St. Thomas Santarchy or Santa Pub Crawl

HOHOHO! 
Time for the annual Santa Pub Crawl!!
Dress as your favorite holiday character... Santa, elf, reindeer! We'll have some extra Santa hats to lend too!
Bring your crazy friends or meet new ones as we strut our holiday stuff and party through Red Hook & possibly Cruz Bay 

This Saturday night December 21st, starting at Duffy's in Red Hook at 8PM!

What is Santarchy?

Santarchy takes place in major cities all over the world involving tens of thousands of Santas. It is a non-profit, non-political, non-religious & non-sensical celebration of holiday cheer, goodwill, and fun. There is no good reason to dress up in cheap Santa suits, run around town, give gifts, sing songs, have strangers sit on our laps, and decide who is naughty or nice -- but it's a lot of fun -- so Santa does it anyway. Everyone loves Santa and Santa loves everyone! Santarchy is your chance to be Santa, so step up and be jolly.

Santa's Rules:

Be Jolly.

Holiday apparel is mandatory. Be creative. A Santa hat is okay, but more is better like theme Santas: Elvis Santas, Sailor Santa, Rasta Santa, Santa's naughty little helper, misfit toy, elf, grinch, angel, Jesus, snowman, nutcracker, reindeer.

What To Do in the Virgin Islands Update

I just thought I would post some pictures of our recent weekends with the new dog and taking some friends over to Jost Van Dyke for some painkillers at Soggy Dollar Bar!

Tim Tebow Night in the Virgin Islands!

Go Jets, beat the Steelers!

First Tropical Storm - Isaac

When we discussed moving to the Virgin Islands a few years ago with friends or family, many asked if we got hurricanes here. Well, yes, and August and September are the two most high risk months. We would always reply with it sure beats a wild fire (which we were accustomed to in Nevada, Idaho and Colorado, all places I lived since 1989) or a tornado. Why you ask? You get several days notice the storm is coming. I grew up in NJ and we had the occasional hurricane come through, but all I can remember was heavy rain and winds, we were 70 miles from the ocean.

As we speak, I have had several days notice now. We first heard of this storm last Friday. Shannon had a trip booked to her native Canada, to Jasper to visit her parents, brothers and 101 year old grandmother at her parents horse back riding business in the national park there. We went to the Chili cook off last Sunday with some friends and Shannon had some anxiety about leaving Monday with the "notice" of a storm a coming. I told her not to worry, the dogs and I will be fine! She left Monday morning.

Tuesday night we get an email from the marina manager that they were closing the marina on Tuesday morning at 10 AM. You see, by this time, we were under a tropical storm watch.

So what does the marina closing mean? We have a boat at Compass Point Marina and one of the reasons we have a slip there is that it is in a hurricane hole and you don't have to move it. But that doesn't mean there is no prep to be done. What they do is move all the boats 6 feet off the docks. We then have hurricane lines that are attached to the pylons and then the pylons are roped criss cross creating a big web. Then they chain of the entrance to keep the Goony Boats out, there are many sailboats moored in the bay and by the looks of some, they aren't going to move on their own with a motor.

So off I go to the Marina at noon to meet a friend's boat manager to give me a hand since I didn't have my first mate, Shannon. Besides an annoying cough that developed that morning, we had it done in an hour.

Now back to the house, shower, change and off to the grocery store for some cold medicine (yes folks, I coming down with a head cold in the hottest part of Summer on the eve of a tropical storm). Of course I did get some other needed items, rum, beer, bread and a steak, yes my first steak since leaving the mainland back in April.

In the beer section, the entire middle row was pallets of water. Nope don't need that, have a reverse osmosis system. And the lines, well it was what I expected.

Groceries unpacked, now for a nice steak dinner because if we loose power for a while who knows when my next good meal will be. So here is my last supper, mind you, I am high on Sudafed now. Order a movie to rent on my IPad.

Restless night sleeping, keep waking up with all that I need to do the next day.

Wednesday morning, turn on the Weather Channel and they said that Isaac may turn into a hurricane, we have a hurricane watch, only 6%. Better get up and get going. Listened to the radio with my coffee and the local meteorologist is saying the storm will go south, top 35 MPH winds and heavy rains. Still, I better be safe than sorry?

Ok, checklist, generator and extension cords out, unlatch all the hurricane shutters so they can close easily. Bottle some more drinking water. Close up the apartment. Run to the gas station and get an extra 5 gallons of gas, remove the patio furniture and get the batteries out for the inverter (brought my RV solar panels down). I had my helper Bristol with me.

By noon I had it done. Lunch, leftover steak in tortilla with black beans grilled on the stove. Laundry, vacuum and dishes, hey I can't have a dirty house in a storm, right?

Around 3 PM, first band came through with winds at 20 MPH gusting to 27 MPH. Then Sun back out and then windy, cloudy, sun, shower.

The latest on the storm is it has weakened now with two centers. Most of the storm will be late tonight and in the morning.

All I can do I guess is take some Sudafed and a glass of red wine and maybe sleep better tonight. I will let you know how it turns out. One of our friends is having a Hurricane Party, but I don't think they would want me spreading my germs?

What To Do In St Thomas When You Are a Bored Local?

You do tourist things!

So a few Sundays ago, Shannon and I were bored, and decided to go on a local road trip to some tourist attractions.

We have never been to Mountain Top when it is open. When we were here in January 2010 we went up there to find the place had burned down! Well like a phoenix rising from the ashes, Mountain Top is open again.

A few myths about Mountain Top. First, the elevation according to the Mountain Top website is 2100 feet, all other sources say the elevation is 1480 feet. Second, Mountain Top is NOT the highest peak in St Thomas, that honor goes to Signal Mountain at 1486 feet. Believe it or not, Signal Mountain and Mountain Top are taller than the highest point in 8 states!

Mountain Top is a large gift shop with a large bar serving up banana daiquiris and a observation deck. To be honest here, we always have friends looking to shop for trinkets to take home and the selection to has not been great.  In the future, we are just going to take them here as the selection was huge!  The banana daiquiris were tasty, but really not worth $9 (the cost of a bottle of banana rum at any grocery store). The views, well how can you complain about this?

It was very slow as it was near closing and no cruise ships in town, so we had the deck to ourselves. We even got a chance to meet the owner and his son. Nice men, the owner is an immigrant from Israel and has been living in St Thomas for 20+ years. His son said he about had a heart attack with the rebuild, but life is good again now they are open.

On to our next stop. Drake's Seat.

We driven by this place, but have never stopped here. So with cooler in had of cold beer we stopped to take in the views of the world famous, Megan's Bay. Then I noticed why they call it Drake's Seat, there is a bench on the other side of the parking area. We took a seat in Drake's Seat and had a beer. The view was great, but even more fun was people watching with the cars going by, they really don't notice you, so made for some good laughs.

Here is a tid bit of history about this spot:

It is named Drake’s Seat after the British privateer Sir Francis Drake, who was commissioned by Queen Elizabeth I. He used just this spot to spy on enemy ships of the Spanish Fleet passing through Drake’s Passage, where the Atlantic Ocean joins the Caribbean Sea. In 1568 while delivering the victims in his ship a Spanish fleet took him by surprise. He was captured and eventually escaped only due to his outstanding ability to swim. From then on he devoted his life to working against the Spanish Empire who considered him a pirate and an outlaw. To England he was simply a sailor and a privateer.

What to do now?  We are hungry. Latitude 18 restaurant on the water in Red Hook for dinner as they are having Trinidad food!

Latitude 18 is a great outdoor restaurant, that sometimes has live music. The best part is being able to sit right on the water. To get here, go east out of Red Hook. About a half mile there is a yellow fruit/bar stand on the left, the road goes to the right, stay straight up the hill (this is the road to the Ritz Carlton). At the stop sign on the steep hill, make a left, then make your next left down a little hill and some speed bumps. The road then goes up a hill with one half finished. The road splits again, stay left and take the terribly bumpy road until the road ends, you are at Latitude 18!

We had for Trinidad food, some fried bread, potato like cakes with indian dipping sauces and a calla loo soup which was like creamed spinach. Pretty good stuff.

So it was a fun Sunday to be a tourist!