Water bugs, my ass: A night of sleeping on the beach

Ooof, I just looked at this post. It’s really long.  Here’s the thumbnail version:  I stayed in a cabin on the beach. There happened to be cockroaches in the cabin. I did not like it AT ALL, but in the end, I forgive the beach. Oh yes, I forgive the beach.

Here I am, on a Wednesday, as usual, ready to sit down and write about my latest life revelation… kidding. Yes, I have had several, and the only people more tired of that than me is probably you.  So! Instead! I also just remembered that this time about ten days ago, I was on my seventeen billionth drink of the day, right in front of my mother, because I had slept outside on the beach all night in intermittent rain. And got eaten by mosquitoes and, I’m certain, no less than 400 other kinds of sand-dwelling bugs throughout the night.

So let me back up. A couple weeks ago, my mother and I took a trip to the Virgin Islands. It’s no secret around here that I have a slight addiction and it’s sort of my Life List to get everyone I know and love down there with me at some point in my life, both individually and as one huge-ass group. But, in all the times I’ve visited over the years, my mother has never been along for the ride. The furthest into the Caribbean we’ve gone together was the Bahamas, and that happened to be during spring break (I was already past the “spring break! wooo!” age)  and I was pretty sure at that point my mother thought every beach bar was only about getting drunk and seeing who could dance on the bar first.  (Okay, so she isn’t too far off on that one.)

Nonetheless, we finally got to take our trip a couple weeks ago, and as part of my wanting to try to pack multiple experiences into eight days, I asked her if she’d be up for staying in a beach cabin for a night or two. She was.  I went to every length I could to tell her how this “cabin” would be: real beds, refrigerator, electricity, no A/C, screens, slight breeze, steps from the beach, etc.  Very basic, but livable, especially for just a couple days.  She, surprisingly, was up for it.

We arrived on the island at about noon, dropped our things in our beach cabin, and went out to explore (read: immediately find all of my favorite bartenders and friends).  We then came back to the cabin, showered, changed, and went to the barbecue at the beach bar just steps from where our cabin was.  It’s a heck of a set up, right?  There is never a moment wherein I forget just how blessed I am to experience these things.  And while we’re at it, if you’ve never attended a traditional Caribbean beach bar-type barbecue, get that on your Life List as soon as possible. Unless you hate amazing food. And people. And laughter. And music. And pretty much all good things in this world. Do it, immediately.

After we were stuffed full with fish, ribs, chicken, and seven million traditional side dishes, we slowly shuffled our way back to our cabin, still hearing the music of the barbecue along with the soft waves on the beach in the background. It couldn’t have been more perfect sleeping conditions, and with just 3 hours of sleep the night before, I could not wait to sleep. I unlock the cabin door, step inside, flip on the light, walk about two steps to put my bottled water in the fridge, look down at one of the beds, and see the biggest @#$%! cockroach I have ever seen in my life.  Okay, deep breath. Don’t make mom panic.  “Um, what is that?” I ask, hoping I am hallucinating.

I can handle a lot of things, I KNOW bugs and critters come with the territory in the tropics. It’s a fact of life. Geckos, mosquitoes, sand fleas, and yes, even cockroaches happen. That’s how it is.  But, Lord help me, I cannot bear the thought of sleeping among cockroaches. So I breathe deeper.

“It’s definitely a cockroach,” my mom says, and so I freak out a little, try to kill it, of course miss and don’t kill it at all, and now it’s under the bed.  Okay, well it can run away. It will go out. There’s just one.

Except, no.

There’s not just one. I go over to my bag, to pull out my clothes, and there’s more.  THERE’S LIKE FIVE MORE.  And if I were the kind of person that used expletives on her blog, this is where you’d see a lot of EXPLETIVES ON THIS BLOG.  I couldn’t take it, people.  And although she was much more calm than me, my mother couldn’t take it either.  Then, I remembered!  This wasn’t my first time in a beach cabin, and I knew just what to do!  Several years ago I stayed in a beach cabin with friends while on a trip to Hawaii. Hawaii, also the tropics, also no stranger to the cockroach. And, yes, they were in the cabin.  Our solution? Sleep with the lights on. Cockroaches scatter when exposed to light. They do not like it. And in Hawaii, that solution worked.

So then that was going to be our solution here, too. We would just keep the light on.  Okay, fine. So we clean out every last corner of our bags, shake out every piece of clothing, reseal it all, and get ready for bed.  Just as we think we’ll maybe get some sleep tonight, THE [EXPLETIVE] POWER GOES OUT. ON THE WHOLE [EXPLETIVE] ISLAND.

Seriously? Yes, seriously.

By some miracle of intelligence, I had brought flashlights on this little adventure, so I got them out immediately, in the dark, feeling like things were crawling on me the entire time, and there my mom and I sat, staring at each other, sitting on the ends of our beds, flashlights in hand, wondering what we were going to do next.  By this time, the music has ended. People are stumbling to their beds, and on and island of only a few hundred people, and at past 10:00 p.m., we were out of luck.  There was going to be no one to help us figure out what do to. We had to be our own heroes. And so we sat.

I knew, because of past experiences with power outages on this island, that not only was this the usual, but the idea of the power coming back on that night was a pipe dream. Yes, there are some generators, but not here and certainly not on order at 10:00 p.m. for two women who are gagging themselves over the sight of some measly bugs.  And yes, I know some people would have just gotten over it, but I couldn’t, we couldn’t. I knew just how many cockroaches I’d seen, and that thought wasn’t going to leave my mind that night, or ever.

Finally my mom looks at me, stands up, and says “Get your sheet and pillow, we’re going to the beach.” The thought had crossed my mind, sure. My first instinct was to get the heck out of there. But I knew what waited in the sand, too. All those other creatures I’d mentioned, the sand fleas, the MOSQUITOES, they were all out there waiting, too.  But, what choice did we have?  I couldn’t stay up through another night, and I’d sooner die than sleep in pool of cockroaches, and so we sprayed ourselves down in bug spray, wrapped ourselves in our sheets like burritos, and tried to sleep on two chaise lounge chairs just a few feet from the ocean.

It sounds kind of nice, right? Kind of fun, adventurous even, right? And I guess it was. I mean, there were some light intermittent rain storms, and yes, there were bugs, and that beach was desserted as I often find myself wishing every beach were.  The only light were two or three mast lights reflecting in the bay, and the bright, bright moon when a rain cloud wasn’t blocking it. It was nice. But it was also pretty rough, and unplanned, and would have been a lot better had I had a really strong drink before heading out there.

We made it through the night though, and as usual, I ended up with all the mosquito bites and again only about 3 hours of sleep.  A little later in the morning, we walked down the beach, and my favorite beach bartender and friend put his arm around me and said “You look like you had a rough night.” I looked up at him and said “cockroaches” which is how just ten days ago at this time, I was on my seventeen billionth drink of the day, right in front of my mother, because I’d slept outside on the beach all night in intermittent rain.

We moved into a real room, sans bugs, the following night.  I do not blame the island, nor the cabin owners, nor the people that have stayed there cockroach-free in the past. I only blame myself, my wimpy, wimpy self.

The End.  THE [EXPELTIVE] END.