Michael’s college roommate, Greg, and Greg’s wife, Margaret have been on island for a few days. They stayed with us from Wednesday to Saturday and now they’re staying at Carambola.

We haven’t had guests for a long time and that’s been the way I’ve wanted it since our home had become a ghetto with construction debris and Land Rover parts strewn about. Paint was peeling off interior and exterior walls and the yard had become overgrown and neglected.

How could we have let this happen? Well…..laziness and Land Rovers. I got really lazy with Michael always working on Rovers and not helping me around this place. I was also depressed about the way I saw St. Croix going and felt like anything I did would be futile, so why bother.

Anyway, a while back, Michael and Greg reconnected and Greg got some great deals on flights and a room at Carambola. So that gave us incentive to get the place spiffed up and we worked like crazed folk for weeks as summarized in past posts.

The place is really shaping up though. There’s still painting to be done, but much of the big stuff is out of the way! Hooray!

And we’ve been having a blast with Greg and Margaret (pictures soon come). We’ve had tapas and wine at Savant and Galangal and Zebos, dinner at the Pickled Greek, breakfast at the Golden Rail, lunch at Sunset Grill and last night after a fun beach day out west, dinner at Rowdy Joe’s.

They have been extremely good campers – appreciative and very helpful. Not once did they mention that my plants needed watering or that the knicknacks or coffee additives were in the wrong place. They never complained about the dogs barking at night (We were always too tired to hear dogs barking and aren’t sure that they did. I think they might have a couple of times though). Greg heard them howling the other morning, their usual start-the-day-off sing-along and found it funny. And Margaret, who is allergic to cats, has not sneezed once – how cool is that!

It has been a wonderful experience meeting Michael’s old friends. We’ve shared some nice California wines and St. Croix mangoes, hiked down to Isaac’s Bay and swam out to the wreck of the North Wind off Butler Bay in Frederiksted.

Greg and Margaret are truly kindred spirits who enjoy the natural wonders of the island. They are interested in the culture and history of the people who have lived and died here. They’re easy to talk to and just be with. I love that they opened the windows of their rental car while driving through the rainforest and the first thing Margaret did when we got to their hotel room was shut off the A/C and open everything up.

I’m already starting to get teary- eyed about them leaving on Thursday. They’re sailing to Buck Island today with Michael and others on a big boat. I have to work a little later, so I’m here at home blogging. It was too windy for us to go parasailing the other day and the seas were too rough to take Origami out to Buck, but we had relaxing fun anyway.

Gotta go do laundry now…..

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 19th, 2009 at 12:09 pm and is filed under St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.