Sea Trekkin'

The photo posted at the end of the last blog post was of Dave and I "Sea Trekkin'" at Coral World two weeks ago. We got into Coral World free - we know people who know people.... so we thought we'd check it out to see what the fuss was about. Basically, it's got an aquarium or two.. an underwater observatory (not at all like the one in Jaws; this one just had a few windows here and here, so it seemed like a regular aquarium to me, no exciting tunnels to walk through, worrying about drowning if a big shark comes by and runs into the tunnel). We saw the turtle pool, which was quite sad - four or five big sea turtles stuck in a small area (the photo on their website shows just about the whole area but the turtles are quite bigger now). There's also a shark pool and a touch pool where you can touch sea cucumbers, star fish, and the like. And there are tons of iguanas all over.

We mostly went because we also got a free chance to go Sea Trekkin (usually $50). Sea Trekkin' is where you are given a huge helmet which lets you breathe under water, it weighs 75 pounds above water and just feels like 15 pounds under water. The helmet is connected to an air compressor on the surface, so it's like scuba diving in the old days; it's quite loud underwater inside the helmet. Our group was just the two of us plus another woman. Once dressed with the underwater shoes and gloves they provide, you walk down a ladder until just your head is sticking above water. Then someone places the helmet on your head and you continue down the ladder about 25 feet until you reach the bottom. At the bottom, you make sure your ears have equalized, then grab onto a chain about waist high that keeps you from wandering off.

Dave went down first and I followed. About 30 seconds after the helmet was placed on me, I chickened out and climbed right back out of the ladder. My claustrophobia had gotten the better of me. After the other woman went down (a little more nervous given that I'd freaked out), I gave it another shot. The person told me I could come right back up after I walked down the ladder if I didn't like it. Determined to see if I would ever enjoy scuba diving, I gave myself time to adjust and went down the ladder very slowly, taking deep breaths. Once I got to the bottom I thought it was fine.

The helmet just hangs loose and the air bubble just stays there because of the water pressure. So, if you lean too far forwards, you can get a mouthful of water -- a little unnerving. But on the flip side, you could also pick your nose with the helmet on (or so they told us...I don't think either of us gave it a shot). To get a good look at things on the bottom without letting water crawl up your face, you need to bend your knees to a squat position, insead of bending at the hips.

Since you can't really talk with the guide, she just points things out. She placed a few pieces of sealife in our hands to look at more closer. We touched a brittle star (a star fish), a west indian sea egg (an urchin), and a damsel fish. (Dave told me all of this after our trip.) We were underwater walking along the trail for about 20 minutes. We both enjoyed it, especially given that it was free for us. I think you can see just about as much sealife just by snorkeling or swimming at most beaches on the island. Especially at the beach by Coral World (Coki Point, the same place we saw the ramora), because I think the fish must get fed there...

I'm not too enamored by Coral World, but it was worth the hour we spent there exploring it before our Sea Trekkin' adventure.

Christmas on St. Thomas

We survived the holiday weekend. Wow, Christmas is a HUGE event here. On Christmas Eve, I took Derek and Suzanne to K-Mart, downtown, and Havensight so we could do some holiday shopping. It wasn't crowded more than usual, so I don't think many locals do a lot of last minute shopping. (Although Dave's afternoon trip to K-Mart may indicate otherwise.) Derek was impressed by the lack of items on the shelves in K-Mart - we were looking for some cold medicine as it seems I caught a bug at work and gave it to Derek. Derek and Suzanne got to experience the lengthy lines at K-Mart too - there may only be two people in front of you, but you'll be in line for about 15 minutes nonetheless.

In town we checked out our favorite liquor shop - Dynasty - and had some free samples. Mostly the shops in town sell liquor, jewelry, edible gifts like rum balls, or generic touristy junk. After spending some time in town, we went to Havensight so I could swing by Gourmet Gallery. I bought some chocolate for some of my gift recipients. Since Derek and I weren't feeling so well, we didn't do much else that day other than read our books and listen to the surprisingly quiet holiday music of our neighbors. (often they play loud, annoying music) We ate some food I'd gotten from work over the past week - pasteles and potato stuffing. Pasteles remind me a lot of tamales but they are wrapped with a plaintain leaf and are made with green bananas and instead of cornmeal, there are garbonzo beans on the outside. I thought they were quite good. They are a bit of a delicacy here though as they are very labor intensive. Someone at the courthouse brought them over from St Croix where his cousin had made them. People in the clerk's office at work keep an eye out for me for local foods - seems like I always get a call from someone saying "have you tried this? we thought you'd want to taste it!"

After we all went to bed on Christmas Eve, everyone else on the island began their holiday celebrations. Christmas music got louder and louder. Dave and I turned our dehumidifer on for some white noise, but I felt bad for Derek and Suzanne with just the earplugs we'd purchased for our guests to drown out the noises from the various bugs and chickens and dogs nearby. At 3am I walked out to our deck, determined to yell at our next door neighbor to turn it down, knowing I would just be viewed as the outsider who can't understand how the islanders celebrate the holidays. But then I realized the music was coming from much farther away and higher up on the hill. Since there was nothing I could do about it, I just went back to sleep.

When my alarm went off at 6:30am, Dave and I got up and headed downtown to listen to the Challenge of the Carols. For the past few months, people I work with at the courthouse have been telling me about this. Apparently, tons of carolers get up at dawn and start singing at Emancipation Garden on the bandstand. Each group sings various songs for awhile. We heard two different groups singing. We didn't recognize the songs, though they were clearly Christmas songs, just a stronger religious leaning than the ones I know. Some of them were quite good.

Today I found out that some of the caroling groups go around to various parties all night long on Christmas Eve before arriving at the Challenge in town. Christmas Eve parties here sound like New Years Eve parties in other places.

While we were up, we took some photos of the harbor in the early morning. Afterwards we headed home for a little more sleep before we opened presents by our awesome lighted palm tree I got at K-Mart!!! And we had omelettes, courtesy of Chef Dave. In the afternoon, we went to Morningstar Beach, which was more crowded than Dave and I have ever seen before. For dinner, Dave cooked various seasoned steaks on the barbeque along with some zucchini (the only vegetables always available here) and Derek and Suzanne made some shrimp risotto. We'd hoped for lobster but couldn't figure out where to buy fresh ones. While staying on St John last week, Derek and Suzanne had gotten some grilled pineapple, so Dave cooked some of that too. We had a very tasty Christmas dinner! (I set the table!)

We hope everyone had or is having a Happy Holiday season! (more on the origins of our holiday photo later....)

12 Days of Christmas

Last week my co-clerks and I had to sing the 12 Days of Christmas at the office holiday party. We had to learn and perform the Virgin Island version as crafted by the Ten Sleepless Knights. Here are the essential lyrics so you can sing at home:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my woman gave to me:
one dozen roast fish,
eleven benya,

(like banana fritters)
ten sleepless (k)nights,
nine pounds of okra,
eight ball of fungi, (picture cornmeal + okra cooked together, it's quite yummy)
seven pans of sardines,

six shots of vodka,

five guava tarts,

four coconuts,
three sweet bread,
two cruzan rum,
and a dimy john of guava berry.
(much like the guavaberry liqueur we got from St Martin)

Miracle on Main Street

Friday night was Miracle on Main Street on St Thomas. It's like the Havensight Christmas Tree Lighting Party but it's in town instead of at the mall. This time there were a few more bands, including the Rising Stars - the steel drum band created from the Superior Court's intervention program with local kids. The band is huge and the kids are amazing. I was really glad we got to see them. They had a concert last Sunday night but I was busy working and we didn't think to buy tickets ahead of time so we missed it. I definitely want to catch it next year.

For Miracle, local vendors filled Emancipation Garden -- a big square grassy area near the Post Office, named for when slaves were emancipated in 1848 by the Danes. The vendors sold crafts, jewelry, and, of course, FOOD. For starters, we got a coconut sugar cake; this one was a little more crumbly than the one we got at the Havensight event. We bought our dinners from the same woman I got kallaloo soup from at Havensight. This time I tried her conch though and Dave was adventurous and got the welch. Her potato stuffing was good but I didn't need to eat as much of the buttery rice as I did. Dave's welch was interesting. Maybe he'll post about it and the leyche liqueur one of these days...

We wandered up Main Street and walked back along Veterans Drive (the road by the harbor). Tons of shops were all open late and there were plenty of discounts. We popped our heads into a few shops and bought a few small items. Miracle on Main Street is considered THE shopping day apparently. It's the night lots of the locals do their Christmas shopping. Although at work I heard many people mention that they've learned over the years to choose between shopping or enjoying the food and the bands and the boat parade. Yes, the boat parade!

At 6:30, the boat parade began. About 6 or 7 boats paraded along the harbor near Veterans Drive with lots of holiday lights on them. One boat even had an inflatable Santa Claus on it. The boats did the route twice. It was interesting to see what constitutes as a parade here.... Everyone seemed to enjoy it though and there was happy singing going on. When we were in one store, carollers even came in to serenade the shoppers.

With all this eating going on, I've gotten into the habit of going running a few times a week. Good thing I went today because we just had a surprise holiday party at work and I sure ate a lot of local food. I'm bringing home some potato stuffing and desserts for sharing though.

We're enjoying our first Caribbean holiday and we're super excited because our first visitors arrive tomorrow. Maybe we can get them to do a guest post on the blog....

Soon, I'll post some photos of Miracle on Main Street as well as a great photo of us taken this weekend doing something very touristy... stay tuned!

Christmas Tree Lighting at Havensight

Havensight is the outdoor shopping area by the main cruise ship dock. Last Wednesday was the annual tree lighting ceremony and party and we were strongly encouraged to attend by those I work with at the courthouse. So, rather willingly at 5:30, I left work to walk over there; it's only about a mile and I see tons of tourists do this walk daily. Dave drove straight from work and met me there.

There was quite a tall Christmas tree at the main part of Havensight. (The live Christmas trees arrived on St Thomas on Tuesday last week. Apparently we get two crates full. One of which is at Home Depot now. Yes, the Christmas tree lots here are really just refrigerated backs of semi-trucks.) A large steel drum band of students was playing music and promptly at six o'clock the lights came on the tree, and I believe Santa arrived shortly thereafter. Dave and I decided to take advantage of the shops being open late and bought a few Christmas gifts while we wanted around Havensight which is made up of about 6 long rectangular buildings. There are roads between these buildings but for the party they were blocked off and filled with people like us wandering around or dancing to the band that was playing in that section of Havensight. I think there were about 6 or 7 different bands, all playing very different music. There were also dancers and mocko jumbies (traditional folk characters - brightly dressed people walking on stilts - the elevated spirits).

Of course, a big part of the celebration was food. There were tons of food booths. We recognized some of the vendors from the agricultural fair at UVI. I tried kallaloo soup for the first time. It is a traditional soup around Christmas though it can be found year round here, though not many restaurants serve it daily. It's typically fish soup with lots of greens, okra and various spices. Sometimes pork is added in as well apparently. Kallaloo usually comes with fungi too. Even though I'm not a fan of okra, I do like fungi! It's made of cornmeal and okra. I enjoyed my dinner and had a sour sop juice to drink too. Dave had pork, local potato stuffing (very tasty stuff, have we mentioned it before?....) and various other side dishes with his guava drink.

Then we hit the dessert vendors! We tasted sugar cakes - I couldn't really explain what this is like.. the sugar is crystalized but it's still soft somehow, there was an almond flavor to it as well. One recipe I just found online says it has coconut, water, sugar, cream of tartar, and almond essence. We should try making them at home... We also tried mango something. it was okay but not fabulous. Then we got some Caribbean candy canes. They are made in rectangular pieces and are quite thick - about an inch or two wide and 1/2 inch deep and the lengths vary but the ones we got were about 6 inches. plenty of sugar! Very pepperminty sugary taste.

All in all, we enjoyed our first Caribbean Christmas event and we are looking forward to Miracle on Main Street this Friday, which sounds like the same thing as the Havensight party except its near the shops in town instead. Any excuse for food and music!

Saint Martin and Sint Maarten

Finally our post about Saint Martin/Sint Maarten! For the record, Dave and I both contributed to this post a bit, so "I" may be Dave in a few places, but mostly it should be me, Kendra. We really enjoyed our trip to the nearby island. We stayed on the French side, St. Martin, but we visited the Dutch side, St. Maarten, a few times too. We could easily have stayed a few more days and still have plenty to do and see, so we may need to go back sometime.

We flew on LIAT Airline for a whopping $44 roundtrip fare, but with all of the taxes, fees, etc, it was twice that and then on our way back we got stuck with a $30 departure tax. LIAT is “the Caribbean airline” – and, boy, it really is. I’d been warned by coworkers that it stands for Leave Island Any Time (or Luggage In Any Terminal). Both trips were about an hour late and since they are international flights, we had to be there about 2 hours early for the short 40 minute flight. Totally worth it though. [Dave's pamphlet with our boarding passes says "Ready, Set, Go"]


After arriving at the Dutch airport, we rented a car and drove to our hotel (on the right side of the road), Le Flamboyant, just a few miles away. We got a good deal on Hotels.com for the hotel stay and even though they don’t really have non-smoking rooms, the hotel was pretty nice and the room didn’t smell like smoke at all. We could have easily spent a day just enjoying the hotel. It’s on the lagoon instead of the ocean but they have tons of non-motorized boats that guests can use for free. We didn’t have enough time to use any of them though. Next time, the paddle boat for sure.


Thursday morning we headed towards Marigot, the town on the French side, where a coworker told me there was a good breakfast café called Zee Best Bakery. Unfortunately we couldn’t find it. We got a little turned around in town because the maps only show a few roads and they certainly don’t tell you which ones are one-way roads, and while there are signs, there are generally too many to be useful. [See picture on left.]


We decided to head to Phillipsburg, the town on the Dutch side, because we had to drop off a toy for a coworker’s grandniece. (My coworker didn’t want to have to wait to ship it because the boat only comes once a week apparently.) Long story short, we drove around for awhile trying to find the McDonalds where coworker’s sister works in the business office, and eventually just parked the car and walked around the town’s main street lined with shops. We found McDs quickly and then walked towards the boardwalk looking for breakfast. We ended up eating at the Barefoot Café [See Dave and his mango juice to the right.]. The food was fairly standard, except they had johnny cake sandwiches. For those of you who don’t know, johnny cakes are essentially donuts minus the hole and most of the sugar. Kendra had a johnny cake with egg, ham and cheese; basically a Egg Mc Muffin except johnny cake instead of muffin. It tasted and looked good…. Fortunately vacation calories don’t count.

While in Phillipsburg, we made a stop at the Guavaberry Emporium. [Pictured to the left.] Guavaberry liquor is the island's official drink. It is mighty tasty and we brought home some bottles. [I made a guavaberry colada on Friday. Yum!] After visiting Phillipsburg we stopped by a little grocery store near our hotel and got some delicious brie cheese and a french roll as well as some quiche


We tried to find Loterie Farm where we wanted to go for a hike through their nature reserve, but we made the wrong turn so we ended up at the top of Pic Paradis (Paradise Peak), one of the highest points on the island. The road was super narrow and lined with trees. It was quite difficult if not impossible to have two cars on the road in many spots, much like the road we live on. The view was pretty nice though.

We then drove to Orient Beach - THE beach to go to on St Martin. We weren't super impressed, but we usually go to the beach for swimming. Here, there were so many motorized water activities that I bet the water was kinda gross. It was kind of like Venice Beach in some respects, but crossed with a French nude beach, as OrientBeach.com makes clear....

On our way back to the hotel we drove through Grand Case and encountered Restaurant Row, where all the fabulous restaurants St Martin is famous for are located. TONS of yummy menus on these restaurants' front doors. We walked quite a ways looking at many of them before finally deciding to make our dinner reservations at Le Pressoir.

Later that night we ate a wonderful meal at Le Pressoir. Dave had the house special which was a two course seafood meal - first course was shellfish: shrimp, crab, scallops, lobster, etc; second course was fish filets: grouper, tuna, and some other stuff. I went with the goat cheese salad and the shrimp and scallops entree, which I loved, but I also wish I got to try the filet of snapper in vanilla sauce. The desserts were equally as wonderful. Dave had a white chocolate and passionfruit mousse that was so delicious I wish I'd ordered it in addition to my raspberry creme brulee. Oh yum.

Friday we found Loterie Farm and went on an hour hike through the rain forest and saw some amazing views, which we definitely earned given how steep parts of the trail were. [Pictured below]

After the hike, we went to Isle Pinel, a small uninhabited island somewhat near Orient Beach. We took a 5 minute boat ride out there and wandered around a bit before finally just jumping in the water to cool off. While noone lives on the island, it is a happening place during the day with a restaurant and bar right on the beach. We found an empty table covered with a grass roof like you'd expect on Gilligan's Island and Dave tried the Liche Colada while I got an Apple Colada. For lunch we had their famous lobster salad and cod fritters. It was a wonderful meal, and the first time I ever wore just a bathing suit at a restaurant. I even jumped back in the water while waiting for the food to appear.

For dinner we had planned to go back to Grand Case for another french-seafood meal but we couldn't resist trying an East Indian restaurant in Phillipsburg that our guide book gave good reviews. There are NO east indian restaurants on St Thomas and we'd missed tandoori chicken and naan. It was definitely worth the trip back to the Dutch side of the island. [Main Street in Phillipsburg pictured to left. The dusk view from the boardwalk just on the other side of a row of these shops is pictured below. In the distance is a cruise ship leaving.]

We didn't experience much of the night life on St Martin that is apparently quite happening, but we kind of figured bars and casinos are pretty much the same all over. We enjoyed ourselves very much and would definitely go back sometime. But before we make a return trip, there are a bunch of other islands to visit for the first time - St Kitts and Grenada are up there on my list.