The monastery & Cathedral in Belem

I made it to Portugal last week, and after getting to my hostel I started a list of things that immediately berate your senses and remind you that America is long gone once you hop the pond. So here goes, you know you're in a European hostel when:

1)    Everyone speaks at least some English

2)    90% of the people are on a weekend getaway

3)    The milk is warm

4)    There is hot chocolate for breakfast

5)    The cornflakes haven't even got a hint of sugar

6)    Meeting people feels more awkward cn than ever

7)    The number one thing you ask for is the wifi password

Torre de Belem

I only had two days in Lisbon, so I left early on Sunday to make sure I would get to see as much as possible. I walked down to the waterfront and took the light rail west to Belem, a suburb that contains a few monuments, a market, and the largest free cultural center in the world. It contains so much art (and is larger than many of the Smithsonians in DC) that it ranks as the 50^th most visited museum in the world, which is surprising considering how many of them must be located in Washington, New York, London and Paris. Turns out that Portugal is an art hotspot.

I walked along the waterfront, went to the museum, and then headed back into Lisbon for some more downtown exploring. Chiado and the other nearby neighborhoods that make up central Lisbon immediately reminded me of San Francisco and I was really happy to just wander for a few hours. The waterfront has been redeveloped and is full of pedestrian areas with benches and trees that locals are taking full advantage of. I found a wine and cheese bar/art gallery/restaurant in a converted warehouse and sat down for my first lunch in Europe (which was long overdue). I had a Portuguese pizza with ham and peppers and olives and sat watching sailboats out on the water.

Lunch on the water

As I always say, places that are off your radar, and you have few expectations for, always surprise you. They tend to be low key, pedestrian friendly, tasty, and generally a good middle ground in terms of grimy/sterile. What I mean by the last is that you want a city that hasn’t been trashed by the locals (Rome), or sterilized to draw tourists (lots of fake places). You need something that feels real, where you can smell the food (Malaga) and hear the local sounds (Fes). The point is, Lisbon does that. It gives you just enough of each, without overwhelming you (India), that you want to come back. It seems that this is a regular thing with Lisbon, people only pass through for a few days and then realize they should have stayed ages. Every article in the Huffington Post, New York Times, and Matador all were written by people who had been in transit and been so blown away by Lisbon they were adding it to their list of places to go back to when they next had the chance.

One last success of the day. When you travel, and I mean that in the truest sense of the word, you are trying to leave the predictable and ordinary behind. I realized at one point in a train station that I couldn’t remember what I had been thinking for the last two hours. No clue what was going through my mind. But I know it wasn’t work, it wasn’t applications, it wasn’t any of the stressful day to day things that we all seek to escape when we’re on the road. Lisbon gets a thumbs up and five stars for making me completely lose track of where I was in life for that afternoon.

The waterfront in Lisbon

The Wrap-Up

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Driving is such an experience on Statia. First of all, there’s a very humorous element to it. Because of the sun, everyone has the top of their windshield either tinted, or covered in a sticker. If you’ve ever traveled to another country and seen people wearing English writing on their clothes then you’ll know exactly what a road trip around the island is like. Because the stickers have words on them that make no sense at all. I’ve been keeping a running list of my favorites. Here’s the count down of favorites from seven:

7. Live Yuh Life

6. Wha Nex?

5. Feel the Heat

4. Quad Lord

3. Even yo mother

2. Independent Woman Haha

1. Bun Fire

What exactly does ‘Bun Fire’ mean? And why is it in your windshield? That’s all I ever want to ask when I see that car. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m just so confused.

The other thing about Statia road trips (I use that liberally because the absolute farthest you can drive is about 5 miles), is that they have a very deep, existential quality to them if you take the time to notice. Here it is, the deep, dark secret that takes a whole month to realize…

Every road leads to where you want to go.

Seriously.

You have to actively try to get lost on this island. If you go too far in one direction, the road stops. The airport is in the middle. There are hills on one side and a volcano on the other. No matter how you want to get to the bay, you’ll end up there. Don’t know what road you’re on? Doesn’t matter. So basically, wherever you are, is the same as wherever you want to be. And it doesn’t really matter which fork in the road you take, there’s no difference between the more traveled and the less traveled, because they’re the same road. Think on that one for a second.

Sadly, no roads lead down Crooks Castle Bay. It’s more of a disaster zone that you reach by walking through the desalination plant and port authority. It’s a rocky strip of beach covered in coral that I have to patrol once a week. Why? I’m not sure. There has not been a single nest there yet because there’s nowhere to actually nest. A 30-meter strip of sand is about 2/3rds along the walk but I highly doubt any turtles will brave the rocks just off shore. Lynch and Compagnie are the same. No sand, just lots of rocks and death traps. I’m honestly surprised that I haven’t broken an ankle yet trying to patrol those three.

Here’s another abrupt change of topic. It’s illegal to kill animals that come on to your property and destroy things. Now maybe this is the gun crazy American in me, but I think that is absolutely absurd. The pigs have been invading the island and I’ve been chasing them out with a machete. Which, I was complaining to some people, is hardly the right object because it’s not strong enough to actually do any serious damage. I’ve scarred a few here and there, and drawn a little blood, but nothing major.  I even caught a little one the other day and through it over the fence by its feet. But none of it is having the hoped for effect—keeping them outside the botanical gardens. No, they keep breaking through the fence and rooting up plants, some quite valuable and sensitive. They’ve also thrown our garbage everywhere and broken into the kitchen to eat all the dog and cat food.

So we talked to the agriculture office about shooting them. It takes warning the farmer several times, though, before they can do so. But this farmer gets warned every few months when they break out of his farm. Finallyyyy, a meeting was held and it was agreed that if they weren’t gone by this Monday then STENAPA would have the right to start shooting. That got the farmer’s attention and he was out here all weekend reinforcing our fence and patching places they had broken it down. But it turns out, that even if they do break in, we normally don’t have the right to do anything about it. That’s. Just. Crazy.

But speaking of gutting wildlife, I’ve become quite the lionfish hunter. Six in the bag the other day. It’s quite satisfying to get one. But the word on the street is that it’s the most painful thing you’ll ever experience if you get stung. Liv watched someone get stung and they screamed for an hour straight. She, herself, got one in the finger and her arm started turning black for a day. That’s one way to end a dive quickly.

Normally we put them in a bucket and bring them back with us to the office. We have to open them up to see if they’re females or males and measure how long they are. Some days we leave them, though, for situational reasons, i.e., sharks. Last week four reef sharks were getting extra curious and following Steve and I around finishing off our disposed of carcasses. How’s that for an example of when it’s best to hand over your kill?

Last thing I want to say about Statia. When I walk the road into town there is a section near a couple of cow farms that has a lot of cow patties on it. I would normally complain about that except for one difference—they make for the best scenery to walk through. I’m not talking about them specifically (it’s weird you thought that’s what I meant), but what they attract. Butterflies! Clouds and clouds of butterflies that take off as you walk by. Hundreds and hundreds of little white butterflies swirl around as you make your way down the road.

Island Days

Islands and isolation go somewhat hand in hand. Besides the lack of fresh fruit or vegetables (at anything near an affordable price), and unbelievably expensive materials at the lumber yard, things here tend to move slowly. Our truck, for example, has been out of commission with a radiator problem for a whole month now. Which means, that our isolation is almost complete, and our escapes are entirely reliant on the generosity of others. Every morning Steve picks us up, and every afternoon he drives us home. Without him, we would spend two and a half hours a day walking back and forth to work. In other words, he’s a lifesaver. And it only costs him an hour and twenty minutes of driving each day.

The rides are nice, though. The windows down, a breeze off the water, sometimes music (when we can snag a station from another island, or the local one is open for business). The announcements are always vitally important, for instance, the local swim team is serving breakfast to raise money to fly to St. Croix so they can swim against another team. I love hearing those when I’m driving back and forth to the beach too. It reminds you that this island is one small town where everyone knows everything.

 

The downside to that is that it has very little going on, and when something does, you have to take full advantage of it. To be honest, we’re getting frustrated by the lack of pace. I can adjust to a degree, but being stuck at the garden gets old after you watch three movies in a day and read until you have a headache. The beach is on the other side of the island so our weekends consist of hitch-hiking to town to get internet and a short vacation. Mazinga has become my new hang out. Not just because of the pirate flag hanging outside, but also because they have a nice deck with chairs and tables that I can sit at while I work. Marta, my Spanish friend, works next door at the Old Gin House (the classy establishment on the island) and snagged their wifi password for me so now I don’t have to work in the office all the time. When she’s done working, and Leon is free, they come meet me there for a beer and a swim and I get to enjoy the Caribbean as we all envision it.

The garden is a little slow, as I said, but that is giving me time to catch up on movies. I’ve been watching everything in sight and feel quite cultured now. I highly recommend Win Win and the Devil’s Double and Behind the Pines. Excellent films. We’ve also become master falconers. Sort of. Zoe is finished growing, and entirely imprinted on us. She refuses to leave. We’ve let her stay for now, mainly because we were unsure if she was hunting or not, and because we haven’t known what else to do with her. But now that we’ve seen her catch a lizard, and our ear drums are completely shot from her chirping (24-7, no joke), Tuesday is going to be her day of release into the wilds. Just like a groundhog at home, she’s going in the cage, getting driven to the middle of nowhere, and getting left to fend for herself. Tough love on the island.

Work has been relatively successful lately. We fought for some more substantial projects and since then we’ve been working on a couple of surveys. The first, is a fish survey on a little wreck called Miss Kathy. It’s about 20 meters down and home to some really beautiful wildlife. There’s a big French Angelfish that lives there (my favorite kind!), and a massive stingray probably four feet across. I don’t know my fish well enough to be noting them all so I go as the photographer to document everything that is going on. Liv and Steve follow a transect line that I lay, and count and name all of the fish they see along the way.

Besides that, we’ve been working on turtle population surveys. These we do at night, on a big wreck called Chien Tong. It’s probably 200 feet long and home to 20 or 30 turtles. At night, they sleep there, which makes it easier for us to mark them with a big glow in the dark marker/crayon. We put a different symbol (+, o, or triangle) each night, and a number so that we can tell which turtles are returning and which are new. Using those numbers, we can estimate the size of the local population. It took us the first two dives to work out the kinks because it is surprisingly more tricky than you would think. Liv is our marker, I’m the data collector, Andrew is the cameraman, and Steve is the wrangler. Our mistake was trying to do all of the jobs on the first night. We ran out of air pretty quickly and it was too confusing.

Here’s how it works. Liv and I lead the pack. We search around the ship, over it, and eventually in it (pretty neat swimming into all the old cabins) looking for turtles. When we find one, we either identify it as one of the old ones, or determine it is new (harder than you’d think since the marker doesn’t last that well). Either way, I jot down whatever the marking is, Andrew snaps a picture, and we move on. Simple enough, right? Except that some of the turtles aren’t asleep and some don’t like be woken up. Which is where Steve comes in. The first night, when I was marking, I was also doing a lot of catching. Turtles are stronger than you’d think and it took a lot of pinning them down to hold on while Liv took the marker to number them. We switched up the jobs because Steve is a giant and has less trouble snagging them than Liv and I do together. Turtle catching takes a certain finesse; the key is pinning their front flippers back to their sides, if they’re larger, say chest size, hug them hard. The other trick is breathing out a lot. Instead of staying buoyant, it’s best to let our your air and sink onto the deck, otherwise they take you on a wild ride. Turtle wrestling is a bit like the rodeo.

Everything is $2 on St. Kitts

The isthmus with Nevis in the background.

This weekend I took a vacation across the channel to St. Kitts. We left on Friday afternoon and snagged a ride over with a local fisherman (named Fisher), who makes the trip every few weeks to “trade.” The boat was actually STENAPA’s old marine patrol boat, which made us a bit nervous since anything that’s not good enough for the park, has to be on death’s doorstep. He has “In God We Trust” painted on the side, and to confirm our worst fears, just as we pushed off from the dock he said a prayer for safe passage.

Let’s just start by saying it was wet. I had been contemplating wearing real clothes, and it was a good decision to just wear my trunks and rash guard. As soon as we rounded the south point and hit the Atlantic we were soaked. The swells weren’t even that bad, maybe three feet? But it was just wave after wave over the side. On the dock beforehand, we had met a couple other people from Statia and so we spent the ride laughing about how badly we were getting pummeled by the waves. We might as well have been sitting on the shore right where they were breaking. Somehow we held on to the boat and no one got swept overboard because  even with lifejackets it would have been interesting snagging them in the swells. Finally, just as we pulled up along the shore, dolphins started playing in the wake and near the bow.

The "Circus" in central Basseterre.

Once we made it to St. Kitts we had to wait for customs to show up. On a lot of these islands people pull up at random docks around the coast and call up customs on their phone to let them know they’ve landed. We stopped at a random dock on the northwest coast, about a half an hour from Basseterre, the main city and capital. Once they showed up, and we showed we weren’t carrying any narcotics, we hopped on a bus and headed into town.

During the week, I had emailed a few people on couchsurfing and ended up finding a guy named Otava who was happy to have us crash with him for the weekend. It was just Mike and I, so we said goodbye to the others and hopped on the bus (van) to head south to meet him. I called him and he ended up just hopping on with us a little farther down the coast on his way home. We eventually made it to his house after picking up his car from a friend who had been borrowing it.

Otava is about 28 or 29, and went to school in Alabama. He’s a world traveler who has been to ten or fifteen countries, and he works for the St. Kitts Carib brewery as an accountant. He lives with his mom, brother, sister, and her two children. We stayed in the guest room downstairs and only ever really saw his brother and nephew. Who knows where the others were.

Wandering around Brimstone Hill Fort.

Let me just say that Mike and I spent a lot of the weekend talking about how great people can be. It’s really encouraging that complete strangers are willing to open up their homes to travelers and offer them a local experience. We could have stayed at the Marriott resort along with all the hordes of tourists and cruise-ship-ees, but instead, we stayed with a local family that wanted us to see the St. Kitts they know.

Otava was the best host you could ever hope for. It was even his first time hosting and he still went out of his way to show us the island. On Saturday, he drove us all the way around the island. We started out going to Romney Manor, an old plantation, to quickly see the gardens, before flying off to Brimstone Hill Fort. It was a British stronghold that was only ever taken once, by the French, after a long siege. It was eventually returned, by the Treaty of Versailles, in 1783, but still has a long history of protecting one of the main British territories in the Caribbean. St. Kitts was the first permanent British colony here, and was the base for numerous other expeditions to colonize other nearby islands.

After that we were feeling peckish, so we pulled over for jerk chicken and a beer on the side of the road ($4), and then kept moving north towards Willet’s Bay. Mike’s last name is Willets so it seemed appropriate to make a pilgrimage to what turned out to be quite a beautiful little cove. We wandered along the sand and picked up beach glass for a bit before hopping back in the car and continuing on to Black Rocks, a volcanic lava flow on the north end that was quite stunning.

Mike Willets at Willetts Bay

Finally, we drove back south to Ottley Plantation, which is now a trendy resort way beyond our price range. We opted out of getting a drink and instead wandered the grounds and old plantation house before picking fresh mangos and wax apples off the trees in the backyard. The maids in the resort were laughing when they saw us, and ended up running off to fill a bag from their personal stash of perfectly ripe ones. Once again, locals taking care of us all.

As we were headed back to Basseterre, Otava decided to take a detour to the isthmus that connects the north end to the trendy, pricy, picture-perfect beaches of the south end of the island. The view was stunning and we could see all the way over the Nevis, the island that makes up the other half of the Federation of St. Kitts (Christopher) and Nevis.

We dropped off the two Dutch girls who had been traveling with us for the day, Thialda and Rosan, and headed home, where Mike and I walked into town to get chicken wings, fries, and a Carib at a local joint, Bobsy’s. After our ridiculously delicious protein downing (this weekend was the most I’ve had since I got here), we walked back to Otava’s for a nap and shower before heading out on the town.

Interestingly, the island nightlife has quite the quirks. Despite a medical school, a nursing school, and a veterinary school, all full of locals and American expats, and loads of tourists, the island has very little going on apart from Friday night. Which is a bit wild. As you’d expect, Caribbean islands are big on beach bars and late night parties. But Saturday was amazingly quiet. So we had a drink, sat by the water, and then walked home. Or would have, if we hadn’t hitchhiked back. The guy, Nica?, was great, and decided we should come with him to check out some other places where locals go for their Saturdays. But after poking our heads in, and realizing how exhausted we really were, we decided to head the rest of the way home and get a whole, luxurious seven hour sleep. 

Brimstone Hill Fort

Sunday, we felt refreshed enough to pack our bags and get going, saying goodbye to Otava on our way to the bus stop. But once again, he came through for us like a champ, and ended up driving us over to the Marriott where we were beach-crashing for the day. Our friends from the boat, Leon and Marta (Dutch and Spanish), were having a date weekend away from the schools here on Statia where he teaches, and decided to invite us to hang out on the beach with them Sunday. We dropped our bags in their room and went to get breakfast at a coffee shop down the road with Otava while they went to play tennis.

We ran into the girls again, more like caught them, since they were trying to stealthily eat half a cake for breakfast, and sat and chatted till they had to head back to where they were staying to check out. It was beach time then, so we walked back down to the resort to steal their chairs. Absolutely beautiful beach, even if it is imported sand, where we spent a few hours sitting watching the waves. I swam out to the break wall for a bit, and went on a couple walks to take pictures, and then hid out in the shade because I was getting a bit red. We found Leon and Marta again in the pool and then wandered around the beach until we had to catch our ride north to meet the boat and head home.

It was quite the trip. Lots of local jerked chicken. Lots of beautiful vistas. And the most friendly, helpful people you could ask for on a weekend get away. To top it off, when we made it home and hitched a ride back to the gardens, the driver decided to drive us the whole twenty minutes back.

Day at the beach.

People will constantly amaze you if you let them. The opposite may be true sometimes as well, but I prefer to remain optimistic. We stayed with someone we didn’t know, caught rides with random strangers, ate food and saw sights we would have never otherwise known about, and had great times that we would have missed during a couple days in a hotel. Hitchhiking and couchsurfing continuously go up in my estimation and they made our weekend perfect.

Going Native

Zeelandia Beach--Where I conduct my turtle patrols.

The wildlife has been annoying me. The other night the roaches sent me over the edge and we went on a killing spree that was satisfying in a worrisome way. Last night a pig got into the garden and started upending the trashcan. It was lucky that all I started chucking were bricks, because for a second I had picked up a machete. Then I realized that I wouldn’t know what to do with a dead 300-pound pig in our kitchen. It was one in the morning and I didn’t feel like hosing down the blood, even if it did mean bacon, all I wanted was to get back in my bed.

I remember getting to India and being a bit shocked by the locals’ attitude towards the dogs. But after a few weeks of watching the feral packs hunt down pigs and goats, and hearing their death screams outside my window, I was happy to join in throwing rocks at them too. My point is, the line between compassion and slaughter is much thinner than you might think. Move to a desert island, even a Caribbean one, and you my find your ‘civilized’ behavior slipping away.

On the other hand, with all of this time on our hands we haven’t got much to do besides get in touch with our creative sides. Mine is a seventy-year old man who likes to cook and read all day. Everyone can cook rice, but only a true artist (pronounced artEEst) can truly cook rice. I’ve been perfecting it in a million different ways. Last night was a lentil curry sauce over rice. Delicious. Might have to open an Indian restaurant when I get home. Not like I’m getting ahead of myself or anything.

Having all this time has been nice for my reading too. I just reread the first Game of Thrones book to forget the school year. Now I’m free to dig deeper. I’m reading Reza Aslan’s “No god but God” book on the Islamic Reformation. I saw him speak a couple of years ago with my dad and we agreed he was brilliant.

Besides cooking curry and reading about Islam, my life has taken another major turn. I recently gave up pants. No need for them. I think they’re overrated. Shirts are slowly on their way out too (I really am going native). I just don’t feel like doing laundry. It’s not in the cards for how my weekends are going to go. It takes too long to do by hand, and it costs $2 a pound in town.

So I’ve graduated from pants to board shorts. Single layer, light, airy, and when they get dirty or I finish a beach patrol or I get back from diving, all I have to do is wear them into the shower for a light soaping up. Voila. Laundry done. Shirts are the same. I have a dark blue soccer jersey and a blue and white rash guard that I rotate between. When they get dirty, I just wear them into the shower.

And with that, I’m off to a shower---in my clothes.

Roommates and slow days on Statia

I live with three other people. Andrew and Liv both work here at STENAPA and Mike is a volunteer for the month. All three are English, and I expect that by the time I get home to the States in August I’ll have a proper British accent again.

Andrew has been here since January and works in the National Park. He left a job back home to get more field experience and is completing a study on Red-billed Tropic birds. He’s our resident chef.

Liv has been here since the end of April. She’s a PADI Dive Instructor and worked at a dive shop in Mexico for the last couple years. She works in the Marine Park like me, but her responsibilities have more to do with keeping things in order out on the reef, lionfish eradication and keeping the snorkel club from drowning. She’s pretty lethal with a spear.

Mike just got here last Monday and is taking a bit of a summer holiday before heading back to work. He got bored at uni, took a job at a charity, and is now about to head off to Sandhurst for officer training. He’s been sharing my room since we don’t have a fourth intern right now and it’s a little toasty out in the tents.

Andrew and Mike and I have been on lizard patrol the last few days. As the island parks department we tend to get a lot of strays. Right now we have a Tropic bird and a kestrel chick that someone dropped off at the office. The Tropic bird gets 10 inch sardines for breakfast, and the kestrel gets what we kill for it, or what we cut off the sardines. Yum. S/he is growing pretty quickly and needs a lot of food. We make a sorry lot, though, driving around the island in our truck with a menagerie. The other day we had three people, two birds, 4 water jugs, a garbage can, our groceries, and a hitch-hiker hanging on to the back.

We do a lot of riding in the back. Either to hold down the tires because they’re bald, or because we’re on our way home from the bar and we have 12 people in the truck. We seem to pick up our friends and stray hitchhikers pretty easily. Island rules are pretty lax. There aren’t many laws that are enforced. Driving is kind of wild. The police are semi-non-existent. You leave your keys in the car, not just because no one will steal it, but also because someone else might have to move it down the road so they can get through. There’s a lot of off-roading, mainly because there are no roads.

Things are like that here. Everything is slow and done in its own time. When we went to drop off Amy (last Brit who left), we sat at the airport bar (which was half the airport) and had a beer at 9am because there wasn’t anything else to do and it’s the cheapest thing on the island at $2 a bottle. Security is almost non-existent, and the airport is relatively the same size as my house. There are three flights a day, morning, afternoon and evening. The plane is a 19-seater and the pilot leans out the front door to wipe down the window. Luggage goes on your lap.

We also have to come up with our own entertainment. Liv has convinced me of the benefits of hermit crab racing. You find a bucket of them (they’re about the size of your fist) and take your pick. Choosing a winner is a bit like going to the racetrack, it takes a certain eye. Then you put them in the middle of the circle and see which one crawls out the fastest. Gotta keep ourselves busy here!!!

Where I Live and What I Eat

The Quill

The Botanical Gardens were established nearly fifteen years ago on the southeast corner of the island. The house we live in is tiny, three small rooms with an outdoor sink and outhouse. One half is a big room with two beds, and the other is a small bedroom and an indoor kitchen.

The tropics, as you probably know, tend to take their toll on everything. The humidity, rain, high temperatures, it all makes paint peel and wood warp. The bathroom doors are more curved than they are straight, and there’s less paint than chipped paint. But like everywhere we live, even the most dilapidated places become home. I’m quite used to it now, and enjoy the breeze coming up the hill from the water, and the crickets singing me to sleep. They do, however, compete with the generator that is our main source of power since the solar powered batteries blew up about three months ago.

This brings us to another island quirk. There’s nothing here. Nowhere to get supplies, or groceries, or backups. You have what you have. And Statia doesn’t have batteries for a solar setup. So we don’t have power. At least until they get shipped in from a company in St. Maarten. Of course there’s no internet or phone either, and the radio is broken so we’re cut off from the rest of the island. The groceries arrive once a week by boat in large shipping containers and more often than not I hear, are closer to going bad than they are to be ripe. The other day I bought two peppers that were starting to mold by the next morning. Fresh and Caribbean islands don’t go together. Especially this particular island.

Our kitchen and garbage can

Cereal is in the $5 range. Peanut butter is $8.25 a jar. Rum is cheap of course because this is the Caribbean. Pasta is $2 a box, not $1. Grapes are around $6 a pound. Peppers are $1.35 a piece. Bread is $6 a loaf so I’ve been making my own. Quite a bit cheaper that way, although much more time consuming. I wanted an adventure and it turns out I’m getting more of a temporal one than a geographical one—back to the 1800s for me. Looks like I’ll be baking bread and living on rice for the next few months. Scurvy is a distinct possibility.

But back to the gardens. They’re located on the south side of The Quill volcano. It’s quite pretty and, as anyone who lives on a lake or the ocean will understand, it dominates your landscape, quietly looming over us as we cook dinner and feed the dog. Foxy, our yellow lab mutt, is ancient as the hills, and quite blind, so he barks at people, lizards, invading cows, the cat, and us, usually because he forgets for a second that he know who we are. Vinny, our cat, is a proper monster. He steals our food, has more attitude than any person on earth, and tends to get underfoot just to trip you up. He’s gray, with green eyes, and the blackest heart of any animal I’ve ever met. At least once a night I wake up swinging when he lands on my face.

The front of the house that faces the visitors' pavilion

My room is in the back corner, across from the kitchen and looking out towards the volcano and backyard (seniority will bump me up in three weeks to the front room). My mosquito net gets tucked in every night to keep out the wildlife, and when it doesn’t, I get out of bed looking like I have chicken pox. The lizards tend to stay out of the house, but I can’t say the same of the cockroaches. 

My window and the blue water jugs

Our water comes from a cistern, and the other night it ran dry so we had to wait until morning to get someone to come up and refill it so we’d have water. Our drinking water we bring up from town in 5 gallon jugs that we pour into water coolers. We each have a box for dry goods, and the fridge runs (sort of, everything seems to always be melting) off of gas cylinders we have to change every few weeks.

The gardens are everything else. Our place is about 5 km from town, down a single-track road that only trucks can maneuver. It washes out, or blows tires, or requires 4-wheel drive to get through. Driving in Peru and Cairo looks tame in comparison. The upside is that the other day I was told I’d be good in a desert road rally. Cows and pigs and goats just add to the obstacles. We’ve had two flat tires since I’ve been here (I wasn’t even in the truck), and there’ve been two accidents since January. A road crew was digging up the road all week so we had to either navigate a moat to make it out alive, or more often, head in to town before they started work. Our trucks are a twenty-year old Nissan and a twelve-year old F-150 that is out of commission this week due to another blown tire and bent rim. We wave when we drive by because there’s no way to move it except by hauling it out of the brush (Liv ran over a tree) with another truck. Waving is quite normal, though, since everyone on the island knows each other. It’s rude if you don’t wave.

Our table and the blue bench I spend my time on

Down below the house is the sensory garden with separate sections for taste, smell, touch, sight and sound. I make tea out of the white cinnamon tree leaves, and like to smell the frangipania growing near the driveway. Below that is the lookout garden, where my pictures from last week were taken. It looks out over the channel between here and St. Kitts, and I like to sit on my bench at night watching the clouds change as the sun goes down behind The Quill. After that, I usually head back to my little blue bench by the kitchen to sit and watch a movie or read.

So now you know where I live and what I eat. Next up, the time I was asked to play for a national soccer team and my housemates.