No More Drinks Please
- Inversed Poet
- May 24
- 5 min read
I have drank enough to drown a fish, sink a small canoe, and seen enough to last a lifetime
The Villa Style home perched and hidden amongst the clouds is coupled with a well-deserved view of the vast deep blue Caribbean Sea and Megan's Bay after the panic-stricken journey it took to drive up the left-hand side of a steep curvaceous mountainside.
This task was made nearly impossible as natives of the area sped down the mountain in a Tokyo drift style.
The Languages here are a blend of African, Danish, Spanish, English, Portuguese, and more. With nationalities ranging from Puerto Rican, Portuguese, Scottish, English, French, and African Origin.
With the diversity in ethnicities, cultures, languages, social norms, and communication barriers there is barely time and patience to tolerate the ignorance of tourist.
I followed the tradition of drinking like Tourist are expected to do.
The heat mixed with a cold drink is very fitting for the occasion of a getaway in paradise.
I am blessed. I am forever grateful to lay my eyes and feet on an island.
I am humbled by the two-thousand-mile, seven-hour journey away from the nine counties of the Miami Valley and my voyage has sailed behind my eyelids ever since.
I have drank enough to drown a fish, sink a small canoe, and seen enough to last a lifetime.
Those precious days, moments, minutes, hours, that entire week…
The words will never really find me as I am still trying to wrap my mind around it.
The water felt different. I have been to Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Texas Beaches but none of them felt like the Caribbean. The sea seemed to call to me. Draw me in. Whisper to me. I couldn’t look away.
As curious swimmers we often rush to the deep end. I slowly took my time as its not long before there is nothing but miles of moss-covered sand below you and eventually complete blue of all shades, surrounding you with no sight of land. I swam as far as thought I could evade a shark. Hilarious, as there Is no such distance. So, I kept checking under water to see anything coming towards me, on all sides. At one point, I remembered that marine life can smell fear. It was not hard to drop all notions of fear once I really took a look at where I was.
I was in the middle of the ocean, with my head below the surface, listening to the silence of a calm ocean. looking wide-eyed with amazement at white sand and grassy patches that stretched for miles in either direction. The sun was at its highest point of the day, beaming into the clear water, allowing me to see that the sand below me could only be reached by how far my eyesight would allow without full scuba diving gear. I felt as if I was in a different planet. I felt as if I had was being blessed with a chance to be where humans were not supposed to be.
Once stateside, I didn’t touch another drink until January 19th, 2024. The drink was a sip form an Apple Cider Whiskey, the latest purchase of a dear friend and business partner, El Concinero.
The Whiskey looked like apple cider, with a taste of sweet cinnamon an apple overtone.
“It’ll put hair on your chest and keep ya’ warm”
He states with a southern draw. I shook my head with agreement as I take the smallest of sips possible from this alcoholic apple juice.
The cider portions are a slow warmth that ever-so-slightly grows in your chest.
“Have you ever thought about purchasing a care package of White Hennessy from the Virgin Islands?”-I asked
“No, Need. I have a bottle from Panama.”
We sip our Whiskey in unison and smile at this. My dear friend has heritage and family in Panama. He visits every other year or so. We must make the journey together seeing how I was one thousand-three hundred miles across the Caribbean Sea from his ancestral home.
When traveling it is important to brush up on knowledge regarding the area in which you are putting yourself in, for example about seventy-five percent of the population are Black people who are decedents from enslaved Africans and;
"People of European, Asian, and Latin descent make up the rest of the population."
However, some information will present itself on its own, in real time, weather you are emotionally prepared or not. On our first day of, we found ourselves lost in what looked like slums and shanty towns. Trying to drive to the stores and main roads, we found ourselves amongst locals who were not happy of our presence.
Luckily, we did not have any unfortunate encounters.
unbeknownst to me, thirty-four percent of families in Saint Thomas live in poverty. After getting lost in the local neighborhood, we eventually found our way to several shopping centers and dining locations.
"The Caribbean Sea"
The same sea that Pirates and the Caribbean was actually filmed in, I was exactly eighteen to nineteen hours away from ST. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, and other smaller islands where the Pirates of the Caribbean series was filmed.
The Virgin Islands are made of three large islands, Saint Croix, Saint Thomas, and Saint John. With an additional fifty small islets and cays.
“Christopher Columbus arrived on the island that’s now called St. Croix in 1493, and he named the cluster of islands the Virgin Islands in honor of a Roman Catholic saint. For more than 60 years, the Carib people fought off the explorers. But in 1555, the Spanish king sent forces to kill the natives and claim the territory. Over the next hundred years, European settlers arrived, forcing enslaved people from Africa to come, too. In that time the countries of Spain, France, Britain, Denmark, and the Netherlands fought over ownership so they could grow sugar, cotton, indigo, and other crops. In 1754, Denmark took control of the islands and renamed them the Danish West Indian Islands.
At this time, the islands served as a hub for the slave trade across the Americas. But in 1848, enslaved laborer John Gottlieb, known as General Buddhoe, lead a historic revolt on St. Croix. The uprising forced the governor to abolish slavery throughout the islands on July 3, 1848.”-Nationalgiographic.com
When visiting Saint John, I was five to six miles away from Little Saint James, better know as, Epstein Island.
I was unaware of the closeness.
The blood left my face when our travel guide, William, pointed it out. Ironically, tragedies, misdeeds, pain, and degradation is a reoccurring theme for all the islands in the Caribbean.
Beautiful. Jaw dropping. Ethereal as the sharp white sand and clear blue waters are, The Virgin Islands has a long bloody history. One that cannot be ignored and one any traveler must pay respect to if you are to step on its land.
Thank you for reading.
Keep Open Ears, Eyes & Mind 'Till Next Time
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