It Was Supposed to be a 3 Hour Tour!

Okay, so maybe not 3 hours but New Year's on Jost van Dyke was definitely NOT supposed to be an overnight adventure this year. Tim, myself and our friends Rachel, Coco and Josh headed over to Jost via Dolphin Water Taxi's round trip (ha!) boat transfer. Miller & Cruzan sponsored the free drinks on board and Greg was kind enough to give us 4 free spots. I like to think that was in honor of Coco's birthday but whatever! Anyways, we went over early- 1:00 PM- so we could spend the day on White Bay before heading over to Foxy's for their party. They were super organized with wristbands telling you what time you were coming home, drink tickets, etc. He also said if we had any questions he'd be standing by the Jost Van Dyke sign starting at 9:00PM. I was highly impressed- just not used to that kind of thing on STT!

We were on our own private transfer and I think this is where the day started to get interesting! Because we had all of our stuff with us (read coolers, clothes, cameras, phones, etc) we really didn't want to take a taxi from customs by Foxy's to White Bay so our Captain agreed to let us out over in White Bay. Problem was the water was so rough he wasn't able to get us close enough to shore for us to get out and touch to keep our stuff out of the water. What to do, what to do. Oh, I know! Drop us off on the trampoline set up in the middle of the bay! Honestly, whomever said it, it was a great idea except for the fact we were then no better off than we were on the boat. But at least our Captain was hightailing it back to St. Thomas to get the next group over, right? Oh, and did I mention he left us with NO instruction on where to pick up the ferry back at 2:30 AM?

The man that runs the trampoline was quite confused to see 5 people literally throw their crap on his livlihood and jump out of a boat onto it. And we were quite confused as to how to get our stuff to shore. I've never seen a West Indian move so fast as he did to swim out and yell at us to pay our $5 for jumping on the trampoline. We explained we didn't want to jump, we wanted off and could he help us. Somehow, someone convinced him (god knows how much money we actually ended up giving him) to go get his kayak and kayak our stuff in. Obstacle overcome!

We truly enjoyed our day in White Bay. This here is Coco trying to persuade this guy to give her his crown since it was his birthday. He let her pose for a picture but wouldn't let her keep it. I hope he struck out.



There was plenty of drinking and dancing and fun had by all. We ran into plenty of people and joined in a big group photo of everyone on Jost. Wonder what happened to that?

And then we saw this girl:

I'm sorry, are you 19 years old and wearing mom jean shorts over a tank suit??? This girl truly confuses me. She was young, would have looked just fine in a bikini but, the mom jean shorts? Really??

Moving on. Day quickly turned to night and we realized we needed to get our butts over to the other end of the island and have some dinner. Hmmm... no taxis to be seen and we weren't walking (by this point we had shed most of our gear by consuming it). Being the ever creative people we are Tim flags down the first local we see and we shove 5 of us into his Suzuki. I'm not 100% sure if he agreed or we just got in but regardless he took us over to the Foxy's side of the island and we gave him some cash. Turned out he had showed up at Soggy Dollar to pick up his girlfriend who was getting off work. Hope she wasn't mad that we kidnapped him...

We had a great time at Foxy's doing some more dancing and playing with friends. Here are some of our favorite St. Thomas bartenders imported to England for the night. I'm guessing the Jager was flowing behind the bar as well as on the other side from this pic :)

As we were on the 2:30AM ferry we started heading towards the ferry dock at 2:15. Now, I know we were a bit tipsy but there was NO boat there. This is a big yellow and black and white ferry that holds hundreds of people and was supposed to take 75 people back to St. Thomas and we CANNOT find it. We don't even see anyone walking towards the dock! It starts to rain so we go back to the customs dock and try to see if maybe we were misinformed or if we can find anyone. Remember Greg who said he'd be at the sign beginning at 9:00PM? Yeah... guessing he got on the 2:30AM ferry 'cuz he ain't there! It's official, we are stuck on Jost. We hung out on the dock with some friends whose engine stopped working and were stuck as well. Leigh Goldman fed me a hot dog- god bless you Leigh- and we chilled under some plastic tarps in the rain. One of our friends showed up for his last pick up of the night around 4:30AM and said he'd take us back... for $60/head. Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I understand this is your business and you're probably grouchy for being sober and taking drunks back and forth all night but a little sympathy or a deal would have been nice... Eventually all of our dock friends went home and we were left by ourselves. It's close to 5AM at this point. We are defeated. See the defeat in Coco here? Happy birthday lady!!

We decide to sleep in the ferry terminal. Now, if you've never been to Jost on the ferry the terminal is no more than a shack. The below picture shows the corner Tim and I slept in :) The sun woke us up around 8:00AM and we wait, with a large group of other people mind you, for the 9:00AM ferry. We pay our $5 departure fee and sit on the dock until the big boat comes. This time we found it. We try to board the ferry and apparently it's more than $5 and we are missing tickets even though we are on the manifest. It's not just us, it's about 1/2 the group. In the chaos of it all Tim at least is able to sneak on the ferry, the rest of us pay $50. Guess we should have just sucked it up and paid the $60 4 hours earlier huh?



All in all it was a great New Year's Eve and I enjoyed the adventure. However, the next day when Dolphin Water Taxi proudly posted they moved 220 people successfully to and from Jost on New Year's Eve I couldn't help but laugh and think, nope, you moved 215 successfully and clearly the other 70 people that were travelling with us at 2:30AM had no problem finding the big ferry...