Background:  Tropical Dance Vacation

Now in its 7th year, Tropical Dance Vacation, organized by George Marshall of the contra bands Wild Asparagus and Swallowtail, brings together dancers from all over the U.S. for a week on St. Croix.  A Contra Week is held yearly to the wonderful music of Wild Asparagus, and, beginning in 1999 a biannual English Week with Bare Necessities was instituted.

Background:  St. Croix

St. Croix is the largest of the three U.S. Virgin Islands: St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John.  The territories are overseen by a governor and a unicameral (one-house) legislature of 15 senators: seven each from St. Croix and St. Thomas, and one from St. John.  The Virgin Islands have one representative in Congress, but no representation in the Senate or Electoral College.

St. Croix has flown the flags of seven countries:  the U.S., Britain, Spain, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Malta—most major sites still fly all seven flags.  It has two major cities named for Dutch kings: Fredrickstead and Christianstead; each city has a fort: Fort Fredrick in Fredrickstead, Fort Christiansvaern in Christianstead.

The Dutch divided the island into 9 quarters, which were subsequently divided into 150 sugar cane plantations.  Each plantation had its own sugar mill and rum factory.  Sugar cane is no longer raised on the island, but the island does still have a functioning rum factory.

Tuesday, February 6, 200:  Arrival

I actually began my journey on Monday, February 5, with a red-eye out of San Francisco to Philadelphia, and from there on to St. Croix.  Despite the fact that, as I later learned, there had been a blizzard in Philadelphia the night before, I had no trouble getting in or out.  While I was waiting for the flight to St. Croix, I ran into several other people from the Tropical Dance Vacation:  Sam and Sandy, Ruth and Emlen, another Philadelphia couple whose names I don’t remember and whom I’m not sure I ever saw again, and a couple sitting in the same area who none of us knew but who heard us talk about dance and leaned over to introduce themselves.  Turned out they were Jim and Carol, the other couple from Pittsburgh whom Sam knew slightly and whom Sam and I were rooming with!  As a further amusing twist, they were sitting right across the aisle from me on the flight!

The flight went first to St. Thomas and then to St. Croix before returning to Philadelphia.  As we were coming in for a landing on St. Thomas, I looked out my window and suddenly saw this gorgeous blue expanse of water with huge, green covered islands rising out of it in a chain.  Suddenly I knew what “archipelagos” meant.  It was just gorgeous.

We landed safely on St. Croix and checked into the resort with just enough time to get settled, shower, and change before dinner.  The dancers were actually housed in two adjacent resorts:  Colony Cove, and Sugar Beach, which was also where the dining and dancing tents were.  Sam and I stayed in Sugar Beach, in a suite with an ocean view, and in a coin toss Sam and I got the master bedroom with the ocean view and direct access to the balcony.  My favorite thing to do during the week was to lie on the bed and read and gaze out at the marvelous blue ocean and the beach with the coconut palm bearing real coconuts right outside our room.  Breathtaking.

The other cool thing about Sugar Beach was it had one of the ruined sugar mills on site.  The concertina and accordion players had a squeeze-in there Thursday.

Dinners were catered by local restaurants, a different one each night.  The first night was just a general, broadline restaurant, with ahi (dolphin fish—very, very popular on St. Croix), and some other kind of meat, and salad, and bread, and dessert.  Quite tasty, but not spectacular.  Then there was time for a walk along the beach before the first dance, under a huge blue tent spangled with silver stars.  Very, very magical.

Wednesday, February 7:  Orientation

Wednesday morning we had an orientation before the morning dance (general schedule:  morning dance, afternoon free, dinner, evening dance, late night snack).  We learned about the plans for dancing and things to do on the island, and those of us who had never been to St. Croix before got a chance to ask questions of those who had.  Then we had ham and cheese submarine sandwiches with cream cheese made by the staff (yummy!), and a bunch of the local tour vendors came after lunch to give us a chance to sign up to do different things.  Sam and I decided to visit Buck Island National Monument the next day, he decided to go scuba diving Friday while I took an island tour, and Saturday we decided to go to the aquarium.

After the activities fair, Sam and I decided to warm up for Buck Island by snorkeling off Sugar Beach with some of the other dancers.  There was a real coral reef a few hundred yards off shore, which I didn’t swam out to (apparently it’s very close to the surface and loaded with fire coral, which can be nasty, so it’s not that worth it), and several man-made reefs comprised of old automobile tires.  It was really interesting.  I saw some anemones, and some sea cucumber type things, and an interesting array of fish, although nothing spectacular.  Sam saw a snake eel, which he said was cool, but I think I’m just as happy I didn’t see it!

That was my first real experience snorkeling.  It was difficult at first, because I panic at not being able to breathe through my nose, and I did a lot of fighting the water.  Fortunately, one of the guys we were with was really patient and really good and stuck with me as my buddy and made me go out in the deeper water.  Pretty soon I realized that if I just floated, I would be fine, and I didn’t need to spend all my time trying to fight my way to the surface for reassurance, because it was just making matters worse.

Dinner that night was Italian.  It was one of my favorite meals of the week.  They had 3 different kinds of lasagna:  meat, sausage, and vegetarian, and they all had different sauces, so it was really nice.  And salad with Italian dressing, which was great, because the salads most of the rest of the week were only served with 1000 Island, which I don’t like.

After the dance we had the Manager’s Punch Party.  All the resort staff cooked traditional island foods, and we got introduced to the staff.  We had Johnny cakes, which in island legends got their name because wives would make them for their husbands when they went off on a “journey”, and conch fritters (which I actually didn’t eat because I’m not a fish fan, but they looked good), and friend plantains which are a relative of the banania but coarser and more like a vegetable, and sugar cakes which are cakes is the sense that rice cakes are cakes (only not as good for you!) and can be flavored various ways, and baked spiced pork which I found quite tasty, and a really good spicy guacamole, and lots of fresh fruit, and of course, rum punch, which is everywhere on the island and quite tasty.  The punch at the party wasn’t particularly strong, and Cruzan rum is very, very smooth, so it doesn’t hit me very hard and I don’t feel the after effects, which has its good side and its bad side!

Thursday, February 8:  Buck Island

Thursday Sam and I took the afternoon boat tour out to Buck Island National Monument.  This is one of threeNational Monuments which are underwater, the other two being in Hawaii (one is Pearl Harbor; I’m not sure what the other is).  In addition, much of the island of St. John is a National Park, a large portion of which is underwater.

Sam and I went into Christianstead and stopped for lunch at a little café.  While we were there, another couple of people from our group came up to get lunch and started chatting with us.  One of them was carrying a pair of bright pink beach shoes, and I thought “those look just like my beach shoes, only larger”.  It turned out that the shoes had been left on the taxi the two women had taken by another dancer going to Buck Island, and the driver asked the women to deliver the shoes.  They left to leave the shoes for the person at the tour office, and I suddenly turned to Sam and said “Sam, where are my beach shoes?”  Turns out I was the other dancer who had forgotten her shoes on the taxi!  But I did get them safely restored to me, although alas that was not my only adventure with shoes that week.

Then we set off for Buck’s Island.  We arrived at the island by catamaran, enjoying a lovely 40 minute sail with a gorgeous view of the coast of St. Croix and all the different buildings.  There are some magnificent private estates on the far end—just breathtaking.  Plus, we saw some turtles swim by, which was cool.  At least 3 species of turtles live and breed in St. Croix:  Greens, hawksbills, and I believe leatherbacks.  The beach where we landed at Buck Island is called Turtle Beach because turtles nest there several times a year, but not in February.

Since the park is primarily underwater, the main attraction is snorkeling.  At Turtle Beach, we all tried on our equipment and had a brief practice.  Sam and I saw a squid, a starfish, and a great big skate buried in the sand.  Then we sailed around to the other side of the island to do some deep water snorkeling.  First we followed our guide along the underwater trail mapped out by the forest service.  Then, at the end of the trail, we were on our own.  That area of the park is a big coral reef, and at parts it was very difficult to navigate without hitting the coral, which is a strict no-no for two reasons:  it kills the coral, and much of the coral is fire coral, which is difficult to recognize and stings quite badly.  One of the other dancers got stung by some on a scuba trip, but not badly.  Still, we saw quite a few fish:  some blue tang, a lot of really bright turquoise parrot fish with white and black and yellow stripes, some angel type fish, and some grouper type things which were all brown and splotchy and kind of neat.  Unfortunately, the seas were pretty rough, and it was hard for me to make headway sometimes, and I ended up swallowing a big mouthful of water, panicking, and needing to go back to the boat early.  I wish I’d done more snorkeling, but it was still worth it.

Dinner that night was cooked by the crew.  They did a lovely marinated boneless chicken breast and salmon, along with a tasty coconut rice dish.  We all got to take leftovers back to our suites for lunch because the staff didn’t want any food remaining!

Friday, February 9:  Sweeney’s St. Croix Safari Island Tour

Join us now for an island grand tour as we leave the morning dance and board a tram driven by Sweeney, owner of Sweeney’s St. Croix Safari Island Tour.  Our first stop is the St. Georges Village Botantical Garden.  This site is actually listed twice in the National Register of Historic Places, once as a village and once as a plantation, which has now been converted into a botantical gardens.  We start our walking tour by the slave quarters, one of which has now been turned into a greenhouse for orchids, and another into a gift shop.  We then take a stroll through a miniature rainforest and cross over the aquaduct of the planation, which is cool and made me think of the old Roman aquaducts.  Then we walk past the ruins of the rum factory.  Against the remains of an outer wall is a replica of a slave garden, the small plot of land the slaves would be given to plant their own little crops.  Popular choices included bananas and plantains, which were very neat to see growning.  Inside the ruins is a cactus garden, with an impressive variety of cactus and desert plants, including a crown of thorns, which is a very strange, spiky little plant.

Next we proceed to the Cruzan Rum Factory, the only remaining operational rum factory in the Virgin Islands.  All the sugar cane is imported from Barbados, St. Thomas, and so on, and converted into rum here.  Cruzan rum is specially formulated to be very smooth and not cause much of a hangover—I think it’s now my favorite liquor, and it makes yummy rum cakes, not too mention good rum punch.  The factory makes 10 or so types of rum, which are aged 2-15 years, depending on the type.  The older the rum, the smoother and more expensive it is.  We also get free samples at the rum factory, so more rum punch.  Yum.

Next we stop at Whim Plantation, a fully restored plantation, including the only fully restored sugar mill and factory on St. Croix.  Whim Plantation is not its original name, but it was sold and renamed that, well, on a whim.  We tour the Great House, which includes the Great Hall, a long, narrow, room perpendicular to the rest of the house; the parlor; the dining room; and the bedroom.  Everything is arranged with high ceilings and plenty of open architecture to get lots of air, as the island can be quite muggy, and of course there was no air conditioning back in those days.  The kitchen is separate, near the slave quarters, to keep the heat from affecting the Great House.  Today, a woman in period costume sells Johnny cakes smothered in powdered sugar for a dollar.

Whim Plantation has a fabulous gift shop.  Instead of walking across the grounds to the mill and factory, I shop the gift store and pick up most of my souvenirs.  Dad gets mango chutney, which he loves, and mangoes are a very common native fruit.  My aunts get pineapple-ginger jam, two other common plants on the island.  My mom gets a cookbook of native island dishes which includes bits of history and information on the various dishes and ingredients (I spend much of the remainder of the week reading it).  For myself, I get a Christmas ornament in the shape of a miniature sugar mill, as I collect ornaments, particularly from different places.  I have a formula for buying souvenirs:  they must be distinctive to the place I’m visiting; they must be something I’ve seen; and they have to be geared to the tourists (I will buy nicer items—I bought myself a wonderful dress, and a pair of fairly nice earrings for Sam’s mom Joyce—but typically I do want something that screams “tourist” because that’s what I am and that’s what I’m representing to the people I give the gifts to).  I don’t go for the really tacky stuff, but $10-20 kitsch is just my speed.

Next we proceed to the Turtle Deli for lunch.  We have sandwiches at outdoor tables and admire the murals of turtles on all the walls and even the ceiling.  Here, I go to the bathroom at the last minute and am almost left behind—I catch the tram just as it’s pulling out!

Next we stop at the main dock and square in Fredrickstead.  A cruise ship is in, so a market is set up in the square for those interested in souvenir shopping.  Cruise ships stop about 6 days a week, mainly from Carnival and its related lines (one of the Carnival brand ships, stops there, and the Sea Goddess I and II from Carnival's Seaborne brand—the Sea Goddess II I think stopped twice while we were there—it was probably on a 3 or 4 day run) and the Celebrity Galaxy.

We are on our own in Fredrickstead for about 20 minutes.  First I browse Fort Fredrick in the square, free and open to the public.  It’s a very attractive fort, open design and painted red.  There’s a wagon in the courtyard, and several cannon with a spectacular view overlooking the sea and the cruise ship.  There’s also a room with a hurricane exhibit, talking about what hurricanes are, when hurricane season is, and some of the more notorious hurricanes that have hit the island.  Hurricane Andrew was probably the most devastating, at least in recent times—it destroyed much of the rain forest and other vegetation, and the island is still recovering.

Next, I visit the booths in the square.  I find a very nice T-shirt at one booth which I buy.  It has two swimming turtles on the back, and a smaller version on the front pocket with St. Croix underneath.  At another booth I find a T-shirt with a Bulldog in dreadlocks and the caption “Dread Dog” as opposed to “Red Dog” (the beer).  Unfortunately they only have one in size large, which I buy for my mother; otherwise they could have sold me at least 2 more.

Next we take a scenic drive through the rainforest and the rest of the island.  We pause briefly overlooking Columbus Landing, where Columbus stopped at the mouth of a bay he believed would lead to a fresh water river on his second voyage to the new world.  Instead, he found Salt River.  Here, the Spaniards had their first engagement with the natives, ending with one Spaniard and one native dead.

We also drive by Cane Bay, a popular dive and snorkel site with a pretty beach and some good restaurants.  We see my roommates from the tram and wave.  We also drive by the famous golf course on the island, and then back to Sugar Beach.

Dinner that night was Johnny Mango’s BBQ, another of my favorite meals.  There was a very nice turkey, not heavily sauced or seasoned, served with a hot sauce or mango chutney, both very tasty.  There’s also wonderful red beans and rice, and for dessert a perfectly fabulous rum cake and chocolate rum cake.  Man, I like that Cruzan rum.

Friday the evening dance is in the afternoon, which I miss because of my tour, and the crew is given the evening off.  Instead of dancing, we are all given the opportunity to go into Christianstead for the annual Valentine’s Jump-Up.  This is essentially a street fair where the stores stay open late and there’s entertainment and some food.  The term originates from Carnival, when the music was so good people would “jump-up” and start dancing.  The main attraction is the Moko-Jumbie, or stilt, Dancers, who walk down the street in loose colorful clothes and big floppy straw hats on stilts so tall they can reach up and slap hands with diners at restaurants on the second floor .  There was also a nice school jazz-type band they we danced to for a bit, a 3 piece steel drum band, and a huge steel drum band of school kids.  They had 6 doubles, 6 singles, and at least 4 big 50 gallon drums.  Awesome.

Saturday, February 10:  Christianstead

Saturday I went into Christainstead to do some shopping, explore the fort, and go to the aquarium.  My first stop was shopping.  That morning, I’d noticed Sol’s (one of the other dancers) T-shirt (he has the most amazing collection of t-shirts.  I don’t think he’d been in town more than an hour before he started buying, ‘cause he had a St. Croix T-shirt of “hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil” frogs Tuesday night).  This shirt had a kitten snorkeling (did I mention he’s a cat person, too?  Some of his cat shirts are wonderful—like the cat with yellow eyes watching the fishbowl with two yellow fish).  The snorkeling kitten was so wonderful, I just had to get one for myself!  The shop I went to (unfortunately I forgot it’s name, but it’s on the Christianstead boardwalk area and it offers custom t-shirts) had a lot of wonderful designs that were hard to resist, including a view of Christianstead Harbor with the restored sugar mill on the dock.  The woman who runs the place where Sam & I had lunch Thursday is an artist, and several of her designs were offered there as T-shirts.

Next I explored the fort. Fort Christiansvaern (or Christian’s Defense) was completed in 1749 and added to in 1835-41.  Its original purpose was to protect the town from pirates, privateers, and, most especially, slave uprisings.  After 1878 it was used as a police station and courthouse.  It is part of Christianstead National Historic Site and is maintained by the park service.  There’s a $2 entry fee, but it’s not enforced as the fort itself is open and the park office is in the Scale House across a small park and the street from the fort (I did pay my fee, albeit after seeing the fort).  The Scale House was used to inspect imports and exports and weigh sugar prior to export.  The Customs House is part of the same complex as the fort and Scale House.  This is, as you would expect, where the government collected duties on imports and exports.  There’s a nice exhibit telling all about it.

After exploring the fort and the surrounding area, I met Sam at the St. Croix Aquarium for a tour.  The St. Croix Aquarium is one room and a gift shop (really just a partition off the same room).  They have one permanent exhibit, a green turtle called Dunkin’ who was trapped in his nest and is unreleasable because he’s never been in the wild and thus doesn’t have the necessary skills.  He’s very cute and friendly.  He’s been trained to think that he gets fed every time someone comes up to his tank, so he greets all newcomers eagerly.

All other exhibits are caught and then released and replaced.  My favorite exhibit was the Queen Angel.  Queen Angels, fully grown, are about a foot long.  This one was about an inch and a pretty purple with yellow highlights.  It made Sam and I both go “Ahhh”.  Other than that, we got to see all kinds of things you will see while snorkeling or diving around the island, including puffers, scorpion fish, and all kinds of coral as well as urchins, anemones, and stars.  They even have a touch pool where you can handle a brittle star or regular star (I got to hold them in the palm of my hand and could feel their little cilia propelling them), and a live and dead sea urchin, and all kinds of things.  All in all a perfectly fascinating place.

Dinner that night was West Indian fare, which was perfectly fine but doesn’t stand out in my mind.  They had ginger beer as one of the beverages, which I discovered I don’t like—too strong and sweet.  Sam of Sam and Sandy suggested watering down, but I switched to the passionfruit punch instead, which was quite tasty.  I did, however, discover when they served it Thursday night that ginger lemonade is quite good.  Less gingery and not as sweet, I think.

After the dance that night, Sol and I organized a sing-along, which was a lot of fun.  We sang “Those were the days”, and “MTA” and “Sloop John B” and a beautiful spirtual that Edmund, the piano player's wife, knew.  He’s a Unitarian minister and a lawyer.  We also sang a round about Winnie the Pooh and Prell shampoo to the tune of Freres Jacques.  Lots and lots of fun.  I think if Sol had his way, everyone would burst into song at the drop of a hat.

Saturday night the weather turned extremely windy due to storms in the main 48 states.  My suitemate, Carol, woke up in the middle of the night because the wind was blowing so badly, and went to the window and looked out.  The tent was flapping wildly in the wind, and suddenly she heard a loud rip and crash.  So she woke her husband, Jim, and asked him to check it out.  Jim called security and security woke George, and sure enough, the tent had completely ripped and smashed many of the lights that were decorating it!  George said later the gusts that night were up to 50 mph, which was what the tent was rated for, and it must have been a firm rating!

Sunday, February 11:  Lazin’ Around

The big question hanging over all of us Sunday was where to dance that night (obviously, canceling the dance was not an option).  We held the morning dance on the uncovered floor where the tent had been, and the eventual decision was to go ahead and dance there.  Unfortunately, the weather didn’t cooperate, and it was raining intermittently, which made the floor very tricky to dance on.  So, the dance was moved to the pool and patio area, giving a new meaning to the term “patio dancing”.  I’m told it posed some interesting problems, although I didn’t actually go—the winds were still high, which was making me jittery (the poles nominally holding the dining tent in place were hopping all around—fortunately the tent was actually anchored to the tennis court fence), and I don’t do well with uncertainty and sudden changes.

The one thing I’m sorry I missed about Sunday night is the native dancers.  There’s a quadrille native to St. Croix which descends from the square formation in certain English dances and is related to American Square Dancing.  Earlier in the week, one of the people living near the resort came and watched the dancing and mentioned that her daughter was involved in this native dancing and would we like a demonstration?  Gene (the caller) and George naturally said yes, and the natives came, and danced, and apparently played some native music for our dancers to do English dances to, and a valuable native contact was formed.

Monday, February 12:  Little Princess Nature Conservancy

Monday was our last full day on St. Croix.  Monday also again brought concerns about where we would dance.  Obviously, the weather was not reliable enough to let us use our floor, and the patio was not a good alternative.  That afternoon, a group of people went down the road to the Little Princess Nature Conservancy, a former plantation being restored as a museum, community center, and nature conservancy.  One of the buildings under restoration is the former Great Hall of the plantation.  The people who visited mentioned this to George, who immediately drove over, looked it over, and excitedly made arrangements to use it.  The people who run the conservancy were delighted, especially since George made a donation to their efforts, but I think they would have gladly let us use it in any case.  Their eventual plan is to have the Great Hall used as a community gathering place, so they were glad to see it getting its first use in that respect, and I think it was another good community relationship George can draw on in the future.

The hall was very narrow and we had to squeeze in, but it had a nice porch to relax on between dances, and the crew had strung Christmas lights along the porch, and it looked really nice.  It was also exciting to be dancing in the type of environment where these dances would have originally been danced.

At break, Edmund recited a poem he had written, entitled “Lament to the Blue Tent”, which was both very good and very amusing.  It was followed by a tribute by Sol written on the whiteboard for dance announcements the next morning, to the tune of Freres Jacques:

Have you seen it?  Have you seen it?
Big Blue Tent.  Big Blue Tent.
One exciting story,
It was in its glory.
Down it went.  Down it went.

Unfortunately, after that, it was back to the real world.

Reflection

This was my first dance intensive vacation, and it was a lot of dancing, which isn’t necessarily what I want, although the music was spectacular and just listening was worth it, and of course the location was divine.  I don’t think I’ll go back to the Tropical Dance Vacation for a while, but that’s because it tends to be at the same place with the same bands, and while Bare Necessities is worth it, I’d like to travel to some different places (I can really only fit in one major vacation a year).  If George started a similar thing someplace else or moved the Tropical Dance Vacation elsewhere, I’d seriously consider it, and I know there are other dance trips out there, and I might do one of those if I find one and find someone to room with.

I liked St. Croix.  I would have liked to be able to get to Cane Bay or Fredrickstead more, and I think a week was almost too long, even though I never saw Little Princess in daylight or did several things I wouldn’t have minded.  If I were on a cruise that stopped there, that’d be good.  And Cruzan rum rules.  I bought a bottle and made a yummy run cake.  Now all I need is Pina Colada mix or a good rum punch recipe, or both.
 
 

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