Arrival in USA

James noticed a really large cultural difference in making the switch to USA Protectorate here in the Caribbean. Suddenly, we are in the home of good service. We had a coffee in a diner in St. Johns and the waitress could not have been more engaging, polite and helpful. She smiled, she brought refills as soon as our cups were empty, she was prompt with the ‘cheque’. It has been a feature further south that many establishments made us feel like the customer was more of an inconvenience than an asset. Many American proprietors have told us how hard it is to run a hospitality business further south. They are forced to recruit locals, but these people come from a history of slavery and white oppression and so really do not do ‘service industry’. So the American needs to employ a load of ex-pats to pick up where the locals leave off and costs double.

The passage to Culebra was quiet. We set off in darkness in light airs, so motored, then sailed, then motored, then sailed again and finally motored. Even in the Virgin Passage, there was barely a ripple on the sea. The trip was punctuated by some bad news from home – a fox had broken in to our neighbour’s chicken coop and had killed and eaten both our children’s pet bantams, Choccy and Lavender. Matthew and Elizabeth seem detached enough now from Conington life that they did not take the news too badly, although I understand the neighbour’s children were very upset as they had grown fond of our mini-chickens.