Around noon, we got back in the jeep and went in search of food. After driving back through the four gates and over the mountain, we found a resort on the other side of the island called Leverick Bay, which had a nice outdoor grill and a grocery store. We were almost at the resort when a lady stopped us on the road and asked for a ride to the top of the hill which we'd just driven over. I said, "Sorry we're going the other way," and Kathy modified that slightly with, "Sure, hop in." So I turned the jeep around on the mountain road (no easy feat) while Kathy and the lady compared hair braids and quickly got to know each other. We drove her all the way to the top of the mountain to what looked to us like a bus stop. Turns out, there are no buses here, it's just a covered bench where people flag down their friends (or strangers) to get rides to a fro.

Turning around again, we drove back down the mountain in a now desperate search for food and medicine. I'm proud to say our first purchase on the island was a bottle of aspirin, which we washed down with Red Stripe beer (I love vacations) and chased with a Mahi Burger from the little ocean-side grill. We were feeling better now. After lunch, we went through the grocery store and bought a small amount of whatever looked good. It was expensive, so we just got enough for one dinner.

Our next adventure was to find the barnyard / rental car place again in order to pay for the rental car. Driving back down the mountain road, we marveled how crazy it was to do that for the first time in the dark, but the views in the daylight were positively breathtaking. From the top of Gorda peak, you can pretty much see the entire island, and our big Pink House is visible from pretty much every hilltop. After a few more turnarounds, we found the one-way lane to the rental place. Some girls sitting in the front yard of a house stopped us and yelled, "Hey, this is a one-way road!" I screeched to a stop and then they said, "It's okay, you're going the right way." Dumb tourists are apparently a spectator sport down here.

We worked with Chanell to get the paperwork done on the jeep, and then he directed us to a great wholesale grocery store that sounded a little like Sam's Wholesale. It wasn't at all like Sam's though. There are very strict rules in the BVI about what's required to call yourself "wholesale". It should have been called the three-of-a-kind store. Everything had to be purchased in threes. Three six-packs of diet coke, three bottles of wine (all the same kind), three pounds of onions, three packages of pork chops, three cans of juice, three jars of mustard, and three pounds of garlic (we skipped that one). At the checkout counter, the manager carefully inspected our cart to verify compliance with the three-of-everything rule, then we loaded up the jeep and headed back to the Pink House with enough groceries to last for a few days, and enough ice cream for a month.

For dinner that night, we had an island variant of shrimp scampi, made with olive oil, capers, fresh lime juice, a little Cruzan rum, and some Caribbean spice for flavor, served with ziti pasta and buttered bread. We skipped both the trail mix and rum that night, and felt much better the next day.