Thanksgiving in St. Thomas
Yes, it may have been an unconventional choice for a Thanksgiving trip, but St Thomas (and St. John) actually made for the perfect holiday weekend. I hopped on a plane Thanksgiving morning, set out for the Virgin Islands, accompanied only by my carry-on and the hopes of doing some diving. I didn't really intend for it to be a solo trip, but when Vlad couldn't get off work that weekend, I wasn't just gonna not go...
So, after two and a half hours across the Caribbean, I landed in St. Thomas and hopped in my rental car, ready to go. Little did I know, that the roads of St. Thomas had other plans for me.
THANKSGIVING
I spent probably about an hour and a half trying to get to my AirBnB from the airport, which my GPS said should take 24 minutes, because the roads are straight-up rollercoasters. The road up to the house is about a 45 degree incline (very steep for those of you who don't like geometry), and I was sure my little compact rental was not going to make it. Then, at what you think is the top of the hill, the road makes a very sharp V, not even a U-turn and gets even steeper up this mountain. I, of course, thought that this could not be the right way, and found another route in the GPS. This time I went up the opposite side of the mountain and found myself on an equally steep path through the jungle, that was not an actual road. There was clearly no way to turn around at this point and I had to keep going. I got to a fallen telephone pole, got out and hiked up the rest of the mountain, only to find myself EXACTLY in the same place I tried to get the car up before, but no house. After several more tries and accepting that I would probably come careening down this mountain in my little rental at some point, I finally found it... 😅...now that I was covered in sweat and my maxi dress full of grass.
Oh, and did I mention they drive on the left side of the road here? Because that added just a little more fun to the adventure. Once relief set in, I hopped right back in my rental with my gracious AirBnB host who invited me to a Thanksgiving dinner with him. We headed back down the mountain and into a dinghy over to Thanksgiving dinner. It was almost like Thanksgiving at home. Plenty of food and everyone was very welcoming, even though I had to explain 9,386,489 times why I came to St. Thomas and yes, I knew that they had just been hit by two hurricanes.
But, I did meet a very nice couple who charter a sailboat called Rumbaba. They said they were going out on the boat the next day to St. John to drop some friends off and I should hop on the boat with them. So, I did.
ST. JOHN
At 7am sharp, I met Christina and Jon out at the docks of Red Hook, already getting eaten alive by mosquitos and no-see-ums. I swear, I lathered on every kind of insect repellent and they still loved me anyways.
Rumbaba at 7am
Off we went!
The little dinghy behind the boat which reminded me of Malta, where they put "seeing eyes" on the boats to keep them safe
The weather was perfect and the scenery was beautiful. Every direction you looked out there was turquoise blue water and mountains jutting out from the sea. You could see the mansions built out over the water on the mountainsides. Would have been a perfect day for sailing, if only there was any wind. But we made it to St. John. We sailed into Cruz Bay where we had breakfast and got back on the boat for some snorkeling.
We spent all day going to different bays on St. John, each more beautiful than the last. St. John, like St. Thomas, is surrounded on every side by perfect white sand beaches, with crystal clear turquoise water.
The beaches reminded me of the 7 mile beach in Grand Cayman, except that the Virgin Islands had so many more beautiful beaches. And the best part was that post-hurricane, they haven't had a lot of tourists, so we had almost every beach to ourselves. We snorkeled Trunk Bay, Francis Bay and Maho Bay before heading back to St Thomas for the night.
DIVING
While you might think I had enough after one whole day on the water, you would be mistaken. The next day I hopped on a dive boat to go diving on some reefs.
Off of Little St. James Island
We went out on two dives. One to Cow and Calf Reef and the second off of Little St. James Island. Apparently, the story is Little St. James Island is privately owned by this rich guy, Jeffrey Epstein, who got in trouble with the law. He was ordered to be on house arrest, so this guy bought an island as his home. And he's supposedly had all sorts of famous people come to visit him on this island, as his house arrest lasted several years. By the way, that little blue and white striped building you see in the picture used to have a gold roof, but that was lost in the hurricane.
Our lovely Captain Jacob of JJ Divers
Anywho...the diving was amazing! I was so disappointed I forgot to bring the GoPro for this trip. We caught lobsters and lion fish. We spotted an eagle ray, and on our second dive we saw a huge nurse shark in the reef who we fed the lion fish to. But, you'll just have to take my word for it.
Except for on the lobsters. I took plenty of pictures of those.
Now, the end of our diving trip comes with another good story.
We were all getting a lesson in how to properly clean a lobster.
You gotta rip its tail off and toss the head. Then clean the guts out. The most important part is, when you're ripping the lobster in half, not to drop the tail in the water. There was a group of hungry tarpon swimming around our boat at the dock waiting to snap up some food.
Seems easy enough, right? So next up to be cleaned is the biggest lobster we caught. I mean, just look at the size of that thing...
And good guy, Paul, who went diving with us volunteers to try it out.
working on it...
now he's got it
So, after he twists the tail off the lobster successfully, without dropping it, he stands there proud of his handiwork. Then he promptly chucks the tail into the water without a second thought and turns back to us, with a smile on his face before he realizes, probably from the horror on our faces, that he's only holding the head and the tail is gone to the tarpons.
It was like "opening a jar" he said, because you open the jar and then chuck the top without thinking about it. He got so much crap that day for losing that giant lobster tail though. We even had a scuba diver go in after the tail, but never found it.
THE LAST DAY
After two adventure-packed days in the Virgin Islands, I wasn't gonna leave the island without squeezing some more fun in on my last day. So, my last day there, before heading to the airport, I woke up at 6:30am and went on a road trip around the whole island of St. Thomas (or should I say struggled through those mountains in my poor rental?).
It took me probably around 2.5-3 hrs to go around the whole island in and out, including several stops at viewpoints and beaches. The roads may have been a struggle (not just steep and winding, but some off-roading and lots of pot-holes) but the views off the roads were amazing. Because the roads went up into the mountains, around every corner you would get an awesome panorama of the houses below or the beaches and the water and far off mountain islands.
I'll just give you a brief synopsis of my road trip in pictures.
Hull Bay (North End)
Secret Harbor
Coki Beach
Charlotte Amalie (the capital)
And I still made it to my flight super early. The airport is going through construction from hurricane damage, so I was advised to come 3 hrs early. Apparently they were hand checking each bag without an x-ray machine, unpacking and repacking everything.
Of course, I have to post my obligatory sunset pictures too...
Until next time St. Thomas!
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