January 22-28
Matt and I took a belated 15th anniversary trip (only 2 1/2 years late :S) to the US Virgin Islands. We spent 6 days on the beautiful island of St Croix! We haven't ever taken a beach vacation by ourselves - heck, we don't do very much by ourselves ever - so it was an especially sweet time together, just the two of us.
We booked flights from Denver to Christiansted, St Croix with several layovers each way. We left early in the morning on Wednesday, 1.22, and traveled from Denver to Chicago to Miami and finally landed in Christiansted late that night. St Croix is three hours ahead of Mountain Time so 10:30 didn't feel quite so late, but after a long day of travel, it was nice to settle in for the week.
Get ready for picture overload of selfies and beaches! :)
We snapped a picture in each airport - Denver, then Chicago, then two in Miami. We had enough layover time (1-2 hours each airport) to stretch our legs before the next leg. Matt and I commented to each other that we felt far away from home; we were the furthest we've ever been away from home. 2800 miles is quite a distance! We left the mountains and arrived on a really green island with the most turquoise water we had ever seen - so yeah, we were pretty far from home! (Ok, I lied. We've been to Alaska and that's more than 3300 miles from Colorado.)
We booked an Airbnb in Christianstead, a one bedroom condo in a gated community with a pool (which we never actually swam in). We wanted more of a local experience so we opted to stay away from big resorts. We got our car and settled into our place for the week. One big difference between St Croix and the states is that people drive on the left side of the road in St Croix. They are still American cars, so the driver is on the left, but you also drive on the left. It was a bit strange at first, but we pretty quickly got used to it.
On our first full day in St Croix, we slept in, found a grocery store, and bought some groceries for the week. We were a bit surprised at the prices! A gallon of milk was close to $8 and a jar of peanut butter was about $5. Matt and I wandered around the store for a bit trying to figure out what we would want and need! We dropped the groceries at home and then went out for lunch at The Chicken Shack. Yum! Mercedes (Matt's coworker) lived in St Croix for six months or so and she gave us some really good information about where to go and what to do. So helpful! We actually did quite a few things that she suggested, and everything we did was well worth our time.
After our late lunch, we finally found the beach! We spent the rest of the afternoon at Shoy Beach trying out snorkeling for the first time and walking along the beach. The water was so warm and so blue. We saw some fish with the snorkel gear we brought along (courtesy of Jordan and Mercedes!) and had fun trying that out. We ended the day with the most delicious fish tacos at Rum Runners right along the boardwalk by the water in downtown Christiansted.
On our second day, 1.24, we tackled a four-mile hike to a tide pool. Like a really big tide pool! The hike was long and fairly easy even though we gained a bit of elevation. It had rained the night before so the trail was wet and kinda muddy; we were mostly getting wet due to the water droplets on the leaves as we were hiking on the trail! The climate in St Croix is a pretty dependable 70-80 degrees with an average of 75% humidity. So the rain didn't dry up at all! Once we got Annaly Tide Pool, we left our things on the beach, scaled the rocks, and went swimming in a giant tide pool. We brought our snorkel masks so we could see the different kinds of fish and sea creatures. It was really neat! At one point, a huge wave came up and over the side wall of the tide pool, raining down on us. It also rained toward the end of our time there, and we ended up hiking back in the rain a big. At that point, we were soaked from head to toe anyway due to wet swimsuits and the drippy foliage on the hike, so it wasn't a big deal. We walked down the beach a bit as well; the beach was covered in pieces of coral and rocks. Did I mention that we found a TON of sea glass in St Croix throughout the week? We found soooooo much - it was amazing! We came home with half of a quart sized bag full of pretty pieces. Green, clear, turquoise, brown, and even a few of the elusive royal blue color. LOVE!!
After spending maybe 4ish hours on the hike and at the tide pool, we then drove to a restaurant called Eat at Cane Bay and split a mahi mahi sandwich. Cane Bay is a beautiful spot that we would come back to later as well.
On our third full day, 1.25, we drove across the island to Frederiksted. Frederiksted is where the cruise ships dock, though there aren't very many ships that come to St Croix. In fact, there's only one per week that comes to port. Compare that to an average of seven per week in St Thomas and that impacts the islands dramatically. I can imagine that St Thomas is more developed and can handle the thousands of tourists that a cruise ship brings, while St Croix feels a lot more local and undeveloped.
Frederiksted has a great pier (for ships, obviously) and there are some cute things right down by the water. (Did I mention that we saw chickens everywhere on the island? On the beach, in town, crossing the roads, wandering all over - chickens! It was pretty bizarre at first.) Matt and I had coffee at a cute little coffee shop/breakfast and lunch restaurant called Polly's. We found a few scuba/snorkeling shops and maybe one touristy shop to walk though as well. The architecture in St Croix lends itself to a lot of arches and windows with shutters, and often times those shutters were closed. It made things look like they were boarded up and vacant. A lot of the shutters actually did reveal stores behind the windows; I wonder if the shutters are for hurricanes and tropical storms? They all looked really neat and I took pictures of several windows and arches. It is the kind of architecture that I think would be found in New Orleans as well, though I've never been there!
Mercedes told us that there is some good snorkeling right by the pier in Frederiksted so after coffee, Matt and I put on our snorkel gear and headed out. There was an easy access point to the water (there was a sea wall built so it wasn't a sandy beach area) and then we just had to swim down and around to get to the pier. We saw some really cool fish; bright blue ones, some yellow ones, black and white ones, and we even saw a sea turtle! Matt saw it a bit more clearly than I did; when I saw it, I could just see the outline of a sea turtle swimming along the ocean floor. I couldn't tell what kind of turtle it was. Matt said the one he saw was a Green sea turtle. It was pretty cool to see!! We spent an hour or so in the water snorkeling, and then we drove to Sandy Point National Wildlife Refuge. Sandy Point is the furthest western most point on the island. The wildlife refuge has the longest stretch of sandy beach in St Croix, and we walked a good chunk of it! The sand was so white, the water was soooo turquoise, and it was just like a picture in a magazine except we were seeing it in real life. We walked probably two miles on the beach and were wowed by the big conch shells we saw. They were everywhere! We picked up sea glass and other shells, but the conchs were the most amazing. Matt found a lobster tail, too! The beach was amazing to walk on - we didn't actually swim in the water there. The sand was at quite a steep angle; we watched a few people get tossed around in the waves when trying to get into the water. Ha! We Facetimed with my parents and the kids while we were walking on the beach for a bit to see how things were going at home. No worries there! The kids were in great hands. :) Matt and I actually got a little sunburned while we were walking on the beach though the skies were cloudy for most of the time. It was so, so pretty there. I took lots of pictures but they don't do justice at all to how beautiful it was.
After the beach, we went back to the pier. Matt wanted to snorkel some more, but I opted to sit out. I was surprised that I felt a bit motion sick while snorkeling, probably due to being on top of the water that was moving and trying to look at objects that were moving (fish and things) against the ocean floor that wasn't moving. It was a bit trippy for me so I couldn't last too long in the water. Matt was out for maybe another hour or so. We walked along the waterfront for a bit and saw a big wedding party taking pictures at the clock tower. We wanted to see the sunset in Frederiksted, so we waited and enjoyed the evening. After sunset, we headed to a restaurant called Rhythms at Rainbow Beach. Frederiksted was 30ish minutes from our condo. It was another amazing day!
