After two class 5 hurricanes balled the islands up and tossed them in a washing machine filled with rocks, nails, and mach 7 winds, the U.S. Virgin Islands are limping back to health.

Not all homes have power or electricity yet, and there are too many houses who still use the blue Red Cross tarps as a roof. It’s disheartening to see so many people suffering, but despite the chaos, people are back on their feet rebuilding their homes.

“Roofers are making a fortune,” our cab driver said as he swerved around potholes and traffic.

The island lost its traffic lights when the storms hit, and now driving is a free for all, a Mad Max race to get where you need to be. A brief yield is all the rage nowadays.

The cab driver told us about the destruction his island had faced, and how difficult it was to get moving again after the storms left.

“We lost half our roof in the storms,” he said. “My whole family was inside when it happened.”

Gasoline powered generators were the only way to keep food safe to eat, and prices soared as it was rationed out. Everything was expensive, the cabbie said, but you had to eat, and you need a roof, so you paid the money.

Despite the long talk with a local, I couldn’t truly grasp the difficulties he must have been facing.

We paid our expensive fare, and climbed aboard a ferry that would take us to St. John, the next island over where we would be staying in an Air Bnb.

“It’s like the wild west out here,” Parker said as we climbed into his pickup truck on St. Johns.

Parker was another guest at the Air Bnb, he had been living there for over a month and still wasn’t used to how crazy the islands could get.

“You can literally do whatever you want in a vehicle, as long as you have your seatbelt on,” he joked.

Driving past businesses and homes still in vast need of repairs, my mind began to open to the tragedy left by the storms, but I didn’t fully grasp the concept until the next day.

Walking along the beach, sunlight dancing through the jungle beside us, my cousin and I waded through the surf towards a reef to snorkel. Up ahead, it’s stern sticking out of the jungle, a boat had been tossed onto land, and behind it another one.

I turned my head back to yell to my cousin, and spotted another larger vessel stuck in the trees across the bay.

“If no one’s claimed it, it’s mine, right?” I asked, climbing aboard the nearest vessel.

I felt like a pirate, picking his way across a deck littered with lines, lifejackets and garbage. I turned back the way we had come, looking out over another shattered boat that had capsized in the shallow water.

I still had that giddy feeling of excitement I always get when I’ve found something lost or abandoned, but at the same time I felt guilty.

These had been people’s who now couldn’t find the time or money to salvage them. Not all of the vessel’s we found were rich people’s yachts, there were smaller fishing boats and dinghies as well.

In one bay we found a dozen boats stacked on top of each other, masts broken and hulls dented from the storm.

I snapped some photo’s, planned a blog post to talk about my findings, and then took off down the beach towards my destination.

Yeah, I’d had a sudden realization, but that initial feeling of guilt quickly faded, this was only my vacation spot after all. I looked at the destruction and began to feel blown away by it all, but still, it was a tropical paradise to me. It was only a vacation.

I’ve never been very empathetic, and it takes me a long while to truly grasp what someone else has been through, so as I type this, I hope that people better than I jumped to their feet and reached out a helping hand instead of playing on ships in the jungle.