February 29

This was the day the charter was supposed to arrive, but their flight was delayed so they would be a day late. Having finished all our projects (or at least all the ones we felt like working on for the moment) we decided to go on an adventure. We dinghied over to Marigot, and there we were - in a foreign country with no ID, and no shoes wandering about looking for a bus to another town.... We meandered down many streets asking directions with my limited French and finally found the bus to Grand Case. It was late afternoon by the time we got our adventure started, so when we arrived we went for barbecue ribs at the beach side diner where the exchange is $1 = 1 Euro - a price not to be found in many French countries. So for $8 you got a pile of ribs and several sides including fried plantains, corn on the cob, coleslaw, potato salad, rice and beans, etc, etc... All of this was just in preparation for our original goal which was finding the hookah lounge in Grand Case. The Blue Martini had a hookah on a bookshelf in the lobby. So we went inside and asked if they had a hookah bar. The waitress told us they had one that worked - the rest were broken. Sam laughed. "I am from Egypt. Bring me the broken hookahs." So there we sat in a little garden of broken hookahs, with blue and green glass and embroidered tubes all twined around us. Sam was twisting, tweaking, wrapping, twining, blowing through tubes and checking suction. It took Sam about ten minutes to fix all of their hookahs. Needless to say, ours was free. Meanwhile, I was kicked back toking on our own mint hookah - the one that wasn't broken - and enjoying the eve of my birthday immensely. I was digging my toes into the sand under the table and slipping down into a minty tobacco haze of relaxation. The moon watched lazily from above. Yeah for random adventures.