While we weren’t thrilled to be back in Rodney Bay, it was nice to have access to Stuff again. The marina has a coffee shop, and that became part of our well-if-we’re-going-out-anyway ritual. Look how American the setup is!
It’s weird going to the dentist in the time of COVID. Everyone’s taking all the precautions they can, and yet it still feels weird to let a stranger poke around your mouth. Here’s a masked-up Jazz in the waiting room, where the chairs are all six feet apart.
We also had a package coming in a couple of days, so we figured we’d hang out and get ready for the holidays. The first of these was Thanksgiving, which we celebrated with zoom calls to the various families, and take-out from our favorite Indian restaurant.
For dessert, we broke out a coconut candy we’d bought from Gregory (remember the floating duck blind?), which apparently his daughter makes. And after biting into an unidentifiable solid thing and finding a whole cinnamon stick, we decided it was better not to probe further.
Rodney bay isn’t ugly or anything. It just feels… not friendly. As the COVID numbers have risen (get us out! get us out!), and the lockdowns intensified, the attitude from the locals has increasingly felt hostile. Meanwhile, resort guests are isolated from all the restrictions, and locals (and cruisers alike) can see them partying and openly flouting the precautions the rest of us are taking. To a local, we look just like the resort guests, and so we’ve made an extra effort to distinguish ourselves, e.g. wearing a mask even when far from other people, to avoid the kind of blowback that some others have gotten. And we look out the window as the boats of resort guests pass by.
Meanwhile, tourist activities are open, but the operators are behind on business, and still hoping to charge honeymooner/cruise-passenger/normal-tourist prices. We stepped into a tourism office, and the guy said we were the first people to walk in in three weeks, then quoted us US$92 per person for an hour-long Segway tour of not-at-all-historic Gros Islet. That’s way more than you’d pay even in San Francisco! Or, e.g., US$50 per person to hike up a small hill. Pamphlet below; note the blurb about how this isn’t the Pitons. Naturally, we declined this offer.
So we’ve kept more to ourselves, enjoying the pretty views and sunsets.
And we did our shopping from the boat’s stores. (We’d bought extra clothes back in the states, expecting things to be … about as difficult to find as they are, actually.)
And I channeled my frustrations into cooking increasingly elaborate breakfasts.
And after Thanksgiving, we decorated the boat for Christmas. Everybody helped, to varying degrees at various times. (At some point Jazz and I agreed that it was done, e.g., but Captain continues to insist that the bows on the tree are all in the wrong places.)
After a couple of days of this, our package of fabric arrived from Sailrite, and we headed back south to where the nature is pretty and the people are further away. And Captain had a new toy!
