I learned two things about the Caribbean yesterday:
- The “Carib” were a tribe that ate their enemies. Columbus reported that and thru time some scribe did a typo and wrote “canib”, which is where the word “cannibal” comes from.
- Columbus was naming every island he “discovered” after saints. A subordiante told him there were thousands of islands over there, so he named them after Saint Ursula and the 11,000 virgins. Thus, “Virgin Islands“.
We docked in St. Thomas of the US Virgin Islands. I don’t take pictures of the ship just because it’s pretty. I find it amazing how steep the hills are surrounding the harbors in such islands. This viewpoint was only a 10-minute drive from the ship.
I took the “Mountain Views and Villa Botanica” tour. We started with the Villa – the gardens are not as nice as Gaudalupe, but they had some pretty orchids. Flower pictures incoming…
It was hot, muggy and hilly terrain, but the flowers were nice. There were also cockatoos, peacocks and tortoises, but the nets/cages for the birds were so tight I didn’t get any good pictures. All the tortoises were napping in their huts. Oh, well.
Hints that we were back in the US:
- Roads were wide enough for giant 4×4 pickup trucks
- The step-off-the-ship shopping were in quality buildings
- Did I mention the shopping?
Our next stop was the mountain view. If you’ve every driven down I-95 on the US east coast you may be familiar with “South of the Border” advertising signs. Here, it’s “Mountain Top“. Signs all along the road, pirate manikins on the path, bright blue exterior paint. I refuse to take a picture of a tourist trap, but it was a very well-done tourist trap. You know you are back in the US where they sell signs that your cat knows it’s happy hour somewhere.
The view was nice. We are facing north, so you see the Atlantic Ocean. The port is on the south, so it’s the Caribbean Sea. We are smack on the border. The islands in the distance are the British Virgina Islands.
PS: I’m using my cell phone for internet access in San Juan, Puerto Rico as I write this. IT’S SO FAST!!!!