Kerry checking in from Victoria

Our overnight stay at a casino was here in Oregon on the way up. Went in for dinner, but put no money in the machines!

They also had this great old bathtub for a horse trough, but I would have liked for a bathtub!

We took the ferry over from Anacortes in Washington, and IT WAS VERY COLD!
THiS COLD


This was Friday Harbor, I am sure lovely in the sun...

No wind, which did not make it any warmer.

Big marina in the San Juan Islands

So, I had quite the shock of my life this morning! Before we went across the border to Canada, we remembered that the last time we used our air card from ATT up here we spent thousands of dollars for web usage roaming. Well, no sirree we were not going to let that happen again, so before we came up we phoned and got the upgraded package so we could use the card in Canada and Mexico as well. Another $50.00 a month or so.
Imagine my surprise when they called me this morning and said that in two days our web usage was almost $5000.00!!!! My jaw dropped! It turned out that they had not put the package on when we called the other day, (what a surprise!) so they did not and backdated it so the charges should come off!
Considering I just want through a back and forth with ATT over my IPHONE trying to make them believe that my IPHONE was not making calls from Haiti, St Lucia, Jamaica, Trinidad and the British Virgin Islands all on the same day, it was like a re occuring nightmare!
The best line I heard with that customer service rep was it was "possible" that I picked up those networks from the BVI so they could not do anything about it. Hell, we have a hard enough time picking up our own cel companies down there, never mind the ones in Haiti!
And, the International Roaming Package for your cel phone that give you 50 MB of data a month, just works in 42 countries Internationally! The BVI is not one of them either. BUT at least if you have the International Traveler and the International Roaming package for IPHONE it is only going to cost you 1.9 cents per kilobyte instead of the $5000, it just about cost us for 100 MB of data in Canada!
So beware of that, when you bring your phones down to the islands. There is nothing that tells you that you are getting data from Haiti or Trinidad, in fact, mine said ATT the entire time. So I naturally assumed I was picked up the ATT St Thomas network. Live and learn one more time.
We had gone out to a Mexican Place, and I don't like spicy things, and this chile looked way too dangerous for me!

I urge all my guests, and everyone else who has flights booked next winter on American Airlines down here to DOUBLE CHECK their itienaries. When they did the schedule shake up over the last weekend, a lot of people who thought they were flying direct to San Juan, found out they weren't and many others found out they had overnight flights, getting there and back. Or more.
If this has happened to you, you are going to have to get on the phone and get a better flight plan. Do not leave it. Additionally, if you have charters booked for next winter down here and you do not have flights BOOKED yet, you are going to want to get on it. The availiblity is, going to be in one word, pathetic.
Delta is still flying a fairly reasonable schedule into St Thomas, and there is talk that the Tourist Board will be working together with the Government and the ferry operators to put on at least one evening ferry coming over, so we can get people over to the BVI.
I wonder if they will put more lights on Johnson's Reef at night so the ferry operators have a better chance of avoiding it.
There is also rumor of a high speed ferry coming into play from Puerto Rico. I will let you know as I hear of any of these things happening.
Please contact me if you need help figuring out your schedule and how to work it all together! I am going to get out a personal email to everyone on this, but this is a much faster way of getting it done.

Anyways, this is home for the next while, we just fit in the driveway and the satellite dish is going through the veranda to get the narrow little beam it needs for Directv! All is good and we are just getting comfortable and I am going to catch up on work!