“I have a challenge for you,” I tell the concierge. “We’d
like to take a snorkel trip to Buck Island but we haven’t been able to find a
boat willing to take the wheelchair.”
“Challenge accepted,” she tells us.
“Challenge accepted,” she tells us.
While she goes off to find that tour, we’re off to find the sunrise. No, we’re not actually getting up at the crack of dawn, we’re just driving to the end of the island.
Watch The Video!
Point Udall is the eastern end of the island. It’s also the eastern-most point of the
United States.
It’s still hard to wrap our heads around that this is still
our country…part of the good ‘ole U.S. of A…but it is. This barren little rock
outcropping is the first soil in our country to feel the sun’s rays.
A monument put up at the millennium alludes to this fact.
I peer over the side to see the extreme end of the point. The rocky outcropping is constantly pounded by waves.
There’s even a little waterspout when the waves hit it just
right.
Now, let’s go find the island’s most famous industry, the
rum.
St. Croix has been making fine Caribbean rum for over 300
years. Cruzan is their brand and is found as the well liquor in just about
every bar on the island. The distillery offers tours but it is full of stair
climbing and is not hospitable to wheechairs.
We’d like to take a tour but this just doesn’t sound like
much fun for Tim. Luckily, there is now another option.
Recently, Captain Morgan rums relocated their distillery
from nearby Puerto Rico to a new plant near the airport. It’s new, this is the
United States…home of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it should be
accessible…right?
We pull into the handicapped spot in front of the new
visitor’s center. Inside, we’re told that the tram used for the tour is not
wheelchair accessible and that there is also one part of the tour where
visitors get off the tram and walk a little bit.
I ask if I can transfer Tim into the tram and if he can stay
on it during the walking part. The answer is yes to both so we sign up for the
tour (no pictures allowed during the factory part).
We roll Tim out to the tram, which looks like the kind
Universal Studios uses for their backlot tours. We’re escorted to the side
where one tour guide notices the seat behind the driver folds up.
“If you can lift both him and the wheelchair, you can put
him there,” she says.
No, I can’t lift both but I can transfer him into the seat
onboard.
Then the other tour guide notices a slot under the floor of
the tram.
“What’s this?” she asks and pulls on a strap there. Low and
behold, a ramp slides out. In operation for a year, no one had noticed there
was a wheelchair ramp built into the side of the tram.
They pull it out, I wheel Tim onboard, and beg to take a
picture.
“But you don’t understand, a lot of wheelchair users follow
our travels and would be thrilled to know your tour is accessible,” I plead.
After a few minutes, I’m finally given permission to take
one, really quick picture. It turns out Tim is the very first wheelchair
visitor they’ve ever had and I am happy to report that the Captain Morgan
distillery tour in St. Croix is now fully wheelchair accessible…even the
walking part halfway through.
After the tour, we watch a very entertaining film about the
brand and learn how to do the “pose” while sipping samples of their dozen or so
rums in the bar.
During this little “happy hour,” we also get to have two
cocktails of our choice mixed with one of their brands, of course. We spend
another hour in the gift shop looking for souvenirs and rum. It is a very
inexpensive place to buy it. Before I left home, I saw Captain Morgan Spiced
Rum for sale at Costco for $34.99. Here? It’s $9…no tax, either (U.S. citizens
can take up to 6 liters of liquor home duty-free, as long as at least one
bottle is made on the island).
We take a dozen bottles home.
Back at the Buccaneer, we change into our swim trunks and
head to the beach. There are three beaches here but most people only go to two.
Mermaid Beach and Grotto Beach. We go to Grotto because they also have a
swimming pool there.
The road is long and the hill steep enough that you don’t
want to walk down to the beach from the great house, especially with a
wheelchair. The hotel runs shuttles up and down the hill all day long but we
opt to drive in the rental car. That way we can set our own schedule and throw
a six pack of beer in the back to supply us on the beach.
Not quite accessible, it takes two steps to get to poolside
here but I’m able to back Tim down them pretty easily. We blow up an inner tube
and Letty and I get him into the pool without a problem. Tim takes a couple of
hours to float around the pool while Letty and I tag team to stay with him
there while the other goes swimming in the adjacent ocean.
I get a diving mask, snorkel, and fins from the beach shack
and head to the coral reef just offshore. It’s a bit murky since there was a
storm a couple of days ago, with lots of little bits of seaweed floating
around. Not really great and not really worth the great effort it would take to
get Tim in the water.
Still, I was able to get a little video of it, which you can
watch in the embedded video, above.
As the day comes to an end at Grotto Beach, we go back up
the hill to make homemade rum punches, sit on the terrace and listen to the
sounds of the house band playing on the beach and wafting up to our room on the
sunset breeze.
Darryl
Darryl
Copyright 2013 – Darryl Musick
All Rights Reserved
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