So, you’re moving to the Virgin Islands, are you? Finally decided to grab life by the nut-sack and escape to paradise like you’ve always dreamed of doing, hey? Good for you! You’ve done all the research. You’ve sold your car. You’ve booked the one-way ticket. There’s no turning back now, right?
I know your situation so well because I’m another guy for whom there was “no turning back.” I was in that very same situation not long ago, friend. My credit card is still warm with the sweat from booking those one-way tickets. And how did the great escape work out for me? Well… I live in north-central Wisconsin now, thanks for asking. (It’s not so bad… sometimes I’ll go to the grocery store for a liter of cheap rum and some half-rotten plantains, then head home and crank my gas heat up until I feel like I’m at Magen’s Bay Beach. Then I cry myself to sleep.)
If part of your relocation plan is “Head to the winter home in Phoenix if a hurricane hits”, then you can rest easy. You’ll probably do just fine, and my little guide won’t make or break your adventure. But if you’re a normal guy like me, you don’t have a winter home in Phoenix–you don’t even have a car anymore, remember? If you’re a normal guy like me, all you’re really working with is a bulimic checking account and a deliciously bad idea.
I’m not saying you can’t–or shouldn’t–go for it. The worst-case scenario here is that you go on a pretty sweet adventure that turns out to be kind of pointless. When “failure” means having the adventure of a lifetime, you’re already doing something right. So please don’t mistake my realism for pessimism. In my professional opinion, your bad idea is a pretty good decision no matter how things end up.
So what I am saying is that unless your pre-move preparations included an extended research trip to the Virgin Islands, you’re probably not as prepared as you think. Ironically, I’m here to tell you that you simply can’t prepare yourself for an adventure of this magnitude by reading a handful of crappy articles on the internet. But, since you’re not rich and can’t just take a month-long “pre-trip”, crappy internet articles are pretty much all you’ve got to work with. And every crappy article makes you either a little more delusional or a little more prepared. Hopefully my crappy article will do the latter. Here are five things I wish I’d understood before I got on the plane in Chicago.
1. Island Time Isn’t a Marketing Ploy.
It’s borderline eerie, but I swear it’s true: time moves slower in the Virgin Islands. If you’ve spent some time living in or visiting Caribbean societies, you already know what I’m talking about. But if you haven’t, there’s nothing I can do to explain this phenomenon to you. So what does “Island Time” mean in terms of your chances of success as a wannabe Caribbean resident? Everything.
Before I left, I spent hours every night typing, printing, faxing, mailing, and e-mailing a massive canon of job applications and resumes to prospective employers on St. Thomas and St. John. Out of 25+ applications, I only heard back from three places before I left. Two said to call and set up an interview once I arrived; the third basically said, “We’ll get back to you later if we feel like it” (but in slightly more professional language.)
For the unaccustomed North American job seeker, “Island Time” can be a source of extreme anxiety… it’s supposed to have the opposite effect. Extra-long, wide open days are great for snorkeling and sipping rum drinks, but they can make you panic if you spend them waiting to hear from that cool job that seemed like a sure thing when you were safe at home packing your bags. Eventually, I got two very promising callbacks from on-island employers… of course this was a week after I had already blown my emergency budget on return airfare and came back to the good ol’ Midwestern USA.
You say you don’t mind waiting for “Island Time” to catch up with your job-hunting efforts? Cool, neither did I… it was my budget that ran out of patience, not me.
2. The Best Things in Life… Cost a Crap-Load of Money.
When Island Time meets unrealistic budgeting, adventures can take a turn for the worse.
Cabs and rental cars; a modest place to stay; food and beverage items; the half-dozen essential toiletries you inevitably forgot; tips for everybody and their brother. All of these things are expensive in the Virgin Islands. Groceries, for example, can easily cost 2 or 3 times more than they would at your mega-sized grocery store back home. Here in Wisconsin, I could survive comfortably on $100 a week if I had to. In the Virgin Islands, you might be able to live on $100 a day if you stick to ramen noodles and don’t do anything fun. (And that’s before nightly accommodations.)
It’s also worth noting that you may be a “target” for the myriad islanders who make their livings in the tourist sector. This can drive up your costs. It happens simply because you’re North American. And since you are North American, you look North American, so it will be assumed that you are a rich vacationer by the people who expect to receive tips from you, the people who will bargain with you, and also the people who may want to exploit you. It’s not worth discussing the social and moral facets of this situation; it simply needs to be stated as fact. Most islanders won’t distinguish between the cruise ship visitor with a $1,000 per day “just for fun” budget and the in-debt explorer renting a studio apartment. You can’t expect anybody to make an exception just because you happened to come to their island with high hopes, good intentions, and three almost-over-limit credit cards.
It’s true that most of the people you’ll meet on-island are extremely friendly, helpful, and accommodating. But tourism is a huge industry in the Virgin Islands, and therefore some people rightfully expect to be paid for their friendliness, helpfulness, and accommodation.
Also, there’s no good way to save money when it comes to on-island transportation. Cab fares add up quickly and–just like you’ve read in every other USVI guide–you really can’t get around on foot safely or comfortably. Trust me, I was extremely insistent that I wouldn’t need to rent a car because I’d be fine walking everywhere… after about 12 hours of that nonsense, I ended up cruising around St. Thomas in a pimp-ass Chevy Aveo for $50 a day. You’ll have to rent a car, and it’s not always a cheap or simple process (especially if you’re under 25.)
Oh, and unless you’re man enough to arrive during the hurricane-prone months like I did, you can expect to add $10-$25 to the price of just about everything: welcome to “high season.”
3. Lizards Like to Cuddle Too.
Let’s keep this one simple: there are a lot of lizards in the Virgin Islands. So if you’re the type of person who freaks out about having a mouse in your apartment two or three times every year, how well are you going to cope with seeing a lizard in your bedroom two or three times every week? And while we consider it standard procedure to trap and kill mice and rats, it’s generally considered messy and not very nice to slay every harmless-but-kind-of-gross-looking lizard that wanders into your room.
4. Your Skills Are Dumb.
Do you consider yourself highly employable? That perception might change when you arrive on-island. When it comes to job-hunting, you’ll hear people encourage you by saying that the Virgin Islands need the same people that are needed “anywhere else in the world.” But they won’t mention the obvious: the population-per-area is probably a hundred times higher than wherever you’re coming from. There are fewer available jobs, more applicants, and a sometimes-cliquish mentality found in any isolated (i.e., island-based) population.
Even if by some twist of fate a Virgin Islands company really does need somebody with your combined MBA degree and MCSE certification, don’t expect to make the same salary you’d ask for back home. Entry- and mid-level technical support workers will be looking at rates of $8 or $9 an hour instead of the $12 or $15 they could shoot for in mid-sized North American towns. And retail clerks–even experienced ones–are unlikely to make more than $6 or $7 for an hour of work.
But since you’re the kind of person inclined to attempt island life, you probably don’t care all that much about money anyway. Guess what, you will. How are you going to put down a deposit on a $900 studio apartment when you’re only making $8 an hour? Hell, how are you even going to afford that $5 jar of peanut butter? And you can’t keep renting that car when you only bring home $300 in a week…
So even if tip #4 doesn’t bother you, it eventually comes back to tip #2. Doesn’t money suck?
5. You’re Lazier than You Think.
Seriously, how is anybody supposed to accomplish anything meaningful in a place where clothes and household items cost twice as much as they do back home, but rum and cigarettes are practically free? I don’t care if you’re a poet or a marine biologist–it’s going to be very difficult to get anything done once you arrive on-island.
And maybe it’s supposed to be that way. Would I really be happy if I had succeeded? Would I really be happy working full time in a place that’s 85 degrees year-round when the days feel like they’re 40-hours long? Hell yeah I would! But when you blow your one chance and end up living in Wisconsin, you have to tell yourself something to make it through the day…
It’s not Impossible…
In closing, I must admit… even an absentminded lowlife such as myself could probably make it in the USVI with a little effort. The real #1 reason I ended up coming back? I got my fiancé knocked up! We decided that it’d be too hard, too scary, and too expensive to start our new family in the Caribbean, so we came back. Would we have “made it” otherwise? I’ll never know… I’m just happy that I can say I tried, and gave it my best effort. (Okay, so maybe it was more like 10-15% of my best effort.)
Take my five pieces of advice to heart, don’t get too pregnant, and you just might turn your hilariously irresponsible scheme into a pretty sweet reality. And so what if you don’t succeed? You’ll have an awesome time anyway. Order a rum punch at “Sib’s on the Mountain” in St. Thomas for me… just make sure it doesn’t cut into your return airfare budget too much.
