We swing open the door and it’s clear to me immediately that we have a situation. A quick check of the room confirms we have a situation. I go to the landlords door and knock, pretty loud, but don’t get an answer. I go upstairs to our acquaintances place and knock. I tell her what’s happened but she is not of much help. I was pretty sure the moment I opened the door we were leaving tonight, now I’m certain.

I don’t want this thread to go off the rails or have stuff posted that needs to be deleted so I’m going to put a few things about the incident up here, mostly about things I’ve learned to avoid this type of incident – Stuff Happens
I don’t know how much I want to say about it, but I’ll say what I feel comfortable with and why I won’t say certain things on that thread and go from there.

Sweetie Pie is dying for a shower, it was all she talked about just before we got off the bus. “Grab a shower, Sweetie, I’ll start packing.” I’m pulling stuff together and trying to figure out a plan. Maybe we can walk to Canoe or Mi Yard and try to arrange a room from there. We could easily get a taxi from one of those spots. I have a bunch of crap in our bags by the time Sweetie Pie is out of the shower. “Jump in the shower,” she says, “I’ll keep packing.” As I’m getting in the shower Sweetie Pie says, “Do you think we should call Shauna?” “Wouldn’t hurt,” I say, “Let someone know what’s happened and that we’re on the move.”

I hear muddled conversation in the background as I quickly shower. A brief period of quiet. More muddled conversation. The considerable firepower of Marley9808 has been brought to bear on this situation. When I shut off the shower, which I guarantee was not a long shower, Sweetie Pie comes in and says, “Shauna is sending somebody to pick us up. She’s finding us a place to stay tonight.” Wow, that was a productive shower!

As we finish wrapping up our packing we have a few more phone calls back and forth with Marley. Chicken’s brother Pelle will be coming to pick us up shortly. Shauna can’t get a hold of Tizzy so we’re not going to stay at moon tonight. She did get a hold of Chris at SeaStar and he has a room. He’ll have it ready for us. Done and done. Ain’t no tottling turtles on the West End tonight and we will be eternally grateful. We’re packed and waiting for Pelle, I try the landlords door one more time. No answer.

Pelle and his wife run us up to SeaStar. They are very kind, thoughtful and considerate. He feels good about dropping us at SeaStar. “Very good security here,” he says. We let Marley know we’re there, she says that they’ll come up the lane in a little bit, they’re waiting on Ninja to get back with Edie’s chicken. We are shown to the room and Chris is in there putting on the final touches. Can’t say enough good things about Chris, I’ll just say again, Thank You.

We head down to the bar and get a drink. This all happened pretty quickly. Supersonic by Jamaican standards, nearly lightspeed compared to today’s turtle traffic. We were dropped off at the guest house around 10 and we’re sitting at the bar before 11:30. Shortly into our seconds Narley Minja shows up. I think it was about midnight.

We have a big time decompression session. They get the full scoop. They are excellent sounding boards. We talk about options. We don’t want this to ruin our vacation. It’s a major setback but we’re still here in one of our favorite places with some amazing people for another 5 days. We’re going to make the best of it.

The conversation wanders through the events of the day and beyond. It rolls into the wee hours, especially for Sweetie Pie. We see the far side of 1:30 again. We are pretty open and transparent with each other at a fairly raw moment. How does this keep happening? How does something that is already off the charts seem to, on a regular basis, keep rising to a whole new level? All I know is we’re honored to have people the caliber of Narley Minja getting our back. Honored and humbled. Incredibly humbled. Someone should let Ninja know just how humbled we were. Much more humble than Ninja’s ever been… We say goodnight and head to the room, drifting off to sleep with the greatest possible sense of humility, probably never before experienced by any human being…