We left Puerto Rico late this morning to take the puddle jumper to Tortola. Some of us were a little nervous about our flight on such a small plane that we decided to stop at the bar before our flight. I ordered a Bloody Mary which I thought was rather strong. Maybe it was just too early. It was 10 AM, 8AM at home. I jokingly said that is when the school will call me at 8 AM a little tipsy. Hey, it’s noon somewhere.

I wasn’t especially nervous about the flight. I figure I can handle just about anything for 30 minutes. I wore pants which ended up being rather ridiculous. I am always cold on planes, but this plane was very hot and loud. We spent the whole flight filling out our customs form and then it was over. There were only about 12 people on the plane, half of them belonging to our group.

We got off the plane and entered one of the smallest airports I’ve ever been in. There were chickens wandering around outside. It was very hot and everything went at a slow pace. We took a shuttle ride from the airport to the marina. We got to our sailing charter a day early and would spend the first evening sleeping aboard at the marina.

We couldn’t check in until later in the afternoon and decided to walk around to find something for lunch then provision at the store. We got a recommendation for a restaurant, but when we got there the sign said closed. We heard people inside and wandered in anyway. They were short staffed so we sat at a table outside and relaxed waiting about 2 hours to eat. We weren’t in a hurry. While we waited, we could hear the band students playing Bob Marley songs nearby. The band room was located in a tent ever since the hurricane.

We walked to the store later. It was strange since the traffic moved in a different direction than it did at home. Cara started to cross the street and had to run back to the curb because a car came around the corner fast. She earned the nickname frogger from the old Atari game where the frog tried to cross traffic without getting squashed. Later that evening, the same thing happened to Cara. This time a man on a motorcycle stopped so she could cross and almost got rear ended by a truck.

Our trip to the store was interesting. It was strange because there were people tailgating in the store parking lot. I found that to be an unusual hang out place. The store had a lot of interesting food like squid and fruits and vegetables we’ve never seen before. There were cases of beer for $50. There were also 6 packs that people mixed with other brands. Coming from WI, it was weird to see beer for sale by the bottle. I also did not see a large selection of coffee creamers. Some of the items did not have prices.

After we bought our provisions, we stuffed them in our backpacks and walked back to our boat at night. We weren’t worried about crime although it was a little scary to cross the road. The next morning we were going to have our bigger items delivered like our cases of water and soda. Then we were going to be on our way.