Charlotte-Amalie, St. Thomas, USVI

Our chore today … see if there are any decent laptop computers at decent prices on this entire island.  We had Googled “computers” but no electronic stores came up.  There are a couple of tiny electronic shops here in town that we’d found but they don’t keep computers in stock.  Everything has to be ordered.  That just won’t do!!!

There is a store that we heard about called Cost U Less.  We were told it’s similar to a Costco back home.  Perhaps they sell computers???  We checked it out online and they had a “Computer/Electronics” section but when you clicked on the link to that page, it came up blank!  Damn … so, do they have computer or not?  We used Google Maps to find out the distance from the Marina.  It is about 2 miles and Larry suggested walking.  I’ve barely recovered from the last walk … remember in Culebra.  It was only 1.5 miles … and it was a killer what with the hills, bends and everything.  This is ½ mile farther and if any of you have been to Charlotte-Amalie, you know it is a small town set in front of very large (huge) hills.  URGH … here we go again.

We walked as far as the Kmart plaza and stopped to ask if there was a larger Kmart on the island.  Again, we’d seen something about that but had no idea where it was or if it even really existed.  We were told it was out at TuTu Park Mall (which was about ½ mile further than Cost U Less).  Hmmm … the word “mall” sounds intriguing but we’ve seen so many “malls” that were just a tiny cluster of buildings … not a mall at all!  And there’s ANOTHER ½ mile added to our walk!  It turns out, there is also an Office Max at the mall so we’re going to have to make the trek.  Now the possibilities of finding our laptops were getting more and more likely!  We now had three good places to try (Cost U Less, a larger Kmart, and Office Max).

So the directions for the walk said to turn at the Kmart plaza onto “38”.  We had no idea if this was a street name, a highway or what.  It turns out, it was a nasty road that very quickly climbed a very steep hill … and there were no sidewalks.  A little relief came over me when I realized we were NOT going to be able to “walk” to the mall!  Just a little ways away, we found a bus and confirmed the mall was one of their stops.  Yippie!!!  $1.00 each and no marathon hill climbing today!

The bus driver let us out in front of the Office Max (just outside the mall area).  We figured this was our best bet for success.  They had about 2-dozen varieties of laptops but they were all very large and heavy!  Having to transport these to shore in our dry bag and then carry them around all day while we explored, made the thought of a heavy, clunky laptop very undesirable. Our primary choice would be a netbook (very similar to what broke).

We went to Kmart next.  Again, we searched the store but they didn’t appear to have a computer section.  We asked the sales clerk and there was one small cabinet where they had ½ dozen laptops (mostly display models/returns/etc).  But … we were able to find two ACER Aspire One netbooks.  They were identical except one was Windows 7 and one was Windows 8.  Yippie!  They were slightly under $400 each … not too bad for being in the islands I guess.  I only paid about $300 for my Dell netbook but that was at Costco, in the US and quite some time ago.  We bit the bullet and purchased the two new computers.  Ouch … that put a big unexpected dent in our cruising savings.  Hope this kind of thing doesn’t happen too often.  We anticipated things like sail repairs, equipment issues, and etc. but ouch!!! … new laptops this early in the game hurts!!! We have a set monthly budget and this put us over the top!

Back on Soulmatie, we made sure both laptops were functional and when we were sufficiently satisfied, we decided to return the monitor to Kmart.  It had served its purpose and would just be clutter on the boat if we kept it.  That’s $120 recovered from our huge expenses over the past couple of days!

We accomplished our chores and were able to make it to Happy Hour at Fat Turtles.  We had hoped they would have Internet available so we could use our new laptops but no such luck.  We had their Happy Hour Tacos and beer for dinner … another $16 and not a minute of Internet time to offset it …Ouch again!

On the way back to the boat, there was a kiosk (one of many but one of the few that was actually open).  It was Da Lime in Da Coconut … a bar.  We were able to get Internet from there and work on the Blog a little more.  It’s a big job and the initial setup is taking much more time than we wish.  I sure hope it’s worthwhile and that you enjoy the results!