4:17 P.M.
Tuesday April 27, 2004 Day 5
I hit the breakfast bar again this morning first thing after I woke up.
The days on this ship are really flying by.
My cabin is small and cramped but I�m starting to get tired of waking up alone every morning. It seems that everyone keeps talking about how they are sleeping in one room and waking up to hit the breakfast table together.
I�ve been eating alone.
There was a sound of 4 bells on the loud speaker before a woman announced that we had docked the boat at Tortola.
Tortola? We were supposed to be in St. Thomas.
I met up with Ki-Ki and Jo-Jo and we grabbed a taxi to the beach.
Ki-Ki sat up front with the driver and Jo and I took the back. Jo asked the driver to take us to the best beach to snorkel on and the first place the driver took us to was a resort.
Ki-Ki popped his head into the back seat and said, �Oh hell no! We don�t want a resort. We want a beach.�
We didn�t want the padded version of the beach.
The cabbie had a smile on his face as he put the van in reverse and took us up and around the mountain to another beach.
We stopped at an old run down hut on the other side of the mountain. We had been traveling at a snails pace around the island in an old 20 year old, beat up van, so it took us about 25 minutes to finally get to our spot.
We ran into Brad just before we set our stuff on a chair under an umbrella.
An old man ran up to us begging for money and Brad yelled at the man. �Look old man, I already paid you. Now scram!�
We protested the price of chairs and umbrellas by pilling all of our things on the chair that Brad had already paid for.
The old man who charged for the chair had a hard time accepting the situation, but there wasn�t much he could do about it.
We all went swimming for a bit and I watched the guys, as I stayed closer to shore as they tossed each other into the air doing back flips.
Ki-Ki kept asking me to try one and I stayed put closer to shore. I wasn�t comfortable going into the deep water just yet.
After about an hour of swimming, Ki-Ki, Jo, and I walked up to a straw hut for lunch. Ki-Ki had hot wings, and Jo and I split a burger and a coke.
They wanted to find a reef and asked our waitress where the best snorkel spot was.
She pointed to the end of the beach and told them to be careful of sharp rocks and barracuda.
We made our way to the reef and ran into Travis, John, and Brad. They were all headed to the same place to see the same thing.
The guys made their way into the water and said they would tell me if there was anything good.
There must have been fish everywhere because the guys were down there for almost an hour. When they returned they looked beat.
Ki-Ki, Jo, and I broke away from the group and took a taxi around the island. The driver took us to the highest point on the island, which was also the highest point in the entire Caribbean.
Jo took a bunch of photos and then we got back into the cab and headed to town.
We asked about the things to see in St. Thomas and our driver told us that Carnival was going to start today, and there was no port space today, but tomorrow the island would still have a huge festival.
He told us that if he had a choice he would charter his own boat and hit the island a day early and just sleep on one of the beaches.
�It�s something you have to see at least once in your lifetime.�
There was a guy on the side of the road and our driver picked him up.
The stranger sat in the row of seats behind Jo and I. He poked his head between us and asked where we came from.
Jo told him we were on the boat and the guy told us he was a captain himself.
�I charter boats to other islands around here.�
Jo and I looked at each other with a smile. We had just found our way to get to St. Thomas. Could it really be this easy?
Our driver dropped us off in the city and charged us each 4 dollars. We walked around town looking in the shops but Ki-Ki was on a mission. He wanted a pipe.
He disappeared 20 minutes after we made it to the city so Jo and I walked around, people watching, laughing and having a good time.
We found Ki-Ki in the city closer to the boat. He had found a pipe and a pinocolada.
We followed him back to the drink hut and ordered some papaya frozen concoction.
We made our way back to the boat and slammed our drinks when a guy told us we couldn�t bring them back with us onto the boat.
Jo spent about an hour trying to track down Liz to find out if we could legally go to St. Thomas early, and she said it would be fine as long as we brought our passport and left the ship before 5:30, because that was the last call for �All aboard�.
She could just tell everyone that we missed the ship but told her we would meet the group on the island.
We made our way down to Deck A, and the ship was already pulling away from the port. We were too late.
My daydreams of sleeping on the beach were crushed so I went back to my room to get cleaned up for dinner.
I took a short catnap before dinner and met up with them a few hours later.
We usually at late around 8 p.m. so I had plenty of time to rest.
After dinner we watched a show and hit up the disco for a few hours.
Linda pulled me aside to tell me that she liked Jo and Jen agreed.
�We were rooting for Jo. He seems like the most normal out of all of the guys on this ship.�
I took their comments with a grain of sand. He lives in Minnesota. I live in Florida.
Lets get real people.
After a few hours at the disco I went to bed.
Isn't Tortolla beautiful!!
