I ended up in the coffee shop for 40 minutes, quickly catching up on the news, email, some other stuff. Started to organise people dancing the first weekend I’m back, found out someone else is also trying to get a party going at the same place. Excellent! 🙂

The coffee shop did not reflect the demographics of the local neighbourhood. There was an obvious wealth disparity, but more than that: I saw more Caucasian Caribbean residents coming in and out of that coffee shop than across every island I’ve visited in the last week put together.

The coffee wasn’t bad though, to be fair.

After 9km yesterday I was back on the ship after another 7km today. That had included a walk to the cable car, the ride itself not as pretty as I’d hoped but the view from the top meeting expectations.

Sadly there was nothing at the top, just a couple of tourist shops, an overpriced restaurant and a bar showing tennis. They couldn’t get the cricket, and so didn’t get my business.

At the base a museum cost $16 to enter, so I didn’t. Their shop was free to look around and I did spend money, a combination of tourist tat and item that I needed. It cost $18, so barely more than entering the museum and far more useful.

The chap that sold it to me suggested a sports bar. I headed that way, stuck my head into another bar on the way past. Neither showed the cricket. I’m on the only island in the Caribbean that doesn’t have the cricket on.

So free water, free coffee, free sit down in my cabin on the ship. It’s a cheaper way to travel, but I’d have happily invested a hundred dollars in a day sat watching the cricket and drinking rum.

I head off the ship later, to find internet and cricket scores. First bar has such awful and overly loud music that I walk back out. The second one has no staff, no SSID, so I walk out. The third is full, has a nice menu, friendly staff, two SSIDs with their name in them. I walk in, grab a table, ask if they have wifi. “No,” says the waitress.

So I end up in the tourist office, which offers internet access for free, but no food or drink. Their internet access is also strangely hobbled: It works only on mobile devices. So I can’t update my travelogue, but I can check the cricket score, and I can sit there typing this update offline, much to the confusion of the ladies sat behind the information desk.

Not that the cricket’s going well anyway.

Federal ICE employees have a terrible reputation. On St Thomas they let everybody into the country but check your passport on the way back out. The young one checking mine as I went to board the ship the second time asked if I’d had a good day, so I mentioned the lack of places to watch the cricket.

“Ah, you need to go to [I forget the name he gave] in Downtown, they always have it on.”

We were less than an hour from departure and ‘downtown’ was more than five minutes walk. I may have cursed before adding, “I should’ve found you this morning, it’s a bit late now.”

As you’d expect from an armed Government ICE employee, he smiled and gave me a hug as I passed. Vicious, those guys.

Twenty minutes after casting off we were heading for the sea. Given we’d had to reverse past another cruise ship and turn in that time the captain clearly wasn’t hanging about. I popped onto deck ten minutes after that, a last brief chance to get a phone signal and receive SMS updates on the cricket. (Thank you for those!)

That was, on reflection, a silly thing to do.

On the way back down I surprised an old man trying to use a walker to get into the lift. It had arrived behind him, another man had walked straight in and stood at the back and there was no chance the lift would wait for this old bloke to do an 18 point turn and go into it. So I swerved around and past him, sensed his irritation that I hadn’t waited and instead of entering the lift just stuck out a foot, blocked the lift door from closing until he could reach it.

Four cruises, all of them with numerous lifts, my knees forcing repeated use of them, has given me great insight into cruise ship passenger elevator usage. Only half the passengers will wait for others to get into the lift first, even those that were there waiting when they arrived. Worse are the people – predominantly female – that try and board each elevator as the door opens, whether there’s someone trying to get off or not. They always look surprised if I’m the person trying to leave the elevator; maybe it’s because I don’t let them on first.

Dinner was whatever I could scrounge at 10pm, my body having rejected lunch. I ate it in the lido before heading to bed.