boats, small sail boats, and a grand total of three smaller-scale yachts. We passed one at a wide berth, and upbeat French music poured out of the speakers while two women in neon bikinis that showed most of their ass cheeks bounced up and down on the top deck while singing.
Several husbands on deck with me received swats from their irritated wives for looking.
I chuckled and straightened from the railing as the ferry set course into the round bay succinctly called Cruz Bay. It was a small port town that was something right out of a fantasy pirate flick.
I doubted I would happen upon any ragtag pirates wearing dark eyeliner and slurring into a bottle of rum, though.
We slowed as we approached the dock, after which the passengers were free to disembark. A ferry staff member was there in a safety vest to guide us down the ramp onto the wooden dock and direct us toward the main part of town. Once there, we could hail taxis or head down to the beach where Sea-Doo’s, kayaks, snorkeling equipment, and body boards were available for rent.
I shouldered one of my bags and dragged the other behind me. The small wheels of my suitcase thumped over every board on the dock until I reached the end and stepped onto old concrete covered in sand. It made its way into my sandals in less than a minute and I carried on down the road, keeping to the shade cast by the lush greenery and palm trees.
It smelled floral and fruity all at once.
Gone were the stench of car fumes and garbage that I was so used to in LA. Gone were the telltale noises of an overpopulated city. Even as I walked along the roadside about half a football field’s distance from where the ocean kissed the beach, I could hear the sound of children splashing in the water. Mothers hollered for them to come back up and reapply sunscreen, fathers threw Frisbees with their sons, and daughters lay on their stomachs, eyes glued to their phone screens, scrolling.
I left the busy part of town behind and stopped to hail a cab without competition from other tourists. It took me less than three minutes to find one that wasn’t a truck loaded down with a twenty-passenger tour wagon—similar to something one might find at a pumpkin patch for hayrides in the fall. The driver, a middle-aged dark-skinned St. Thomas native, got out from behind the wheel of his silver sedan and tossed my bags in the trunk. He wore a loose palm-printed yellow shirt, cut-off jean shorts, and a crooked smile.
He told me his name was Andy as I slid into the passenger seat.
“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Peter.”
Andy had big hands. I wondered how long he’d been driving a taxi for and what he did before this, but I didn’t ask. “Where are you from, Peter?”
“Los Angeles.”
“You have that look about you.”
I cracked the window to let in some air as we pulled off down the road and put the beach in our rearview mirror. “Is that a good thing?”
“Neither good nor bad, just true.”
I smiled. Was this what people meant when they said island life was simple?
I pulled out the address of the place I was staying on the island, which I’d scribbled on the back of a coffee receipt and left in my pocket. Andy nodded when I read it to him, telling me he knew the place. He cranked up the car radio, which was fuzzy and cut out frequently as we drove twenty miles an hour down an ever-narrowing road into dense tropical jungle.
The farther inland we went, the sweeter the air smelled.
Flowers of bright shades of pink, purple, and sunset yellow grew along the sides of the road. I’d never been someone who gave a second thought to fauna or flowers but I couldn’t deny this place had a magical feeling to it, like I’d been transported to another world.
For the first time in my life, I understood why people spoke so highly of tropical vacations and beach destinations. The only traveling I’d ever done had been work related, and in my thirty-two years of living, all I’d seen was my home in LA, New York City, Detroit, and Chicago.
Basically, I was more familiar with concrete and plastic than I was greenery and sand.
“How long you here for?” Andy turned down the volume on the radio and shot me a curious look. “Week? Two weeks?”