Ah, the memories — rain lashing at our windows, wind howling, four of us huddled in our bedroom nervously riding out the category five hurricane on our honeymoon.
My hubby and I knew very little about hurricanes when we booked our honeymoon in late August in the U.S. Virgin Islands. No one really talked about them at the time, before the advent of satellites, the internet and instantaneous news.
Our travel agent sold us on the island of St. Thomas, and we chose a nice-looking resort on the north side called Point Pleasant. We liked the way it was tucked into the hillside; it had recently won an award for best preservation of the environment, and since the burgeoning field of ecology and environmental science was my major in university, it seemed like the perfect fit.
We arrived on a Monday morning after a series of connecting flights culminating in a hair-raising 30 minutes on a little island hopper airline called Prinair — the door to the cockpit was coffin-shaped, the bolts on the metal housing on the wings were loose and rattling as we flew along (I tried to pretend nothing was wrong, but my hubby could tell something was bothering me).
The resort was perfect — condo-style rooms built into the lush, steep hillside, with 25 feet of sliding glass doors opening onto a wide balcony draped with fronds from a tall palm tree, overlooking the most beautiful blue-green water.
That evening, after dinner, we were chilling out sipping rum punch on one of the terraces when someone mentioned that there was a storm coming in. Okay, we could handle a bit of rain, we thought.
On Tuesday as we explored the small island, the word “hurricane” came up. We asked in town, and found out that there was indeed a hurricane headed in our direction, forecasted to arrive the next day. I remember thinking, you’ve got to be kidding me, then, well, there’s nothing we can do but shelter in place.
Wednesday started out as a gorgeous, sunny day, so we went into town again to do some shopping. Building owners were taping up their windows, and in the harbour small boats were being tied down while the cruise ships fled out to sea. Hmm.
Back at the resort, the owners gave out instructions: the storm was expected to hit around midnight. We were to crack open the sliding glass doors a bit so that the hurricane’s weird air pressure could equalize and avoid blowing them out. Then we were to stay in our bedrooms and close the louvered doors — the bedroom and bathroom were at the back of our unit, almost completely set into the hill. If things got bad, we were to hide in our tub.
We had a nice dinner with another honeymoon couple from Michigan, but the wind began to pick up as darkness fell, and we were worried about them walking all the way down the hill to their unit, which was at the bottom past quite a bit of construction materials where new units were being added. There were no phones in any of the rooms, you see, so we would have no way of knowing if they made it safely.
As our building was the second closest to the main building and restaurant, we convinced them to do spend the night with us. So on the third night of our honeymoon, the other couple and I were in our king sized bed (fully-clothed, of course, in case we lost a wall!), while Mike was on the floor next to the bed, leaning against the nightstand.
Waiting and not knowing what was going to happen was the worst part. We had some drinks and chatted nervously for a while, then tried to doze off a bit. At one point the window air conditioner kicked in suddenly over our heads and startled the crap out of us.
As it turned out, we got lucky. Fifty miles south of us, Hurricane David suddenly turned due west and took out the Dominican Republic. We ended up with only the fringes of the storm, which was bad enough — a couple of other units in our resort did lose their sliding windows, and in the morning we no longer had a palm tree draped over our balcony.
The night had been stormy but not overly dangerous, although for months afterward I would tense up at home whenever the wind picked up. The skies remained grey and the waters continued to churn down on the beach, tossing boats around vigorously. We could see beheaded cacti all up and down the hillside.
There was a lot of debris on the roads, which were all closed, so most of the resort guests ended up in the restaurant and bar at some point. We met two couples from the southern U.S. and had dinner with them.
No one could call into the island, but we were able to call out and reassure our families that we were safe and sound. My dad had been frantic because news reports had said the island had been evacuated. My hubby’s larger family was still post-wedding partying around their pool when we got through to them.
We were playing cards in the glass-walled restaurant into the evening, fairly relaxed, when I noticed the big window next to me bowing in at least 12 inches, then popped back into place. I was just wondering if anyone else had seen that, when all of a sudden the wind picked up and began to howl strangely. We could see small trees flying past the window, the wind shrieked, and the lights went out. As a group, we dove under the table, not sure what the hell was happening.
After a few tense minutes, the staff said we could come back out. Everyone was shaken, and they told us to head for our rooms. The electricity was out throughout the resort, so we were given lanterns to use — and here’s a tip: in utter darkness, don’t hold the lantern in front of you, because it will effectively blind you to anything else. My hubby slipped on the wet wooden stairs and bruised a rib. The six of us headed back to our room, again because we were the closest; my hubby and I joked afterward that to the resort staff we must have looked like one kinky honeymoon couple!
The remainder of the night was quiet. We found out the next day that a tornado had torn through the other side of the hill that our resort was on. Lucky again (all in all)!
When we could get out and about again, we found out how bad our hurricane turned out to be, and how truly fortunate we’d been, ideally positioned in a resort on an island made of one big hill, tucked securely into the hillside on the north while the hurricane raged south of us.
What also saved us at the time was the speed at which the hurricane moved, unlike Dorian, which has hovered over the Bahamas this week to do extensive damage, and hurricane Harvey which dumped so much water onto Texas two years ago. There’s been a great deal of speculation lately regarding how much effect climate change has had on these storms to make them so slow and so much more damaging. Hurricane David resulted in over 2,000 lives lost, I think in large part because there weren’t fast and effective warning systems in place back then; now we have warnings that people often ignore, and storms that lurk in place like monsters.
Mother Nature always wins. Should you ever find yourself in the path of a hurricane, don’t risk your life.
Lion Tail Magic supports IFAW, which is collecting donations to help the animal victims of Hurricane Dorian.
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