Monday 25 Mar, USVI day 9, St.Thomas: Shopping, laundry and other boring stuff.
We wake up to quite a bit of swell coming in the harbour, and two new cruise liners docked in front of us. They must come in during the night like ghosts! Today will be a boring blog, so feel free to log off right now!
First we return the hire Jeep, I damaged. Then head to Pueblo supermarket for shopping which is just behind the Yacht Haven Grande marina. We are trying to eat through our supplies, some of which date back from Greece in 2017! But we need fruits, veg, yogurt, meat and other fresh items. Seems a while since we ate a good salad or had proper fruits & yogurt breakfast. We don’t want to risk scurvy now do we?!
Pueblo is a very rundown facility. You almost need a 4WD shopping cart just to get across the parking lot! ). And that theme continues inside. But it’s pretty well stocked and best of all hardly any shoppers.
While perusing the shelves, we see something new: a guy is driving down the isles with a gas powered floor cleaner, whose white choking smoke trails behind him and the machine. Well that should at least keep the mosquitoes away… and maybe a few customers too! 1 hour later we emerge into the fresh air, $165 lighter in our pockets. Not bad prices considering it’s island.
After stowing the shopping aboard we head into the main town of Charlotte Amalie to post birthday cards (late as usual), buy some souvenirs in the market and get some photos and video of the handsome old town of Danish architecture. It may have been renovated especially for the cruise liner passengers, but it has been done very authentically.
Then it’s back to the shopping area behind the marina again, this time Oana is browsing clothes shops and we end up in K-Mart. Like Walmart, K-Mart is one of those cheap shops that has everything. And as you pluck items off the shelves thinking “what a great deal” there is always a surprise how much all those little bits add up to when you check out. Luckily for us, we didn’t find many items of interest. Only earplugs for Oana, a salad bowl and more bandages for me, all useful stuff. And I splashed out $11 on a watch to replace the deceased Decathlon one! Still, it was fun to be in such a store for once, if only for the air conditioning.
Lunch is back on Cloudy Bay while being entertained watching the the two giant cruise liners creep out of their dock and out to sea. By 6pm we are ready to go into town again, this time for laundry.
This laundromat we found nearby is very interesting. Thewashboard. It’s completely shabby but seems to have very good machines at a fraction of the price we normally pay. The funny thing is that each machine has its front panel missing, so you can see the rusty frame, electric motors and plumbing all working. A bit like one of those watches that has a clear face so you can see all the clogs working inside. Well, these are no Swiss timepieces, but you get the idea. Needless to say it’s full of locals doing their laundry in the evening, complete with local blaring music. Certainly the most downmarket laundromat we ever been in.
But the pain is soon over and we are back at the boat. Oh, we have clean bed-sheets and towels tonight. Bliss! There are pluses to an admin day.
It’s been a full on admin day, so for the rest of the evening (not much of it left by the time laundry gets put away) we relax watching a movie and discuss next action plan.
Tomorrow we plan to check out of USVI and sail west to the first island in the Spanish Virgin Islands, Culebra. Although these islands belong to Puerto Rico and Puerto Rico is USA territory, we still have to check out of USVI and again check-in to Puerto Rico, where apparently it’s like a full-on check-in to the USA. Hopefully we can also be issues with our USA cruising license for 2019, which will ease our entry when we sail to the mainland.
Culebra will also be the first of several Spanish speaking islands. Oana will be happy as she is fluent, but I’ll be the usual dump Brit that can only speak English!