Pros and Cons Of St. Croix

So after being here for a little over a month, we have started to get a grip on things.  Here is a list of the good and bad things that come with being here.

Pros

The People-  We have met some of the nicest people in the short amount of time that we have been here.  All most all of the people that we have met have been extremely helping, whether it is to help us find jobs, a car or whatever else it is that we need. 

The Beaches-  On the days off we have, we try to go explore and find a new beach.  There are endless amounts of them.  Some of them are calm and tucked away in lagoons, and others are open with big waves at resorts.  They are all different and have their own feel.

Bar Games-  One of the bars that we frequent, Cheeseburgers In "American" Paradise, since Jimmy Buffett sued them, has little bar games to play.  One of them is that you pay a dollar and get to roll five dice three times.  If you hit five of a kind you win the pot.  The other night the pot was up to 750.  Philip got four of a kind.  Almost. 
Another game they play is squares for Monday Night Football.  For four dollars you get a square.  There are a hundred squares predicting the scores of the game.  If you win you get 200 hundred dollars and a square on the big board.  The big board is for the Super Bowl.  Last Monday we won thanks to the Patriots shellacking of the Jets.  The prize for the big board is Twenty Thousand Dollars!

 Food-  The restaurants here all have great food.  We have yet too just have a horrible meal.

Cheap Booze-  The booze here is outrageously cheap.  It is like buying alcohol in Mexico. 

Open Container- There is no open container laws here.  You can take booze with you anywhere.  Walk out of bar with a beer and drink it on the way to your next.  Not a problem.

Relaxation-  Everyone here is completely relaxed and easy going.  Very rarely do you come across someone who is in a bad mood or in a hurry. 

 Cons

Old people- enough said.

Service-  Due to the fact that everyone here is relaxed, you usually get crappy service.  If you do get good service it is because the people have just moved here and are not used to making people wait.  It is not unusual for a meal to take over an hour and a half and not get a single re-fill during that time.  It is very frustrating.

The weather- Everyone keeps saying that the weather will get better, but right now it sucks.  It rains almost everyday making the water cloudy.  Waking up to blue skies is always a blessing.

Massive Pot Holes-  There are pot holes everywhere here, like two feet deep pot holes.  Driving the roads here is a challenge.  It can be very fun though trying to avoid all of them.  You do not want to get in the car if Philip is driving at night without his glasses because it is guaranteed he will hit every pot hole on the way and you will most likely get airborne.  

Expensive Items-  As cheap as the booze is, everything else is that much more expensive.  Eight dollars for a gallon of milk, and so on.  It is kind of comical to go to the grocery store and see how much stuff costs. 

No See Ums-  This is by far the worst part of the Caribbean.  No see ums are little gnat like mosquitoes that will drive you crazy.  They are about the size of fleas, hence the name, but they have a strong bite.  When they bite you it will make your leg twitch.  And they are everywhere.  We all have numerous bite marks all over. 

So that's the list.  I'm sure as time goes on there will be more to add too it.  But,  overall the good outweighs the bad.  Hopefully soon we will be able to go to Buck Island for the day to go have some fun.

St. Croix The Retirement Village

We have moved to a retirement village.  There is nothing but old, older, and ancient people here.  The other day at work I was taking food out to Drew's table and asked him where it was going.  He said to the younger couple.  By younger, he meant the couple that was sixty.  I'm not kidding.  Saturday night was a swinging time at Topside with karaoke.  Classics from the fifties.  Drew had a lady fall out of her chair and a man take a break from his oxygen mask to cuss him out.  Pretty soon we are going to start having a bingo night.  All of the locals keep saying that once Christmas comes around it gets better.  Maybe their grand kids come to visit or something.  We make our own fun here and have been having a blast, but we are ready for Christmas to come and things to get going.

Kookin It

We have been going to the beach on a regular basis now that we have our work schedules figured out.  Unfortunately the water has not really been clear enough yet to go snorkeling, which is what we have wanted to do since day one.  So instead we have been going to the Carambola Beach Resort.  The beach at the resort is nice and gets alot of waves.  These waves are very fun for body surfing and just messing around.  Here are some pictures from the days we have been.  Hopefully soon we will have awesome underwater pictures with a bunch of fishies.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving day was a laid back but fun day for us.  Drew cooked us our Thanksgiving lunch which consisted of turkey burgers, and turkey hot dogs.  We spent the rest of the day watching football.  That night we got invited to an employee party at one of the restaurants here.  It was a great meal and best of all free.  That concluded our day.

On Friday is when we finally got to go a beach for the first time since we have been here.  It has either been bad weather, or work, or something else that has always prevented us to go have fun.  We traveled to the west end of the island to a resort called Carambola.  The resort was super nice and had a nice beach.  We intended on going snorkeling, but the guide told us we should wait for a better day.  So we spent a couple of hours just messing around in the water, getting what Drew calls "seahabilitation".  We hung out at the beach for awhile and then went to a bar and grill right on the water called Off The Wall. It had great pizza.  It was a nice relaxing day, but Drew and I had to go to work that night.

We had an epic night at work with the total of our combined tips being a goose egg.  It turns out that in town that night was "Jump Up", which is why no one was at our place.  Jump Up is an event held four times a year to bring money into the town.  It's just a huge street party, with a parade and marching bands and people walking around on stilts.  This was by far the funnest night we have had so far.  We met up with some friends on the boardwalk in town and hung out at the brew pub.  It was a great night, with a live reggae band playing. And that was our Thanksgiving.  It was sad to be away from home for the holiday, but we made the most of it.  Unfortunately I did not take my camera to Jump Up so there are no pictures from it.

The Reef Part 2

It turns out that the people who own the unit at The Reef were not comfortable renting to three twenty four year old guys.  So we kept looking and looking for a place to live, but we could not find anything that we were happy with.  However, we were running out of time on the boat so we were starting to get desperate.  Well, the first table I had on the very first night of work for me at The Cultured Pelican happened to be none other than the owners of the unit at The Reef.  They were down here fixing up there place because they are putting it on the market.  I did some serious charming, and by the end of the meal they said that the next day the three of us would meet with them and we would talk about a lease.  So, we all met them the next day and signed a lease.  Since they are trying to sell the unit, we would have to be out with in sixty days if it does sell.  After living in the place for a week we are kind of hoping it sells.  The Reef is nothing but old people.  We are the only ones there under 50.  And since we have started working we have been offered numerous places to live.  All of them awesome.  The Reef is a great place and we are happy to be there, but we realize that there are now other options.

Finding A Damn Job

Sorry for the delay but we have not have Internet for about two weeks now.  A couple weeks ago the three of us randomly stopped into a bar in the afternoon call Duggans.  We talked to the bartender Sean for a little while about what we were doing down here and he offered one of us a job bar tending right then.  We talked about it for awhile and decided that Philip should take it.  Duggans is a nicer restaurant right on the water.  It is known for its seafood and famous clientele.  Ted Kennedy was a regular there.  Bill Murray and Morgan Freeman also frequent the place.  Sean called some restaurant managers for us to try and get Drew and I set up with jobs.  I got hired at a place called The Cultured Pelican.  It is a fancy Italian restaurant.  The owner is a New York Italian named Mitchell. He is a super nice guy.  The only problem is that the place only has one shift available as of right now.  So the job hunt continued. 

Before we left we decided to come down during the middle of November because that is supposedly when the season starts.  We were wrong.  The season does not actually start until right before Christmas.  So pretty much every place that we have applied to says  "We would love to have you but we will not be needing any help for another month, come back then." 

Finally, Drew and I got hired at a place called Topside Restaurant about a week ago.  It is a new place that just opened a couple weeks ago.  Everyone that works there is super cool, except the owner who is from England.  He is a dumb ass.  Working at the Topside is super easy and laid back.  There is just not that much money to be made right now.  So we kept looking. 

As of now all three of us have been hired at a resort called The Buccaneer.  It is a fancy corporate place, but a job is a job.  I just dropped Drew off for his first shift, and he wrote me ten minutes later after getting his uniform saying "I look like a fucking fruit bowl."  Can't wait to see the shirt.

Your Working Boys First Day at Topside

Exploring The Island

After two days of taking cab rides everywhere, we decided it was time to rent a car.  We took a cab to Olympic Car Rental in Christianshed.  This was our first experience with the local Crucians (local black people).  Let me tell you, they are lazier than the laziest valley mexicans.  It took us an hour to get our car.  At several points we were all ready to just get up and walk out.  But, finally we got our car.  A white Jeep Wrangler, that came with a flashing sign that said "Rob Us White Boys Now".  After leaving the rental agency we drove around the island.  That's when we found Udall's Point.  It was a drive along a cliff road that led to a great lookout point.  The following pictures are what we saw.  The last picture is a inappropiate photo that shows how much fun some people had at Udall Point.

Sea Legs

So staying on this boat is really starting to get to Drew and I.  Everyday is getting worse and worse.  During a job interview today I had to ask the employer if I could sit down, because I was starting to sway too much.  She just thought I was hung over.  It does not bother Philip one bit.  We are on a 45 foot boat in a protected harbour and the boat hardly moves.  Guess Drew and I are just not cut out for life on the high seas.  It's funny though because we don't feel bad on the boat, it is just when we are off the boat that we start to feel like everything is swaying.  People tell us that we have not got our sea legs yet.  We enjoy staying on the boat, but will be happy to be living on stable ground.

The Reef

Before leaving, we set up an appointment with a realtor named Pam McFadden.  She was supposed to show us around to different places that we would be interested in staying at.  The first place we looked at was a condo on the west side of Christianshed.  The condo itself was nice but a little outdated.  It was a big unit with its own private beach and restaurant.  But, it was located in a rough area.  After the condo Pam showed us an apartment unit in the middle of Christianshed.  The unit was really run down.  The place had a cool vibe to it though with high ceilings and a bunch of windows.  It just needed way too much work.  Give Mom and Susan a month to work on the place and it would look awesome.  Things were starting too look bad, as if we would not find anything.  That's when we told Pam that we were willing to raise our budget.  So, she then drove us out to a place called The Reef about ten minutes outside of town.

Pam was the most helpful lady we could have come across.  She gave us a tour of the area showing us good places to work, where the bank and post office were, and where to stay away from.  I can not express how selfless she was.  Anytime someone called her, she would tell them I'm showing some guys around trying to get them set up.  She took three hours out of her day to show us around. If it were not for her we would be completely clueless on what to do.  She could have not been more helpful and if this whole thing works out for us we owe our success to her.

So after being in St. Croix for two days we were all a little worried.  Where were the beautiful beaches and bars we had seen on the internet?  It was getting to the point where we were pissed.  This whole thing was a scam.  Well, on the drive to The Reef we found it.  The drive was right along the coast and gorgeous.  All along the way were beach side bars and restaurants that seemed awesome.  We pulled up to The Reef which was a huge condo unit.  It almost looks like a retirement village.  As we are driving up to the unit we see that it is surrounded by a golf course.  It's a nine hole course that looks a little run down, but it's still cool.  Turns out there is a driving range on the property so Philip can continue his goal towards joining the tour, Ha.  So we get to the unit and walk into a enclosed patio.  In the middle of the patio is an outdoor shower.  Great sign of things to come.  As most of you know, one of the small joys in life is to drink the first beer in the shower.  Well whats better than having a beer in the shower underneath the stars?  Once we walk in I am so excited that I almost start shaking.  We all give each other looks trying not too show how excited we are about the place.  This is it.  This is paradise.  Every room has a great view of the ocean with wide windows that open up.  It is a two bedroom place with two baths.  Completely furnished with good appliances and a washer,dryer included (The Jefferson always talks about the importance of having them included).  On the bottom is a nice spacious deck with a table and chairs and a grill.  It also has a pool on the property with a bar called Dave's Place.  The Reef, a golf course, bar on site named Dave's Place.  The place is perfect, we must have it.

P.S.  I did an awful job of taking pictures of this unit.  I did not want Pam to see me taking the pictures of a place we wanted to rent so they are pretty bad.  These pictures do not give it justice.

Tradwind

Drew found us a place to stay at the last minute.  For a week we will be on the Tradewind boat.  Tom is the boatkeeper who showed us around.  He's a crazy old bald guy who used to be a marine.  Really nice guy.  The dock in which the Tradewind is at is surrounded by awesome yachts and sailboats.  The Tradewind itself is a sweet boat.  Living on a boat has its ups and downs.  You can walk out in the middle of the night and take a piss off the side of the boat, its a great feeling.  But, the motion of the boat can seriously mess with you.  The worst part is in the morning when you step on to land and it feels as if everything is moving.  The boat is two bedrooms and two baths although the restrooms can not be used.  There are restrooms in the marina that we use.  They are dorm style lavatories.  The boat has a tv with cable and a dvd player on it, but we only spend time during the night on it.  Usually passing the time by playing cards and drinking rum.  Cruzan rum is produced on the island, and it is extremely cheap.  It will be nice to get off the boat, but it is a great experience to spend time here.  There is something that is just completely manly about staying on a boat, although we would not have the slightest clue about what to do on open water.