We ended up walking back over to U.P.'s, the movie theater which is much more than a movie theater. Sammy wanted to see if they were showing Midnight in Paris. I was highly skeptical it would be showing and I turned out to be right. None of us wanted to watch The Green Lantern, which, along with Harry Potter, seemed to be the most advertised movie.
While we were there we bought some drinks to cool off. I bought a can of 7-Up which cost a dollar fifty. These islands can get expensive. Yoni bought apple juice that said it was 100% apple juice with added ingredients.
Instead of seeing a movie, we went bowling in U.P.'s basement. In most bowling alleys one purchases based on how many games are going to be played, but not here. Here you paid based on time, by the half hour. Amichai and CG bought an hour for themselves. Sammy, Yoni, and I purchased a half hour. So we were able to play 1.5 games. I did pretty poorly, while Sammy bowled the best game of his life (so far). Yoni did a lot better than me. Part of it was that I lost a bit of confidence after a buzzer and flashing light went off as I was bowling halfway through the first game. One of my feet went over the line a little bit and an F showed up for my score for that bowl. I have never been to a bowling alley like this before.
After the game, Yoni and Sammy went to the arcade upstairs and I stayed below to read. After a while Amichai and CG wanted to leave, so we went up to look for Yoni and Sammy. We looked all over th ground floor for them, but didn't see them, so we left, figuring they had gone back already.
Not long after we left it began to pour, so we ducked under some awnings. Although the rain let up a bit, it showed no signs of stopping, so Amichai decided we should just walk in the rain. When we got back to the boat Yoni and Sammy weren't there.
So we made some popcorn and waited. About an hour and a half later they finally showed up. It turned out they had been on the first floor reading, which was already where the movie theater was, and where we assumed they had not gone. We made dinner (Morningstar Farms Garden Burgers) and then watched The Little Mermaid before going to sleep.
The next morning was dark and rainy. So much for trying to start out for St. Croix! It remained cloudy the whole day. A neighboring catamaran's residents were leaving early, so they gave us some groceries, water, and beer before leaving, which was nice. After relaxing for quite a bit, we set sail for Cooper Island.
It was pretty windy and rocky, although not as bad as Monday. We got to the calmer waters of Cooper Island shortly after 3, where we double tied ourselves to the mooring. As we did that we saw a huge fish in the water, which we assumed as a barracuda. After going ashore we found out it might have been one of these:
We had pizza (!) for lunch and then went ashore. There is a small beach with some chairs, a gift shop, a restaurant/bar, and bathrooms (no air conditioning). While others began to relax and read and use the WiFi in the restaurant/bar area, I headed over to the gift shop, where I got very distracted with a wooden cube puzzle. After spending some time trying to figure it out and embarrassingly failing, I ended up not buying anything and headed back to join the others.
Yoni contemplates the ocean:
Before we left to go back to the boat at nightfall, we each tried to balance walking along a tree trunk that was nearly horizontal, right by the beach. Sammy had also found a coconut which he kept trying to crack using various implements along the beach, but only succeeding at making a gash in it. After CG ran along the sand, we took the dinghy back to the boat.
On the boat Sammy finally broke the coconut, hammering into it with a screwdriver. For dinner we had fake chicken, rice, beans, and salad. We said our highs and lows and Yoni mentioned that he finished his book, the most American book: The Great Gatsby.
After dinner we watched Peter Pan - except for the last 5 minutes, because the laptop battery died. Then we went to sleep.
This morning I woke up late, around 8:45. It's a sunny day and Sammy, Yoni, and CG went snorkeling and saw a bunch of rays and schools of fish. At one point they noticed a huge conch shell on the ocean floor. They kept trying to dive for it, and even had me toss them the stick we use to catch the moorings, to no avail. Then suddenly a snorkeler from the boat nearby popped up right next to us holding the conch shell!
He explained to us how to dive farther down you have to hold your nose and blow to pop your ears because of the water pressure. The conch shell had a huge crab living inside:
We breakfasted on bagels and scrambled eggs and then relaxed on the boat before taking the dinghy ashore to relax some more. After a bit I saw the snorkel-man and his son in the bar and went over with my camera to offer them the pictures I took. They thanked me and downloaded them onto their computer, after which we had a long discussion about religion and how people decide what they do or don't do, what they agree with or don't agree with, or just ignore, about what it says in their religion/holy books.
Since then we've just been relaxing. Sorry if you were expecting a more adventure-filled post, but some of vacation means sitting around and enjoying our leisure time!
Oh, and this is from an advertisement for wine, about the geese they keep in their vineyards:
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