Welcome!

Hello readers - thanks for viewing my blog. Especially welcome are my beautiful wife Cyndi, our two wonderful children Tom and Lisa, and my siblings Jeff, Mary and Suzy. I posted often from America Samoa while I was there a few years ago. I also post from our past and later travels. Keep checking in, and please leave a comment!

They may not be readers, but our dogs Monte and Zoey have a special page with their own photos. They are involved in many of our trips, and all of our lives.

Click on photos and videos to enlarge and (usually) see them better.

Sunday, March 1, 2015

St. John, USVI




   Responding to the ubiquitous Minnesota winter lament – “Get Me Outta Here” – Cyndi and I flew off to the little island of St. John in the U. S. Virgin Islands shortly after New Year’s Day, 2015.  We left below-zero temperatures and piles of snow to land in “America’s Caribbean” for a full week of sand and sun.
 
Flowers by roadside
 
 

   We knew nothing of St. John. Well, not exactly nothing, we knew it would be a lot more pleasant that what we were leaving. But we learned a lot. St. John and its neighboring islands of St. Thomas and St. Croix were acquired by the U.S.A. in a good, old-fashioned and conservative way: we bought them from Denmark in 1917. Denmark had acquired them also in the good old-fashioned way, stolen from the original occupants a few hundred years before. The Danes used them as plantations to grow sugar with slave labor. At one point there were some 1200 people on St. John of which some 100 were Danish colonists and the rest slaves. Becoming just a wee bit nervous about this, the Danes freed the slaves a few years before our civil war and then essentially abandoned the place. They sold it to the U. S. A. because the Danes were losing money running it and also because we didn’t want German U-boats using the wonderful harbor in Charlotte Amelie (St. Thomas) during World War 1.

    St. John then pretty much reverted to mountainous jungle for decades until being “discovered” again after World War 2 by persons such as Laurence Rockefeller, sailing around the area. He bought much of the island and later donated it to the nation. This land is now Virgin Islands National Park, covering well over a half of the entire island. Thus this island retains much of its beauty and wildness. There are a couple very small towns, primarily Cruz Bay where the ferry stops, and a few thousand inhabitants serving the gentry who have vacation homes and who visit.
Entering Cruz Bay


             What we did on St. John is easy to describe – we went to beaches, snorkeled, and hiked the trails in the park. Several of the most beautiful beaches in the world are here. The most famous is Trunk Bay, which regularly appears on lists of the top ten beaches anywhere. It certainly qualifies by our opinions. But several other beaches rival Trunk Bay, and are perhaps even nicer. If you want a relaxed tropical paradise look no further than St. John.

   

Without further ado, here are some photos:










Trunk Bay Beach







Snowman, St. John style!
 
   You get here by flying to St. Thomas, van to the dock, then take a 20-minute ferry ride across the straight to St. John and disembark at Cruz Bay. Here's what you see on the way:

Leaving Red Hook Harbor
 
   We were met by the friendly representative from our booking agency. He waited while we got our jeep (you do want a jeep, not a car) and led us carefully to our rented home. Carefully is right – driving is on the left here, so it is an odd experience at first. Every time we drove anywhere, we repeated our mantra “on the left, Rick” over and over until it became familiar. Roads are narrow, often very steep and quite twisty. Here, by the way, was the view from our porch:

Looking SW - that's St. Thomas out there
 
  Same view, at full moon
 
 Entry driveway to our home for the week
 
Our trusty Jeep buggy
 
   Quite the pleasant way to enjoy the sunset and the full moon! Big cruise ships came and went every day to Charlotte Amelie in St. Thomas. Some of the passengers would ferry over to St. John for the day, then hurry back to the ship before departure. Small boats plied across the channels between and among the islands. The British Virgin Islands are nearby – you see them all along the north coast – 
easily reached by sailboat from here. The place is a sailor’s dream come true. 

Looking across to Tortola, B.V.I.
 
Cruz Bay harbor
 
   Life on St. John is laid-back. Warm trade winds blow constantly, so no air-conditioning is used, or even needed. Water is different here too, there is no natural source so all water is captured rain. Each house has gutters which direct water to a cistern for collection and use. Water trucks will come in to re-fill if you get short, at significant cost, of course. We were warned not to use the toilets in case of a power outage, as they work via an electric pump instead of gravity. Showers are short – get wet, stop the flow, soap up, then water on again to quickly rinse off. It’s OK since the showers are all open to the air and breeze!

   I bought a GoPro camera and used it once to tape a snorkel run at Trunk Bay. Here is one of them:


    All too soon the week ended and we had to fly back home. But our next trip looms: we depart for the Galapagos Islands and Ecuador soon. Tom and deb, also Lisa and Ross, will accompany us for a true family vacation. Keep checking, posting for that trip will come in a few weeks. But as for St. John, we will return soon.

Cactus, flowers near trail
 
Iguana on the beach
 
Honeycombs in old building
 
Termite nest in tree
 
Pelican
 
Saw these, hard to photo real ones
 
Boobies
 
Feral donkeys live in the jungles
 
Caterpillar!
 
Bar/restaurant in Cruz Bay
 
Round a corner and see . . .

 

UPDATE:  We enjoyed St. John so much that we have returned several times, in 2016 (with Tom, Deb, Lisa & Ross), 2021 and recently in 2022. The two hurricanes which demolished much of the Caribbean in 2017 both hit the Virgin Islands very hard. Many buildings were destroyed, or heavily damaged. Among these were the places we stayed in 2015 and 2016. Vegetation was stripped all over the island. Sadly, the reefs and corals were also badly damaged. As of our 2022 visit, much has been repaired. The island is again very green; villas have been restored, and the corals are growing a bit. We stayed again at Tre Scalini in 2021 - a highlight was seeing as many as 13 iguanas at one time from our porch! But many signs of the damage remain visible. The views and warm waters still beckon.