Troll Echos

I’m not sure if insects can fly hundreds of miles across open ocean, or for that matter, if they even want to, but as far as I can tell they can’t.  St. Lucia was delightfully lacking in the typical insects of the Northeast.  I don’t recall seeing a single mosquito dispite the almost constant presence of puddles and standing moisture they so love.  We as honeymooners were not alone on the island however.

Everywhere you look there were frogs the size of a quarter, large snales, and lizards that would impress Geiko.  Whether they were actually geckos or not I have no idea. The frogs hung out on frondy plants that hung near the short sidewalk lights that were all over the grounds of the resort.  My wife and I came to call them “Frog condos” thanks to the multi-layered housing effect and the fact that we often so more than one of them near a single light.  The idea of housing or warmth was quickly replaced with the reality that they were hanging out for a midnight snack made up of any tiny light attracted bugs that were silly enough to pass within tongue range of the tiny amphibious hunters.

During the day lizards basked in the sun on anything they could find.  Sometimes it was the same lights the frogs made into hunting zones, other times it was random guard rails or plants, but most often it was literally in the middle of the sidewalk.  My initial thoughts at this pattern were along the lines of “well, I guess you are next on evolutions list to elimitate for playing in traffic.”  How truly wrong I was.  Never in my life have I seen an animal so like a ninja before.  3 inches of lizard could go from apparently asleep in the sidewalk to simply gone before you even knew it was moving.  They moved very quickly, and were nervous enough about people that you couldn’t even get closer than about 4 or 5 feet from them before they did their vanishing act again.  This turned my wife and I into very frustrated photographers indeed.

On the exact opposite end of the speed spectrum was the humble snail in its not so humble shell.  They were large, they were slow, and frankly they were short lived.  I personally squashed at least one during our stay by stepping on it in the dark without knowing it was there.  Walking up the roads at night revealed that they didn’t have much better luck with vehicle traffic either.  There were creepy slippery smears of snail guts and shell bits all over the roads every night just waiting for the next day’s torential rain to wash them away into oblivion.

It should stand to reason that countless pirate songs can’t all be wrong when describing the islands.  They drink a lot of rum.  I had no idea how much in fact.  They have types and flavors of rum you have never heard of, half of which would make any self-respecting pirate blush a little.  If the idea of chocolate rum, orange rum, and even ginger rum aren’t out there enough for you, they also make drinks using these crazy rums by adding everything from fruit juice to actual fruit to cream and an unlimited number of other things.  If you don’t like rum, you should consider visiting some other part of the world that hasn’t yet made its way into pirate songs.

Not to complain, but inclusive seems to have many definitions.  My wife would chime in at this point to remind me that all “All Inclusive” places follow a similar model, and I’m certain she’s correct.  My problem is at least partially based on the fact that I’ve never been to an all inclusive resort before, and before I give Sandals a bad name I would like to point out that it was certainly “mostly inclusive.”  

Resorts are big business.  There is really no other intelligent way to describe it.  To that end, they do everything in their power to get as much money out of you as possible before and during your stay.  Before we arrived they successfully sold us safari adventures and romantic dinners for two with exclusive butler service and candle light.  During our stay the choices were almost endless.

Tipping was strictly forbidden on Sandals property, that I am infinitely thankful for based on our experience at the airport.  Generally speaking, everything you want was included.  Assuming you only wanted food and drinks.  Wine lists were provided at almost every single meal, and they cost extra.  While wondering the resort, the uncommonly pushy camera men working for the little photo shop were around almost every corner like paparazzi.  Instead of taking pictures of you, they were there to ask if you wanted them to.  Trust me when I say that is almost as annoying.  Needless to say, pictures taken cost nothing, unless you actually want them.  That meant paying for them.  The gift shop was about as overpriced as any other you find in the tropics, but was obviously not included in the price of admission.  There was also an almost constant presence of staffers trying to sell you time in their spa or convincing you to book a return visit.

It wasn’t all bad of course, just a little overwhelming sometimes for a guy on the first real vacation of his entire professional career.  Thanks to the free meals being readily available, for some time after arriving back home I actually worried that I would go out to eat somewhere and simply get up and leave when I was done as I had done so many times on my honeymoon.  The experience of being able to order a 3 to 5 course meal with an alcoholic drink at every meal without concern for price was an awesome one indeed.  So, if you go to an all inclusive, be ready to to say “No.”  almost constantly to the attempts to upsell pictures, wine, and anything else they can think of.  It will still be a blast and a great excuse to put on some extra inches to the old waistline.

No trip to the tropics during hurricane season is complete without almost having to deal with a hurricane.  Ours included.  Hurricane Omar moved through the area around 200 miles from St. Lucia while we were there.  Since it was rainy season while we were there and there was rain everyday anyway, few people even noticed.  The effect if had on our tiny little island was nothing more than large waves thankfully.  

At the edge of our resort and just past the massive pool is a large stone wall with convenient stairs going down to the beach at random intervals.  When the seas were normal and happy, water never made it anywhere near that wall.  In fact in most places there were 20 to 70 feet of beach.  During the time when Omar was exerting its climatological influences the waves were actually around eight feet tall and were hitting the stone wall with enough force to throw salty mist at people in the pool.  

After a few hours of pounding waves the worst was over and the seas began to slip away back to their original position several yards from the wall.  The damage was done however.  The beach was effectively gone.  In its place was an impressive collection of rocks of all shapes and sizes and almost no sand at all.  The last step down to the beach from one of the sets of stairs was now slightly over three feet tall instead of the previous size of about a normal step.  Thankfully the ocean happily works itself out, and in so doing works things back to the way they are supposed to be.  Several days after the waves subsided, normal waves slowly dragged sand that had been churned up back to the beach and deposited it gently back over the rocks occasionally grabbing a rock and dragging it back out to sea as it left.  

At the end of the day it was very cool to see larger waves than are available anywhere in the northeast and I’m glad they weren’t any more dangerous than mere photo opportunities.

It was bound to happen.  It seems everytime I travel anywhere I end up sick in some way or other.  I’m not sure why it happens, or how I got so lucky to have this pattern, but it does.  Some may say, “Well you sat on a plane with 200 other people for over 6 hours.”, but that’s not it because I’ve gotten sick driving to Vermont in my own car too.  Best of all, there is never any obvious cause of the illness.  I’m just sick, that’s all, thanks for playing, and with any random collection of symptoms.

In the tropics, my body’s choice was a day of mild fever (100.5F) followed by almost non-stop trips to the bathroom.  The rest of this story is not for the squimish and you may want to go on to another post prior to getting to my brief but descriptive story of Liquishits™.

For lack of a more graceful way to describe what happened to me, I will say that I would sit down and make a noise something like someone pouring a bucket of water into a toilet.  Gut wrenching pain and about 3 seconds of high-speed Liquishits™ and it was time to clean up after what seemed like a war.  If that wasn’t bad enough, there was a day where I would leave the now partially destroyed wreck of a bathroom only to return to the same freak show mere minutes later.  I said many times during our stay “My kingdom for a solid poop.”, but it was not meant to be.  The gut wrenching pain tapered off, the frequency of Liquishits™ lessened to about once after each meal, and the consistancy got a little less liquidy, but the solidity was not restored until I got home.

It wasn’t pretty, sorry you had to read that.  There’s nothing to see here, move along.

Living in America has all soda drinkers very used to things like sodium benzoate (to preserve freshness) and high fructose corn syrup in their day to day bubbly sugar water consumption.  Down in the Caribbean however, corn is missing, sugar cane is grown everywhere, and preservatives are not something you are likely to find in anything you eat or drink.  This produces an interesting opportunity indeed.  One where a soda drinker can enjoy outstandingly delicious soda.

My soda of choice here in America is Coka-Cola.  Good old fashioned high test sugar laiden brown bubble water.  Sadly the ingredients on the American version of Coke include things like “Sugar and/or High Fructose Corn Syrup”, which to me indicates that they mix all their sweeteners together and at the end have honestly no clue how much of each ends up in each bottle.  Presumably they mix them and the desired ratio ends up in each bottle or the flavor of a bottle of Coke would vary widely, and it clearly doesn’t vary much at all.  Down in the tropics however, something wonderful was waiting for me behind that red label I know so well.

At first I never even thought to look at the ingredients.  I opened a bottle of Coke from our well stocked mini-fridge and took a sip.  Something was very wrong.  It was like Coke, but not exactly.  It was delicious.  Outstandingly delicious.  I sat there with the bottle in my hand and felt a bit like a polar bear that just enjoyed another Christmas Coca-Cola.  A grin, a feeling of peace.  Heck, it was soda nirvana.  I slowly twisted the bottle around to find the nutritional information panel and the ingredient list so I could see why this Coke tasted so much better than any I’d ever had.  The nutritional information panel was entirely missing.  No calories, no carbs, no fat, no nothing.  The ingredients however was a shorter list than I’d ever seen on a bottle of Coke and revealed exactly why this bottle I held in my hand brought a smile to my face like no other bottle of soda ever has before.

Ingredients:  Carbonated Water, Sugar, Caramel Colour, Phosphoric Acid, Natural Flavors, Caffeine.

That was it.  Real sugar.  100%.  And no preservatives at all.  To my friends at Coke:  Please offer this recipe here in America.  It’s so much better than the version you sell here I could hardly imagine drinking standard American Coke ever again, and would happily pay a premium if required to get “the good stuff.”

Once loaded up onto the bus to Sandals Regency we were off for what I could only describe as an, uh, “exciting” trip.  A bus on St. Lucia is more like a large mini-van with extra seats crammed into it.  Before I can explain how the trip to the resort was, I need to explain a couple of things about the island itself.

St. Lucia is a volcanic island formed almost entirely by a single large volcano near its center but offset slightly toward the southern end of the island.  Due to either volcanic chance or perhaps erosion patterns the island’s mountains have an almost starfish like quality.  There is a large set of peaks with many very steep ridges and valleys radiating outward toward the sea.  Because of these ridges, the obvious approach to road construction was to simply try to go around.  For this reason almost all of the cities on the island are near the ocean and there is effectively one large road that goes all the way around the island.  Before the concept of a road that “goes around a mountain” gels up too solidly in your head, think back to the humble starfish. Imagine one with not five but closer to twenty legs.  Then instead of radiating out in equidistant straight lines make it more like a tangled twisty mess as would be drawn by a child with a mountain colored crayon.

Now try to imagine the road that would be forced to go up and down this crazy freak of a starfish to avoid sending its traffic out into the ocean.  That, my friends, is the road that we had to take from the airport at the very bottom of the island to the resort at the very top.  As the crow flies, the island cities we were traveling between are no more than twenty miles apart, but the drive clocked in at almost exactly an hour of crazy turns and hills. Beyond geological concerns, the driver in a car sits on the right side of the car, drives on the left side of the road, and enjoys an almost complete lack of traffic laws beyond that.

As far as I managed to learn from the times when I had my eyes open during the drive, there are generally no speed limits on the island unless you are near cities.  The general idea is, “get there as fast as you possibly can without flying off a mountain or crashing into anything.”  Also, since some folk like to try for land speed records and others seem to drive vehicles without engines that have greater than six horsepower, passing each other isn’t just something you occasionally do, it’s actually part of driving anywhere and happens all the time.  To make that slightly more exciting than it would otherwise be, remember that there is basically one road.  Now put an entire island worth of traffic onto it.  See what I mean yet?

If that wasn’t enough, it rains for almost six months straight every year and is dry for the other six.  The effect that has on roads may not be immediately obvious, so let me explain how it goes well beyond wet slippery roads.  The entire island was constructed with drainage ditches to try to keep things like cars and people and bananas from washing away.  These ditches can be found almost everywhere and are usually around two to three feet deep and about one to one and a half feet across.  Roads are the most common thing that has them and for that pattern to work, there are a few things that have to go.  Shoulders are likely considered a waste of space and a curb on the side of the road would only mess up how the drainage ditches work, things like guard rails to keep your van on the road in case something bad happened are clearly a concept for the weak.  This gives our speed racer inspired traffic acrobats less room to maneuver and a very easy to fall into ditch to wreck a wheel or a whole car in or as one’s imagination is spinning tales, off of the road, down a cliff, off of a banana tree or twelve and then right into the ocean off the cliffs at the bottom.

There are huge long stretches that have no lines on the road at all to assist the effort of staying on them. The general up and down and hyper-twisty nature of the roads regularly means you see traffic coming at 90 degree angles that you would assume is someone merging into the road, but is in fact just traffic moving in its own lane opposite yours.  People of all shapes and sizes walk on the sides of these streets both near cities and out in villages near the banana trees.  To the crazier types out there it could be considered sport driving in the same way a guy with a gun in the woods could be considered a sport.  I often wondered if we were going to be in the bus that took out the entire 4th grade class from a smaller village on the way.  After an hour of this, you are truly ready to be at your destination, and are also comically kind of used to it.  It was good to be at our resort finally.

Ok, to those of you that were paying attention, I know I said this wasn’t going to be like a diary, but for this post, it kinda will.  How else is one supposed to tell the story of international travel?

Our morning started at the brutally early time of 2am.  Our flight was going to leave JFK airport at 5:45am whether we were there or not, so it really made a lot of sense to be there.  We had packed over the previous week and had remarkably little to do on the morning of our departure.  After a drive to the airport provided by my father-in-law we started our adventure by getting grumbled at by a mean lady with a power complex and a dashing red coat.  ”You’re late.  The flight closes in 15 minutes.”  To which I immediately thought, “How late am I really if the flight doesn’t close for another 15 minutes?”  For obvious reasons I left that thought safely in my head.

After a brief time in a line to check our bags we found that being “late” of course still means that we were left to sit around waiting for anything exciting to happen at the gate.  We had time to grab a muffin for breakfast from the Au Bon Pan near the gate, use the facilities, and still sat around after eating.  Our flight left on time.

To avoid turning this into a diary, I’ll jump ahead to when our flight was descending toward Miami International Airport.  The flight attendant began to ramble off a list of connecting international destinations and the gates we would have to wander off to in order to go to those places.  We heard St. Lucia in the list, heard her say gate 51, confirmed it with each other, and even took out the American Airlines magazine with the airport maps in it and figured out how we would get to that gate.  Once in the Miami airport we walked to the departures board, confirmed the time of our flight and somehow entirely failed to verify the gate number before wandering off to gate 51.

On our way to the gate we hit up another restaurant for a pre-made turkey and cheese sandwich to split so we wouldn’t starve to death on the longer leg of our travels to St. Lucia.  Then we made our way to a semi-crowded gate area that had additional people showing up from time to time.  We ate our lunch and assumed all was well.  The time we were expecting to start boarding came and went and my wife decided to go for a last minute pit stop before they started.  That’s when it soaked in.

The board at the gate we were told to sit at was not international at all.  It was to Chicago.  That flight was leaving 10 minutes later than ours and that was why they hadn’t started boarding yet, but still had people arriving to the gate area.  My heart started pounding as I tried to figure out how to get us where we needed to be in the now very limited time I had to get us there.  I grabbed my wife’s hand and took off at a power-walk pace to the nearest departure board.  That board said gate 34.

Now for those of you that are taking notes, gate 51 is not the same as gate 34.  We had been blatantly misinformed and at our own fault failed entirely to verify our information until it was almost too late.  With this new information and signs over our heads telling us that gates 40 through 31 are this way, we resumed our morning power-walking session.  Somehow, we missed it.  My wife and I are both reasonably smart people and when a sign says gates 40 through 31 are this way, we figure that is exactly what we would find.  Yet there was no 34.  We hit the area where 31 was, hit a bend in the corridor and started seeing signs for other sections of the airport.

This was not a good time to have misleading airport signs.  Using the closest aproximation of my previously mentioned intelligence that I could muster considering the situation, I flagged down one of those carts they use to drive around old people.  I figured if someone would know where our mysterious gate was, it would be him.  The answer was almost literally “there is a side hallway on the left near the vending machines.”  Now I’m no airport designer, but it seems that I would either have designed this better or added additional signage to point happless travelers in the right direction.  A sign indicating that gates 40 through 31 are this way was a good start, but right away I would have put another sign that said “oh by the way, you guys that want gates 34-36, go down that hallway next to the vending machines.”  We arrived at gate 34, verified this time what we were about to do, and immediately handed in our boarding passes and got on the plane.

Words to the wise:  When you travel, verify the gate number every time you pass a departure board.  They change all the time.

This is the first post in a series of posts about a honeymoon in the tropics.  The basics are that my lovely wife and I went to Sandals in St. Lucia for 10 days and had some adventures in the sun.  Each post that follows this one will be about a specific thing from the honeymoon.  This is not a diary, day by day account, or anything like that, it’s really just a story about things that were interesting, comical or otherwise just something I feel like talking about.

Hold on to your butts…