I wonder if there is a book that translates the Queen’s English into American English? Thank goodness I knew our next island was Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. At first I thought we were going to an new island not on our itinerary. Anyway after I figured out the assistant cruise director (from England) and I were talking about the same place I felt a little better. So we took the lift down to the gangway and left the ship and put our backpack in the boot of the car and left on our excursion. I love being on holiday with the international crowd.
Our tour consisted of a boat ferry ride to Sint John and then a forced march (hike) that Cindy scheduled.
I left the pier with my island girl on the ‘Island Girl’ and headed to Saint John. As you can see by the photo our ship was not the only one in port. The ship in front of us was the Royal Caribbean Jewel of the Seas (which we were on the last time we came to Saint Thomas). Behind our ship was the new NCL Epic (bigger than our ship). At the dock out of sight of our ship was the Royal Caribbean megaship, Allure of the Seas (holds almost 6,000 passengers) Also a Holland America dam ship (Eurodam, Veendam, Oosterdam? I know it ended with dam.)
Over 50% of Saint John is a National Park donated to the US by one of the Rockefellers. When you come into the town dock one side of the dock belongs to the National Park Service and the other side is for the town. The map above of Lind Point Trail is our hike and the young skinny kid is our tour guide, Eric! We started the hike and the temperature was in the 80’s and the humidity was 200% (my kind of weather). Cindy did point out that the hike was in the shade. It didn’t make a bit of difference to me as the water ran out of every pour in my body.
Eric pointed out a lot of the flora and fauna while on the hike. The plant on the left is the Medusa air plant. It grows by latching itself onto a host tree and eventually kills the tree as it covers the whole thing. They call it the Medusa because it looks like the snakes that are all over Medusa’s head. The second plant is a type of Agave plant and the large stalk in the middle of the plant is the bloom. It can get up to 35 feet high. Eric said that many of the locals use the bloom as their Christmas tree, since a Christmas tree sent in from the mainland can cost well over $250.
The next stop, Honeymoon Beach, was a nice cool dip in the ocean for one of us as the other thought of being on the Sea Dream Yacht having a cold gin & tonic in the air conditioned bar!
Our final stop was at the famous Caneel Bay resort which was built on an old sugar cane plantation and mill. The rooms start at $400 a night and go up. The photo on the left is their international five star restaurant that is built on the spot where the grinding stone was pulled by donkeys to grind up the sugar cane. The photo on the right is where the liquid from the sugar cane would collect and be filtered for use. After our trek we were picked up by an open air truck taxi and taken back to the ferry for our trip back to our ship. It was a great day but a little on the warm side.
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