View overlooking Trunk Bay, St. John USVI
In February 2010 I visited a paradise known as St. John USVI for the first time. Nearly 3/4th of the island is national park land and it is beautiful.  I stayed in an eco cottages (pretty much tents in trees with geckos and frogs as roommates)  and snorkeled every day. I didn’t want to ever leave this paradise.
But as with all trips the end seem to come too soon and it was time to go home. A day before I was supposed to fly out, I started hearing rumors that flights into the USVI had been cancelled and no one was getting into the islands. At first it was like a little joke, “Ah darn…looks like we cannot go home. Stuck in Paradise.” But as the day went on it turned out that the rumors were true: a “Snowpocalypse” hit the most of the Central and Eastern part of the US. It also meant that all of the mainland bound flights were also cancelled…as there were actually no planes currently on the island.
We used the antiquated computers and dial up to confirm  that yes our vacation was going to continue for an extra day or two. Usually the island would have been packed for Valentines and Presidents Day with no rooms available but since no one could enter the islands either we lucked out and could stay in our same rooms. By this point there were many people trying to use the computers so I then had to word a quick email to work saying I was stuck in paradise because of the snow in the East Coast. I smiled a little as I wrote it, expecting my co-workers to be envious of me. But hey, I had plenty of vacation time and it was a slow time of the year, so it shouldn’t be a big issue.
So I enjoyed being stuck in Paradise for another two days, lounging in hammocks reading books, snorkeling, and hanging out with the other stranded people on the island. And then the flights started to resume and our little  paradise was invaded by outsiders who had just arrived. And then it was time again to pack up. But then once again our flight out of the USVI was suddenly cancelled. This time because a nearby volcano had erupted ash into the air which is dangerous for jet engines. So once again I had to wait my turn on the dial up computers and send another quick email to work, to say that this time I was going to be delayed another day due to a volcano erupting. Man did I get so much crap from my co-workers for that email!  They didn’t believe I was stuck in paradise, and wondered if I would ever come home.
And to be honest, I wondered too. :)
Travel Missteps is an every-other week series on how sometimes part of the journey is making mistakes and getting lost.
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