Lizards and donkeys and goats

Before we started the hike toward Pic Paradis the other day, I asked about snakes. Apparently (if the kindly woman who stood to make 5€ if I took the hike wasn’t kidding me), St. Martin is snake free.

Which doesn’t mean that there are not other dangerous critters wandering loose on what the tourist board would have you believe is a carefree paradise.

Goats: Across the parking lot from our condo balcony lies a body of water called Étang de Chevris (which, unless my French is mistaken, means Dangerous Infestation of Goat Gangs). We see them loitering about the pond, clambering on rocks that line the road, and hiding in the shadows of parked cars. Very intimidating!

Snails: Not the delicious, escargot variety whose native habitat is a shallow bowl of garlic sauce, no, these are the huge ones that sneak up on you very, very slowly and then —whoop! — there they are, just sitting there, laughing their silent snail laughs. Very sly!

Donkeys: There are a pair of them who wander about Mont Vernon. They gambol (that’s right, they gambol! Frolic, too!) in the garden beneath our balcony. They stroll along the winding sidewalks and they lurk behind bushes leading to the pool. I suspect that they are in cahoots with the goats, perhaps planning a takeover of the resort. Very shifty!

Lizards: Here on the main island, we’ve only seen little, scurrying ones scooting about the edges of the tennis courts. But over on Pinel Island (a 15-minute ferry ride away) they grow to King-Kong proportions. Big and fierce enough to eat a goat, they gather near the restaurants where they strong-arm treats from the tourists and strike intimidating poses.

And I don’t want to even get into the size of the butterflies down here.

We are not on vacation

We woke to morning light muted by clouds floating across the tops of the steep hills that rise beyond the parking lot.

Soon the rain came.

We viewed it as time to catch up. I was working on a long list of changes and corrections for my most recent novel. I’m months behind in writing the next novel. We had hundreds of photos to sort. Long-distance business (taxes, car insurance, etc.) needed attention. Deb had a long list of health and nutrition seminars to complete.

The weather also gave my legs a day-off from tennis and hiking the beach.

The next day we chatted with an American couple we had met while playing tennis. They are here for two weeks. They viewed the rainy day differently: it had cut into their vacation. Of course.  All the visitors we talk with here in St. Martin are on vacation. We just happen to live here, as we did for three months in Hilton Head, or for a year in Hudson, Fl. As we will for three months in Portland later this year.

You could say we are on a roving vacation, or you could say we just move around a lot, that we are vagabonds.

Not having a permanent home (with no mortgage or utility bills or real estate taxes or property maintenance) means we can redirect that part of our budget to cover rental and travel costs. That makes it possible to rent a condo in St. Martin for three winter months.

Here is how it is working in St. Martin:

     One month’s rent for a furnished condo on Orient Beach: $1,960 (includes internet and all utilities)

     By comparison: One month’s rent for an unfurnished 1-bedroom apartment in a modest apartment complex in Raleigh (where we lived before we became vagabonds): $1,050. Electric, internet, cable TV, water & sewer, trash and renter’s insurance brought the monthly cost up to about $1,600.

     One-month car rental in St. Martin: 550 Euros (about $600) a month for a Kia Picante.

     By comparison: Our lease on a 2003 Hyundai Sonota is $333 a month plus $80 a month insurance. Last year we spent about $100 a month on gas. Average monthly cost: $513. (We plan to give up the car when the lease ends next year and make that money available for taxis, Uber and public transportation costs.)

     One-way airfare for 2 adults from Raleigh to St. Martin: $390

BOTTOM LINE:

Monthly cost for a furnished studio in St. Martin (for 3 high-season, winter months): $1,960+$600+$130 (a third of the airfare) = $2,690

Monthly cost for 1 bedroom, unfurnished in Raleigh: $1,600+$513 (car lease, insurance & gas) = $2,113.

So, if this were a vacation, it is costing us about $600 a month. 

Chasing the sun

Looking north on Orient Beach toward Mont Vernon

Let me explain it this way:

Hudson, Fl.: 49°     Myrtle Beach, SC: 37°     Orient Bay, St. Martin: 77°

Those are the temperatures as I write this blog entry (8 a.m. on Feb. 6).

We are in St. Martin.

A few years ago Deb and I created a weather chart. Along the left side we listed places family members lived and places we wanted to explore. Across the top we listed the 12 months. Then we filled in the average high for each month for each place.

Our goal was to be near family and be warm.

Our year in Hudson, Florida, met the last criteria (except for a few unseasonably cold days). Myrtle Beach got us closer to part of the family, but we spent the month indoors. Which was nice but there was no tennis play, no warming walks along the beach.

So now we are trying a winter in St. Martin, where we are assured the kind of weather we want. We are living along Orient Beach in a condo where there are tennis courts.

We are able to walk 10 minutes south along the beach to Coco Beach Restaurant (above). Another 10 minutes gets us to Orient Village, where there are more restaurants, a well-stocked convenience store and a wonderful French bakery.

We’ve barely settled in, yet this feels like an extremely comfortable fit.

Some details: We spent January (very off-season) at the Camelot resort in Myrtle Beach. We paid $790 for the month. We had access to the indoor pool, indoor lazy river, indoor Jacuzzi, and fitness center. There was an onsite laundromat ($2 for a load of wash, $1.50 for a spin in the dryer). There were very few restaurants open in town and Broadway at the Beach was deserted (although we did play miniature golf there with our granddaughter).

I’ll get to the details about our 3-month stay in St. Martin in the next posting.

It's how I roll

I almost wiped out a hotdog vendor in St. Petersburg.

Assigned to bring up the rear of our Segway tour, I was closing in on double-digit miles-per-hour as I ripped across Bayshore Drive at Second Avenue (which used to lead out to the inverted pyramid on the Pier). My right wheel caught the curb as I zipped up the ramp from the street to the sidewalk.

Here’s how I remember it: The Segway canted over a dangerous two or three degrees, creating a tidal-wave-disturbance to my equilibrium. Much like Captain Ahab battling Moby Dick, I fought for control of the runaway Segway. Throwing my weight to the side, hands gripping the handlebars, helmet knocked askew from the force of hurricane winds generated by my reckless speed, I brought the beast that was my Segway under control just as I was closing in on a hotdog vendor who was sitting on a lawn chair oblivious of the Segway that was bearing down on him.

Catastrophe averted, I nodded at the man – who was unaware of how close he come to being the bottom half of a Segway sandwich – and leaned forward to catch up with the rest of the tour group.

But two-wheeled danger isn’t the topic today.

Deb and I are getting ready to hit the road.

This year-long stay along the Gulf Coast has been lovely. The view, the nearness of St. Pete and Tampa, the handy tennis courts … all have been wonderful. I got a lot of writing done. We frequented the Dali Museum. And we soaked up the beauty of our lagoon.

But we’re getting itchy to get moving.

We’ve mapped out a much more active year … a month in Myrtle Beach with visits to Raleigh and Pennsylvania … three months in St. Martin … three months in Portland and then back to Raleigh for the holidays.

We’re planning to use the St. Martin trip as fodder for the first of a series of travel guides for wintering overseas. Something like “Snowbirding Abroad … Three months in St. Martin.” Then “Three months in the south of Spain” or “Three months in Malta.” Someplace warm. Any place warm. Maybe Uruguay, who knows?

Any place with Segways.

The Field of Reeds

I just put “The Field of Reeds,” the fourth, and final novel in a series of science fiction stories about the ancient Egyptian architect, scribe and physician Imhotep, on Amazon’s Kindle catalog. The other books are, in order, “Imhotep,” “The Buried Pyramid,” and “The Forest of Myrrh.”

I tried to accurately describe the food, dress, religion and daily life in ancient Egypt, both in the Third Dynasty under King Djoser and, later, in the 18^th dynasty under Pharaohs Hatshepsut and Thutmose III. I watched documentaries on chariot construction, consulted way too many maps, and poured over dozens of websites dealing with ancient Egypt. At times I felt that I was as covered with sand as the characters in the stories.

The books were written, with a few interruptions for other novels — “Kaleidoscope” and “The Earth Is My Witness” — over a 10-year stretch. I lost myself in ancient Egypt while living in Camp Hill, PA, in Cary, NC, in Myrtle Beach and, later, Hilton Head, SC, and for the past two years in Florida.

I did a word count today and found that the four books contain 652,135 words. While that is a lot — the average novel is between 75,000 and 100,000 words — my four novels combined are barely half the length of Marcel Proust’s “Remembrance of Things Past,” which contains 1,267,069 glorious words.

The other side of the country

We flew to the west coast to visit two of our three kids and to check out Portland and Seattle as possible landing spots for a few months next year. The kids are thriving; so are Portland and Seattle.

Here are the logistics. I'll cover each city in future posts (10,000 naked bike riders and enough coffee shops to give you caffeine jitters just taking a walk).

FLIGHTS: We flew SW from Orlando (an excuse for a visit to Barnie's Coffee Kitchen) to Seattle, which cost less than flying into Portland. (Although, curiously, flying from St. Martin to Portland is less expensive than flying to Seattle. Go figure.) We paid $768 (two people, roundtrip) for the Orlando-Seattle-Orlando flights.

And we got to spend a little time in Milwaukee where they sell cheese top hats. Because.

PARKING: Since we were leaving for 17 days, we looked around for cheap parking at the airport and found Jetway Parking was the least expensive. We paid $78.45 for 17 nights. They drove us to the airport (10 minute ride) and picked us up within 15 minutes of our calling them on our return.

BUS vs TRAIN: We took Bolt Bus from Seattle to Portland. Tickets were $34 each for the one-way trip. We left Seattle from right outside Chinatown at 8 and arrived in downtown Portland at 11:15 a.m. Nice, clean ride. Heading back to Seattle from Portland we gave Amtrak a ride. It took much, much longer. We paid $64.75 for two tickets. The ride was supposed to be 3:40 on the Cascades train. It took 6 hours. There were delays for other train traffic and for work on the rails. At one point as we were crawling north, someone on the PA system informed us that we couldn't go any faster because of the heat. So, take the bus ... or walk, either would be faster.

UBER/LYFT: In Seattle we used both and had great experiences with each. I know there are legitimate issues about Uber and Lyft having an unfair economic advantage over licensed cabs, but they are SO convenient and the drivers are SO much friendlier.

CITY TRANSIT: We used the LINK rail system twice in Seattle. It was on time, clean and inexpensive.

COMING SOON

Seattle: Pike Place Market, Beecher's Cheese, Oddfellows, Lake Union's wooden boats, Discovery Park and serious hills. Portland: Voodoo doughnuts, St. Honore Bakery, Petite Provence Restaurant, Mount Tabor, Crescent Beach and the search for tennis courts.  

Sponges, Dali and macarons

We are in Hudson, Florida, now, overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.

We didn’t do much vagabonding last year after we got to Spruce Creek Country Club. It was way too easy to fall into a routine of writing, playing tennis, reading at the pool. We’ve already done a bit of wandering this year and plan a lot more for next year. Hopefully, I’ll bestir myself to keep this blog up-to-date.

So here’s what I’ve learned in the first six weeks along the Gulf Coast, just north of Tampa and St. Petersburg.

The Dali Museum, along Tampa Bay in St. Petersburg, is awesome. We were there a few years ago when the new museum opened. We revisited in January and quickly bought a membership. Right now Picasso is sharing the museum with Dali. Da Vinci will be rolling into town next month.

Tampa Bay BrewingCompany is right down the street from the Church of Scientology in Ybor City. We had a quick post-airport lunch here (with delightful, locally brewed beer). We plan to return to check it out. Ybor City that is.

Tarpon Springs is the sponge capital of the universe. To prove it they erected a statue of a sponger. Billed as a small Greek village on Florida’s Gulf coast, we found it to be very crowded with tourists. We’ll try to go back this summer when things quiet down. 

Lastly, Deb was happy to discover a Le Macaron store in Clearwater. The macarons here are even better than the ones in Winter Park. At least that’s what I’m told.

There is more … wine tasting, Clearwater beach, Hulk Hogan and an off-the-beaten path seafood grill, but my fingers are cramping. Oh yeah, and we’re planning out 2016. So far … a month in Myrtle Beach, three months in St. Martin, two months in Portland, Ore., and then back to Florida.