Insects and infections. Noisy nights and strange neighbors. Hyper dogs and bored offspring who don’t yet understand “Island Time.”  Not nasty enough? Okay:  Rude dude choking his chicken in the bushes below our balcony; hostile neighbor kid piling dry plywood on my blazing BBQ grill. There are worse stories, but let’s keep this PG-13. 

Somebody asked me if a Sabbatical like this brings constant Paradise–or is the BreakAway road pocked with potholes?  Of course there are plenty.  And while complaining rarely helps, here—by request—is a short, requisite rant about…

11 Predictable Problems in Paradise

• Surfing the interNOT.  We chose our places to stay based on purported internet access.  But so far, all 3 destinations have had disappointing, if not maddening, connectivity.  Makes this project (and communication in general) a major head-banging challenge.
• Feeding the bugs.  At times, my children appear to have chicken pox.  And nights are often punctuated with slaps and curses and rabid scratching. But it’s just the mosquitoes, no-see-ums (sand fleas), and more.  Even free-basing deet doesn’t help. 
• Feeling faraway.  I rarely mind not “being there.”  But helplessness drifts in like stormy seas when a close family member is in surgery, the house is exploding with its second messy plumbing disaster, and imperfections persist that Paradise can’t fix. 
• Going without.  Living with less is part of the Mission—and good for the kids.  But frustration quickly elevates when one is unable to get essentials like a guitar pick or sandals.  2 deliveries of necessities to St. John didn’t make it before we left.  And one can waste hours “in search of” on islands. 
• Ride the rip-offs.  The St. John gas attendant, for example, will fill your Jeep to $23 and not have $2 when you give him $25.  Or the dollar bus driver will take your money twice (she paid the fare; he didn’t see/know it so paid the  man again).  Encounters like this happen on a daily basis.  Make it a game (and carry small bills). Or simply say, “Happy New Year!” and consider yourself the richer.  
• Pre-negotiate most everything.  It took some “hold-ups” by porters, taxis, and vegetable vendors to remind me of this mantra.  First ask, “What’s this cost?”  And when a restaurant hands you a menu without prices, ask for another or just leave. 
• Paying the price.  These islands are expensive, naturally.  But they’ve proven to be manyfold worse than expected—200%+++ markup on everything.  Our travel budget included hefty per diems that have been, to paraphrase President Bush, woefully misunderestimated. 
• Doing island time.  The Slow Movement is cool, but getting blown off is a bummer.  In a recent 12-hour period, a playdate didn’t show.  A fishing guide didn’t show.  And neither did the caretaker/cleaner.  As a part-time adult, I can accept it.  But the kids were genuinely hurt. 
• Managing eating disorders.  I’ve become a grocery sherpa for the kids.  Restaurants serve warm wine and cold meals.  Buffets become an inebriated feeding frenzy.  A simple “club sandwich” arrives as something unrecognizable.  OMG:  I miss my kitchen?
• Being held hostage.  Transit brings risks.  Some movers view customers as sub-human cargo.  At one airport, they took our water at security and then put us in a balmy waiting area for a few hours.  There was no snack shop, no vending machine, and no drinking fountain.  Thirsty?  Tough. 
• Bad (or rude) service.  Disinterest in tourists is a science in some places.  But so can be rudeness (especially on the American islands), where macho machine-gun banter can be the cover charge for getting attention.  When my Jeep broke down in the middle of the road, right by a service station, getting “help” from the attendant (!) went like this.  

ME:  So sorry, but you want help me move dis broke Jeep outa da way?  

HIM:  (long pause)…Don’t want to.  

ME:  Ha!  Okay.  You just take da wheel and I poosh.  

HIM:  You not strong enough to poosh!  

ME:  Yassuh!  Assa good one!  Allright allright:  I just leave Jeep hee-ya; not my sah-vees station; I doan give a sh*#!  

HIM:  No no no—can’t do dat.  (pause, stare)  You tryin’ put me to work!  

ME:  Yah well, I can see you very bizzee in dat dere chair.  

HIM:  And I can see you ain’t go noplace wid dat brokedown Jeep.  

ME:  Okay.  Dat sound real good den.  How ‘bout I just sit right hee-yah wid you all day den.  

HIM:  (stands up abruptly, but we’re both smirking by now)…Put dat ugly ting in neutral me-son; I show you how to poosh a Jeep.  

ME:  And I owe you a cold beer, me-frenn. 

But who ever said travel was easy?  Or settling into a new place with strange food, currency, customs, and characters?  Gosh, if it were easy and cheap and risk-free, people would be doing it all the time.  Money aside, I’m reminded often why a guy can only tap the moxie to do this every seven years or so. 

And while I’m happy to rant, may I also state that—as is true anywhere, people are mostly kind and honest, and will go out of their way to help a stranger.  That’s even more true on islands like these, because it has to be. 

No, Paradise isn’t perfect.  But it can come pretty close—with enough patience, persistence, and (to quote the Rastas), positivity. 

And suddenly, you’re feeling like a local…

One Mission for this Breakaway is to seek out work/life hackers—inspirational role models making up their own rules. Like Sue and Sean, proprietors of the delightful Donkey Diner on St. John. He excelled in molecular biology; she found her fortune in financial services. They walked away to faraway Coral Bay to cook up brand new lives.

Now, some might think of this as trading down to trade up.  After all, for nearly 20 years, they worked their way up corporate food chain…only to wind up bringing home the bacon by flipping pancakes and peddling pizzas.    

But in their eyes, this is THE vision. “I can’t even imagine that stuff used to be my life!” declares Sean.  And they’ve discovered new definitions of success:  “We sold out of pizza last night—had our best night ever,” beams Sue.

Riding the Donkey to the new dream has had some ups and downs.  

• One upside was, after quitting their jobs, taking a one-year travel Sabbatical to search 10 islands and the internet for the right restaurant.  

“We became traveling, professional foodies,” admits Sean.  In the end, they found the Donkey on Craig’s List.

As negotiations began, they learned quickly that “you must be willing to do things differently,” they say in harmony.  Leases? They barely exist.  Lawyers?  Make others suspicious.  Papers?  They only wilt in salt air and blow away in the breeze.  As one player in their process put it, “We are all adults here.” “We had to meet half-way over and over,” reflects Sue.  “There are a lot of cultural nuances to get used to as a business owner,” admits Sean, the other recovering executive.

Other things that take some getting used to: Cooks that “call in sail” (skip work because the wind suggests it’s a perfect sailing day); procurement problems (“We’ve had to ferry over to St. Thomas just to buy spinach”); customers who make asses of themselves (“One dude blew up last night because we were down to our last 2 pizzas.”) Can they handle the many Donkey messes?  Sean only laughs,

“Hey, I’ve done million-dollar negotiations; I can handle a complaint about $2 home fries!”  

Anyway, after only one month as owners, they now know that their big-city work ethic will trump “Island Time” most any time. Plus, “99% of the customers are just happy to be here,” they agree. Says Sue, “Those last two pizzas last night?  They were call-in no-shows, so the ingredients were already on them.  Right after the New Yorker blew up and left in a huff, another customer came in and was ecstatic to buy them—said it was his lucky day.” Sean and Sue feel lucky, too. But besides luck, what drove them to such extreme work/life hacking?  

“It’s about not working for The Man anymore, yet not letting go of the pursuit of quality,” asserts Sean.  “That, and we always dreamed of having a cool Jeep,” smiles Sue.  

That Jeep, by the way, is a typical St. John model, loaded with bumper stickers, dings, and character. For all that, they sold two fancier vehicles, a 3-story penthouse with a rooftop deck and view of Boston harbor, and many now-unnecessary possessions.

Sean takes a puff of a post-Sunday-brunch-rush stogie, rests his bare feet on a picnic table, and laughs, “People back home are still shell-shocked we actually did it!” Together, they reply, “We’re not!”

“Bequia is like St. John was about 40 years ago,” sailors and Caribbeanheads told me.  Upon first impression, I’m thinking they should have said 55.  Or more.  But our ferry pulled up, and we disembarked, aiming to find out. 

“Island time” works well for, well, not working. Not living off deadlines. Not getting anywhere by any particular time or worrying about much. But “island time” fails miserably when trying to catch ferries and make airplane connections. 

The ferry floats away from saintly St. John.

The good news is we made it off St. John and on to St. Thomas.  Then Anguilla.  Then Antigua.  And eventually to our destination, the island of St. Vincent.  And it is breathtakingly beautiful.  Worth the hassle?  Of course (but that’s easy to say now).  The bad news is the day was, as expected, an endurance test, only worse. 

"Island time" and flying skeds don't mix well.

“Island time” was taken to new levels, and I don’t mean 20,000 feet in the air.  I mean:  Refusing to let planes land.  Stranding people in airports.  Canceling flights.  Holding passengers hostage and inventing a form of “island torture.”  They call it a “soft strike.” 

It comes courtesy of the air traffic controllers on the island of Antigua, a hub for Liat island-hopping airlines.  Seems the Controllers want more money, or something, and the government won’t pony up.  So…they create chaos out of flying (which is already chaotic down here) and make everybody really, really mad (in all senses of the word). 

We’d already received angry and defensive e-mails from the airline.  Every cabbie or airport employee was talking about it—or refusing to.  And frankly, there probably hasn’t been this much drama down here (other than hurricanes) since Reagan and Troops invaded Grenada 20 years ago. 

As for me, I got scolded by a flight attendant and frightfully threatened by a security officer (who was about twice my size).  A Gamegirl was stolen from right under my nose.  And I witnessed unprecedented airport panic and paranoia.  And that’s saying something, since air travel has been increasingly unpleasant since 9-11, if not before. 

In the Antigua airport, most chairs were taken.  Most garbage cans were boiling over.  And the food stand was down to hot dogs and warm beer.  At one point, I stared at an (empty!) garbage can for an hour or more, convinced that this was the appropriate mediation focus for the day. 

Stranded. I meditated on this trash can.

A TV preacher barked in a Patois growl while a nearby CD stand played short samples of reggae, Jamaican toasting, and soca at full volume.  At one point, I thought I would scream.  But instead, I must have zoned out, because that’s when the new pink GameGirl (a necessary drug for CurlyGirl on a day like this) was pilfered.  Disappeared like magic.  

We got lucky.  Our plane flew.  We got out of there, and onto St. Vincent only a few long hours late.  Needless to say, we went out for a celebratory dinner and stayed up way too late.  When getting there is not half the fun, getting there feels twice as good. 

• On St. Vincent, “island time” is alive and well.  And suddenly, slowing down to soak it all in is a euphoric experience.

There must be other places as beautiful as St. John, USVI. And if there are, I sure hope to see them before my travels cease. Meanwhile, leaving is not easy. The packing and practicalities stink, naturally—but moreso because here is that rare place that makes it easy to relax, let go, and lose track of time.

Trunk Bay. On just about every "Top 10" beach list.

Where have these 18 days gone? And how could our BreakAway be 1/4 over? Despite a gradual descent into Island Time, hours race by like the swift little bananaquits that flit about crazily every morning.

The days have flown by like 3 little bananaquits.

Maybe the next island on our itinerary won’t be in such a hurry to teach that you can’t slow down time, even while you can slow down yourself. Hope so. But I’m in no rush to find out.

I AM always in a hurry to get long travel days over, though. That’s St. John to St. Vincent. A hellish day of travel that, with any luck, will be a “good” adventure—never mind that Liat Airlines (an island hopper down here) has already sent out emails warning of impending delays, cancellations, and worse.

Some sort of air traffic controller’s strike. Or something. “Plan” on it.

So what does this travel day look like?

• Pile the luggage in the Jeep.
• Drive across St. John to Cruz Bay to board a boat.
• Ride that ferry to port Charlotte Amalie (on St. Thomas).
• Catch a cab to the airport.
• Do security, customs, luggage, and wait, wait, wait.
• Walk on a runway to board a little plane.
• Fly to one island, but stay on the plane. Wait.
• Fly to another island; transfer planes (after a 3+ hour wait).
• If possible, leave the airport to have dinner and see something.
• Arrive on St. Vincent, late.
• Cab to our hotel.
• Find something to eat. Swim in the pool? Move in and C-R-A-S-H.

We’ll be in St. Vincent for 3 short days, before moving on again.

It's hard to leave St. John, where beauty abounds.

Moving on to see “more” seems silly at the moment. Perhaps no island could be better than St. John. But I’ve been here many times, even lived here for a half-year.

But back in Minnesota, in the throes of winter, in fits of courage and excitement and seductive web-travel-planning, we set out to see the Caribbean. Get lost, but NOT in America.

Pack those bags. Fasten your seat belts. Spread those wings. Let’s fly.