Just…look at it…the lighthouse, the tropical paradise, the waves crashing against the rocky beach…what a magnificent view. Across the bay…on the OTHER shore…where I am not. I swear, my travel agent and I are having words once I am home, safe from this god-forsaken island.
“Gin, you just have to see it, only a three hour boat ride…no, no…a real boat this time…” and I should have known after the chicken fiasco to ask more questions, but me…the humble and patient soul that I am, decided to give my agent another shot. And no sooner had I stepped foot…adorned in a lovely pair of red open-toed heels…on the rickety rust-bucket, the theme from Gilligan’s Island crept into the back of my head and became much more obtrusive once we were underway.
I would love to say the three hours flew by, but considering how rough the water was and how small a boat we were on, three became five and a good portion of that was spent with my head hung over the railing…yes…seasick and puking. And oh, if the nightmare of a trip ended there, it would have ended on a high note…for one fleeting moment, when the captain announced that we had arrived, I thought the worst was over. The clouds broke, beams of sunlight shown through and illuminated one of the loveliest islands I had ever had the pleasure of seeing. My spirits lifted, the nausea just a distant memory now, the scathing comments for my agent vanished…until the boat veered to the left and headed to the opposite shore.
If you ever think to yourself, it can’t get much worse…the world has a way of accepting your challenge and really taking pride in outdoing itself. In my case, after what had to be a several mile hike up a steep, muddy path, in heels no less, I came to what some would call a bridge…or what was left of a bridge that even in the prime of its life, the structural integrity should have been severely questioned.
While we’re on the subject of structural integrity, after narrowly escaping the death bridge, I reached the top of the island only to find what amounted to a half-finished, long abandoned construction project…god only knows how the rusted scaffolding could still hold up a stack of bricks, but from the looks of it, the cement mixer fill of hardened concrete and the general “no one has been here in a decade” look to the place, my travel agent had just moved to the very top of Gin’s bad list.
I won’t go into too much detail about the “accommodations” at this so-called BNB mostly because there were none. The inside was in worse shape than the outside and if anyone had ever lived there or stayed as a guest, they were long gone. And by gone, I mean dead, dismembered, stuffed in a sack and most likely underneath the one bed I did find in the place.
And now you must be thinking, what did Gin do…did she brave the night, muster up all of her courage and peek under the bed, check all the closets, the trap door the led to the cellar? Are you out of your ever-loving mind? I’ve seen the movies, I know exactly what happens to those unfortunate, but rather attractive and well dressed girls who get lost in the woods and end up in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere once the sun sets. I ran..in heels…back to the docks and caught the next boat home.
For any of you out there, brave enough to venture back to the Virgin Islands and do what I could not, stay the night, brave the horrors, I have one request. Take my formerly employed travel agent with you and leave him there.
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