Sunday morning, we packed all our things back, piled them in the rental car, and headed for the St. Maarten airport. Of note here is our discovery of how to operate the compactor in our villa 10 minutes before we were to leave. Four adults a new compactor, and we never could figure out how to make it compact. It is a new Kitchenaid, and turns out you pick up on the opening foot pedal with your toe to make it compact. We dropped the bags off with the girls at the airport, and rode down to turn in the rental car. Along the way we stopped to fill the gas tank. I was watching the meter spin round and round and it ended up at 25.458 liters $36.91 Florins. The guy came to the window and said $25 US so that’s what we paid him. Later reading the car rental agreement, we had a good laugh. Seems like the desk clerk, who seemed a little rushed, created a new address for Jerry. Jerry now lives at 176 Red Gerald Resort Martinsvill. Virginia VA 24112606. Hope they don’t try to send him a letter there.
Customs and TSA at the St. Maarten Airport were pretty benign, and we were soon safely camped in our boarding area awaiting transportation. Pretty much on time our Liat Air Dash 8 turboprop pulls up to fetch us. We walk out across the tarmac, and climb aboard an already ¾ full flight. We find some seats here and there and settle ourselves for take off. It is stiflingly hot in the plane, but we know as soon as they start the engines it will be ok. Wrong. They started the engines, and perhaps because it was a low altitude flight, the pilot never turned on the air that blows out of those little overhead twisty things. So as the automaton (read flight attendant) droned her way through pages of the usual text, we taxied out for take off. I figured it had to get cooler when we were off the ground. Wrong again. Luckily it was only about a 20-minute flight to St. Kitts, and after one more memorized spiel from the robot flight attendant, we were in St. Kitts.
Customs and immigration in St. Kitts was very low key, with the exception of the lady that kept telling us to change lines.
Here I have to diverge a little to explain my great fall. You know how they have those movie theater type ropes to designate lines when you have things like say immigration. There was a grand total of about 10 or 12 folks that got off the plane in St. Kitts, and there were four “lanes” designated by the movie theater ropes. Jerry and Brenda picked one lane and proceeded on through. Vickie and I picked another lane and were told to stand at the yellow line. Then soon a lady came and told us to change lanes. Since the ropes were only about 18” off the ground, I decided to step over them rather than walk all the way back to get in the other lane. Then in a little while she told us to change lanes again. I repeated the process only this time I caught the top of my crock on the rope and went down with my armload of stuff the rope and poles. Everyone thought I was dead or something and came swarming. A very nice gentleman held out his hand and helped me get up from the floor. I was unhurt, just felt kind of dumb. I overheard the supervisor getting all over the lady to be sure and make the folks walk back and go around when changing lanes. I still don’t get what all the changing lanes stuff was about.
Finally our turn came, and we were processed through immigration by a girl who sang most of the time she was processing our papers. She didn’t sing to us, she just sang. But the papers were processed, and our luggage was half-heartedly searched, and we picked up our Hertz car. Two interesting twists here: first you have to buy a 31-day St. Kitts temporary drivers license. No test is required, just that they copy down the info from your driver’s license and you give them $25. Just another mindless tourist fleecing these islands seem to be so good at. Maybe the US could learn from this---let’s tax the heck out of all incoming and outgoing tourists that are not American nationals. But then that would be un-American or would it. Second surprise was twofold, first they drive on the left here (like England) and second, our Honda Accord had the steering wheel on the passenger side. Jerry had experience driving on the left side, but never when the steering wheel was on the passenger side. So we loaded up the luggage, and timidly headed out into the St. Kitts traffic, all of us helping Jerry to stay to the left.
After a brief drive and only one wrong turn, we arrived at the St. Kitts Marriott Beach Club. We were heartily welcomed, and given a young fellow to escort us and haul our luggage to our room. This place was quite different than other Marriott Vacation Club we have been to in that it is attached to (actually part of) Marriott St. Kitts Resort and Royal Beach Casino. Therefore the lobby is quite bustling and busy. We arrived at our room, and were greeted by what we have come to expect from Marriott Vacation Clubs, very nice accommodations. (With a few exceptions I’ll get into later)
Our first surprise was that the grocery store was only open from 8-12 am. So we were out of luck there. The resort contained a few little shops, so Brenda and Jerry went off in search of necessities. Bless their hearts back they came with a big bottle of local sugar cane rum and some delicious fruity mixers. We were soon unpacked and down by the pool enjoying the trade winds. For dinner that night we availed ourselves of something called the Pizza Shack, which served pretty good individual pizzas, and an OK Caesar side salad. We then retired for the night planning our exploits for the next day.
What I have not spoken about here yet is the Internet access issue. All of the rooms were supposed to have wired Ethernet connections, of which our suite had 3. However no matter what plug I plugged into or what cord I used, it wasn’t there. So I called the “supposed to help you with everything” folks. They sent two different guys up with different cords, and then finally told me they must have a problem, the big I.T. guy wasn’t here, I should go to the business center and they’d give me some free time. Well I walked all the way to the business center (closing in 20 minutes) and the guy looked at me like I was crazy. He made some calls, and then told me to go back to my room and I would have wireless. I got back to the room (oh and all this involved walking back and forth about ½ a mile) tried the wireless and it didn’t work—wanted a code. So I called them back, and they said they could provide wireless, but it would be $20 for 24 hr. I promptly told them I wasn’t paying for something that was supposed to be free. So they sent another guy up and finally got me on wireless. Great---or not so. The only place the wireless works in the condo is out on the deck, and then doesn’t have enough power to upload anything, and barely read Email. So, tired of fooling with the stuff, I gave up and read a book till bedtime. It gets better.
More later,
Wes
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