Great descriptive report. I remember Thursday, March 22, very well. We had arrived in Provo from Salt Cay where we had 3 days of wind and rain. There was much less wind and rain on Provo that day.

Friday was a better day and am looking forward to your Friday report.

Ed

i love love love these kinds of trip reports...the longer the better...

it sounds like the villa you had was great...what was the name of it?

maybe i gotta re-read to find it...

i can't wait to read the good about your trip...hubby and i were talking about how much it must have been such a bummer for so many people visiting during this past month...it's nice to know there are happy stories even if they are wet...

I always can't wait for the next chapter.

DAY ONE part 2

Originally I had planned to make the IGA trip with my two teenage daughters, but the sorry state of the SUV we have to drive, coupled with the fact that we have NO drinkable water with us, not a drop, means we decide to all 5 hop back in and go grocery shopping. It could take me a couple of hours to find 10 days worth of groceries and I don't want to leave hubby and my son behind without anything to drink.

The villa has no drinkable water, it collects rain by a system of PVC tubing from the gutters. Good for washing clothes, dishes, showers - not good for drinking, cooking or even rinsing your toothbrush.

The grocery shopping on arrival thing is something I've refined after several similar vacations. No matter how late we get in, we have already earmarked the local supermarket and we always head there first, pick up groceries and then we know the next day we will wake up with everything we need on hand.

Decompression in the early part of a vacation is so important - and it usually takes us a couple of days to accomplish. If you have your morning coffee/tea, eggs, some deli meat for sandwiches, bagels, soda, etc. you can be as lazy as you want while the stresses from home ease and fade away with sunshine and warm sand........

We are planning to eat all breakfasts and lunches at our villa, unless we end up out at another beach over lunch a day or two, and I tentatively plan on half the dinners here, half out at restaurants. So I have made two separate grocery lists - one for my teenage daughters with things I know they are capable of choosing correctly, such as bottled water, sodas, dairy items, paper goods, and the like. The 2nd list is for me with the more picky things that I will want to choose myself.

We rustle up two carts and into the IGA we go. I can tell at first glance that this grocery store will suit all our needs, and we go at it with enthusiasm (perhaps a little too much as we see when we get our final bill...).

Folks if you are coming to Provo for the first time, you need not worry, you can eat well here, the IGA has just about everything. Except today, no canadian bacon anywhere (my family loves me making Eggs Benedict for breakfast), and not a single tortilla chip to be found. Well, we'll substitute ham for the canadian bacon. But there is no substitute for tortilla chips if you want to make chips & cheese, an EZ staple at my household. Well, I figure we'll be back another time or two so we'll hopefully get chips then.

There are plenty of other chips, mind you, every sort of potato chip, cheese doodle, even plantain chips. But not a single Dorito, or the plain tortilla chips either.

The other thing I can't find for the life of me is any pink lemonade. I am always fighting the kids to keep them at one soda per day, so I wanted to keep pitchers of lemonade handy in our fridge. It seems they haven't heard of pink lemonade here though! Or lemonade either. There is no frozen lemonade concentrate. Lots of other frozen concentrated juices. No lemonade either in the koolaid section. So the kids pick out one koolaid flavor that they will all drink and we leave it at that. Just trying to save a buck here....

Prices? Well, I'll give away the end right now, our bill at checkout is $704.46. It is hard to compare to home since I never shop at home for 10 days of groceries at a time, having to pick up everything from ketchup to salt & pepper, to paper goods, to laundry detergent, to alcohol. But it is a big OUCH to the start of the trip. We better be eatin' very good :)

We are not big drinkers, the alcohol portion of the bill (which by the way you can get all you need right off the shelves at the IGA) consists of Myers Rum $14.99, tequila $39.99 (don't remember the brand), something pretty and blue that caught my eye - Alize bleu for $24.99. It just looks tropical and comes in several colors (flavors) and I gotta try it. Except for some pina colada, and drink mixers that is it for the alcohol.

The next priciest category of things I bought was meat. I really like the selection of beef, pork and chicken here. Am surprised, there is hardly any seafood though. Our caretaker that drove us to the villa suggested it all goes to the restaurants, leaving nothing for the folks there. Guess he is right!

Beef is well priced, ribeye is $9.99/lb, sirloin $7.99. I get a big pork tenderloin to grill and it is less than $10.

Some sample prices from my receipt:

Top Ramen $.25

bunch cilantro $1.49

Guacamole in the dairy section $4.99

butter $3.38

Lay's potato chips $3.59

IGA cranberry juice $3.99

Bertolli olive oil $10.99

Balsamic vinegar $5.69

1 dozen large eggs $1.79

Hormel black label bacon $4.99

two heads broccoli from produce section $5.48

Kraft easy mac 4-pk $4.99

Gogurt $4.89

Jello 6 pack $4.99

A1 sauce $6.49

2.5 lbs Gala apples $4.92

bagged salad $4.99

limes $.25 each

sliced pineapple $3.49

head iceburg lettuce $1.99

very tiny package blueberries $6.99

2 cucumbers $2.87

1 lb ground beef $4.71

1 gal water $3.87

package Mardi Gras napkins $3.99

box kids cereal $5.99

Coke 6 pack cans $3.09

Pepsi 6 pack cans $2.99

6 pack Thomas english muffins $5.99

I am glad that I read posts here and packed most of our snack food into our luggage. Things like nuts, chips, kid's fruit roll ups - very light items that took up some room but we had room in the luggage. Seeing the prices, if I had bought them on Provo they would have cost almost double in some cases.

However, the pricing of meats and produce were in most cases, very reasonable. Dairy too. It is hard to know what to bring, but my advice is if there is something you can't live without (your favorite coffee brand) then bring it. This is a darn good store with great selection but there are some gaps. It looks like the IGA is trying very hard to please - they have suggestion slips and many are posted at the door. If you want a certain food or brand, they will try to get it.

Two full carts and we check out. The rain had been threatening when we went into the IGA, now it is a full-fledged monsoon of course! Everybody gets wet packing the car. We discover another frustrating thing about the SUV, you have to lower the back window with the key in order to open it and load - and it only works when it feel like it apparently. No amount of monkeying with the window will get it back up so hubby gives up and the groceries will just get rained on for the drive home. It is what it is........

Tonight's dinner is steak and corn on the cob. The grill at the villa is charcoal, a nice change from gas grill at home. I like the flavor of a charcoal grill, and haven't had that for quite some time. It's dark by the time we get dinner done so we eat indoors and get ready for our first night. One more warning to the kids not to use water for toothbrushing, we put bottled water by every sink as a reminder.

Perhaps sun tomorrow? We hope??

justlaura - the villa is called Caribbaway.

www.caribbaway.com

It is rented directly from the owner, not through an agent. Will post more later about the villa and how we chose it.

If anyone reading this has never tried a villa rental but this appeals to you, keep reading my trip log. You'll have a real feel for the villa option by the time I'm done :)

Great report, so far. Thanks so much for sharing.

Thanks for your report! We'll be there in a couple of days - thanks for taking the time to write about your experience.

I love the details of your trip report. We usually go for 2 weeks which we split between staying at a villa and staying at a condo. We enjoy them both for different reasons. We also make all of the breakfasts, most of the lunches, and half or more of the dinners at the villa or condo. The IGA bill is always a shock but in the long run, we realize how much we save by not going out every meal. We also bring snacks from home. There are some great inexpensive places to eat which we enjoy every year and we usually try some new places for a few dinners every year. You tend to see more of the Island when you rent a villa since a rental car is necessary for most villas. It sounds like you had a great vacation even with all the rain! We have been going for 6 years and had rain at most one day for a couple of the years (also had some wind for several days one year). We were still able to go diving on the rainy days and even on the windy days. Also enjoyed the Unicorn Book Store - they do have quite a selection.

DAY TWO Fri 3/23

Woke up to clouds and rain - oh no! - will it be another washout? Very windy. But just before noon we started seeing the clouds break up here and there and finally it became a partly cloudy day. Awesome to be at the beach!

Everybody did what they wanted, hubby and I got some sun, our 18 year old daughter read and stayed in the shade, our 14 year old daughter and 9 year old son swam and built sand castles. Daughter built a huge sculpture of a head (Davey Jones from the Pirates 2 movie). Very impressive - a couple walking by later paused to admire and the woman bent to kiss the sculpture while the man took her pic. Very cute!

Decided to go out an watch the sunset somewhere - we are on the east side of the island - so we head for the Blue Hills area to find da Conch Shack which has been recommended by previous renters in our villa. The Squeal Mobile was much worse today though, it started to stall at every roundabout - scary! Plus we find out the kids have no working seat belts in back. We do not feel safe in this car! Must find a car rental but it is too late today (Fri after 6 pm) so we'll find dinner for now.

Da Conch Shack is easy to find but the crowd looks pretty adult and now rain is threatening so we decide to come back at lunch sometime. We head to the Gracy Bay area instead for dinner. On the way I want to find an internet cafe, but no luck with the ones I'd scribbled down from the phone book at our villa. I am imagining that the next day (Sat) will be busy for car rentals and I want to reserve one online just in case.

Internet access - if you don' t have internet access where you are staying, there are places to log on for a fee. TCI Online is in the Port O Call mall but is only open until 4:30 pm and is closed Sat and Sun. $5 minimum, you have to buy a card with a preset number of minutes. Lorter's Electronics next to the IGA has one computer you can use cheaply, a couple dollars for a few minutes, $15 per hour max. But try finding anything after sunset - forget it!

Bambooz - we end up at Bambooz sports bar & grill in the Salt Mills mall for dinner. At this point we don't really care what is on the menu, we just want a break from the death trap of a car and the frustration of trying to find internet access.

Menu looks great and reasonable prices. The place is clean, there are both families there and adults playing pool and gaming machines. Not too busy, service is friendly and quick enough. Fish and chips is great (beer battered grouper). Breading on the conch appetizer is also tasty, although the conch is very tough and rubbery.

Waitress says pizza is their specialty so we order one to go for the kids to reheat for lunch the next day. I ask her to get it half-baked, and she says she'll try but the cooks don't speak English so they might not understand. But she must have gotten through to them because it comes back perfect.

Cost of dinner $95 plus tip for 3 entrees, 1 kid's entree, 2 appetizers, a round of sodas and one 12" pizza to go.

Tomorrow morning, early, I will just have to get on the phone and find us a car to rent. The SquealMobile is no longer an option, we don't feel safe in it. Finally got it to stop stalling on roundabouts when I turned off the AC - not that the AC was working, it was not - we were just trying to run some air through the car. But it is still not safe and we worry what will go wrong next, the dashboard has so many lights coming on and off it looks like a darn Christmas tree!

Overall - pretty nice day as I remember. We all got to use the beach, and relax. The vehicle problem was really the only downer, highlighted by not being able to find a way to get on the internet.

I love reading your trip report. Can't wait for more!