Learning to drive left

During my first few weeks here I had Justin do all of the driving for two simple reasons.

The first reason I waited to drive is that they drive on the left here. This dates back to the Danish colonial period, but I am fairly certain they were using horses back then. When the US acquired St. Croix, St. John and St. Thomas in 1917 they never bothered to change this practice, thus making the USVI the only territory in America that is the exception to driving on the right.

The other reason are the roads here. The roads are so curvy and steep here that it all seems a little scary at first. Sometimes there are no guardrails on the sides of the mountains, which is also a scary prospect to me.While this photograph hardly does the reality of the situation justice, all of the roads look something like this:

You may also visit these videos I found on you tube that will give you a vague idea of how twisty the roads are here:
Driving on St.Thomas I
Driving on St. Thomas II

Otherwise, the roads are really just something you need to see for yourself...

So I took the time to adjust my eyes to driving on the left, the twists and turns, the landmarks and the behaviors of other VI drivers. However, every time I was a passenger in the car I felt quite queasy. I have nearly tossed cookies on more than one occasion since I have been here. On Monday evening Justin began to drive us home from Town. I started to feel queasy and suddenly couldn't handle it anymore. I promptly told Justin to pull the car over and I ended up driving us home. Miraculously I somehow managed not to get queasy or drive on the right side of the road by accident for the duration of the trip. Simply another victory for me!