CARIBBEAN ISLANDS 1978
February 8 - March 1, 1978
PRELIMINARY THOUGHTS ABOUT THE ISLANDS TRIP 1/31/78
Think about the remarks about seeing the PEOPLE on the island, and how delighted I was with the "Good ah-ftah-NOONs" of the British-accented blacks on St. Vincent, but we DIDN'T IT ALL go down into the town on St. Vincent and explore it, we didn't remember AT ALL the towns of the places we'd been to before and hardly EVER connected with the people, though I get out my notes from the trip to CHECK that. And I haven't finished it yet, so let's WAIT on this! Amused to find that the Pan Am flight was delayed an hour, as everyone warns us the Eastern flights will be delayed, and in fact on 8 of our 22 days there will be connecting flights missed if we're substantially delayed! Reminded of the different vocabulary: "ship-siders" for standbys on flights and "title" for name. We DID walk around the towns, but got tired by the heat and walking; we DID ride a lot, but it was cloudy to obstruct the view and rainy to make traveling uncomfortable, so that we spent an entire day just playing cards at the Sugar Mill. We DID wander among the people, and interestingly I NOTED something "not pleasant" about the people, which Rebekah remarked about, saying that the islands were physically very beautiful but psychically very heavy because of their backgrounds in slavery. Lots of the problems emotionally for me on the trip were caused by seeing sexy guys and not being able to share their attractions with Madge, which won't be happening with Azak this time, and she was physically quite weak and complaining, which I don't think Azak will be. So the company will be better. Sadly, most of the flights were sightless, so I hope they all have new little jets between the islands which will afford better views, and since all the flights are so short, maybe I'll quickly get into the framework of liking them for seeing what I'll see, rather than being afraid of them. Seem to have done relatively little worrying about the flights and relatively more looking forward to the sights to be seen. I may be more used to heat now, may be more willing for things to happen rather than forcing them, more willing to just look at what's THERE than moving around to see different things, so this trip should be even better than the last, and let's just hope that the "perfect" luck of the first REPEATS.
LEAVE FOR PUERTO RICO
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8. [page 2739 missing]
line develops trouble and has to taxi back to terminal. MANY planes land. Then all gradually take off and we go up at 2:52, fly southeast, New Jersey falling behind (BWIA is on STRIKE). "You Light Up My Life" awful from 3:37 to 5:07 and the chicken fricassee is pretty bad. Slightly bumpy, but OK. We decide to say we WANT to go to Trinidad, and get a free evening. Land at 5:52, JUST three hours, and it's WARM waiting to get out. Into lobby to find whole group waiting for Trinidad, Barbados, and other places. Into an office at 6:11 and my pushing gets us first, and he unquestioningly fills out a form for the Isla Verde Holiday Inn and a taxi chit (which he doesn't tell us to CASH) for $6, and we take off for short ride to hotel, past Carolina, and Azak asks about "how laborers live." Don't know! Hotel is just as feared: loud music, basic rooms, no towels at swimming pool, gate to beach locked, phone broken, pool water tacky, so we walk OUT and around frog-peeping muddy walks and no sidewalks to beautiful curving beach. Back to swim in pool, shower, wait for dinner from 8:50 to 9:15 because there are only two waiters and they refuse to fill up the rest of the tables, eat to 10:25, taxi to El Convento, change reservations, and walk aimlessly through park to meet Don from Detroit who says "Been to Lion's Den?" I'd noticed that the "Lion of St. Mark's" had been closed, so I didn't know where to look, and he walks us there and we move through baths and disco and Hungry Lion to meet fabulously bearded Everett, chat and talk about Eddie while he has an appetizer of spaghetti and entrée of spaghetti, and back to San Francisco Inn with Dean, getting the last rooms for the next weekend, and Dean joins us to the airport to meet his Polish lover John, and we pay $44 for two days, and take a cab and chat on way back about his Alcoholics Anonymous work and his being cured and how many alcoholics hang around Puerto Rico, and Azak is forced to get chocolate for the hypoglycemia (though he later says it's not a disease, only a temporary condition), and we get to bed at 1:20, he reading some magazine about how to make mille feuilles pastry and I doing lightwork to stop from getting pissed with his leaving the lights on.
ST. CROIX
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 9. Wake at 7:20, no call yet, and do lightwork and I dress to 8:45; wake him up, have AWFUL breakfast for $3.75 on cafeteria line, forget sunglasses on the table but get them back, have long talk with Milly at El Convento and Mr.; Alvarez at Eastern and he confirms us to St. Croix at 12:50. It's 10:30 and he says "Get here NOW," and Azak's to beach and I decide to go for a swim, too, and the beach is PERFECTLY sandy underneath, SLIGHTLY milky, with breakers far out causing smaller-than-Riis waves, and I enjoy about 10 minutes, we gossip about TANNED body with TOO-black hair, and I'm back to shower, he gets back at 11:20, and I go to check out, paying $4 for AWFUL wine last night, and sit and write to here at 11:35, and he's LATE. He sort of SAUNTERS, or SASHAYS back and forth in his walk, blatantly cruising, and is CONSTANTLY worried that he didn't bring his hair dryer, that he didn't put on his morning face cream, that his suntan lotion must be applied---and I have a bathing suit line ALREADY with what I would consider NO exposure, and there are surely ONE or TWO humpy numbers (Azak gives little squeaks of excitement about the double-woven bracelets the waiters all wear): the red-tan muscled blond on the beach out front, the cute little PR in the Hungry Lion, some humps on the street, but the clientele (11:55, computers broken at Eastern, they tell us to go to gate) (this now 11:10 am 2/10) at Holiday Inn is the ABSOLUTE pits: kids (18) with nothing to do, fat ladies, sunburned and sunoiled couples, dumpy Americans all. Then study timetable and find we can fly Eastern from St. Thomas to St. Croix, but not St. Croix to St. Thomas! It's 12:10, and flight to St. Thomas is at 12:40 and to St. Croix at 12:50, so I dash back to get SUPERVISOR'S OK but the WOMAN says the flight's closed at 12:30, so I'm back disgusted and Azak says that Sanchez told him to take $9 flight from St. Croix to St. Thomas and catch up to our schedule THAT way and she'd fix it with the computers. Also, Azak "wrangles" first class for $3, but when we get on plane at 12:55 the purser wants him to sign an amountless chit "Accounting will take care of it, if you think it's too much you can complain." "I can't, can you see my position and my accountants'?" "Yes." He gets up to leave, then "May we stay?" "Sure," and he lectures me ("Are you waiting for the Goose? I'm supposed to pick up someone." Supposed? Sunny blonde at Antilles.) on NOT raising my eyebrows and saying "There's ROOM back there?", and I oblige him to say "Bob, sit down and be quiet," in front of someone else. But we don't get our requested pre-flight glasses of milk and white wine. Off at 1:07 for 25-minute flight over crinkly blue waters after curving around possibly Luquillo beach and the forested cloud-covered slopes of El Yunque. Around end of PR and clouds clear to a lovely Tahiti-pretty surf and woods and clouds below, then past freighters and descend over the dry, flat, dusty-looking deserted (but for one dune buggy) Sandy Point and VERY scraggly houses, some Guesthouses, but the LEFT is the best place for the San Juan-St. Croix flight, because you'd see flat Friedrichstad, lavish Sprat House, and the island to the north before landing at the south airport. Out and wait for cabs at a rather listless place after finding, after about 5 tries, a hotel Phoenicia for $25, and finding that at $23.90 a car is too expensive, particularly since we have to return it to rental point. The other car is $18 or $19, but at 21 a mile, it would end about $28 or $29 for only 50 miles. So we take taxi for $2.50 apiece and $1 tip across green island with huge poinsettia trees, violet bougainvillea in bloom, and flaming red jacaranda. Mangos and bean-trees) (which are flamboyans) hang over road, and left-side driving is confusing. Guy recommends Brady's (up on King's Cross Street) for fish dinner and Azak hears of Captain Weeks for conch. Phoenician chipper lad is Lebanese, belly-dancing tonight, and room is small with BARELY adequate air conditioning and a john that turns out not to work. In about 1:45 and we're not hungry, so we put on suits and out to wander streets, finding Buck Island is usually 9 or 9:30 to 1 and 1 to 4:30. ONE company says they DID have 3:30-7, but boat's chartered today. In and out of arcades (loading 11:45 for St. Croix to St. Thomas, off at 11:50, 20 minutes, lovely back view, Azak gets co-pilot's seat, in at 12:15 after GREAT sweep toward boat basin and then swing around for whole panorama on right and land fairly far out, between airport and main town. BUT, take taxi to place, no cars, to airport, no cars, to Gray Line's "I'll take you to office and you take tour," but all tours full. At 12:50 Gray Line woman listens to Steve, our driver, and calls Paulette, who can squeeze us in.) (Flamboyan with pods, blooms May-October. African tulip is lily-like tree; licenses green for private, blue for taxi, red for commercial). (skip to 11 back:) and get to dock area to find a place that'll take a minimum of THREE people, or $45. I check out a few other places and decide we're wasting time, so back to guy saying, "Me, me, and him for 3," and guy looks at watch and muses that we can get there by 4, so we're fitted with flippers and I take my mask and they stock beer and we zip off across bay, getting resorts and private homes on points and cays pointed out, and into a covey of boats around reef, put stuff on (looking at Carlos's ass as he ties us up: "the best diver on the island") and fall over backward into water to "see how you move." Through rather spectacular trail rather quickly, in and out of huge staghorns, and other coral formations to the surface, lovely fish, grand rays of sunlight streaking down, a few others on trail, and bright blue signs for brain coral, fire coral that strings, urchins, and fans and fronds. Back to boat and dither around looking at fish, and Azak gets out of water to chat and I'm called back to find it's only 4:45. I protest, he says I'm a captive audience, but permits me "10 more minutes." I continue following LOVELY fish, particularly two HUGE angels, but get cold and tired and come up about 5:10 and sit with back to sun and spray back to Christianstad, wake bright behind and St. Thomas is vague hump under clouds to the north. Back at 5:30 and walk around streets but keep returning to same small tourist centers. To Phoenicia to shower and change, and he naps, then we're out about 7:30 to ask a girl directions to Captain Weeks, which Azak got from cab driver, and she tells us, so we get there to psychedelic posters and mixed crew and female waiters and he has conch, boiled and too little and I have a huge rather dry lobster with no claws, and beers, and walk out feeling good to wander side streets, and up and up Queen Cross Street, past end, to SUMPTUOUS view of BRIGHT stars and the WHOLE arc of the bay. LOVELY! Azak stays below and I join him and we walk across until we hear live music: trumpet and assorted percussion, coming from local bar. In to see old gray Suzanna Sternberg with her pretty young Turk and a VERY drunk fellow who latches onto me, says he was a recruiter for the Air Force, and we drink our beers and they promise another set, but everyone leaves so they don't play, and I promise to return tomorrow but I leave and I DON'T return. Young drunk woman owns the place---strange. BUT feel very good toward island and feel we've become "part" of the life there for the SECOND night. To Limin'inn for GOOD calypso daiquiri and crowd-watching, and return to the Phoenicia and get to sleep about midnight, earplugs in, but without air conditioner on.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 10. Wake fully and do lightwork by 7:30, then get up and walk down OUR street toward bay, past elegant Danish Hotel, and around curve to reserve last two seats on the 11:30 Antilles Goose to St. Thomas, then around in a large circle, enjoying the streets and stopping into the magnificently wooden ceiling of the church, then back to wake Azak at 8:30, he dresses and we're out to wander up street to try to find a local coffee place, but we don't, so back to top of hill to see view in daylight and down to harbor for continental breakfast of coffee and good warmed Danish at Limin'inn, seeing cruises to Buck Island leave at 9:30, pretty tanned blond boy nice on scene, and we comment on how awful and overweight most people look. To Fort Christianstad and lovely self-guiding tour through quarters and jails and yards, and pick up National Parks brochures, and across the street to Steeple House and nice museum of island, out at 10:30 to get to hotel and pack and leave key with cute kid and walk to airplane base by 11:10 to pay $13.50 for flight. Take some notes, then we're off at 11:45. (see additional notes on DIARY 2742-2743). Get into back of sightseeing open-top bus without paying anything and get driven up side of bay to Bluebeard's Castle, lovely terraces, no lunch for quick snackers, looking at views over bay and old castle turret with rooms 49 and 50 upstairs. Then it's 1:20 and back to loaded truck, Azak in front to moan about nothing to eat at driver, and me into center of middle row to get respite from sun at all angles. Up incredible hill in back of harbor to stop RIGHT on road (at this point I'm GLAD we couldn't rent a car) to look over city, then up BACK ridge to an INCREDIBLE view of HUGE Megan's Bay, unnaturally regular and beautiful, like an open-ended bathtub for Leviathan, then up to sit on Drake's Seat as flower-crowned donkey gets his picture taken and we're up to Panorama Mountaintop Hotel at 2, told to be back in 15 minutes, he'd told us 20 before, and we dash down to lovely open-air restaurant to order grouper, tough, and mediocre banana daiquiris and LOVELY beers and cole slaw, and get it all down by 2:25 and pay bill and be last people into truck, but no one says anything. Back down an equally precipitous way and get off at shopping center and leave without paying. Shop a TINY bit (Azak afterward says EVERYONE was shopping with $100 bills, spending like CRAZY) and get around to Midtown Hotel which has a room for $26, fine, and we're in to Number 4 and get stuff put away about 3, and he wants to sleep. I look at stuff I picked up and decide I want to go to Coral World, since he's not interested, and I leave him a note "Back at 6" and get a cab right in front and ask all kinds of questions of lovely guy while we drive to Coral World by 4. (From 7: In St. Thomas harbor: Sea Princess, Carla C, Amerikanis, Angelina Laura, Cunard Countess---"about average, sometimes even 11 ships in one day") I pay $5 for one hour, but the undersea viewing ports ARE almost like snorkeling for clarity and beauty of formations and fish and there's even a barracuda chasing flocks of fish and a Moray in a pile of cave-junk and LOVELY gar-fish and lots of neat things. Up past guitar in top lounge and dash to 21 tanks of aquarium for spiny shrimp and mud-fish and bizarre red batfish and lovely angels and crazy seahorses eating from a cloud of tiny fish, waving fans and disappearing yellow coral leaves and a final incredible display of fluorescent coral, one brilliantly purple with the tiniest stars of purest gold being tear-jerkingly beautiful. They don't seem to be in a hurry to chase people out at 5, so I look at a few favorite tanks, then leave past closing shops and go down the slope, pleased to STILL see people snorkeling. Change into contacts and strip to trunks and plunge in and to the right is a nice set of reefs with a large fish population: schools of needle-nosed fish, silvery clouds of feeding minnows, and even a red-suited snorkeler who shows me 5:30 on his watch. Then sun sinks lower and lower, I have to empty my mask a few times, I explore territory at outskirts of Coral World where buoys mark, I assume, where we can't go (though I forget it's CLOSED now!) and keep looking until about 5:45, when I'm tired and cold and happy. Get out to dry in the cooling air and see two guys talking English, so I ask if they rented a car, but they say we can share a cab. Shorter admires my courage in changing into contacts in the sand, and they're 21 dealers on the Sun Princess. Stop to look where a water truck went off the road and clobbered a car in the jungle below, and two trees too. Back to town at 6:15, having left off guys at ship, and Azak's just showered from having a black trick who admired his Louis Vuitton wallet. I shower and we go out to find Frenchtown, walking seaport streets to find Norman's bar doesn't serve elegant drinks and upstairs to Café Normandie where Azak creams over the bartender's $45 shorts from some name shop and $25 shirt, and he hears of my Kahlua and Rum drink and makes me a fabulous Kahlua sour and Azak a medium planter's punch and we look at the menu and he's aghast that all the fowl (gibiers) is frozen, so we're out to bartender's directions to Olga's and the "Russian Embassy" (which I say sounds like a gay bar) but we walk along silent streets and come to the water's edge without finding anything, then get to the coastal highway again to walk far to L'Escargot, put our name on list at 9 and look at menu and inside at large elegant room---and Azak says he's not hungry! I swallow anger and we walk through French section. I say "We've seen two restaurants and now I'll see an interesting third," and see the sign for fried chicken and they fry thighs for him and I order good-looking and tasty French fries and then the soup in a HUGE bowl of DELICIOUS vegetables and chicken, and then we return for strawberry ice cream cones of grand quality, and I have my first India Malta, good chocolate taste with no alcohol. Oh, passed through a cemetery, above-ground graves like New Orleans, before. Walk back through town and a shopping arcade to hotel so he can smoke a joint to get hungry, and I wander up colorful side streets behind hotel, and he's out feeling good and we get into Greenhouse for two Pina Coladas, listening to cute bongoist, but I'm STILL thirsty but feel I've had enough alcohol. Some PRETTY guys here. Back by way of empty dance at the Grand Hotel with huge chandeliers and back to hotel to sleep at 12:30. (Back to 7:) MUCH too much since: Coral World, snorkeling at Coki, 21 dealers from Sea Princess, Norman's bar, Kahlua Sour at Café Normandie, to "Olga's" and beach to L'Escargot and French Mountain and chicken soup and strawberry ice cream and cemetery and Greenhouse for Pina Colada and drummer and sleep at 12:30 after wandering side streets.
JUST MAKING ANOTHER FLIGHT
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 11. Up at 8 and get him onto street for cab by 8:35, and cabbie MAKES it to Red Hook by 8:55, and Azak goes straight for a cup of coffee without buying the tickets, but the boat delays until 9:10 for about 20 last-minute loaders. Across lovely waters with all KINDS of islands on all sides, and day is gray but we hope clearing. To Cruz Bay and find no cars and she says slippery streets are hell for scooters, so we think to walk. Azak has another coffee and johnnycake (despite his telling me last night I should stop him eating: when I suggest he should stop, he continues eating), but streets seem confusing and we at last flag a passing cab, people telling very positive tales about Maho Campground (which by coincidence is written up in the Times Travel section on February 19), and I had just read about them in a Virgin Islands book I snitched from Antilles airlines), and get off at Trunk bay to get down to beach to find the GOOD/FAIR/DANGEROUS sign to the latter, and he says the surf is JUST too high. But EVERYONE seems to agree that it's NOT that good a place, VERY picked over and dead, and taxi-rider said Buck Island was best. So we decide to walk to Caneel Bay, a high point of trip because there's a nice breeze, no traffic, and the road goes up and down past pretty beaches and tracts of private property, and we see ENORMOUS spider, next to ODD closed-bell flowers that pop open when squeezed and later develop a STRANGE violet 4-leafed excrescence. Look at trees and flowers and wild orchids and pull apart flamboyan seeds both shiny-green and glossy nut-hard brown-black. Look at bays and find Hawksnest rough, look at HUGE cactus plants and flowering shrubs, and get into ground of Caneel Bay past ruins covered with vines and flowers, then to main area and go to information desk to "register" and she just gives a map saying "Don't go out of this area" and says lunch is $9 from 12-2. Azak reads Times and I take notes and watch people and look at it raining and wonder about wealth of these people who can pay $180/day for a double and bring a GOVERNESS for their child. To lunch at 12, good buffet: (from 7 back) fruit, melon, snow peas, rice, hot meat, crab, cole slaw, meat salad, fish salad, bologna salad, gefilte fish, herring, HUGE black olives, drinking seemingly free, juice, julienne Swiss cheese, tarts and apple pie and good chocolate éclair, chocolate cake and napoleon-type and other fruit pies in large slices, all for $8 + $1 tip. Then fish: glorious parrot, fabulous light-blue with dark-blue outlining, SCHOOLS of white fish with yellow stripes, large-eyed squirrelfish, deep black angelfish with elegant yellow vertical markings, whole packs of minnows, hosts of needle-nosed fish, and now-known Slippery Dicks like a cock in its slimy smoothness, and LOTS of sea urchins with ugly spines that make me nervous. Tiny all-gold fish and black ones, others with the blue collars and black stripes and white bodies, some larger fish, and me, which no pelican dived for. Finish lunch at 1 and get into john to change after a fast game of Ping Pong, Azak very ball-english crazy, and to beach to find nice places to snorkel in THIS area and see pelican dive for a fish and get out at 2:15 and change again out of trunks and steal a little white towel and he leaves big brown one and we get cab to harbor early at 2:45 and I write more notes on ferry, wondering what may have happened to our tickets because we just did an "open-jaw" and we sail at 3 looking at a Mongoloid boy jutting his jaw to the side, and two neat girls licking salt from the rail and a VERY spoiled and pretty little boy, and an Antilles boat flying overhead. Back to dock at 3:15 and our driver picks us up and takes us to Midtown and I go in and get bags and get out to airport to LONG lines (7 back, again) Eastern is AGAIN a chaos! Get there at 4 for a 5 pm flight and long confab with older black woman summarizes to say that the WIND has been preventing jets from landing, so they get us a MOTOR flight from St. Thomas to San Juan on Prinair at 5:40, flight 2281, and we still hope to get out to Martinique. We go for drink in crowded bar, then into inner Prinair "waiting room" in chaos as flight after flight of 18- and 19-passenger Prinair planes leave to shuttle people to San Juan. I copy down names of lovely islands from map:
LITTLE HANS LOLLIK G M LU S Great Thatch Cay
HANS LOLLIK R I A T Little Thatch Cay More Cays
ST. THOMAS Thatch Cay O N N J Salt Cay Virgin Gorda
Water Cay S G G H Peter Cay Cooper Cay
S O O N Norman Cay
Pelican surprising open-heart patient by diving for fish at Caneel Bay. 5:45 Azak calls me up to loading, but flight 650 isn't GOING to San Juan. Then at 6 he motions again for flight 793 and he steps on a tourista with a bad back and she and her husband scream at Azak and me as we run across the airfield and he shouts ahead to me "Where's my ticket?" and I shout back "I have it." Into plane and up at 6:11 to seat A1 and B1 at prop-edge, and we're off into a beautiful clouded setting sun. islands, too many to count, below, and I GUESS it's Vieques and others off PR. Land JUST at 6:40, at dark, when our connection to Martinique is taking off, and we dash through customs and ask for flight and she says gate 2 and we RUN down halls, Azak flying past the customs entry, and through the metal detector and FLY down the long corridor to gate 2 (just this side of the Gate 1 to St. Croix), and gasp into CROWDED room at 7 to find flight scheduled to LEAVE at 7. Pant our thanks and Azak had just been needling me about John Guessner being right and I had ALMOST resigned myself to Saturday night at the Lion's Baths, but NOW I get back at him and say we ARE in Martinique. Fly with lovely Novaks from Massachusetts (and had to transcribe this SHEET from 12:30-1:30 am on Monday to make up for emptying sand from my bag into the shower and dumping this BOOK out onto the wet floor, sogging the page.) Flight to Martinique is 7:25-8:30, and I eat the apple and save the cheese and nuts and crackers, and looking out to nothing, landing at Martinique goes VERY quickly, and out to ease through customs and Azak checks at hotel desk while I find change office closed and car rentals cheap, but he shouts for a couple going to Chez Anna in a cab, and we share with a cute 35-year-old guy and his 23-year-old Marcella (Azak fills out their hotel forms and relays information to me) and into French-looking town to a shabby hotel with black-wigged Black Anna limping and smiling, and Azak buys Pepsi for a limping black guy for a Galoise, and there's a small argument over $10/room versus $10/person, and up to room 4 WITHOUT a key, but it HAS air conditioner and looks good. Take shower to wash off the salt and get out about 10 to take a LONG walk through about ALL the streets in town that leaves me feeling STONED: bizarre juxtaposition of falling-apart unpainted wooden shacks next to modernistic windowless art-deco facaded specialty shops, past old barracks, into luxurious La Savane with huge tracts of flowers, magnificent palms, a great new lit kiddie's playground, a memorial to the war dead that seems cruisy, closed old archives buildings, decrepit hotels, the ornate Scholscher Library (now closed), screeching drivers, pretty boys, and to a quick lunch place just before it closes at midnight for French fries, ONE sausage, and beers for about $4, then down a side street for a loud red-flashing-light disco, La Flamiche, Roberts, Tiny Tearoom, and across wide esplanades, porno movies, beggars, streets littered with coconut husks, motorbikes lurching over curbs, and down Avenue Victor Hugo that Azak insists is VERY elegant. Past the cathedral under reconstruction and back to hotel feeling STONED by 1 am, falling into bed to play with lightwork before sleep.
MARTINIQUE---ST. ANN
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12. Wake early and lightwork and he's UP at 8. We pay $2 each for good coffee, natural sugar, and oversweet guava jelly and rolls, then to plaza to price cabs to St. Ann's for swimming, and they're SO expensive we look for cars again, none available, and in desperation we look to buses at the dockside, but get pointed back to a parking lot that turns out to have TC's: Taxi Communals, and they MAKE Martinique! Find that we have to go to Riviere Pilot to get to St. Ann's, and pile into 9-seater for a fast, twisting-and-turning ride down through the mountains looking green with sugar cane and bananas, blue-bagged to keep off the air-dusting, with the fences of trees that have burst into pink blossoms. Some of the villages SMELL awful, but we quickly whirl through them as the driver lets off various people at their doorsteps. Huge clouds over the Pitons to the north, but the south is bright and sunny, and the roads are so twisty that Azak ends up nauseous with knots in his inner ear. Into Riviere Pilot and he wrangles a traveler's check cashed for the drive, then to another taxi and around hills again for St. Ann, telling the driver to pick us up at 4 pm. Walk along lovely beach and past the Touloulou and onto Club Mediterranné property, behind bushes to change, and look over bare grounds and find festivities in an arena with an orchestra and women in bras and both sexes in low-slung sarongs very low on hips. Looks like a sexy place, but a guard catches us and escorts us to the beach, where we spread a blanket and I snorkel for a bit, finding a nice dome of a reef with new coral, clouds of white and gold fish and all kinds of neat numbers in a fish-trap-maze. Out after half an hour and Azak goes in to swim, while I write a bit, then to Touloulou at 2 for an elaborate brunch, Paté au Pot a fabulous "anything" soup, crudités in mild oil, and blaff au poisson (one head, VERY tender, and two tails in awful juiced) and lambi (fried conch, maybe two days old), and awful wine, all for about 40F. Back to beach about 3:30, snorkel and swim both by letting an old man watch our stuff, and out at 3:40 to find no cab waiting for us. I suggest we go see St. Ann, but taxi comes and we zip back to Fort de France by 5:30, past two cock-fight pits, to watch lovely sunset from 5:55 to 6:30, then back to hotel to rest from 7:30-9. Over to Roberts for dinner to find they have no small change and an AWFUL menu, so we're back to La Flamiche which gets smoky from guys smoking cigars and Azak kvetches about how can I eat all the fat in the saucisson beurre and all the butter and mechoui with French fries, and a Matta Poire Belle Helene that's awful and gritty. $11 for this, and I get 33F back from $20 traveler's check. Walk to La Savane and cruise till 12:30 and Azak wants to get done, so we come back to the hotel and I let myself in and then throw keys down to him. Write page over till he gets in at 1:40 and swat mosquitoes under broken air conditioner until 2, drawing them TO me by magnetizing my face and then putting up RING PASS NOT and I DON'T get bit at ALL!
MARTINIQUE---MOUNT PELEE
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13. Wake at 7 and do lightwork and up at 8:15 and search for a laundry and we have tiff over handbag and back to hotel at 10 for breakfast when his choice of breakfast gives a TINY coffeepot, and I check three hotels to find one full, one "check back at 7 pm," but when we do it's full, and one suite in the Restotel for 165F that he says is too much for us. We get cab to Morne Rouge at 11:20 and cover La Trace for $3 until 12:30 and driver says he'll be back at 4. Up Pelee and it's a ROUGH trip: level, then hard climb to a ridge with a great view SOUTH, (1) then to a higher point looking EAST (2), and dip down a curve and col looking north and south and get to ANOTHER ridge (3) overlooking a HUGE chasm of green, and walk level for a blessed bit until there's a STEEP descent (4) to a STEEP ascent, and halfway up, at 1:40 (5) find people coming down who say it's another HOUR up! I climb faster and get to a concrete pillar looking NORTH (6) and rest till Azak joins me, and I go for the final summit and down and up AGAIN to find even THIS is not the top: another peak extends SOUTH, and I get there to find a MéLANGE of rocks and a DEEP chasm between THREE high peaks, the one to the EAST looking higher and farthest away, but it's 2:20 (and actually 2:30 since I changed my watch 10 minutes to con Azak to staying longer) so I turn back on HARD rocks and DANGEROUS bushes---step into a hole and almost lose shoe, getting it wet. Down is agony. My knees are so tired I have to take three tiny steps to control everything when before I would need one. Start scraping sides of legs on rocks, bruising toes, and slamming rocks into my shoes and down against my heels. Sit and gasp at second top, then plunge down, toes aching, feet tiring, legs mush, and up and down again, panting, sweating under raincoat worn to protect against the FIERCE sun, and GLAD that I gave JEANS to be cleaned so that I can enjoy the luxury of shorts that Azak has to take off his PANTS to get. Down fantasizing Azak doing the orange-shirted guy at the resthouse, but he seems to have vanished. Pass two women and chat, down at 4:15 TERRIBLY exhausted to find taxi gone and two gals' husbands drive us to Mountain Hotel for three glasses of LOVELY beer for $2. Hitchhike with talkative girl to town, finding that we were blessed with a GOOD day for climbing, and get OUR old driver to take us free to the cars to St. Pierre for a quick look at the ruins of the jail and the theater, and moon about outside the closed museum craning for a peep at the pictures, and then down SPECTACULAR coast from 6:15 through sunset to 6:45, and we check to find the Studio Hotel full, and back to COLLAPSE in bed and haggle about who calls Grand Voile for reservations. I shower and wash socks and shave to 8:15, waking Azak, then finish this by 8:30 almost ready to go. TIRED LEGS and rather sunburnt, too, as is the back of my neck. Walk to elegant Grand Voile and am relieved to see people eating in shirtsleeves, and they take us (though we MAY have the last empty table). Chat with Michiganders from DC and have potent Grand Voile of Grand Marnier, rum, orgeat, lime, and lemon. His filet is super and my scaloppini has cream sauce so rich he says it's with crème fraiche, and lots of morels and truffles in meat, and he can pay with his credit card. Out at 11:30 and directly back to the hotel to get to bed at 11:55, air-cooled at last, so I can't hear the sounds of the mosquitoes, and Anna complained that the girl hadn't sprayed the night before, and she apologized profusely for our discomfort last night. She might even be an HONEST woman, but Azak hates her for charging for EVERYTHING. I'm so tired from the climb that ANYTHING would be OK with me at this exhausted point.
MARTINIQUE---TARTANE AND L'ESNAMBUC
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 14. Wake at 6:40 and HE bounces out of bed at 7:15! Make beach plans for the day and I finish breakfast by 8:15 and do this. Guy in restaurant tells terrible tale of how his friend's bag was ripped off Sunday night and they spent all day yesterday trying to get things back---National Security Traveler's checks refusing to pay, but American Express did, and "their little bicycle" didn't HAVE a license. Something like that ruins a stay, though everyone "says" such occurrences are rare. Starting to tire of Martinique just in time for leaving in 26 hours. (Back to 12). Azak comes down about 8:30 and says he has to mail cards. I decide to buy stamps and borrow 20F from kitty (actually 50, but 30 makes up for my giving Azak 30F for the waitress last night, leaving me only with 3F) and buy 48F of stamps by 9:30 am. Azak calls and finds, in fact, it's impossible to reconfirm less than 72 hours before flights. Funny: Eastern was closed Saturday night and all day Sunday, and 8 am Monday would have been only 50 hours, though we were HERE 86 hours ahead. (10 am, at door for flight to PR, beer felt in stomach). To cabs and find that we have to go to Trinité to get to Tartane, so we chat with the English teacher of 5th grade who says English is taught as "first language from first grade." Middle is not so dry and tortured as south and not so lush as north and we get out at Trinité and get cab to Tartane beach past dirt in town, and tell guy to return at noon for us. Azak goes in at 10:45, but slope is great and water is very rough, so I just go to side and watch surf crash against Atlantic-side rocks. Azak bathes nude and others are topless but no bottomless. Old cows lounge breastily by local hotel. I sit and stare at surf while Azak runs nude and I say "11:50" and he goes IN again, and we get to road at 11:58 to see taxi departing. Wait in shade for a French guy to take us to town, look at local restaurants and find none good, and get bus---slower and cheaper, 1F to Trinité and transfer to taxi to Fort de France at 1 pm. To market for Azak's fish lunch, dry and salty, but tasty. It closes at 2 and we stroll market to find a large green 2-sided, 4-seeded fruit they call an apricot, that they say is ripe though it's rather dry, and we look at vanilla beans, which Azak buys one of (and declares to customs on leaving), and I suggest we go to Trois Islets and he agrees. To taxi and bumble around to vicinity at 3:30 and walk in the hot sun to a round bar-entry-museum and catch a tour through the foundations of Josephine's house (she married and left at 16, mothering a king of Italy and Queen of Bulgaria, and museum is former kitchen). Letter from Napoleon about her lover in Milan, and we have a beer before and walk ALL the way back to Trois Islets before FINALLY getting a cab at 4:45, thinking we might be STUCK there. Back to city and Azak says he'll pick up laundry while I see museum, and they have MORE of those strange outer-space faces that are all eyes, no nose, and small mouths. Rooms are rather dry as souvenirs of the time, and I buy brochure for 2.50F. To hotel at 6:10 and write lots before he comes back at (off at 10:28, land at 11:28---nice flight, though I'm AGITATED! Over Pelee and peak north, then Dominica and Guadeloupe, and Marie Galante is BIG, then British islands in distance and right OVER St. Croix, and Buck Island and streets, then lower over PR's eastern shore and land smoothly circling over pretty University---through customs and to john by 11:45) 6:45 to say he had to describe his "pretty shirts" to weeping little ironer before locating them, and he fibs by saying my knit was lost. I continue writing, almost catching up, through page 21, and wake him at 8:05 and again at 8:15 and we'd showered, and get to L'Esnambuc at 8:30 to find we have to wait to 9:30. Azak is fighting every step of the way: next door to Flamande to find they have no pigeon, around to Steack de Paris to find he doesn't like the ambience, so at LAST he agrees to a drink in the bar on the second floor, complaining that the felt walls and overstuffed chairs keep germs, that the Venetian glass mirror is wrongly horizontal rather than vertical, but he orders a daiquiri that he says is SUPER and I have a Pina Colada that's quite good. Leave 25F and get called upstairs at 9:35, and I force him to change seats when he makes two cracks about the kitchen operation. He loves his jambon de Bayonne and my herring in crème fraiche is huge and mild and tasty. His fish he says is super and my steak fillet and Roquefort is SUPER, and his floating islands are, as insisted upon, "miraculous." My profiteroles are very good, too. There is a huge cockroach that causes a stir and Azak leaps on it to discredit the entire place, BUT at 195F it's twice as good as Grand Voile at 100F more, he says. Good group with sexy guy with big mouth and glasses, and same pretty-girl ugly-man couple as last night are there. Out at 11:30 and walk streets to 12:30, and up VERY tired to bed at 12:45, leaving tomorrow.
SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15. Wake at 6:30 and Azak's up at 7, and we pack and down for breakfast, then back to the room to take more notes and Azak breaks the lamp. We say goodbye and get out at 8;30 and find that Riviere Salée taxi goes there, not Lamentin, and poor guy keeps looking for more than us 5. Off at 8:45 and check in and spend last francs on beer, and take more notes before flight loads at 10;15, and we get good right seats, see everything (see DIARY 2755), and get to exit to cash $300 in traveler's checks for the black market in Santo Domingo and have awful lunch (Azak loves his goat stew) of ham and macaroni and potato salad until 12:30, then wait in long line for Santo Domingo, everyone taking back TONS of purchases: car seats and plastic car garages and cigarettes and booze and boxes, and in at 1 to Gate 2, same one, and continue with this until we board at 1:45, discussing Haiti, and finish this note up to date at LAST on plane at 1:52, on schedule and feeling good for short flight to Dominican Republic. Azak says he wants to return to Martinique, but I think I've DONE it: climbed Pelee, seen Fort de France, tried beaches---that's all there is, except maybe for Windjammer stop. AH! JUST remembered I forgot to leave a note for the Novaks! Oh, well. We agree that if it's convenient to get to Haiti for a day we'll do it. I'm getting TIRED of writing at 2:04, so I hope we'll be taking off soon for 45-minute flight, but can't tell yet about time change. It IS one hour earlier "same as New York" and land as scheduled at 1:50. Land is VERY flat and vacant, industrial parks laid out with no industry, housing developments with roads but no houses. Interesting green ocean, FAR from city; 20 minutes over Puerto Rico, 10 over ocean, 20 over Dominican Republic. NICE smooth flight and FEWER jitters. Good sandwich snack which I have while Azak naps. ("Beloved Pan, and all other gods who haunt this place! Give me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward person be as one" from Socrates' Prayer, in lobby of Aida's Hotel in Santo Domingo.) Airport isn't even in SIGHT of city, but there seems to be NO public transportation, the cheaper cars are all rented, and the taxis are all $10. Azak boils over and demands to see the police, but he says his use of the word "officer," a military term, throws them into such a panic that he can do nothing. He searches the line of renters (he says ALL offices and banks are closed in airport still at 2:15, but that ONLY Pan Am flies to Haiti (which is illegal ANYWAY) at 8:45 am and returns at 4:45, for about $65, and all borders are closed. Seems too much, and "guide" tells us of $3 bus ride across entire 250 km island to Puerto Plata beaches by public bus, and so he finds us a cab, we find him $3, and Azak changes $50 US to $60 DR with the driver, who gives us his card and his fidelity. Long stretch of parks, mostly unused, along beaches, lots of clean healthy kids in outskirts, but city over new bridge is VERY crowded and jammed with signs and wires and cars and money changers and little stands of candy and cigarettes and fruit and services on every corner. Hotel Aida is upstairs on a busy street, but room 14 is WINDOWLESS, with air conditioner, looking out over a lit yellow chasm between rooms, and hot water is supplied only to the shower by a heater on top of the head. We take it for $13.80 and get out at 4 to look at city, roaming colorful ruins of San Francisco Monastery and Cathedral, apse set up for a play, possibly the advertised "Bell de Bois Dormant," and get to boxy Alcazar to find it closing. My watch says 4:30 but woman says it's 5:45, and I never DO figure what happened when I THOUGHT I changed my watch so that we'd land at 1:50 as the flight captain said. Assaulted by money changers and kids selling peanuts on every corner, and Azak remarks that everyone looks "right into your eyes," as if they search for ANYTHING that we could want that they could supply us with for a small price in American dollars. He suggests that DR money is only play, printed whenever needed. To cathedral and a real heart-breaker of a brown-eyed, gentle-faced boy who asks if we want a guide. Azak say "No," but he starts by saying the church was begun in 1510, finished in 1530, one chapel (in silver) is the only example of Plateresque Gothic---and the knobbed finials on the ceiling arches recall Sao Tomé in Portugal to me. We positively identify neither the Murillo nor the jewels. But the tomb of Columbus has the Lion of Spain, the 4-cornered flying seal above that he says represents N/E/S/W, and keeps talking despite Azak's sarcasm, pleading with his eyes as his broad-assed body could never plead, and he strikes me with the same poignancy of all these extremely poor people who use WHATEVER they do, HOWEVER slight, in a pathetic effort to not only keep themselves going but to better themselves and their families. Azak feels embarrassed by the kids begging for anything, a penny---for two peanuts. How much of all this pathos is ACTUAL and how much is CONTRIVED is always an insoluble problem, however. If Calcutta workers didn't INSIST on sending all their money home to educate their kids, they wouldn't have to sleep in concrete sewer-sections. Pass Café Verde on Isabella La Catholica and I suggest we look at the menu, and stumble across another unforgettable character: the near-60 Annapolis graduate of 1936 who became a Navy captain in 1943 and advanced to destroyer captain and then captain of the first nuclear sub, the Nautilus as I rightly remember, and---for speaking his mind and saying we should never go into the Bay of Pigs---never getting much of a promotion. His son AND son-in-law were killed in two auto accidents and his daughter and her children angled her friendship with the next-door ambassador to the DR to move here and open this restaurant, but since the Manager's mother just died, he had to stay and mind the cash register. The perfect-faced barboy made me a Kahlua daiquiri that tasted good, but Azak said his Marguerita was a disaster. Few customers, lots of milk and bread vendors wanting $1.80 and 65, and he told us how much his wife liked La Bahia restaurant and the tourist on the next stool told us about the Nancy, or whatever, where "200 runners-up for the Miss DR contest lived in a house and surrounded each guy with ten girls for $10, all tugging and pulling for his favors." Another was called "El Mignon" and Azak again told of his doctor friends who come down yearly and have 5 boys a day for a few bucks. We go back to hotel about 7:30 to lay down, and we BOTH seem to be struck by a debilitating weakness and nausea and reluctance to move. We HOPE that it's only the booze on an empty stomach, and lay until 9:30 when we both feel better and hungry. South on Espillat and surprised to find all doors wide open: life is right there: TV, eating, arguing, babies crying, reading, sleeping, perhaps fucking. Streets busy and people lounging and talking, and to the south end to find lines of sidewalk cafes served across the street and VERY disheveled seacoast with hurricane-eroded headlands and muck-filled surf. Find La Bahia and Azak orders broiled snapper and me fried with chopped vegetables, $5.50 each, and they're both just GREAT with green tomatoes and lettuce salad and 2 650 cl bottles of beer. Out at 11:30 feeling better for $15 dinner and walk Bolivar to Delgado to Independencia to look at Jaragua and Intercontinental Hotels and then I'm feeling tired and we turn back to find the bus station to Puerto Plata, with a scheduled departure at 8 and 11:30, and back to hotel to sleep, exhausted, at 1 am.
PUERTO PLATA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16. Wake at 6:45 and shower at 7, but at 7;10 Azak says "I want to sleep more" and I write these notes till 8:20, when he comes out. they serve sweet coffee in AM, people pass from their rooms, but the beautiful blond from the day before that Azak says is gay doesn't appear, dammit. Haven't come since my jerkoff in Martinique Sunday night. Businessmen and military pistol-packers and shoddy native women all seem to be staying in the hotel, a real cross-section. With the bar last night I feel like I KNOW DR already, even to the news that the tourist is VERY safe: this is a "law and order" country and "if someone rips off a tourist, they just disappear," so there's no basis, they say, for Azak's fear that "you change $100 at this corner for $125 and they take it all back by robbing you at the NEXT corner." The fan on low all night suffices, and we were COLD in restaurant and took jackets for streets at night. Streets odd: a total mix of private houses, apartments, food shops (with overpowering towers of Carnation condensed milk and Campbell's soups), x-ray studios, physicians, dentists, cafeterias, estates---a dazzling building mélange of non-zoning. Out to verify that ONLY the Pan Am flight goes to Haiti daily at 9:30 and returns at 6. To Plaza Touristica for a cheese omelet, which turns into ham, and the bill is $6.60, leaving $7, almost half dinner, for 6-8 pieces of odd tasty FLAT toast, an orange Capri that Azak's English got open but he refused, and tea. Out to see the lavishly but authentically furnished Alcazar till 10:50, paying 75 at museum first, then walk back to hotel being offered $25 for $20 about a dozen times, and Azak fantasizes asking for $35 and seeing what happens. We stroll to waiting room at 11:15 and sit until bus loads, and I get right window third from front and Azak wants a window and goes to rear. Young "writer" ("for myself") sits next, hates flying, takes notes on my tree and flower-naming, chooses to travel alone, and sounds rather like me. Loads of jacaranda below the distant hills, colorful tobacco drying sheds, rice strangely enough, but we're rather tired of riding when it pulls into La Vega at 1:30. Azak heard that it wouldn't get into Puerta Plata until 3:45! Place is crowded and guy behind driver says "5, maybe 10 minutes," so we go across to take a welcome frozen beer for 75 and get back to find the bus (start notes at 3:55, waiting for 36-minute-to-now late Eastern flight) HAS left! at 1:40! I'm depressed and disgusted---guy who TOLD me 5-10 minutes and my Greenwich Village writer couldn't hold back the inexorable bus driver. But then the idea of RETURNING is even more depressing so I suggest we find a Publico, as Azak had suggested earlier. Azak asks and we go to public area (La Vega has NOTHING of note) and they shout through streets "Santiago, Santiago, Santiago" before we're 5 and off. Same sort of hills in distance, and into Santiago about 3, and repeat the same screams for Puerto Plata, except THIS time the front passenger is a worried little old lady in black who sits on the little old fellow next to her and worriedly looks in all six directions while passing, being passed, going too fast, going too slow, or stopping or starting, or going at all. Azak starts laughing and can't stop, even when she turns worriedly around to stare at him with a frown. Down a hill to let her off, and it's actually 3:40 when we first see the whitecaps of the Atlantic, a bronze of Poseidon and his trident standing off on a rock and a genitaled David in the town square. Along a rather dirty beach and come to the end of the road at 3:55, and we tell him to return at 4:15. No thought of going in, just walk along to gentle point to see the beach going on forever, then return, to watch a lifeguard do a neat back-flip from the guard stand about 8 feet high. But we have no camera. Back at 4:15 to be offered a freckled woman he picked up by moving his middle finger back and forth over the seat-back, and she gets out and we get to ANOTHER service that leaves at 4:30. Azak pays $3.50, 25 more for a MUCH more comfortable bus with a navigator who gets an erection and jiggles back and forth in his seat, a plate glass window in front that MUST be 5 feet high, and overworking air conditioning. Drive STRAIGHT back (after Azak buys 3 oranges, gives me one, and I'm chagrined to see my gum-blood on the yellow pulp) along SOMEWHAT different roads, and traffic and guys sitting on backs of trucks and passersby and cars and lights going on (or cooking fires coming one) makes sunset last, and we just go, me eating chocolate and getting a hardon myself, and in about 8, WAY out on San Martin Road, so we go to the next intersection and catch about the fifth publico we try for Parque Independencia, passing the elegant National Theater, and get off at park and go to hotel and Azak "forces" me into his espadrilles, too small, his shirt, lower button missing, and his belt, and we're out along Independencia to find Pasteur and up to La Fromageria, for $26 (and 10% which Azak in error adds 20% tip to), for a GOOD cream of wild pea soup, his pallid aubergine, his plasticky langouste, my tasty #20 snapper and shiny-stuffing and oyster sauce, and chocolate mousse, so recommended, is thin and tasteless, and my cheesecake is Italian and dry and hard, so Azak takes it. He has to be reminded that he's had a frozen daiquiri at my place, and HE reminds me it was with Harvey Odze when Bill Whoever got fibrillation! Out hating the place and walk up to buy a nice cold beer for my pills, and back to hotel about 12, drink beer, and fall into bed exhausted, amazed that my thighs are still sore from Pelee DAYS before!
ST. MARTIN
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17. Wake after 7 and decide to let AZAK wake, and start lightwork to lungs only again, and he's up at 8:20 and says I'm sleeping. Out about 9 to walk past Mercado Modelo, and he wants coffee so he missed it as I mount stairs to balcony and look down wide-eyed at the ENORMOUS crowded expanse of tables and booths and piles of spices and straw mats and hats and wooden carvings and religious pictures and chairs and jewelry and handbags and ALL kinds of meats and fish and food, butchers on balcony. Out and meet him and dash to corner to get "johnny cake con queso" cooked for us for 25, good with salt, and get to Parque Esquilo at 9:30 to guy two tickets to Boca Chica at 11 for $3, and Azak asks when we leave and he says 11, but fills up bus and he leaves at 10:45. ARG! Ride past all gardens again and miss the airport entrance, then to roadside and long hot walk down to beach, which turns out to be reef-ringed WAY out with islands fringing, and water THERE is only 2-4 feet deep! Change for $1 and she insists we count our money so we get it back. I step in, then move to a place where someone's snorkeling, but it's just hills and valleys with snow-blowing crabs housed in peaks and tiny white and transparent fish swimming about. I go back and get cash for boat, and check watch to find it's 11:30! Dress and back to buy fried fish for Azak's lunch, salty and hard and boney, and we walk halfway back to road when publico picks us up and drives us to SD by 1 pm, where we shower and pack and chat about wasted days and get off at 1:20 in taxi who says we can stop at Tres Oyos. Down side streets after bridge and stop to go down stairs into cave and back way to see a HUGE blue-water eye with a man-pulled ferry coming back! We hop in and get pulled across 40-foot water pit to dim rocky bank and slide over stones under fancy stalactites to see a BRIGHT green eye in the distance, which someone calls the 4th eye, from the sea. Back along brick walkways to another deep pit, then up the stairs to the waiting cabbie and race to the plane by 2:15, check in and find that it's late. Start writing notes at 3:55 and we're off as soon as the plane lands from PR, and fly INLAND this time over somewhat more populated and farmed countryside, and then miss Isla Mona but STILL get a lot of the north shore of PR on the way back and land at 5:10 to find that the plane that's continuing to St. Martin is the one we just got OFF! Incredibly slow long line at immigration, but customs goes fast and Azak sees it's been delayed to 5:45, so we dash back through INNER security check with a portable metal detector and get to gate 2, disappointed not to see Cacero (Catchero) looking after us. Plane is loaded and we get separated and I sit in seat 11D, hoping people won't want to look out, but what seems to be a basketball player and his manager sit and the manager solicitously makes sure the seat is OK, the seatbelt is fastened and the book OK before we take off about 6:05, an hour late. We chat, they found Tamarind Guest House in After Dark, I mention San Francisco Inn and all the hairpins are out. To airport in dark and quick customs and to information desk to try 3-4 places and get Central Hotel for $30/night. Cabbies SAY they take Mullet Bay because they're closest, but it MAY be because they're richest. Share cab for $4 and get off at tacky place where the proprietor seems Javanese, but she's Martinian. Into awful room to find toilet stopped, they fix that, then shower, completely overflowing the place, after water had been off the following day. Azak has to change the light bulb. Settle in and get out to find we're at Great Bay Housing near Front Street, Worstraat, and find Mandarin closed, L'Escargot crowded, Captain Hodge's awful despite two Lacoste shirts on fags outside, and we have drink at West Indian Inn but my planter's punch is bland so we go across to La Caravelle, where harried bar girl makes me a Kahlua sour and we discuss menu with plotzed Johnny and sit to VERY odd vichyssoise before I identify it as being SOURED, and he likes his fish soup, he loves his prime ribs and my veal is pretty good, and I think the chocolate soufflé is FABULOUS but he thinks it's too sweet. Wine is so-so and bill if $60. Out at 11:30 and wander BACK of Back Street and see old Windmill display and get back to room about 12:30 after staring at surf, both very tired, air conditioner on in stuffy room.
SABA
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 18. Up at 7:30 to find it VERY stuffy and Azak says the air is bad. To breakfast at 7:50 to gulp down coffee and toast and say at 8:05 I'm phoning again for La Esperanza reservations, we should leave at 8:20. They're booked but I say we'll come and wait anyway. By 8:25 I'm mad at Azak for not coming back, stalk to dining room where he's chatting with guys who own their own plane and are island hopping, and say "Goodbye." "What happened?" "They're booked and I'm going to see if I can get on anyway." He later says he expected me to TELL him and I had no right to expect him to return to room. Standoff. Down to dock and "hyperhappy" La Esperanza Dutchman says it was overbooked at 28 and 6 cancelled but there's STILL no room. Azak strolls over and guy offers us HIS ticket. I say "Oh, no, I couldn't do THAT," and Azak says "Then I'LL take it." I feel a flare of anger, sit miserably watching them transfer to ship at 8:50, then snap out of it and hail a cab to Marigot for $4.25 with tip---town VERY much more colorful and "native" than Philipsburg---and check sexy shorted French Gendarmes about the Vagabond and they say it goes to Anguilla at 10 and returns at 1. Heck, I can do that tomorrow! So I pass colorful merchants on sidewalks to travel office at 9:10 and ask about 9:40 flight to Saba. "No time to check, just go." So I go to boundary street and wait a long time for cab and get one for $3.25 to airport and lunge to ring bell at Windward Island Airlines at 9:35 and he rushes out with three tickets for the family ahead of me and fills out one for me for $32 and tells me to go through the gate and I'm on a Twin Otter taking off for Saba at 10! Spectacular clouds and WAY below is Saba and I think we might be flying ON to Statia when he loops around sharply and lands with about half the space to spare. They'd said to "confirm return there," but Gloria Robinson has to tell me that the IMMIGRATION officer did that when he asked me "Ho long are you staying?" and I say "returning this evening." Ignore finding agent and get out to bicker for cabs and attach myself to two couples from Cape Cod in Gloria's wagon and we take off up hill to Windward. Fabulous road like that to Macchu Picchu and up more to reserve at 11 for Scout's Place for lunch, then to buy lace from old big-busted Dutch woman with hairy legs, and to Cranston antiques for drinks and change to suit for hopeful snorkel, and hit my head on a beam in a 200-year-old church, and get down to Fort Bay to see new pier and HIGH waves, no diving! She buys two lobsters, one laden with roe, orange, and she fights to get away with them, and Gloria directs husband to "boil them out back, not on the stove," and we retrace s-curve to Scout's at 12:45, where I have tasty Saba Spice---cinnamon and rum and other nice sweet things, and then spaghetti that I like least of the bunch, telling the people at table about my life and IBM and their ad campaign of wiring animals for Honeywell, and dessert of ginger cake and butterscotch sauce is good and I give guy $10 to pay for my $6 meal and get caught by Scout on my way out---and the FLOWER arranger is obviously the gay to see for guy contacts on Saba---big, gentle, large-handed and slightly stooped, but maybe SHARP behind his seeming stupidity. Leave at 1:40 and start up Mount Scenery at good clip until I rest, panting, at shack, and continue up past lush elephant ear leaves, tree ferns, lizards on every one of the neatly tailored steps, great views down over Captains Quarters' swimming pool, and loads of lovely butterflies, including the last two feet of a thick black shiny snake. Loads of begonias and what I think may be orchids when I reach near the top to pass a case from an extension cutting tool and a lovely harried woman stuffing moss and bromeliads into plastic bags, pointing with excitement to the 36th variety of orchid she'd found on the island. Three guys come out to meet her and I say I MUST go on, eating ripe red---though somewhat dry and unsweet---raspberries from bushes still in flower, and get to top to find it clouded over, but then there would be no view to all sides anyway, and rain starts hitting microwave reflectors on tower. Jerk off quickly to spill my seed on Mt. Scenery on Saba and start quickly down, glad that stones weren't particularly slippery, but my SHOES are wearing thin! Down quite quickly, legs hurting but not awfully and I listen to patter of rain on the leaves and gather raspberries in a box made of the La Experanza poster that LITERALLY made this day possible. Down at 3:45, sweating, and find no topo map, 4 cards for 80, and a small Dutch-language map for $1.10 that I have to fold. Back to a closed (but area's open) Scout's Place and NO one around and I wonder if they've left me, but people come up to say they've wandered island and driver comes back about 4:05 and we're down to Captain's Quarters to pick up botanist and his kid and get a white kitten that yowls. I walk around pool and am glad I didn't decide to STAY. Drive down to airport around 4:35 and guy says I can return at 5:05, but down to watch large waves crashing on boulders-strewn shore and decide it's just too risky alone. Goats flee, rocks are hard, I watch blue waves crashing and foaming and gulls wheeling above and dark clouds forming over Mount Scenery. Up to find plane's delayed till 5:40 and sit looking at people and admitting I'm over 40. "Whatever you're doing, keep doing it; I figured you for about 27." Plane lands in a flurry of rain and we're on to take off quickly and wheel around airstrip and take off in GLORIOUS sun-streaked rain squalls (flying over Dominican Republic about 10 am Wednesday, and haze starts JUST below us and seems DEMANDING to be caused by jets' passages!), but bounce hardly at all and land at St. Martins about 6:10. Out and decide to test "St. Maartin, the Friendly Island" signs and when I can't share a cab I walk on highway and hitch a ride with a black about a mile, then with a French couple in a VERY dusty car who tell me that the best snorkeling is the north side of L'Emprecheur Beach, the nude beach, reachable by busses from Philipsburg to Orleans or French Quarter, sometimes all the way to Hotel Galion. Great! Get to hotel just as Azak gets in, raving about the beauty and exclusivity and food on St. Barts, but the three-hour trip over was choppy and some woman threw up on his shorts and he was somewhat nauseous, but the lunch, the lovely villas, the "perfect concrete" roads linking private beaches, the swimming all came in for high praise. I was sorry I couldn't make it tomorrow and debated going from 8:40 to 11:50, since his round-island tour was only 1.5 hours. We nap and he's not hungry so I go into L'Escargot and get paired with Gary, a red polyester-suited guy with wig-tailored hair and a window and screen business with his brother in St. Thomas which he's on "R&R" from. Talk of his climb on Statia and sorry I can't go THERE, but I guess I'll be back to St. Martin. He wants to spend a few more days hiking on Saba, where he was yesterday (clouds over the Inaguas, so we don't see them). Lights dim and brighten, group of 10 in inner room echoes loudly, they serve a salad I didn't order, the vichyssoise is like pea, the salad is the best part with REAL tomatoes, and my duck is dry and hard, and I had to FORCE the waiter to take back one half-carafe of wine. He gives the names of guesthouses in Bermuda and owner serves us free beer, bitching us in French to our faces. Leave and get back about 11:30 to get to sleep early, exhausted.
EL CONVENTO IN SAN JUAN
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 19. Showered in cold water last evening. Azak's up first at 8 again, and I MAY not have had time for lightwork. To breakfast for a tasty one-egg omelet, slow, and we ask to keep room to 3. She's about to charge us $5, but woman says no. Out to let one bus pass and take taxi that says he'll charge $7 where others would charge $8, and I persuade Azak to say OK. Past revivalist churches full of people and lots of grand stairways up to parlor-floor verandas. Pleasant. To beach south of Galion Hotel about 11 and see no one nude. Cyclist from N.J. who fell and bruised face wants to go nude, too. Nice but plump, lovely eyes and openness. I'm trying to insert contacts in wind when French people come and say nude beach is north of hotel. They're away south, guy doing Azak. I go north to edge of beach and try snorkeling, but greenery is sandy and not many fish, only simple foot-long food-sized fish. Hermit crab in a foot-long conch shell, large as lobster. They're going to drink, so I join them for pina colada and ask water-guy for snorkeling, and he says free beach is FARTHER to north. AHA! There and people skinny dipping, mostly older and fat but a few blacks with enormous sand-covered cocks swimming. Too-low bushes for action. They walk and swim and I snorkel and warn them about prevalent sea urchins, and we all panic and leave water. A few reefs are pretty, but strong surf churns up sand and makes visibility poor. Out and walk and decide to eat, so we order and watch things broiling by big-footed lisper and have good chicken under boat (oh, no boats to Green Cay, where there are eight kinds of coral.) and then it's 1:30 and time to go BACK. No bus, no taxis. No tours to Philipsburg. We try a bunch of islanders and they run out of gas in 20 yards. She calls cab but we get another and he waits while we gather stuff and continue to airport to speedily check in, change clothes (still salty and me Mickey-Mouse-eyed with contact sunglasses), and onto flight that's ON TIME! Circle around and past WHOLE BEAUTIFUL ISLAND, Anguilla above, and then the Cays above clouded St. John, Cruz Bay, and ALL of St. Thomas but for the clouded back. Start down and the views are fabulous. Into San Juan early and out to get on a $2 publico with a weird group from Kentucky, and get off at Plaza San Jose when Azak refuses to say "El Convento." Walk down and he CHANGES us from better (view of Cathedral, on corner) 302 to 312 (view over slums), but we get in and shower and unpack and feel good, watching TV of Agua Pretas bus accident. He slops water, scoffs at my dining choice of El Convento, asks for handbag, and when he asks for water when I pour myself a glass I sputter and say "NO," and then tell him why. (Incomprehensible pilot comment about cloud-hidden islands, but I DO want to hear if Cuba's on our left!). Out at 7:30 to find no seats tonight so I reserve for 2 for Tuesday at 10, latest, and reserve at Carlos and Charlie's, then walk west and THIS is beautiful old San Juan. Azak has to be phoned to come down, and C&C's pretty bad: veal so-so and Azak's eggplant poor and overcooked. California wine, too. Out (I'd said hello to Dean and Everett before 8, also) to walk new streets and end up leaving Azak to enter Lion's Den, watching good films of Joe D'Angelo and "Teacher's Problem" and leather kicks and Joe Parker and LOVELY come shots but I just don't feel HORNY. Sit by dark orgy room, but IT turns me off. Decide to try baths at 1:10, but I'm a third wheel in a kissy duet, lots of cock sucking, however, and out about 2:30 to meet Azak coming in, and return to hotel and get to sleep about 3, Azak coming in about 5, but I barely hear him at all.
EL MORRO IN SAN JUAN
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20. Azak's up at 9:30 and we dress and I go down to find 10 am bus to Condado not HERE yet, so we check out, check bags, and leave for Condado at 10:30. Azak very weary from last night, we eat at Las Nereidas to noon, and breakers have swept beach away---surf riding ALL the way up to the foundations of La Concha nightclub. Weedy surf and Azak doesn't even go in. La Concha has NICE lit wickered lobby, but screamy pool with kids. Meet car at 1:20 and in dressing I DROPPED watch and STOP it at 1:15 and 25 seconds. DAMN! Into car with 6 others and back to grab bags and walk to San Francisco Inn for our welcoming pina coladas. Thanos cute and talky and the room is AWFUL. Unpack and out to El Morro about 3, walking below the walls in La Perlato see the surf crashing over the foundations of what had been squatters' huts, and there's a sewer smell and people stare at us and we leave, feeling out of place. He has to leave at 3:45 to do the washing before 6, when the air conditioner is increased, and I watch BEAUTIFUL surf at north of El Morro for an HOUR of beauty and fascination, getting glasses crudded with salt from the TOP of the walls. Back VERY hot at 5 for ANOTHER shower and write and put clean clothes away and write on pleasant back deck to 6 and on nice sunroof to 6:45 when it gets dark, and down to talk to Azak and have him sew button on shirt and we're out to walk more streets and get to La Colombe at 9 for a sad meal: chef has no calves' brains, won't make a chocolate or Grand Marnier soufflé, and stuffs Azak with a "half" order of sweetbreads for MY taste (but overcooked for him) and my cucumber-spinach cold soup has seeds in it. The rack of lamb has two fine slabs of 8 chops, though the potatoes are so-so and the carrots only reasonable. Sous-chef uses brandy on our crepes suzettes despite Azak's protestations and the wine is winy. Stuffed and out at 11:30 and I'm just too TIRED to do anything but go to bed, not really wanting to face any of the Lion Complex.
EL YUNQUE IN SAN JUAN
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 21. Azak bugs me in AM. (P. 36 notes at 8:45 Tuesday): VERY activating morning: Azak gets up at 7:10 and does his groan "BOB" bit, and we're up quickly to get out for our only day of Puerto Rico sightseeing. He dresses in shorts so I do too, then read that short-shorts aren't accepted in public buildings or churches, AND read that the Museum of Art in Poncé is closed Tuesdays! So why go to Ponce? Then figure to rent a car, but the place across the street is closed---walk to main park under his advice, still no place; Azak asks cop: "None around here at all." OH, just as we were READY to leave, he decided he had to shave---AND I didn't do lightwork this morning AND the fan-cooled room was slightly muggy and uncomfortable through the night. Then we go to see publicos, and he sees the PO and goes to buy stamps, so I go along to get 10 13's and 10 21's for mailing. THEN he stands and writes envelopes for his cards and that seems like the last straw---THE WHOLE DAY GONE (8:20 am) and nothing accomplished AND he expects me to drive. I say I won't and don't like to let him without his license, and regret yesterday's lack of planning for today. I'm silent, say only "I'm in a bad mood, as I don't want to drive, let's check publicos to Cayey" and he says, dripping sarcasm, "You want to take a publico from San Juan to Cayey, rent a car and come back to El Yunque, return to Cayey, then take a publico from Cayey back to San Juan?" I can barely keep my voice calm. He keeps saying how he wants to go to the bank, get pants dry cleaned, get shirts pressed, and through it all he stares at me with his languid eyes and saunters with his slow step. We check publicos and they'll charge $10 a person to go and $10 a person to come back. I suggest taxi to rental agency and when we don't find one immediately he wants coffee, but as it's 8:35 I agree with him when he says we'll miss breakfast tomorrow since we're getting a 9:25 plane, so we should return to Inn for today at 9. (Yagruma (two-faced) leaves silvery on top of tree and green below). Get there at 8:45 and I buy 15 postcards of El Yunque to placate my urge to DO something, and write them in the restaurant that the shorter PR lets me into kindly. By the time that's over I've settled down enough to let Azak have HIS way, and we have breakfast and I say we CAN rent a car, and only when he strikes up a LONG conversation in order to ask if someone wants to come WITH us do I start "We'll rent a car today if we ever get out of this RESTAURANT today." We get out at 10 (only 3 hours to get out) and grab cab to Ashford Avenue to a place that's closed, and then Olympic has a VW for $15/day and 15/mile, we say yes, pay gas, which is pretty bad, but we take it out at 10:30. Never REALLY master second shift, but get the hang of the rest pretty quickly. Traffic IN town is DREADFUL: route 3 is full of stoplights, cars coming from blind entrances, speeders, laggers, lane-switchers and people like me who don't know how to drive their cars. Farther out and turn down 191 and very quickly return to town for 5 GALLONS of 75/gallon Esso that turns into $4.85 that leaves us with too much. Back into El Yunque and out to look at VERY thin Coco Falls, but quickly get back in and continue up bamboo-grove-lined roads. Stop at km 10.5 for La Minia Falls trail and rush in fast to get ahead of family with chattering kids. Good looks at fern growths and moss on old trees, lianas, flat-leafed and plastic-looking vines that can grow a branch, bromeliads with red cock-flowers jutting out and sounds of rapids among the trees---though no bamboo. Continue to Route 191 hoping to find the car, and it's VERY humid and the Coqui calls constantly. Walk and walk, pleasantly slow, and come out at kilometer 13.3 (but VELOCITIES are in MILES per hour, making a good argument for Azak and me), the restaurant, and Azak INSISTS he's hungry, so I groan and then have Yuquiyo with turtle meat, hot rice, some native peas, and one spicy piece of Spanish sausage. Tasty, as was the somewhat diluted Tamarindo and an awful tea-tasting El Yunque julep. To mile 13.6 for the landslide which is ahead, but don't go through to see it. Double back and take off down 988, or something like that, and get a non-swept road, then an almost-view of the whole range leads me to take off on a narrow dirt road to see it, but we both panic as it gets narrower and rockier and we turn back, to go along 987 to Sirocco, a point of flat beaches and flatter residences, El Conquistador blocklike on the hill, and then down to route 3 again to explore Luquillo which is CLOSED at 5. Then reverse on 3 to go through pleasant countryside (forgot our stop for my hot fudge sundae with the New York-speaking black, and Azak's snack next door) with MORE poor drivers and get to Humacao beach about 6, but only look at wide clean expanse of small waves rolling in. Back to Gagaya, or whatever, and take 58, a 35 toll road of great width and we get into San Juan just as it gets dark about 7. Roll onto main streets toward old San Juan, but get confused, get off, and find ourselves alone facing all oncoming traffic in the BIS lane (thank God for strike), then find Calle San Francisco BLOCKED after getting to northern highway by mere fluke. Park down block after stalling for the 15th time and VERY relieved in to the bar at 7 for a rum and coke, not so good, and Azak is VERY cheery with everyone. Up to shower and shave and write and address my cards, and he's suddenly out at 9 for his dinner friends at a poor Spanish place. I go down and have a daiquiri, poor, when he hasn't fresh pineapple for a pineapple daiquiri (and he said "Don't repeat it" when he asks "Are you staying in old San Juan?") and leave at 9:30 and walk a bit, through old gate to cruisy docks and up to cop-safe park, then to El Convento at about 9:45, and get seated in center near back of first section, not bad at all. Gazpacho is spicy, veal with cream sauce and mushrooms dull, 1/2 Pommard for $10 tasty, and guava shells with good white cheese (sort of halfway between Swiss and Muenster) is super. The show is FABULOUS: starting with 4 women coming out in a SNOW of white shirts fore and aft, marvelous hand and arm motions, a native-type dance that's so graceful and athletically done that I can SEE the combination of "Don Quixote" and native dancing, and a guy who's SO good he doesn't even have to have tight pants: he puts the microphone down, sets up a bass rumble with his heels, places over it a tenor of quick toe-taps, and claps his hands while the singer mercifully stops singing and claps HIS hands. Guitarist's "Malaguena" pretty good, but my wine leads me to think the DANCING is so great, and so different from José Greco or José Molinas or movie-dancing as to be another art form, and a superior one at that. True, there were cutsy things of men dominating women and super-emotional facial expressions, but they did NOT have the traditional frowns on their faces all the time, a relief. A great show of enormous theatricality and AGAIN I have to thank Art. Out at 11:45 (hotel not air conditioned since Sunday, when we left!) after Grand Marnier for total of $35 and back to FALL into bed at 12 after brushing teeth and fearing NOT waking up for plane at 7 am tomorrow.
NASSAU
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22. Sleep very badly: uncomfortably warm and tacky, conscious of Azak moving around, worrying about getting up at 7 am, feeling itchy from sun or ants or mosquitoes. Finally up at dawn to see it's 6:10 and take a crap, then nap (doing lightwork sporadically) and up at 6:45 to shower and brush teeth and wake Azak up. Pack---strap broke yesterday in El Yunque so I sew it on rather securely with Azak's thread---and get out about 7:30 to take car out after waiting for Azak to buy rolls from Piag and Abraham. Get to north highway and all goes well until road to Condado is blocked by construction and I go whirling through wrong streets. Ask directions and go in circles for a bit---morning traffic just AWFUL, and get to place in hot sun at 7:50. Azak goes to look for coffee and I watch some humpy numbers walk by and the car is $36 for the day, with 117 miles. Then wave for cabs, which takes a long time, and get out to airport about 8:30. Check in and then go to have breakfast, rather large omelets, and fruit, and Azak's rolls fill the holes. To plane and it takes off on time, but it's a 2 hour and 22 minute flight with the hour time-change. I watch GREAT view of Puerto Rico below, then it gets cloudy and I start writing, and then see the central mountains of Dominican Republic quite high against and above clouds. Then over unseen islands described by garbled comments and I refuse ANY breakfast, though Azak eats lots. Then pieces of LARGE islands that turn out to be Abaco, and maybe San Marco built only in middle, and then the ENORMOUSLY spread-out city of Miami. Land and very nicely confirm reservations and have a couple hours to kill. We sit near a guy in white trousers with legs spread WAY out and LOTS of humps pass. I read stuff on Nassau and Freeport and at 12 Azak calls his lawyer to find him in the hospital for a checkup and his real estate agent "out on business," so he has no reason to stay. I wasn't sweating. Talk about plans and trip and then HE demands seat at window, getting GREAT view down Collins to the curve of the Fontainebleau and the LOVELY sight of North and South Bimini and INCREDIBLE green of shallows falling to INTENSE blue of the "Tongue of the Ocean." (To lap the Fountain of Youth??). Fabulous flight with me peering over his shoulders, cursing him when he reads. Land and take SLOW immigration line with LOTS of people behind, and we're "staying" at the Freeport Holiday Inn and have to show connecting tickets. Pick up LOTS of Bahamas brochures and get to cab to Ransom Square, going through straw market in STIFF COLD breeze, high about 55 today! See Queen Victoria's statue and Parliament buildings and I'm wearing jacket and Azak his sweater. Up to Hill Street to see architecture after viewing ruins of Victoria Hotel and I look at map and dash west along longer streets than expected, through slums to Fort Charlotte at 4:10 and look through cannons and modern bleachers and dungeons, then know gardens are closed and walk back to town along Bay Street, looking at old British Colonial Hotel and through shops and arcades, then back to F&S to order GREAT ribs and food for Azak and watch large waves dashing on other side of Paradise Island and chat with passengers from Sunward II that ran aground, making headlines. Out and Azak's too cold to continue. I walk to Paradise Island bridge, across, to dull casino with cute 21 dealers, and play two quarters to win 50 and put them back, getting nothing but souvenir brochures. Out at 6:25 and across bridge and flag gypsy cab for wait at statue for $2, at 7, and pick up Azak and get to airport for $6, and flight's delayed an hour to Freeport. Get on JAMMED plane with screaming kids, sitting backward, and see only a few lights below as we bounce around a bit and the big Black opposite me looks terrified. Lots of clouds poorly lit by moon hidden by higher clouds. Land in the midst of pretty much darkness, and get into the terminal to find no information available. I'd checked El Conquistador to check first and the cabbie suggests dropping us there, saying it's cheap. Get in and fumble for $2 while Azak checks that there's a room and we're back across patio next to pool to try one room then another (later find the key didn't fit the door and it was just OPEN), and it's HUGE with a full kitchen (non-working electric stove) with no heat and no hot water and no BLANKETS for 47 cold! I open drawers and find plastic mattress cover and put THAT on, so Azak adds the two extra SHEETS to his bed and stays cold while I'm toasty. Bed perhaps 10:30, since we're tired and there's nothing else to do.
FREEPORT
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23. Wake feeling MARVELOUS in the cool room and get out at 8:22 to order omelets and wait a LONG time for SUPER ham and onion and celery and tomato and grease omelet. In fact, I pay the $5.50 bill for them and toast and four cups of coffee at 9:22. Leave bags at hotel back room and get a taxi driven by the driver of a double-decker bus who says he has a 9:30 tour and drops us beneath the dome of the Freeport Princess Hotel, and I go in and collect a lot of tour descriptions. We sit on top of bus after JUST dismissing a cab we'd flagged at 9:50 as the bus pulled into sight. But we sit THERE for a long time and then when group boards (AWFUL gray-haired group) and it's the Town and Country Tour that doesn't go to Grove Gardens, Azak hears and jumps off, but I have to look back and see him STANDING there and down to pound on driver's window to let me off. Azak thought I'd gone into hotel. So we get ANOTHER cab to the Rand Nature Center and Dr. Fluck is fabulous! Pity his stories aren't in his guide or his book, which I buy, and start walking back to hotel. I want to see more but Azak doesn't, so he walks to hotel and goes back to International Bazaar and gets to airport early. I hitchhike and guy goes out of his way to take me to International Bazaar (which we'd wandered through earlier, DOZENS of shops set up like souks with a shop for each country) where I ask direction of two bus drives and find one for 65 to take me to area of Lucayan Beach Hotel, and first exhibit in International Underwater Whatever I see is a fork from Mr. and Mrs. Eddie Elais of Akron, Ohio! Pick up folders and look at sexy guys passing through and get out to grab cab to Garden of the Groves, with stuff from THAT list. Out at 2:15 and no taxi at Shannon Inn and none on way and finally I get desperate (forgot double-deck bus driver's comment: Nassau is for SHIP touring and Freeport is for JET touring), and #34 comes and takes me to hotel past MILES of piney road signs for incredible developments, getting in at 3 and to airport at 3:04. Dash in and Azak signs "5" in air. Talk, wait, read, eat (as written before on p. 45-46). I was ABOUT to say "another incredible hassle---but by NOW it's ROUTINE! Flight 223 on Bahamasair was cancelled before the effective date of the schedule (Michael later said he got a call about it two weeks after we left, too late). But there was room on the 5 pm flight 325. Azak draws a "5" in the air when I gasped in at 3:05, and we "chatted" most of the time until 4:30---he berating me for believing Hemingway's brother's tale about the Fountain of Youth off the island of Bimini---when they said that the 5:30 and 7:30 flights were being combined at 7:30! With our 8:50 tickets from Nassau to Miami, 7:30 for Bahamasair meant 8:30 and we'd MISS our connection. Talked with Eastern and they agreed that if we weren't ABOARD at 8, we'd take the 10:55 flight from Freeport to Miami. So we sat and read and talked and ate (conch fritters for me, pork chops for him) and at 7:30 heard that it was a JET for both flights, so it'll take only 30 minutes to fly and 15 minutes to turn around. We wait, tried finding Eastern at 7:45 but there was no one there, but gate opens at 7:50, and 80 people PILE on. and at 8 we leave, getting in at 8:30 on the nose, and even with Azak's run in with his toticycline pills, we're through to plane at 8:45 and it takes off at 9:10! Guy paid for my drink when stewardess took his $20 and not my $1.50, and said "Welcome to the Bahamas" and reminded me of cabbie who said "1.30 and I handed him $2 and he had no change and took $1.25, all the change I had. We flew over bright clouds and more lights and even moonlit beaches below, and half-hour flight feels good. Land at 8:30 and onto next flight next to couple from Toronto and chat and look at Miami below as we land at 10:00 and have a drink which feels good. I get bags sewed and feel good about THAT and we're onto next flight at 11 and all of Florida at COAST is lit and INTERIOR is pitch black. Bouncy flight, but lots to look at in cloud and city, and land at 11:50 and off to check about 6 wall-phone hotels before black woman finds space at Ramada Inn South. We get room and GUY gets room and he asks directions---I restrain myself for saying he's silly and paranoid for wanting to check on cab driver, but he answers he's rented a car and will take us all! We get to wrong car, which key fits, and sit and drive down wrong road before right one and get last room (someone's PAID for it and desk clerk hopes no one claims it after now, 12:45), and get in to VERY comfortable room at $22 per night, and shower without washing hair, pleased with our luck and we leave call for 7:30 to take 9:30 bus. While Azak showers I call about a dozen hotels for tomorrow and find them all full, and FINALLY Marriott say's they'll put our name on a list, with Azak's credit card number, and he later tells me I should have gotten the guy's name or number to verify the transaction later. I say that's why he should handle such calls. He refuses to move wake-up time past 7:30. Sleep instantly.
ORLANDO
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24. I get phone at 7:30, having been awake about five minutes, and he's still dozing until I verbally chide him. Out and down to cafeteria breakfast for $5.25 of sausage and bacon and eggs and muffins and orange juice and coffee and race drivers, who have taken over Ramada Inn South for their rally these days. Out about 9 to find there's STILL no room at the Inn, but it's 47 and getting up to 70 and we have a $40 room at Marriott. Down and get on bus at 9:15 and leave at 9:30, and two from the second crowded bus to BOTH Sea World and Disney World won't come to OUR bus for both to replace the only two who will force us all out of our way to Sea World. Long trip over mostly nothing, past Sea World's huge flag on tower, and in to enormous area about 10:15, through gates to buy $9.50 day-tickets, guy ahead spending $205 for 16 people, and we take ferry over for the start of a PERFECT day. Get information from folder. To bus just before 7 and sit till 7:12 as driver talks about Orlando and Disney and $50 per acre before and $2800 per acre AFTER he silently bought up 70,000 or so of them for his world, for which he produces his OWN meat and vegetables from his OWN ranches and farms, taking VERY little from surrounding places, and treating his people cheaply but well. THE most spectacularly cherry-bomb red sunset and ripply clouds in front of utterly blue sky as we watch it at 6:45 and wandered through the Contemporary Resort with rooms from $65/night but Beef Wellington for 2 for $19.50 and a single (?) rack of lamb for $10.50; and this was in the PENTHOUSE, restaurant below had top price of $7.95. Delays to hotel by traffic and get in at 8, find STILL no room, and get taxi to Marriott Hotel, closer to airport, and get driven by solicitous Gary to room in "Greece" section of Olympic Villas. Azak immediately turns on TV and then radio and I start writing, catching up fast, and then it's announced at 9:22 and we dash across cold lawns to roast chicken, peppery ribs, and yams and peas with a bottle of Paul Masson Cabernet Sauvignon for the price of the Almaden Mountain Red they don't have. Out about 10:30 and plop right into bed (had a LOVELY hair-wash and shower before writing), ignoring Azak's comments like "C'mon, Bob, let's have a hot night on this swingin' town." I'd usually say "Oh, Azak, you're being so SERIOUS again," but I stuff my earplugs in and get into lightwork, and he shuts off first one light and then the other in quick succession, and I'm asleep even before forming hierarchy, so NO lightwork today at ALL!
BERMUDA AND CYCLING
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 25. Though it's still pitch black I wake and phone operator and it's 5:19, so I shit and wash my face and am brushing my teeth when the 5:30 wakeup call comes and Azak "I HEARD IT," refused to answer by the 14th ring. Out to the taxi that he calls for at 6, and he DOES function better in more elegant surroundings, expecting good service from a good place. Still dark as we drive to airport at 6:30, 37 cold, so he heats van for us. On flight almost directly and Azak sits in the empty seat in front to be joined by the BEAUTIFUL small-faced jeaned bearded blond who says not a word to him, and I get a voluble teacher of the exceptional child who's reading the Ali-cover Time and I see "less" and "..99" and "..AM" and ask to see it and it's ANYWHERE on Pam Am for $999, PRECISELY the fantasy that Azak and I had discussed only a FEW days before---for 80 days. At $20/day that's $2600 for a GOOD trip at $32.50/day TOTAL! Hope Dennis can swing it! Manitoba, Alaska, Molokai, Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia, New Guinea, Malaysia, India, Ceylon, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Rome, London, Dublin, here we come! Land at 8:10, even EARLY, and off at 8:15. Azak wants to go into terminal, so we wander around and I get to gate 5 to a short line and in to shit again, and back to board at 9, but he climbs in at 9:20 and I finish these notes while sweltering in my pullover in a sunny window seat (intelligent flight, since ALL the windows on the shady left were taken) and Azak cruises past PRETENDING to concentrate on his seat, audibly whispering "21C" as he pauses with a studied frown on his face. Nice to be up to date at 9:30. Taxi out and lots of Eastern flights come and go and we take off NEXT to a bright red Braniff International plane and make a big circle and can't see ANYTHING of Atlanta at 9:55 and have LOVELY flight over identifiable Spartansburg and snowy fields until fluffy clouds close in and Washington is on the left. Baby squalls through ENTIRE 75-minute flight! Crying helps the ears, says the stewardess as the brat keeps clenching her fists over her ears. Out of gate C-5 and all the way out to the terminal to find that the Bermuda plane is at gate C-8. But they're not checking in yet, so I get up to date again. Read more on Bermuda and get window seat and board at 11:50---last destination! Out at 12:10 and fly over LOTS of countryside and find we've gone south over Norwalk or Norfolk. Lovely snowed fields and inlets below, cityless, and then (infinite variety of FOUNTAINS using cacti as models, including knitted-ball of Burlington Mills---and CROWNS, too!: Monkey's dinnerbell, fruit EXPLODES and scatters seeds---super laxative and trunk is spiny) clouds close in and lunch is served and I ask Ben Flatters about "Fear of Flying" and we talk till the incredible blue and green shallows around Bermuda become apparent. Land and through customs and check (Azak gets yellow ticket that means they suspect him of drugs, and he panics, but passes) for Riddlesdown and find it's closed, but get Surf Song nearby for $22/day, which is the CHEAPEST on the entire island so far as known. Get taxi there for $7 or so and Mr. Correia is small and ferretlike and Syrian and shows us unheated room with tea and coffee-cooking facilities that Azak likes. Phone for cycles at 4:30 and they arrive at 5, and we try and I almost get mowed down by car out of driveway. Down to Horseshoe Bay the hard way and he goes shopping, and I sit and watch bays and sunset and we climb rocks and look at beautiful cold surf. Back to look at all the material at 7, when it's dark, and light oven to keep warm, and he turns on radio. Out about 8 to Hamilton on dark roads and find Fisherman's Reef closed and to Hog Penny to find Kalbshaxe out and veal cordon bleu not so good, but he likes his fish. Bar has some sexy guys, but we're around to Horse and Buggy for a singer, straight diners, and a sexy guy who keeps staring at me but I'm paranoid and don't want to get involved. Drink beer and look at plastered British sailors and feel SO sorry for them. FREEZING scary ride back on a road that seems endless and bed about 11:45, Azak complaining about the noise affecting the Correia's as I leave motor running to light keyhole for him.
BERMUDA AND MARITIME MUSEUM AND LIGHTHOUSE
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 26. Wake about 8 and decide to go way WEST, and I end up at Maritime Museum which he doesn't want to see, so he leaves. I pay $2 and get individual lecture on the history of the place as a depot for the British until group arrives, among them a sexy guy with a faggot partner, but he keeps looking at things near me, and though he's not ideal, I'm so horny I fantasize running out and having sex with him. Neptune's statue with muscles even turns me on, and I get up to walk parapets and wonder where you could see nude sailors bathing on Ireland Island. Many ship models, an underwater microphone, lagoon for repairing ships, and it's rather warm. I get back to Boaz Island, taking all the side roads and gaping at the nuclear submarine Churchill that was open to the public the previous day, and the Aircraft carrier Hermes that only carries 12 helicopters, and lots of dead rats on roads and places closed, and eat poor shrimp and GOOD tomatoes at Woody's drive in, with good Heineken's beer, and back through Wreck Point and other ends-of-points and back about 1 to find Azak in. I go out to watch firing on beaches, climb lighthouse, and he lunched at Waterlot Inn and was very impressed with the food and the $10 price for omelet and Bloody Mary. We travel around roads on the north, covering Ord Road, and then out to Spanish Point for shell-gathering and sunset about 7 pm, rather cloudless but mostly obscured sun-face. We wanted a beer but couldn't find one and we find ourselves in front of Horse and Buggy and he says "Choose for yourself" and I go in to have Wahoo and a carafe of white wine and loads of sour cream and butter on a baked potato and am freaked OUT by the wine. Tired about 9 and just decide to get back, and he doesn't contradict me and we tumble into bed at 9:45, I quite exhausted, vowing to take some REST soon.
BERMUDA AND ST. GEORGE AND CRYSTAL CAVE
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27. Up at 7:45, having both slept 10 hours, and I go out for a walk (actually, this was YESTERDAY) and jerk off in woods, then back. He wants to delay, I get out at 8:30 to cycle all long cold way up to St. George's at 9:30, find breakfast among Hungarian camp chairs, have ham and eggs and tea for $1.90, which Azak calls cheap, and then GOOD side tour with John Cox to 11:45, being introduced to loquat, luckynut, bignonia that can be sipped for a tangible drop of nectar, and back to the square for the Bermuda trumpets, cannon, town crier (You'll love her, as John Cox said), and to Pub on the Square for a GOOD rum swizzle, and another good rum swizzle, and hamburg and shrimp cocktail and Spanish coffee made with Tia Maria, and he had Bermuda coffee with Bermuda Gold. (SECOND person in Bermuda Art Society exclaims about "Harvey Wallbanger was here" sketch), and we're out at 2:45 (I leave address for John Cox) for Dolphins at 3, and out at 3:30 to Crystal Cave from 3:45 to 4:30 and to south shore for FABULOUS arches and Harbor House and Mid-Ocean Club point beaches and to John Smith Bay and rocks and FABULOUS fish in SUPER clear water and we're BOTH in love with Bermuda, even WITHOUT swimming! Around through Flatts to north and stop in "Nature Hut" for good music and good clouded sunset with FUN cherry-red rugs and he loves music and Planters Punches are sweet. Out at 7:30 and back to house and look at restaurants and he FINALLY agrees to Four Way, after looking at Paraquet menu, and I dress and he does and we get there at 9:10 for $5.50 Jambon de Bayonne that's Spanish, $5 Quenelles de Langouste, good SAUCE and poor quenelles, too starchy; and $22 duck, dry and hard, good peach sauce; and $14 chocolate soufflé with coffee-flavored chantilly and $14.50 wine and 15% service and $2.10 tip for a total bill of $78! Home and bed about 11:50, tired. Forgot to mention the surprise, which John Cox SHOULDN'T have told us about, of girl accused of gossiping and sentenced to 6 dunkings on the dunking stool, complete with irate housewife pelting her with lettuce to complete her ignominy. But she had to duck her OWN head underwater to get it wet enough, and EVERYONE was laughing a lot. I wanted to tour the Tucker House and the Printing Museum and the other museums that were free to the public on Monday, but we didn't have the time, racing around ahead of the bus to see sketchy Gates' Fort and the more restored Fort St. Catherine, with its tacky set of reproductions of the British Crown Jewels, on a marvelous point overlooking great reefs for diving below the pink bulk of the Holiday Inn, which put the St. George Hotel out of business. Small arms displays were boring, and I was glad to get out before the people arrived, though some of the dioramas were quite nicely lit by moonlight, firelight, and sunset light. Crystal Cave was wet going down, then a slash of stalagmites and stalactites, and then a quite quick descent to the pontoon-bridge over the deep clear lake, nicely lit, though the green fungus was growing already. Pretty grottos lit by side-lights, and the water was somehow more impressive than the formations of stone were. Trimingham's appeared, as everywhere, in the souvenir shop. The black shouted a bit too much during the Dolphin show, and it was only a half-hour, so a bit much for $2.50, but it was funny to see the dolphins in the BACK pens turning somersaults as bows as the performer in the FRONT pen did. The PERFECT unison of angle and height and timing when two and even THREE dolphins leaped out of the water was breathtaking, but for the most part I was looking at the strong arms of the British sailors with their sweaters off, crotchless however, and the HUGE shiner on the face of the youngest kid, so it wouldn't do to approach the wrong people in the bars, no matter how nicely they said to their friends, "You suck my little pinky and I'll suck your little pinky" and sat on the terraces of Horse and Buggy and looked at the OBVIOUS faggots around them without being offended by their PRESENCE, only possibly by their advances, if they were sober enough to recognize them. John Cox said it was the only place there was, and the sailors who went there usually knew what was going on, but I was glad to get back to the states and see the REAL crotches on REAL blue-jeaned gays. But that's part of the TRIP SUMMARY ON DIARY 2782-2783 that's the last I have to type here.
BERMUDA AND GLASS-BOTTOMED BOAT
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28. Up at 7:10 and fuss to 8 and to PO to mail 11 cards that I wrote this morning, and I zip around to Lemington Caves at 9:30 to find you need at least 5-6 to go through with a tour. To Hell Hole 9:15 to 10:30, turtle and parrots and squirrelfish and all, and to Botanical Gardens from 10:45-11:45 with a GREAT tour, then to Hamilton for Azak's gas at 12 and to Town Hall to Art Student's exhibit and catch THIS up to date by 1 pm! I'm third one in and make a beeline for grog, a rum swizzle, and look around at dozens of crafts: watch part collages, woodcarving, tying knots as knitting, and then back for a free beer, and the local brewery is about to open on Ireland Island. Gaze around more and back for 2 or 3 cuplets of Bermuda Gold and cheese and crackers and beginning to feel GOOD. Azak arrives, as does town crier for ST. GEORGE, and more Gold and two cups of fish chowder and feeling FABULOUS. Out at 1:35 and down to share Azak's sandwich (which he INSISTS I share though I'm not hungry and he IS) before boarding The Hustler with young Scott at 2 for pickups at Princess Hotel and Inverurie and talk to HUGE (6'7"?) blond from "Mass" with his new wife and chat across bay and around to Daniel's Head for GOOD fish and reef and ship wreck. Then for a FAST hour there and back chatting with Scott, nice. Out at 4:10 and buy an Archie Brown sweater for taxless $10, shop for loquat jam and find none, look at Bermuda Historical Society in the Library (5 from Pennsylvania, 1775) and neat Par-le-ville gardens, then back to Front and find Waterfront restaurant and back to home to fritter away time drinking tea while sun is setting, then get out and go across Camp Road to find it setting already, so go off Waterlot side road and watch obscured sunset, then down to find Waterlot formerly managed by now-managed of Fourways, but they're all booked (underbooked, says Azak, for guests bringing guests), as is Newport Room in Southampton Princess, so we're off back to hotel where I shower and put things away while Azak sleeps till 8:10, and then phone to find they're STILL full but we could call again at 10, when he says they'd rush us through. Out, dressed, to Waterfront and it's quite empty and Azak fusses and FUSSES about vegetables and wine of 1970 versus 1975 and soufflé for dessert and how to make crepes. Wine for $10, tough shrimp cocktail and his escargots that he didn't OFFER me for $5.50 and Chateaubriand for $16 and crepes for $4 for moderate bill, with $5 to headwaiter who was original in using Mandarine for crepes, thick and pasta-like that I like but Azak hates. Smashed on wine and crepes and Azak wanted to go to Horse and Buggy but he leaves it to me and I say no. Oh, on way BACK we went down ROAD to Horseshoe Bay and it's DIFFERENT from what we looked at before, and VERY spectacular, with STRANGE twilight optical startle when large dogprints near lead us to see large dog far away, which I THINK resolves itself into a PERSON, but then we're BOTH sure it's a dog, and then it's ACTUALLY TWO PEOPLE. Home and bed at 11:45, no work on lightwork at ALL. I am actually fairly glad this was our last day there, since we'd been driving faster and more recklessly on the roads, and HE said he went off the road and got so flustered he had to stop, and I found myself going so fast following a car's taillights that I overshot severely my headlights and found myself dangerously wobbly on the margin of the road, and my feet flew out, Azak noticing, and I slowed down and kept more in the range of my lights, but with the wine and booze almost every evening, if we'd continued I may have predicted an accident. Keep looking back to see if the other is following, wondering what we'd do if something DID go wrong on the road, particularly on the dark roads at night when it's raining. Hell Hole grand fun: tied speckled moray pieces to nylon loops and let them over the side for loggerheads, green and gray snappers, and parrotfish to nibble at so strongly that they could be drawn out of the water for photographing. Deep hole somewhat ruffled by the heavy breezes and somewhat unlit by the cloudy day, but still spectacular depths, a nurse shark in a side pool lying pumping its gills, and tacky side displays. Scott talked about Mr. Ludwig, world's richest man, who never saw his half-dozen "hobby" hotels, and going to school in Nova Scotia and feeling WARM compared to the dampness here. TRIP SUMMARY ON DIARY 2782-2783, where there's more room to write!
NEW YORK CITY FROM BERMUDA
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1. Wake about 7:45 to sounds of HUGE wind and rain outside, and I actually get through a lightwork session: 75% of time forming TPH and 25% of time for rest of body. Azak turns on lights and starts writing cards at 8:30 and we hear that it's 65 with winds 20-30 knots gusting to 45, and that SEEMS to mean no PLANES today. I dress and write these notes till 9:30, and Azak shaves and says we have to pack first, but I say we should call EASTERN first. He wins, by default, when Eastern says that the flight is planned out. We pack and cycle into town about 11, getting totally soaked when it really starts raining and he has no rainpants, and my tank runs out for the second time so I put in 25 of gas, and we get to Eastern for the news that they're STILL going out. Cycle back and phone Oleander to pick up the things, and he comes at 12:30 and we're into a cab, fully packed, and I've started reading a fascinating "Catch-22," can't understand why I'd started reading it before and threw it away. Taxi has to drive slow through the flooded streets, cycleless pavements, and we hear that gale warnings will be put up about 2:30, and our flight's due out at 2:45. Customs are easy to get through, send one last postcard to Actualism, read, have one last Rum Swizzle, then flight is called, pick up booze, check in for the only checking of the trip, and pleased to see that the airstrip is less buffeted by the wind than the western end of the island. Onto the plane in two window-seats on the right, reading, and we actually DO take off at 2:55 to 31,000 feet, still thick in clouds, where the pilot says if we could go to 35,000 we'd be above them. Then about lunchtime they stream away, not before we were tossed around a bit and I experienced the old fear, and for awhile there's the tranquil ocean below, then more clouds, then down through them to snowy suburbs and farmlands of New Jersey, and then ahead the towers of the Narrows Bridge, the industry of Staten Island, the oilfields and refineries of New Jersey, and a sharp circle to land at Newark Airport at 4 pm, relieved to be back, dressing warmly against the 30 weather outside, and in to wait for awhile for the booze while I get a map that tells where the gate for the Port Authority bus for $1.95 can be found, and pick up the stuff and wait outside in the polluted cold air for a quick ride to Port Authority, noting that it seemed so BRIEF a time that we'd been gone. Through the terminal to the subways, waving goodbye to each other about 4:30, and I get home at 5:10, conscious of my tan and the Blue Bermuda boozebox at my side, and phone Tree to be cut off, so I can't get in tough with Dennis. Listen to 27 messages while I sort through a pile of mail that the neat-leaving Bill Lois put out for me, keeping the mailbox key, however, and sadly Edward Moulton-Barrett's called while I was away! Leave word with Arnie, Pope's busy, Joe Easter's not in yet, and I continue reading through the mail when Arnie calls back, then I put on TV at 7:30 for Aberfan on "When Havoc Struck," pretty poor, then read through some of the papers that Bill left here, and at 8:50 Dennis calls, delighted to find me in, saying he'll be over, and I watch Vladimir Horowitz playing (Sonata in B-flat minor, op.35: DA, DA, [but I can't continue typing this!] and Waltz in A-flat minor, op.53 and Grand Polonaise) for President Carter and a group in the White House until 9:30, when he arrives, cold and affectionate and kissy, and he opens the booze and we have some Bermuda Gold and Vandermint, I phone for a large special Frascati pizza at 10:10 and they deliver quickly, we eat two slices apiece, drinking wine, and he wants to get into sex, so we do, and he's so hot he squirts on my leg before we're really into it, getting a glob on the floor, and I'm VERY hard and showing off my cock to him, which he adores, and I lather myself up into a hard shooting come that loops through the air impressively, and I say it's fun making up for lost time, and we neck and he almost gets into coming again, but it's 11:45 and we're both tired so I turn out the lights, he puts away the popper that I'd refreshed and made into a potent instrument, and I'm too tired to even think of lightwork, content to lay beside Dennis and think that the trip is over, there's a lot to catch up on, lots of people to talk to, mail to answer, indexes to check up on, trips to plan (RTW for $999, Dennis's Eastern for $300), and lots of diary pages to catch up on typing, and I hope to start tomorrow, but I don't have time. TRIP SUMMARY ON DIARY 2782-2783, where there's space to be filled in.
TRIP SUMMARY
Only came three times, which was a pity, since with Dennis or another lover there would have been sex two or three times a day in such romantic settings. Azak was more flexible than I would have expected, surprisingly strong for the Pelee climb, and nice on the walks, though he said he loved to take long walks in NYC. I irked him more than he did me, but toward the end he almost constantly deferred to me, so it went smoothly. We actually seem to be talking about plans for the 80-days-around-the-world-for-$999-by-Pan Am! Anyone who says "all the islands are the same" obviously hasn't been to the islands with their eyes open. I was hoping to find some that I liked, some that I'd see and never have to see again, and some that I'd hate, just to get the range. I'm perfectly willing to go back to St. John for the beaches and snorkeling and nearby islands, Puerto Rico to see the rest of the island (which I'd have to ANYWAY if I take the Eastern trip again), Freeport as the entry to the Out Islands of the Bahamas, and St. Martin as the convenient entryway to St. Kitts, Nevis, St. Barts, and Anguilla. Martinique I figure I've had, but I'd like to see how Dominica and Guadeloupe compare with it. And see that Dominica is only $46 round-trip from Guadeloupe, the closest and cheapest, but a nice coincidence. May only return to Santo Domingo to fly to Haiti, and I don't feel that I need to see more of Nassau, St. Croix, Saba, or Orlando. Was glad that Actualism seemed to fit nicely into my 3-week absence, so that means I might be able to go again soon, particularly if I can convince Dennis to go during the first of July, when Actualism people go on vacation. Though Azak thought he didn't see enough of Nassau and Freeport, I DID more than he did and DO feel that I have the feeling of Paradise Island (forget it), Nassau (poor, forget it), and Freeport (good as jumping off place to other islands). We both rather gloated over the longer times in Martinique and Bermuda, but I very much feel that the time in Puerto Rico was used poorly. It's nice to know that most of these islands have transportation that's so cheap and convenient that one doesn't need to rent a car, except perhaps on Puerto Rico, where I'm sure next time we could find a cheaper place. What a pity the whole place isn't GAYER, however! The days to Puerto Plata and Tartane served to show us the COUNTRYSIDE, but only of places that we NOW feel we know and don't "need" to go back to. The nude beach on St. Maarten was a nice find, and maybe a rented car would be good there, too. Since none of these really came up to the prejudice about them, maybe Jamaica should be included in the next trip, too. Just talked with Rolf, who described Bob Arnold's trip to Puerto Rico for a week with a sore back that cost him $300, saying that I seemed to know how to travel in a sophisticated way: little luggage, no hotels pre-reserved, fast-traveling with longer stops for relaxation, though there seems to be NO way to stop from hitting Miami and San Juan a NUMBER of times. Told Rolf about the $89 to Freeport, with a daily expense of only $20, or $300 for a 10-day trip, and how sad that he says he has no money to take off on flights like these. Maybe Dennis will be more amenable to something like that, maybe for the first of July, too! Or, of Rolf wants to go, all I'd have to do is schedule it for the empty week in the middle of two power rays! Things seem to be looking better and better: flying from $89 to $299 to $999 with Rolf or Dennis or Azak! But I have to make some money on indexing, since Asbestos isn't going to finance anything SOON. We had good luck with weather: only cloudy day in St. John, coolish weather in Nassau, Freeport and Bermuda, but otherwise only the LAST day of rain and the FIRST two days lost to Trinidad were the worst happenings. Even the long delays in airports vanished as Eastern ran one flight right into another! Maybe there'd be some way of finding what these UNLISTED connections are, so that our "luck" could be planned into the itinerary! The best proof of a good trip is that I'm willing to use the Eastern plan again, and willing to take another trip with Azak. Best ever.
ISLAND SUMMARY
ST. CROIX: mostly flat, Frederiksted decaying, Christiansted beautiful like a toy town; but the best part if the snorkeling around Buck Island, where the reef and surrounding area represent the most perfect ecological balance in the world, and the variety and color of underwater life is astounding.
ST. THOMAS: the "front" of the island is mainly for shopping, the "back" for incredible beaches like Megan's Bay and Sapphire Bay. Coral World and snorkeling at Coki Point is fun, and local busses take you anywhere you want to go conveniently and cheaply, so there's no need for expensive touring.
ST. JOHN: mostly forested, perfect beaches, but reservations would have to be made early for staying at guest houses in Cruz Bay or at one of the campgrounds. Great jumping-off point for tours to the British Virgin Islands.
MARTINIQUE: very French, rather expensive, with Taxi Communales that take 8-9 people all over the island, to St. Ann and Diamant Beaches, to Mt. Pelee, to St. Pierre and the jungles of the northern part of the island. In most places you have to know how to speak some French. L'Esnambuc a superlative restaurant, and the local fish markets and fruit markets are very colorful.
SANTO DOMINGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC: the city is about the only thing to see in the country, and the Cathedral and Alcazar and ruins of churches are about the only things to see in the city. Boca Chica highly over-rated beach.
ST. MARTIN: colorful French side, miniature English side, but transportation is expensive between the two. Perfect stepping-off place for many of the smaller islands: Saba, St. Barts, St. Kitts, Anguilla, Nevis.
SABA: a mountain wrapped with a road; no beaches, no reason to stay for more than an afternoon, but with the cliff-hanging roads and tiny villages it's a memorable stay, even if the top of Mt. Scenery is cloud-capped.
ST. BARTS: idyllic French settlement with villas and private beaches around every turn of the concrete road. Good French restaurants, but expensive.
PUERTO RICO: San Juan is over-touristed and expensive; old San Juan is pleasant to walk through and expensive to eat in; Condado Beach is being washed away; Luquillo Beach closes at 5; El Yunque Rain Forest is one of the nicest places they have, but it's nothing really like Hawaii or even Olympic forest. The country villages are far more interesting than San Juan, and publicos furnish cheap transportation, and the hotels are clean and much cheaper.
NASSAU: made for the ship-cruise crowd, with slums right behind the waterfront shops. Shopping seems to be about all there is to do.
FREEPORT: made for the jet-cruise crowd, with no slums and huge areas for expansion. Great stepping-off place for the Out Islands of the Bahamas: Grand Abaco, Bimini, Eleuthera, Cat, and dozens of others easily reached. Perfect beaches for swimming and snorkeling, only $89 from New York City.
ORLANDO: Disney World is a self-contained island that can be absorbed in one day and let alone for the next ten years. Lots of other sights can be absorbed from Orlando, but hotels are expensive and should be reserved.
BERMUDA: no advertisement does it justice: no slums, perfect pink-sand beaches, transparent water for swimming or snorkeling, pleasant museums and English customs and restaurants, glass-bottomed boats and aquariums and ferries and fish dishes prove that you're surrounded by the Atlantic.