Sunday was a very busy day for us here on the island. We got a wakeup call from a neighbor at 5:50 AM to go to church with her. Church starts at 7AM. We raced around getting ready, gulped down a cup of coffee and a danish and out the door with us at 6:30 AM. After church, we walked to the bus stop to catch a bus to town to see the agricultural fest, but the neighbor drove by and stopped and said she'd drive us there. $30 to get in and $1 for a map. The first thing that Gordon wanted was food, as it was now around 9AM and he can't go more than 2 1/2 hrs without food or...well, I'm not sure "or what" because I'm not sure that he has ever gone that long without food. So we found the "Plantation Breakfast" which was there on the grounds. The tent was crowded and we thought "oh, a buffet". This looks promising! The first appetite killer was the price..$25 each! Gordon said that was ok, because, with the cost of food here and "all you can eat" (not sure where he got THAT idea), that it was a fair price. So we plunked down $50 and got a red ticket that, ONE FOOT LATER, they collected in a white plastic bucket and gave us a plate and a plastic fork and knife wrapped in a paper napkin. First dish was scrambled eggs. I was given ONE TABLESPOON of these! OK, I thought, there must be more food ahead and they want to save room on my plate. Next up, FLYING FISH! OMG! What kind of maniacal mind came up with THIS for breakfast???!!! "No, thank you", I said and stepped to the next dish. "Salt Fish?" the kid asked me. "I keep from shrieking! "no fish", I said. But, inside, I was about to shout out, "are you people nuts??!!" Next was bacon. Yes! Bacon! They gave me 3 pieces of half cooked bacon, usually a turn off for me unless it's crisp, but Bacon! Next looked like scrambled eggs with stuff in it. More fish! And they disguised it in eggs!. I passed. Then there were things that looked like mini sweet potato torpedoes. "No fish in this?", I asked. They said no so I took one. Next there was curried chicken and they slapped a drumstick on my plate. Then curried lamb. All I could think about was "Mary had a little lamb", and here it was, swimming in curry. Ok, it wasn't fish, so I had a tablespoon of it. Then there was flour mixed with water and steamed into something almost edible. I got one of those. There was a bisquick biscuit of some sort with currants in it. I got one of those. And then there was HAM! Now, that was good, but I was given only a small piece of this. We got to the soup tureen and were told we couldn't have any for some reason that I could NOT understand, even after the boy said it 3 times, so we moved on to the drinks. "Sweet tea", I said. I might as well have been speaking alien talk because he looked at me very strange and I repeated it. He said "lemonade?", so I said ok. Then we found our seats. When Gordon went back for soup after foraging through the things on our plate, he was told he couldn't have any because he didn't have a ticket! Remember the ticket that they collected right after collecting our 50 bucks? Well, I complained to our table girl and she got us a bowl of "crab soup". We knew that it was crab soup because it was BROWNISH YELLOW and had a crab claw floating in it. OK, maybe the brownish yellow didn't scream crab soup. Gordon had 2 spoons of it and said "it must be an acquired taste". He tried to get coffee to wash it down, but the coffee pot was always empty, so we moved on. We walked around for several hours, our colons trying hard to process the $50 food fest we had just subjected them to. We finally found a bathroom where we found out that this food can be just as bad going as coming. We caught a bus to the bus station and another bus home. We got nice and crispy around the pool for 2 hours and then back to the apartment to lay in the ac where I watched a race for awhile through the miracle of technology on son's tv thousands of miles away. For supper, I stir fried some vegetables and chicken and added local seasoning that we picked up at the supermarket. It tasted like a raisin sauce. I did the dishes and decided to turn off the race and get a shower. It was already dark and I was tired. I got undressed, got both feet over the side of the tub and got the shower water on when everything went black! "Gordon!", I shouted. "Stay where you are", he shouted back. "It's a power failure". "I'll get the flashlight". I heard drawers opening and then he shouted "where's the flashlight?". "Locked in the safe" I shouted back. Probably not the brightest idea I've had here, to lock the flashlight in an electronically locked safe. "It belongs in the drawer!", he shouted back. Well, this was no time for an argument over who has the bigger brain, so I felt my way along the wall to turn off the water and to gingerly step out of the tub. "Follow my voice" he said. Ok, I did that and ended up on the bed to wait out the power failure. It was getting hotter by the minute with no fans or ac and we couldn't open the doors and windows because of,mosquitoes, so I got the brilliant idea of turning on the battery operated laptop and carrying it to the bathroom where I managed to shower by the light from it. Luckily, the screen saver didn't take it to black during the hasty shower. I was drying off when the lights came back on and then I got the flashlight out of the safe for him. I'll bet the power stays on for the rest of our vacation now that we're ready for it.
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