The room was ready for us around 5pm, and we ate a take-out dinner from the hotel restaurant. Our conversation paused whenever someone saw a shadow move, but the “infestation” never amounted to more than a couple dozen half-inch insects accumulating near the light fixtures. I took a mental note to capitalize on that attraction and leave a light on in the living room tonight to lure any stragglers out of the bedrooms.
The downstairs bedroom that Aimee and I were in seemed like it was going to be a safe bet. Not a bug seen all evening. But Jill and Dean’s upstairs bedroom seemed a bit more prone to overnight surprises. We spotted about a hundred or so carcasses on the roof panels outside their window, where the insects had apparently set up their hive. There’s no sleeping after that, so Jill and Dean evacuated to one of the backup cabins.
It wasn’t my best night of sleep, but it wasn’t the worst. It would have been completely uneventful had I skipped the “one last beer” that resulted in me getting up to pee sometime around midnight. The debate to get out of bed or fight through it was brief. There was no way I could make it until morning. So the real debate was do I bring a flashlight or not. Not an easy decision, since ignorance would be bliss, and several more hours of sleep. But this was a new room on a dark island, and there wasn’t the faintest sliver of a new moon to guide me. Besides, feeling one of the water bugs crunching under my bare feet would have resulted in at least as much sleep lost. So I briefly tapped the switch on my flashlight to illuminate a path, and turned it off before I could focus on any small objects. The strategy worked. I made it to the toilet and back without any surprises, and was none the wiser if there were any bugs on the ceiling. Then back to sleep before I could convince myself otherwise.
We woke up at the crack of 9:30 am, free of any painful blisters. With the exception of a handful of now-dead bugs clustered around a lampshade in the living room, the house looked just as much of a paradise as it did the night before. We consciously decided on a strategy of willful ignorance regarding whatever chemicals may have been available on a small island that could kill a swarm of water bugs at the last minute, and prepared a simple breakfast.
We spent a lazy morning on the beach, and then checked out the nearby Indian Cave. It’s name is a bit dated, but references the indigenous people that used to live in it.
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| Photo by Jill Knuth |
We didn’t stay long, though, since the current inhabitants were a swarm of ferocious mosquitoes. Whether they were out for revenge on the neocolonialist visitors or just a product of the tropical conditions, we took the hint.
For lunch, we went back to the appropriately-named Seaview Cafe. We had forgotten that the hotel staff told us that a band was going to be playing there for lunch, but quickly remembered when we saw the musicians setting up their gear when we walked up. The music was supposed to start at 11, but we were the only ones in the restaurant at 11:45. So we braced for an awkward meal while the band dragged out their sound check to wait for more of an audience. But we didn’t factor in Island Time. I have a reflexively hard time subscribing to cultural stereotypes about promptness, but it was absolutely 100% accurate that afternoon. By 1:30, the place was packed with what had to be every resident of the island. We couldn’t tell if the band was still sound checking, or if they were just really, really laid back about their set list. Either way, they were killing it. Between the charmingly awkward Canadian expats cutting it up on the dance floor and what appeared to be a group of Providénciales municipal water employees living it up on some sort of team building trip, we soaked up some fantastic people watching for the remainder of the afternoon. The reggae covers were a nice bonus.
We eventually got back into our rental “car” and made our way back down to the ferry dock. There was no one at the car lot, and we couldn’t find an office or key drop anywhere. We figured that we were supposed to just leave the keys in the car and head on out. It would have felt weird anywhere else, but a potential car thief would have made it about 45 minutes before simply running out of road.
We watched the afternoon ferry pull out a few minutes after we arrived, but there were still more people on the dock than could seemingly fit into the last boat of the day. We seemed to be the only ones concerned about that. The twenty-something unarmed police officer in a T-shirt and (no joke) leopard print flats clearly wasn’t. She directed people down the boat ramp in groups of five and kept the still-dancing municipal water employees from missing the ferry (or the ramp altogether).
The floating party lasted about 20 minutes, and we pulled into the Provo dock around dinner time. The drive back to the Lighthouse was about the same length as the ferry ride, and we spent nearly all of it breathlessly thanking Josephine and her magical Mahi Mahi for getting our vacation back on track.
