still be working four hours a day in exchange for a place to sleep and a discount on food, but this campground has about 35 volunteers at a time as well as their guests. A much better fit for me. I hope it works out.

I apoligize for not being able to upload pictures, I am working to rectify the situation. They will be here soon. Thanks for reading.

Thoughts as I Depart

So a lot of my friends have been traveling all over the world and have had great adventures. They have used this method to communicate and update their families and friends on what they have been doing. As I embark on my own adventure through the Caribbean, I am starting this blog to accomplish the same goals. I am hoping to make use of this blog to communicate and update my family and friends as to what I'm up to and share some of the any pictures I will be taking.

I am leaving this evening for the island of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I will have to fly to Chicago first, ten Miami, and eventually along to the island of St. Thomas. Once I arrive I have to get myself to the ferry terminal and take a boat to the island i will actually be staying on. Once there I have to make my way to the north shore of the island to the small town of Peters Bay and to the campsite I will be working at. I have a position at a campsite/cabins called Botanical Villas, where I will be working about 4 hrs a day in exchange for a place to stay. I am not sure of the work or the accommodations yet and I am excited to find out.

The flight is going to be long and not very fun, but I am very excited. I will keep you all updated with the details and pictures of where I am and what I am doing.

Feel free to forward this to whomever you think might be interested. Thanks for reading.