The trip got off to an interesting start with the cab ride to the Memphis airport at 5am. The cabby was a Peurto Rican with a gigantic chip on his shoulder and a talkative streak. He hated Memphis ("the people here are a waste of skin"), he liked Texas ("I got my new face in San Antonio after the war"), and he was ambivalent about Arabs ("My friend is a Saudi, I call him towelhead and he calls me spic").

Once we got out of the cab and on the plane, things went pretty smoothly. I had to lift my shirt and show my belly at the security gate because I forgot to remove my money clip. It was basically, "show everyone the body part you are least proud of for punishment for setting off the alarm." The flights were pretty smooth, although nobody serves real food anymore on airplanes. We got something they called a "hamburger" on the long flight, but it didn't seem to have any beef in it, just a patty of some grey material of some sort. We didn't eat it. We were saving ourselves for our first romantic Caribbean dinner that night.

Things started to get weird after we cleared customs in Tortola. Kathy asked the lady at the information booth about the ferry services. She said the next ferry for The Valley (which we'd never heard of but turns out to be another name for Spanish Town) left at 5:30pm and that we could catch the shuttle and make it to the dock in time. Kathy then asked what the local time was here, and the Lady replied, 5:45. Turns out, the 5:30 ferry left Tortola at 6:15 (that's island time for you) and took about 30 minutes to cross the channel and dock at Virgin Gorda. Everybody else got off the boat and went on their way. Kathy and I sat in the parking lot with our bags until everyone else had gone. The rental car company was supposed to pick us up and take us to the car, but there was no way they could know when and where we were. So we sat there until the sun started to set, and then we started making panicked calls to various people, none of whom were at home.

After about 30 minutes another ferry docked and everyone dispersed again. At this point, it's really starting to get dark and there's nothing that looks like civilization in walking distance from the dock. Finally, a guy walks up and says, "Are you the Duttons?" I could have kissed him, and I think Kathy did. We put our bags in the island taxi, which was really a Ford truck with some seats and a canopy over the bed. The guy's name was Chanell, and he took us down several one-way paths and into what looked like a barn yard with a few Suzuki vehicles in it. Another big guy walked out of the shadows and shooed the chickens away and we thought we were pretty much goners. But it turned out, both guys were very nice and very smart (the big scary guy wanted to talk about GPS devices and the weather patterns in Texas). Chanell gave us the keys to one of the four-wheel drive jeeps, spent ten seconds with an Island map to show us how to get to the villa, and told us if we got lost to stop anywhere and have someone call him and he'd help us find our way. When we tried to pay for the rental car, he said, "Nah mon, put yo money away. We'll take care of that tomorrow."

So now it was pitch dark. There was no moon. As we left the barn yard / rental car place Chanell shouted, "Don't forget to drive on the left!" We took off and almost immediately got completely lost, but eventually found our way out of the town and onto the main road to South Sound, which strangely enough, goes North over the highest peak on the island (Gorda Peak, 1359ft). It wasn't a highway, or even a paved road. More like a 1-1/2 lane cement path with cutbacks every few yards. After turning around several times, Kathy spotted "the clinic" which was the landmark Chanell told us to look for to turn onto the really small dirt road. I switched into 4WD and we drove off into the woods. We could hear the surf, but couldn't see it because it was too dark. Four times, we came across barbed wire gates in the road, which Kathy opened and then closed after the jeep went through. This was the scariest part of the trip so far, since we had no idea whether we were on the right dirt road, but there was nothing else to do, so we kept driving through the woods and opening gates until, miraculously, a giant pink house appeared in the headlights. We were home!

The house was completely dark. No lights. We shined the jeep's headlights on the front door and thought, if only this house key works, we'll be home free. It did, and we were briefly elated, until we tried to switch on the house lights and found there was no electric power. We searched in the dark, unfamiliar house for a phone, but when we found one, it too was dead as a doornail. After a few minutes of groping, we found a flashlight and discovered that the refrigerator, though empty, was working fine. Kathy began searching for candles, although neither of us were very comfortable with the idea of sleeping in a strange, dark house in the middle of nowhere. I went looking for a master switch of some sort. Kathy found the candles (no matches) and after about 15 minutes, I found a circuit breaker box in a closet under the stairs. A few clicks, and presto, the Pink House was ablaze with lights!

So okay, we now had a place to sleep, but we were too hungry to think about anything but eating. As I mentioned, the fridge was empty, and so was the pantry. That hamburger-like thing on the plane now sounded pretty good. Kathy scrounged through her purse and found a small bag of trail mix I had gotten as a gag gift from my brother-in-law (yes Norm, I ate all four ingredients) and some airplane pretzels which she mixed in a bowl. We weren't sure about the water yet, and there was nothing else to drink but some rum we had bought at the duty-free shop in Peurto Rico. So we sat down to our first romantic Caribbean feast of trail mix and rum on the rocks. We ate every crumb and drank several glasses and then crashed in the upstairs bedroom without unpacking.