Reece's Water-Taxi Adventure

Shaya Moya
Don & Susan Smyth
Sun 19 Dec 2010 19:12
After dropping off Dad, David and Linda at Anse La Rie I returned to Marrigot Bay with the intention of taking a water taxi back to meet up with them. The trip back was great fun. I raced atop the waves at high speeds through the darkness with just a few lights in the distance to navigate by. After arriving in Marrigot Bay, I quickly tied up the tender to the dingy dock and started my search for a fearless water taxi driver. I found just the man. He was a podgy chap, dark as the night with a smile that could light a stage. Jean was his name.
 
Jean showed me to his boat and we began to negotiate the price for this taxi ride into the darkness. At first he wanted $300 EC (Eastern Caribbean), then $250 EC, then $80 US and finally we both settled on the price of $100 EC. He'd met his match on the bargaining side of things! Or at least that's what I thought. We scuttled into his old fishing/taxi vessel and headed out of the bay, stopping at every other yacht on the way to ask if they might also want to spend $100 to go to Anse La Rie. A half an hour later we were finally on our way still just the two of us. This was probably due to his appalling bargaining skills.
 
We rushed along Caribbean style, slowing down every 30 seconds to check something or try a new bargaining trick (it never worked). He asked me over and over if he should wait for me in Anse La Rie and gave me new hourly rates every time he asked... I said no every time he asked. Being an intelligent chap I hadn't told him that I had no cash on me and that Dad was hopefully waiting for me on the dock when we got there. Imagine his surprise when he said to me 20m off the dock: "Okeey, you pay me nouw an I gonna drop yu fast!" and I said "No, you have to drop me so I can fetch the money and come back fast to pay you." I said this hoping Dad had seen us waiting off the docks and was on his way with the ransom money... He wasn't so I was stuck with Jean, who was no longer smiling, on his water taxi which was no longer close to the dock. Eventually we gave up trying to whistle and attract attention because it wasn't working. Jean then said it was to dangerous now because the waves were getting bigga. We started back to Marrigot Bay very quietly.
 
Whilst returning, not quite as fast as we'd departed, I continued to explain to Jean that I still had no money on me and that all his chances of getting paid that night stood waiting for me in Anse La Rie. At this point the boat slowed right down, I thought " Oh god! crazy Caribbean," and then remembered the story of the axe murderer on the beach a few nights before. I turned slowly on my seat as to not have my back to him anymore and then said :" Hey man, what are you doing? are you crazy?" The sight was horrific... A half naked podgy Caribbean standing on the seat trying to pee off his boat, which of course was still moving. It didn't work out and Jean tumbled in a sort of forward cart-wheel, without hands of course, into the water.
 
So here I sat in the dark on an old boat in the middle of the Caribbean Sea moving away from where the driver of the boat, who was very angry with me, was swimming with his pants around his ankles hardly able to stay afloat. What do you do in that situation? Ask for a refund? Take the boat? Start to bargain and make a new and probably better deal? I chose to turn the boat around and go back to fetch my, no longer fearless, taxi driver. Luckily he smiled when I turned the boat around so finding him was a breeze. I then hauled his now naked podginess back on board and asked if he was alright. I'm not sure if it was shock, embarrassment, relief or gratitude for saving his life but Jean was happy to be back on the boat with me. He smiled all the way back to the bay and even dropped me off where I had my tender tied up. I told him we could talk the next day about payment and so and he said: " No worries brudda, we see us tommorra and we ca taalk"
 
The next day I never saw Jean again and we left Marrigot Bay... If you think about it, I saved a mans life for $100 EC. Good Bargaining Jean!