Day 3 in St. Croix: Flying with DA20

Date: 10.03.2014

It's been a long time since I updated this blog and how our last days of the holiday went, but I have a pretty good reason for it added to the bad internet connections during our trip. Still I'm sorry it's been taking too long, but better late than never, eh?

Me yesterday after the dives and our cute and beautiful apartment, no I wasn't tired at all or feeling sick.. Timo is bringing my camera bag out of the car because I wanted to spot a humming bird next to our apartment but it didn't come back before I headed to bed...

Today I was still feeling a little ill and hurting all over, but I promised to accompany stnz on his first solo flight at the Caribbean. Yesterday he flew the same plane with a local instructor and got the "all clear" to use his new FAA-license and fly alone. Help.

Fluffy seats waiting for us

Gauges and hairy legs (not mine!)

One of the US Air force-fatties

Stnz did not reserve the plane yesterday because "there's no reservations, it will be free when you come here" -excuse, which I've been hearing a lot and which has been backfiring oh so many times.. :D Of course the plane was taken and the reception didn't understand stnz that he wanted to use the plane, so we sat there over an hour waiting for the thing. I was a little too tired and ill so waiting the extra time without food and drink was pretty annoying.

Finally the girls who were flying the DA20 came down from the sky and we got our plane. Stnz was a bit nervous doing his pre-check, but I assured myself that this trip was fun enough so dying now in a plane accident wouldn't matter so much :D.

Point Udall (Easternmost point) was behind that last mountain

Can you drop me off there, I would want to go a little deeper now?

After takeoff I noticed that the radio traffic was very quiet compared to Finland or Iceland where I've flown earlier with stnz, of course San Juan was ~busyish but there are 2 airports and much bigger planes taking off.

First we flew straight to a rain cloud and stnz decided to circle the island counter clockwise, which made my photographing almost impossible. On few places he did make some circles around, but mostly so that his side was down.

Raining, yet again

Point Udall, somewhere there were my sunglasses. I don't have a Nikon so more ZOOM didn't help finding them.

The easternmost place of the US, where we hiked on the 1st day

DA20 felt pretty OK plane to me, little prone to turbulence, but because of it's size and build that is kinda no-brainer. For photography purposes the flare was way too apparent, and only decent way to take images on that plane is to put your camera's lens outside of the dome's hatch. Something I won't be doing anytime soon with my luck. DA40 seemed to generate less flare, but Cessna is still better (for photography). Unless it's a plane with a door for suici.... parachutist, when you can open the whole side and take pictures that way (and I realllly want to do that someday!).

The dish is directed straight to the mountains, weird. On the right of it was the beach where we snorkeled

There's The Wall

Buck Island, reef national monument, which I was told to be the best place to dive in St. Croix

Place to add to my TODO-list next time

Some cheap beach houses

Our landing was interesting - there was some heavy rain just in front of the runway and we had to circle around it. There was a point when the visibility through the dome was almost nonexistent. But fortunately it cleared up in time before we landed. The tower's warning "the runway is wet" did create slight amusement in the cockpit while looking at the rain front "No shit Sherlock" :D

The Carambola bay & resort where we dived yesterday (Sweet bottom), and yes, those are stnz hairy legs.

Fredriksted's pier and NOAA-ship, our dive site tonight

Yeses, we can see the rain near the runway/airport.

It's raining again (and yet again, not men)

Landing

Safely returned.

After this, it was time to go back to our apartment, move our stuff to a hotel for one night and go diving.

Video of the flight, the gopro was situated like this because sntz was more interested of getting his aviation club some kind of feel of the plane which they're considering buying:

From San Juan to St. Croix

Date: 08.03.2014

It was time to move again. This time we were using a small airline company called Cape Air. I was just barely surviving standing up and walking after last night's migraine, and it almost hit back when we were standing in the line at the package drop/check in. Fortunately I had some painkillers inside my bag, so I managed to kill the oncoming storm before it was too late.

Airport terminal in San Juan

We did know that our aircraft would be small, and it was confirmed at the check-in when they weighted our hand luggage and asked about our weights. It was really interesting, because hell do I know my weight in imperial scale; something from "a lot" to "too freakin' much" :D.

Our "tour guide" talking with our captain

Almost in St. Croix

We were escorted to the aircraft and all our personal luggage was put to the space in front of the aircraft or inside it's wing. I will never get used to the american way that people talk to you and say your name when they are addressing to you, I heard my name during the walk and going inside the plane more times than I hear my name said in a month back in Finland. Yet I can say that it's pretty nice custom, and makes the service / conversation a lot more personal than "yeah you, you there" -yelling and pointing :). And it's also cool that people say my name usually right on the first time, even though some people from the main land first try to make me "Maya" before they start to use the correct pronunciation "Mia". Puerto Ricans seem to get it right on the first time :).

At the St. Croix airport

Stnz managed to fail our car rental and we ended up with more expensive premium level car. Well, the only problem is that it's not a car, it's a Ford. Ford's aren't cars. And this one (Taurus) has some odd level of accessories; it has bluetooth, computer, but no park assistance or turning assistance lights.

Spotting hydroplanes

Our apartment wasn't ready before 15, so we headed to the marina and stumbled upon another airline, which made its flights using hydroplanes. While the guys were photographing the plane, I started talking with a stranger who said he had adoptive parents from Sweden / Denmark and stuff. This was the second person in an hour who just came to me and started talking with me about random stuff about their lives - I think I'm gonna like this place :D.

All the artwork is for sale from a local artist

Finally some real food!

It was time to EAT, and I chose us to go to Angry Nate's seafood restaurant which was close by.  Finally I got a real salad when I ordered one, which wasn't coleslaw or some iceberg lettuce inside a bagel. The smoked salmon was nice, but for a northerner like me the salmon should be more.. fatty and the.. uhmm.. ..smokening could be stronger :).

After we were done, it was time to head to our apartment. Next to it, I found one of the many of the town's ruins, and of course I had to go inside (yes, I still have a huge problem staying away from places which seem interesting enough and worth the risks :D). I found some old machines inside of it, which seemed to have something to do with printing.

Our apartment is looking really nice, and from all the places we've stayed so far, it's the one which reminds me of our building standards the most. It seems to be a solid build, and even the tiles on the kitchen or bathroom walls don't make my eye twitch and make me want to scrape all the plaster out and do the tile work again properly.. It's also cleanest one so far, in a way that you could do the "Scandinavian" way of being indoors and leave your shoes off all the time. I could see myself living in this kind of apartment on here, or in Vieques, or on some other neighboring island :).

This time I won the bed lottery, because the guys thought it was "too gay" to sleep on the queen bed together, so I got the bedroom to myself and they shared the couch in the living room :). I'm not complaining!

From the living room to the kitchen

The beautiful little kitchen

Timo in his bed, stnz's bed on the floor (pic by stnz)

And me in my own private bedroom, doing the exactly same thing in same position as what I'm doing now :) (pic by stnz)

Day 2 in San Juan: The day of Fails and a successful mission in Vieques

Date: 07.03.2014

Welcome to the Failboat, this is your captain speaking.

Today, things didn't really go as they were planned. Or well, I started with the fail theme last night by deleting all my beautiful night photos I took at the beach without uploading them to my computer. Time well spent. But well, things happen, it's a first time for everything and failing usually is a one time thing and I really do learn form my mistakes. To be honest, I was most bummed about the fact I managed to delete images of gecko tracks on the sand. They were adorable, as those little lizards are. I really love them and I want to have those :).

First fail for the day was me retrieving my towel from outside and heading to the shower. I managed to drop my phone from 10cm above the ground and break the display in a way that the touch feature didn't work at all anymore. Awesome! I had to go and buy a new phone after we got back from flying..

No crying over spilled milk, and it was time to head to the Isla Grande Flying School; we had scheduled a flight to Vieques from 9am with a local pilot instructor Jay. For some kind of insurance reasons stnz couldn't be piloting the plane alone, and he needed one of the local instructors to come with us for the trip.

We took of in good weather and arrived to Vieques on time. I ordered a cab to pick us up from the airport to move our asses to Esperanza, where we'd eat some lunch and I'd collect some sand for my little project at home I called the taxi and they promised that there would be one in 20 minutes. "Surprisingly" the taxi wasn't there in 25, and we were in a tight schedule. Luckily for us, when I was calling to hurry up the taxi (it was somewhere in Esperanza and 'running late' again) a minibus drove by. I managed to get it for us and we could go to Esperanza.

The Mosquito Pier seen above from the sky

Yeah, it's dead, Jim

Sand and sea at Esperanza, Vieques

Our hired gun, Jay, taking my usual seat as the map techinician

This was the second time for Jay in Vieques and he seemed to be pretty happy to get paid visiting the island with us :D. In Esperanza we ended up to Belly Button's to eat and drinking something. While we waited for our food, I went to the beach and got my sand sample. The guys were all laughing that it was "the world's most expensive sand ever" because it took a small aircraft and hired second pilot to get it :D

When we had eaten our lunches, we headed back to the airport and left back to San Juan.

Isla de Culebra

It's raining in El Yungue

Another Cessna going right underneath us

Flamenco Beach, ranked one of the most beautiful beaches in the world

We needed to go to the airport Avis to get extension for our car, because for some reason they didn't want to give it to us by the phone. It was a pretty quick trip not counting the minutes we were lost again in San Juan - Oh Boy the streets there are overwhelming at sometimes, with multiple lanes and lack of street names.. After that it was time to go and get me a new cellphone from a Radioshack.

Yes, stnz was here, and yes, stnz draw  his trademark walrus there :D

After we got back to the apartment, stnz and I decided to go swimming. First we both were there without anything expensive, but stnz decided to go back to the apartment and get his mobile phone. I noticed one guy was looking at us all the time under a palm tree, and when we went back to the water to rinse off all the sand, we noticed that stnz's phone was gone. Phoning to his customer and taking pictures with it, was enough to get the thief's attention. Fortunately it was an old Lumia which had some issues, and stnz managed to lock the phone when we got back to the apartment.

If this wasn't fail enough for one day, while I was in the shower I noticed I started to see some lines in my sight.. yes, I had a migraine coming. I ate as much painkillers I could get my hands on to in the apartment and started sleeping while the guys were in the Radioshack. When they got back, it didn't really take them a long time to notice that I was really out of it.

For that reason, the whole evening went while I was sleeping through the pain. After our fails, I'm still amazed we survived the flight and I'm still able to write this blog post :D.