Paradise for Work

My new job keeps getting harder and harder.

For instance, Tuesday I got a little sunburned while sitting on a white sandy beach on the eastern edge of the Caribbean. Underneath a beach cabana. On a lounge chair. Reading a book.

How can I have such a hazardous job, where the rays of sun are the hardest thing that I have to overcome?!

Monday was the day that this all began. We flew from Scottsdale over the Gulf of Mexico to the west coast of Florida for a fuel stop.

I’ve never been able to fly over the Gulf like this, since a life raft is required to be on board if flying beyond gliding distance of land.

Gliding distance means if both engines die, the airplane is still able to glide far enough to reach land.

Sounds scary, right? They just don’t want sharks to eat more people than necessary.

But with this new job, I have a life raft. And it’s big. It can seat up to thirteen people, if things get really drastic. We have to have a life raft at least big enough for all the seats on board. Including crew, that means we needed at least a nine-person raft. Ours is a nine-person raft with room for up to four additional people.

You know, in case we come across a ship wreck after we ditch into the ocean. We like to be prepared! The goal is to never use this raft, of course.

So we flew over the Gulf, which only prepared me for later when we were flying over the Atlantic Ocean! It’s a lot of blue underneath you and can be a little unnerving.

We stopped in Fort Myers, Florida for a quick-turn on fuel. They were awesome and fast, but it helps to have single-point refueling on this gorgeous Phenom 300!

After paying for the fuel bill (always a good idea to remember to pay), we were off for another 2.6-hour flight east!

I’ve never been this far past Florida, and it was exhilarating flying over beautiful island nations that I had always heard existed but never dreamed I would see.

I saw these dream locations on Monday from 43,000 feet. It’s really the best view of everything.

As we got closer to our destination, we passed Turks and Caicos, Dominican Republic, and even the US Virgin Islands.

Finally, we descended towards a beautifully green island just north of Saint Maarten.

I am in Anguilla in the British West Indies! Don’t worry…I don’t know how to say it, either.

I don’t know what could have possibly made this day any better. Almost seven hours of flight time. Landing in a tropical paradise in which I would be staying for the week.

See what I mean when I say this new job is rough?!

We landed just before dark set in (which happens in a matter of minutes in this part of the world. Weird, huh?). The sunset was gorgeous, but I was too busy working to take pictures.

We filled out the local Customs paperwork and then loaded bags into the car for our six passengers to be on their way.

Then we cleaned out the inside and locked up the airplane. Because of the humidity, the airplane was already dripping water. Crazy for a girl from the desert!

We hitched a ride with the local FBO line guy for a seemingly endless drive to our hotel on the southwest side of the island.

The entire island is only eleven miles, so it wasn’t really that far. Maybe it felt so far because I was really tired?

Or because they were all driving on the wrong side of the road?

The hotel check-in area is an open desk exposed to the elements. It was very dark by now, so I couldn’t get any “Welcome to Heaven” pictures of the place.

I was able to take a few pictures of my beautiful suite. I guess you could say that I’m a pretty happy camper in these accommodations. And they have wi-fi here! Woohoo!

After getting up at 5:20 AM and saying goodbye to family still sleeping at our house, I flew from the western side of the United States to the eastern side of the Caribbean. Long, busy, delightful day, but it ended by crawling into bed in a beautiful hotel on a lush, tropical island.

It’s just tough, you know?

Thank you for being so understanding. And for having so much empathy for my present predicament. It’s a difficult job, but someone has to do it. Team player, remember?