Paradise Jam and Jazz

I doubt most people think about basketball when they think about St. Thomas, but maybe they should. Since 2001, Paradise Jam has hosted college D1 teams for a tournament in November. There are both men's and women's tourneys, played over 2 different weekends, at University of the Virgin Islands. The audiences are made up of both fans of the teams and St. Thomians. And games draw large crowds!

Bob & I went to opening night of the men's tournament, and saw games between Seton Hall and Alabama:

and between Xavier and Iowa:

I hope no one reading this is a fan of Xavier men's basketball, because we found their fans to be really obnoxious. Seriously, people, if you're winning 60-41, you don't have to yell at the refs for every foul call!

Anyway, there was also half-time entertainment, provided this night by the band & the dance team of Ivana Eudora Kean High School and a couple of "pirates" on stilts:

We went back another night and saw the 3rd/4th place game between Clemson and Seton Hall:

 That night, the half-time performers were from Charlotte Amalie High School:

We went back on Thanksgiving evening for one of the women's games, between Tennessee and Georgia Tech. No pictures that night, sorry, and also no high school entertainment. Bummer!

I don't know if we'll be here for Thanksgiving next year, but, if we are, we'll definitely be at some more basketball games!


Another evening, we went to Jazz on the Green, which is held in an area called Yacht Haven Grande. It was a "cool-ish" evening and the music was great!

This lady was one of the singers at the Gala a couple of weeks ago:

The concerts are held one evening a month, on the Saturday closest to the full moon. So, if you are a jazz fan, plan your visits accordingly!

A Few Things We've Learned

In a comment on the post about our first visit to St. John, John said that he had been told by a St. John native that the deer swim between St. Thomas and St. John. We've been told the same thing - and it is apparently true! So, we'll definitely be on the lookout for swimming deer and hopeful that we see one!

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I was having lunch with our landlord/upstairs neighbor/new friend, Elaine, on the deck of a waterside restaurant, when an iguana stuck his head onto the deck, then began creeping in. The movement startled me, and Elaine realized what I was looking at. She assured me that it was nothing to worry about, then asked, "You don't have red or pink polish on your toenails, do you?" Well, yes, I did! She said we should just keep an eye on the iguana, so we could scare it off if it came too close, because, "Iguanas like to eat hibiscus blooms, and sometimes they see those colors and think it's flowers"!

Consider yourselves warned! :)

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When the Dean's were here and we were shopping downtown, we ate lunch at a local Jamaican restaurant. As one of the sides with their jerk chicken, both Carol & Jim ordered sweet potatoes. We were surprised to see chunks of white potato on their plates. But, upon tasting, they announced that the potatoes were, indeed, sweet.

Then, last week, I was at one of the warehouse clubs here, and saw the following:

I never knew there were white sweet potatoes, but next time I see them, we're going to be trying them!

A Social Event

Last night, Bob & I joined some of his co-workers at the Caribbean Gala for Cure, a fundraiser for the Charlotte Kimelman Cancer Institute at the Schneider Regional Medical Center, the hospital on St. Thomas.

It was a rather typical event of this type; that is, like you would expect in the states: held in a hotel ballroom, black-tie (tho the members of our group weren't the only ones who weren't that dressy), a few raffle prizes, several speakers and featured entertainers.

It was the entertainment that made this one memorable. First, there were 4 different locals who each sang a couple of songs. The first man was great, and each singer who followed was better than the one before! One is a junior high choir director, another is a nurse, and a third is an ob-gyn.

Then the featured act, Ashford & Simpson, took the stage. The name meant nothing to us, nor did they seem at all familiar. One thing we had noted, however, is that they had began collaborating in 1964! We enjoyed the music, especially in light of their long career - but still we didn't think we knew anything about them.

As part of their act, they talked about some of the people who had recorded their songs, then launched into a medley of their more well-known songs ... and suddenly we recognized something! They wrote several songs that were recorded by Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, and Diana Ross, among others. The songs we recognized? "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", "Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing", "I'm Every Woman"and "Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand". When they began singing, a few ladies along the back wall were singing & swaying along, but, by the end of their set, the vast majority of the women in the room were joining in - to the delight of Ashford & Simpson themselves :)

Our First Guests

What a wonderful weekend we had! Our old neighbors and long-time friends from McKinney, Carol & Jim Dean, came down for a long weekend. As they are beach & boating enthusiasts who once lived in Santa Barbara, they were happy to just sit on the balcony, watching the boats and waves and birds. Of course, we did more than that, but it was just a fun & relaxing weekend for all of us!

Straight from the airport, we took them to a couple of our favorite places, which also gave them a tour of some of the island. We had milkshakes at the St. Thomas Dairy, which has a rather clever name and sign:

You can get regular milk shakes there, along with other dairy products, but they also offer shakes with liqueurs, like almond crunch ice cream with Amaretto or chocolate & coffee ice creams with Kahlua. Although they only add enough liqueur to flavor the shake, we never have to worry about driving the winding roads afterwards, because Bob, who isn't very adventurous food-wise, always gets a plain vanilla shake :)

After that, we stopped at the Island Time Pub, which overlooks the Red Hook Marina, where we found out just how much Jim really knows about boats, because he was able to answer questions we'd had about the boats moored there.

On Saturday, we loaded back onto the car ferry to St. John, and one of the trucks joining us for the trip was apparently driven by a kindred spirit:

On St. John, we went to Trunk Bay Beach, which is often photographed and filmed for commercials, movies, etc., because it is a truly beautiful place. If you go, try to take your own chairs and/or snorkeling gear. They have those items available to rent at pretty reasonable prices, but you also have to leave a large deposit ($25/chair, e.g.) and, tho the beach is open until 6 p.m., items have to be returned by 3:30 p.m. I was glad Bob had made us delay our trip long enough to purchase chairs that morning. The water was calm and the beach wasn't very crowded the day we were there:

When it began to cloud up, we left the beach and saw a couple of the wilder inhabitants of St. John:

Carol had laughed at a sign warning against feeding the wild donkeys, but we saw why it's not a good idea when they started towards our car ...

We spent Sunday afternoon at Magen's Bay Beach on St. Thomas. I've just realized that I didn't take a single picture that day, so here's a picture of the beach from above:

Although Magen's Beach isn't very good for snorkeling, we did see quite a few fish swimming with us there. We also watched a bird that would circle the bay, gathering speed, then dive straight into the water. On his 3rd try, he came up with a fish and was applauded by the swimmers! According to some ladies we talked to who spend every Sunday at Magen's, the numerous fish & fishing birds were unusual. We think God provided them for the enjoyment of our guests and are grateful!

I also had a funny encounter with a fellow beach-goer. There was a large group next to where we were sitting, mostly adults with a couple of children. After we'd been there a while, we noticed that one of the little girls, probably between 2 and 3 years old, had shed her swimsuit and was playing at the edge of the water naked. I stood up later to go into the water and saw this little girl walking towards us holding her swimsuit. She squatted down and rubbed sand all over her swimsuit, then picked it up, walked up to me, and held the swimsuit out. Obligingly, I took the swimsuit, and this conversation followed:

Little Girl: It's dirty.
Me: Oh. It's dirty?
LG: Yes. Throw it in the trash.
Me: You want me to throw it in the trash?
LG: Yes. It's dirty. Throw it in the trash.
Me: Hmmm. Why don't you take it to your mom?
LG: (taking swimsuit) Okay.

And off she went, to tell her mom about the dirty swimsuit!

On Monday, we went into downtown Charlotte Amalie to do some duty-free shopping. There were a couple of cruise ships in port that day, so literally every 10 feet someone asked us if we needed a taxi or if we were ready to go back to the ship. We kept saying no, sometimes adding that we weren't from a ship. Some were more persistent than others, asking if we were ready to go back to the hotel then or even if we were ready for ice cream. The one man we told that I live here looked very disappointed ...

The Deans had to leave Tuesday, but their flight wasn't until mid-afternoon, so we got in a visit to one more beach. There were 5 cruise ships here that day, including one that carries approximately 6,000 passengers (the newspaper publishes the ships that are due, along with each ship's capacity), so we definitely didn't want to go one of the "tourist" beaches. Acting on the advice of a friend, we searched out a lesser known beach, Linquist Beach, and found a winner!

This picture shows only the east side of the beach; the other side is just as pretty, tho the beach gets narrower until there is no place to walk, much less set up a chair. There are more waves and a quicker drop-off here than the other beaches we'd visited, but it is beautiful! The amenities are minimal: picnic tables and the cleanest port-a-potty I've ever been in. There is also a lifeguard stand, but it was unmanned the day we were there. With reefs right up to the shore, I can only assume the snorkeling is good - our next purchase is snorkeling gear. There were less than a dozen people there, and, honestly, the only negative is how un-crowded it is - one rather sketchy fellow walked by and wanted to engage us in conversation, and it would have been easy for someone to duck in & out of the trees and steal anything left unattended. So, this is a beach I think we'll save for weekends. But we'll definitely go back!

We hope Carol & Jim had as good a time as we did! Like most people, we don't always get out and take advantage of all there is to do when we live someplace, so their visit was just what we needed to start to enjoy what is available to us here. The coming months promise to bring more exploring!

A New Recipe - and an observation

Friends have asked me what some of the native foods are here. There is a wide range of cuisines, influenced by French, Jamaican, Indian, West Indian and Cuban immigrants, to name just a few.

The most "native" dish I've eaten out is some yummy jerk chicken, tho I do think of that as a Jamaican dish.

Some of the other native offerings are fungi, a side dish made of okra and cornmeal, and goat water, a type of goat stew. We haven't tried either of these :)

We've seen signs for "roti" outside of several local-looking establishments - the type you wouldn't go into unless you were going with someone who'd been there before. In my research, I learned that roti is actually a flat bread similar to naan, but is served here rolled around a spicy curry mixture.

I was reading some tips to enjoying the Caribbean online this past week and found a link to a recipe for Chicken Roti that looked pretty simple, so I tried it. It did require some specialized shopping, as it called for 2-3 teaspoons of "Blind Betty Original Recipe," which I found out is a hot sauce made on St. John. Otherwise, the ingredients were pretty normal, and it even suggested serving the filling in flour tortillas, so I didn't have to make & fry bread - which would not have happened.

The filling turned out to be a not-too spicy chicken curry stew that was really good in those tortillas, especially when topped with Blind Betty Mango Chutney, as suggested. We probably still won't venture into those local places without an escort, but we also won't be afraid to order roti when we see it on a menu.


And an observation, not meant to get into serious political or social discourse, but just something that has made us giggle:

I was waiting to pick up a package at the mail center recently, before election day, and a man standing at the counter began a fairly one-sided conversation with another man. The subject was the upcoming California ballot issue concerning legalization of marijuana. I can't quote him directly, because it would look mostly like #&$^%#&(@* but he did say that he'd smoked marijuana for 45 years and spent 2 1/2 years in jail because of it. He couldn't understand why it isn't legal in the US and seemed to have a fair amount of knowledge about which European countries have more lenient laws - and about the scrutiny of customs agents when travelers enter the US from those countries.

I saw "Marijuana Man" again today. He is pretty easy to identify, as he carries baskets that he apparently weaves from palm leaves and other materials. He also wears a flip-flop on one foot and a Croc on the other. I'm just thinking that the pro-legalization movement might want to find another spokesman ...

Another balcony shot ...

Since we live near the St. Thomas Yacht Club, we see lots of boating activity. One of our favorites is when the different sizes of sailboats are out, usually during classes - which I was disappointed to find out are only for "juniors." I'm going to have to learn to sail somewhere else :(

Anyway, it turned out that there had been a regatta on this particular day. We just love how it looks like the "big brother" sailboats are escorting the smaller ones in!

A Parade!

Bob & I were driving to the other end of the island after our trip to St. John to get our butane tank filled for our grill and noticed some traffic problems - then we heard the music.  It was a parade!

First there was the steel drum band on the trailer:

Then the largest group, the twirlers:

Then the Ivanna Eudora Kean High School marchers:

And that was it!

Our First Visit to St. John

Until we bought a car last month, Bob has had only a rent car to drive while he's been here. And rental policies don't allow cars to be taken on the auto barge between St. Thomas and St. John. So, the first weekend we could, we took ourselves to St. John. We were doing "reconnaissance" before our friends from McKinney arrived, so we drove a bit around the town of Cruz Bay then checked out the beaches and drove through parts of the Virgin Islands National Park.

For those who don't know about St. John, it is about a 20 minute ferry ride from St. Thomas. St. John doesn't have an airport, so the only way to get there is by boat. There are 2 types of ferries: auto barges and passenger ferries. The west end of the island where the ferries arrive is the town of Cruz Bay, and the town of Coral Bay is at the east end. And that's about all the development there is on the island, because 2/3 of the island is the Virgin Islands National Park. There are numerous hiking trails and more than a few beaches, both ones with amenities & entrance fees and ones you can just park along the road & walk onto.

The first stage of our trip was interesting: unlike some ferries, the auto barges here only have one ramp. So, in order to speed the off-loading, the cars are backed onto the barges. Cars are lined up along the sides, and construction and commercial trucks wait to load last, backing up into the middle of the barges. Once your car is in place, you're free to get out (assuming you can get the door open) and watch the scenery. This is the St. Thomas marina as we left:

And this is St. John as we arrived there:

We drove along the west & north shores, stopping at all the scenic overlooks to take pictures:

Cruz Bay

Caneel Bay

Sugar Mill Ruins at Caneel Bay

Trunk Bay

Cinnamon Bay

Maho Bay

Coral Bay

St. John is beautiful! We foresee many future trips on the auto barge to figure out which beach is our favorite ...