.: aaron vanderzwan :.

Last night we went down the hill from Tamar’s apartment and hung out at a little place called ‘Tropics’. It is rightfully named because they have a three walled bar that opens onto a pool and hot tub/patio. This then drops off to a hill of all tropical flowers and trees. This ‘from a movie’ scene finishes with a view of the never ending, bright blue ocean that glistens and ripples in the sunlight. Remarkable how much beauty an untouched area of the world holds. As we were sitting there, Tamar studying, and me working on my website, a tourist guest started talking to his friend, “This island is nice, but it is missing a few things. I think it needs a couple of Starbucks”. It reminded me of the end of that Desiparacidos song, Manana, in which Conor Oberst is talking with one of his buddies. His friend mentions that it’s time for their town to grow up and get a Starbucks. Conor replies, “No, that is a horrible idea”. For an island that is nicknamed ‘The Unspoiled Queen’ (because of it’s lack of tourist driven ventures and resorts) it seems that most people enjoy it’s solitude and naturalistic ideals. This dumb nut obviously should have been vacationing in Orlando.

Anyways, today I will be alone. Tamar has class from 8am to 5:30pm. This means, with a day to myself, I will have the opportunity to explore the lengths of this unspoiled island. I am going to make myself a little breakfast and then I am going to head out. Tamar owns a small moped that will hopefully get me around. They have ridiculously steep hills here in Saba… and little mopeds trying to get big guys like me up really steep hills, ends every sentence with a question mark. We will see how it goes, but I am excited to explore this island and see everything that it has to offer.

The roads are crazy here, not just steep, but squirrely as a corkscrew and often overlooking deep ravines and cliffs. People drive quickly… so I have to muster my courage, be an ass on the road and drive really slowly… as far from traffic and other dangers as possible. I will be sure to take tons of pictures and post them here as soon as I can. Wish me luck!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 9:06 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.