It's butterfly season in Antigua. Every morning, thousands of pale yellow butterflies start to flitter across the surface of the water, usually from west to east. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, and look closely, you can see them just above the surface of the water. They peter out some during the day, and only once has one landed on the boat to offer us a good look (hanging upside down over the rail to see the one-inch critter resting on the underside of the life sling strap). Randy thinks they're probably cabbage butterflies.

We've had a busy week, really. On Monday, we went into immigration and the Port Authority in English Harbour to renew our cruising permit and get our stay extended. The former was pretty easy, the latter involved two or three officials in crisp uniforms filling out forms, longhand, and several whispered consultations behind the counter. The forms finally filled out, and it takes about a half an hour, we're ready to depart, which is when we find out that we have to take these forms and go to the main office in St. John and present them there. Another consulation, and they direct us to go on Wednesday.

(Phil at the grocery store mentioned that his barber is next door to immigration, and there are some days that he won't go to his barber because of the crowds lined up outside the immigration office.)

Wednesday, we take the bus at about 8:30 am, and get to the office just after 9. Up the long staircase to meet the guard at the door. The door is covered with notices about what's allowed, and what's not allowed: No tank tops, no spaghetti straps, no bare midriffs, no short shorts, no bare feet, no excessively dirty shoes, etc. He looks us over, glances into the main office, then sends us back down the stairs to wait at the bottom. He will call us when a seat is available. We feel cowed already.

When we finally get the call, we go into the main office, attractively decorated with bunting in the national colours, where more notices tell us No Eating, No Drinking, No Chewing Gum, Please Turn Off All Cellular Phones, and BE QUIET. There are maybe 36 chairs in three very tight rows, facing the windows where the immigration officers sit. Over the next three hours, we deduce the secret system of the chairs. Whenever the person at the right end of the front row is called up to a window, that's the cue for everyone in the front one and half rows to stand up, and shift along to fill in the empty row at the front. When you get finished with the immigration officer, you rejoin your fellow sweaty chair dwellers and their patient and silent babies, but you sit in the other half of the middle row, which then moves in the reverse, peeling the last person off the back left of the back row, when another exhausted applicant is called to the cashier's window to pay for whatever service they have received. You quickly get annoyed with newcomers who sit in the wrong place and screw up the system. The guard from the door will sometimes stick his head in and bark at someone to sit somewhere else.

There were several other offices off to the sides of the room complete with their own waiting chairs, but in three hours I didn't manage to figure out what the system was for sorting the wretched people over there.
There are computer monitors covered with dust covers at each station, but no computers in view. All the forms are written out in careful script in longhand. Receipts, which repeat most of the information on the forms, are also done by hand. There are lots and lots of filing cabinets. I noted with some annoyance that all of the immigration officers were chewing gum, and most had cells phones somewhere close by.

The woman in front of me was reading a book called "Seductions Exposed" by Dr. Gary Somebody, and I read quite a bit of it over her shoulder. It was a litany of sorry tales involving adultery and prostitution, and men making the wrong "soul connections" through fornicating with women, which would always lead to a shattered soul that only God could fix. It was pretty steamy stuff for the immigration office. On Randy's right, we listened to a young man trying to chat up an attractive young woman. We think he regretted it. Over the next half hour we heard all about her life in Christ.

We bolted down the stairs just after 12 with our papers in hand, and headed for the closest rum punch, which happened to be by the cruise ship dock. Frying pan, fire situation, but we were blithering at this point.

The rum punches were restorative, and we're ordering a burger when I notice a guy at the bar who looks a whole lot like the guy from the Harbour Lights Club in Grenada. We had a fabulous evening there more than a year ago with a bunch of other cruisers, dancing to the dulcet tones of maybe the only jazz combo in the lower Caribbean. So I dither a bit, then, channelling the Newfoundland spirit of Kim Saunders, I go on over and say hello. Yup, it's him, and he's so glad to see someone "from Grenada" that he buys us a beer and we chat for a while and get caught up. Turns out he's visiting his sons in Antigua, and the Harbour Lights is closed (it's now a government office, more's the pity). Norris was coming to Falmouth on Friday with a friend, and he invited us to meet them at Temo's Bar, which we did, and met several more Antiguans and ex-pats. So I'm glad I spoke up and said hello.

Today, we tidy up the boat - company from Ottawa arrives today (but they're staying ashore at a villa and maybe we'll get to use the washer!!!) and learn to drive our new car. The aged and much reviled (by sb) Suzuki croaked and died, so we finally bit the bullet and bought a new Yamaha 8hp. I think we're calling this my birthday present. And it only took a week to be delivered -- a miracle of efficiency, really, particularly since we were the first customers for the new Yamaha dealer. The fella who runs the water taxi recommended Yamaha, saying "they go putt, putt, putt, they not leave you nowhere." The Suzuki, which we also thought about deep-sixing, we ended up donating to Greg Outboard, who did a great job of fixing it up last time.The rowboat is still my favourite mode of travel, but I'm looking forward to having a much better relationship with this new motor. The rubber dinghy still gets no respect, and it looks even worse with the new motor attached, but hey, one major purchase per millenium.