The Conclusion

Everyone's been emailing me, asking how the story ends.  Sorry for keeping you in suspense.

The next morning, I drove down to the service station, and they had a receipt hanging by the cash register.  "Oh yeah, here it is," he said.  And I gave him my credit card, and we were good.  Simple!

So how did we get money?  Well, the ATMs were still not working, so we went over to the Cormorant Beach Club hotel, where we've stayed on both trips to St. Croix.  We had been eating there almost every day this time because we hadn't gotten any food in our house yet.  So the lovely manager of the hotel told us she acts as "banker" for a lot of the local regular diners, and she'd be happy to cash a check.  So there you go!  We still haven't been to an ATM that works!

We had dinner with our realtor Honnie (www.honnie.com) a few nights ago.  She planned a dinner with some of her staff and 3 couples who had recently purchased homes on St. Croix.  We had a lovely dinner and made some good friends.  We took one couple to our favorite island restaurant, Savant, last night.  Its cuisine is a mixture of Thai (coconut-based curries), Mexican (fajitas, etc.), and Caribbean (fresh fish, Caribbean spices, etc.).  It's always fantastic, and their bartender Cheryl makes incredible rumritas.  The yellowfin tuna is fresh off the boat, same day, from local waters and is perfect ordered rare.

Speaking of rum, it's cheap here!  The Cruzan rum distillery is on the island, and there is no duty charged on any alcohol.  All the grocery stores have the Cruzan dark and light rum for about $4 a bottle (750ml), and I've heard you can often get it for as cheap as $2.  They also have a great selection of flavored rums that are really tasty, and a key component in the raspberry or pineapple rumrita.  Since Coca-Cola is sometimes over $2 per bottle and some imported juices are really expensive, you can imagine that the bartenders here tend to overpour the liquor in the mixed drinks!

I'm working on putting up a calendar web page so friends and family can reserve the guest house.  I'll send out an email when it's ready.