Please settle your tab at the end of the week

Jost Van Dyke, I'm still here

I've been drinking at a place called something like "Ivan's stress free
bar". According to a regular, this place started out 15 years ago as a
guy with a cooler, and now it is a ramshackle collection of driftwood and
shells with at least 2 working fridges. In this place, that's significant
progress.

However, what keeps me coming back to this establishment is not the
decor but their method of service, or more correctly the complete absence
of it. Most of the time there isn't even a bartender. Instead there is a
book and a simple process :

You make your own drink
You write it in the book
When you leave you add it up yourself and pay what you owe.

It is deceptively simple. You can't blame anyone else if the drinks are
bad, you can't complain about the rate of service and you can't really
skip out on the bill. You see, you're kinda stuck on this island. There
is not really that much to it and there is not that far you can go.
Everyone basicly knows everyone else so if you cause trouble you won't
last that long. Instead you do your best not to overdose on alcohol and
just enjoy what you have.

At one point, while I was mixing something deadly involving rum and an
unknown fruit juice, I noticed that there was a 'TIP' jar at the end of the
bar. This didn't make much sense since I couldn't see the point in leaving
myself a tip, but there wasn't anything else you could call it. If you
named it the 'Building Improvement Fund' I don't think it would attract
any more attention. Perhaps they should have just left it there with a
note

"Help keep things the way they are"

Or perhaps it should have said "Help keep away the cruises".

No matter how cool they look in the advertisements, you do not want to go
near a cruise. We had one invade the island during the week and it was
not a pretty event.

One minute it was a quiet morning of rum and skittles, the next we're
being invaded by a stream of fat suburbanites with nothing better to do
than sing too loudly, yell too loudly and generally cause a nuisance for
themselves. And this was one of the small ships. It was a nice
four-masted, wooden decked, sailing number that probably tries to attract
the hippies by putting ads in the outdoor magazines. The thought of being
stuck on a boat with them for seven days makes my skin crawl.

It was perhaps good that this happened on the last day and I was able to
use it as an excuse to get out of dodge before everything went to crap.

To put me in my place I was given the royal treatment on the way to the
ferry. The taxi was not only late because the driver fell asleep, but the
doors were held closed with old seat belts (probably from the drivers
seat) he dodn't go faster than about 10 miles an hour and he took pains to
stop along the way and have a chat with some friends. Meanwhile I'm in
the back sweating about missing the last ferry for the day.

The taxi got to the dock with 15 minutes to spare.

I wouldn't want to change a thing.