Eventful last days

We've been incredibly busy the last few days. On Tuesday, we hit the botanical garden and the rum distillery. (Z is all set!) On Wednesday, we got a tour of the Hovensa refinery (thanks to a happenstance meeting in the Lost Dog). And today we went hiking, snorkeled in cane bay, drove up to the LEAP project, and stopped by the beer swilling pigs. Tonight we're planning to stop at the Lost Dog one last time.

The Hovensa tour was very interesting. We met a guy at the Lost Dog who is in the mid or upper administration of the refinery who wrangled us a tour. We arrived at 9:30, watched a short informational video, signed length forms which (among other things) stipulated that our only purpose in visiting the refinery was to sell food. We started with a visit to the docks, where the huge tankers come in. Then we got a driving tour of the refinery and got to see all of the different units. It was fascinating. The emphasis of our presentation was the lengths the refinery goes to in terms of safety -- especially environmental safety.

In the afternoon, Buzz and I set out some traps on Mahogany road and Creque Dam road. While we were out, we stopped by an abandoned rum distillery where we'd heard there were bats. Boy, were there bats! There were huge numbers of bats. They didn't like being photographed much and began flying around us. The walls and floors were splattered with guano. It was cool.

Today, we got up early and headed out for Annaly Bay. We were supposed to park by Carambola and hike along a trail to a place with tide pools. We parked and started hiking, but pretty quickly Daniel and I realized that we weren't going to make it. It was already hot, incredibly humid, and there was no breeze. We climbed up a 15% to 20% grade for half an hour and were far behind the others and drenched with sweat. It looked like were were likely have to two or three climbs like that each way on the hike (which was around 2 miles long), so we decided to turn back. We walked back to the car, wrote a note to the others in the dust on the back of their jeep, and drove to a bar and grill in Cane Bay and I got a beer. (Daniel got a virgin strawberry daiquiri). We enjoyed the shade and breeze and aimed to get back around noon. We actually got back around 11:20. At 11:30, they returned. They hadn't ever found the trail. They climbed to the top of "scenic ridge" and were totally exhausted and soaked with sweat. I prevailed on everyone to come back to the bar and grill and we hung out there for an hour and everyone went snorkeling in Cane Bay.

Afterwards, we drove back up the mountain and found scenic ridge again. We drove back down the other day and ended up on Creque Dam road. We drove down to the main road and Buzz was ready to head up Mahogany Road to see the Beer Swilling Pig. We stopped at Project LEAP so Buzz could pay his respects to Fletcher Pense (by urinating on his grave). We ended our day at the Domino Club where you can purchase cans of beer to feed to a Beer Swilling Pig -- they have two: Grunt and Hurricane Rodger. We fed our cans of beer to Hurricane Rodger, who showered everyone with beer when he opened the cans. It was great fun.

Yet tonight, we plan to visit the Lost Dog one last time. Tomorrow, we pack up and head back home.