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Caribbean hiking on Saint John

Allyson — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:26:23 +0000

RH note: This week we’re happy to feature posts by Andy and Shaira, who honeymooned on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. John.

Andy says: For all of the good seafood and tropical fruit to be eaten, the real attraction here is nature. In a fitting story for Saint John, the National Park was donated to the US Park Service by Laurence Rockefeller who bought the island earlier in the century after admiring it from his yacht. This has led to the vast majority of the island being protected, accessible only by hiking trail (including several pristine beaches). Trails lead directly from Cruz Bay into the hinterlands. One easy hike (1/2 hour) from the park headquarters in Cruz Bay will take you to the aptly named Honeymoon Beach, which on the day we visited it, we had to share with just two other people.

It is hard to put into words the kind of beauty these places hold – let me just say that when you are here you find the essential – and still pristine – source of all of the television and magazine clichés of the “tropics” you are used to seeing all of the time, in real life (perhaps a bit like being in “Lost”, except there is no man-eating smoke or rampaging, gun-toting hippies). It’s amazing.

A word for the wise though – resist the lazy decision to wear your sandals or flip-flops on these trails: the terrain can be rocky and most of the island is steep inclines and descents, so hiking requires both the right shoes and fair physical condition.

Another great trail is the Reef Bay trail. Although we are pretty hard-core do-it-yourself types, taking the guided version of that hike with a ranger/archeologist is really great. The theme of the hike when we took it was the “edible jungle” so we worked our way through the tropical forest eating incredibly bizarre nuts and plants (including a so-called “natural protein-powder” found in seed pods that tastes identical to bananas). The hike also includes some poignant reminders of the Caribbean’s history of conquest and empire: there are pre-Columbian Taino petroglyphs and the ruins of a sugar plantation (including the slave quarters). The plantation buildings are particularly striking and eerie – they are teeming with bat colonies and the 19th century machinery used to process cane sugar is still present.

From here the walk concludes at a pristine beach, where you rendez-vous with a waiting boat, joining it by way of a rubber zodiac (or if you happen to be a tri-athlete, swimming out to it, as some apparently do). The skipper of the boat, incidentally, is also worth chatting up: he’s a retired coast guard captain who sailed around the world from California only to end up on the island towards the end of his voyage; one of many visitors to Saint John, it seemed, who happened upon the place and never left.

Dining options on Saint John

Allyson — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:25:57 +0000

RH note: This week we’re happy to feature posts by Andy and Shaira, who honeymooned on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. John.

Andy says: RH note: This week we’re happy to feature posts by Andy and Shaira, who honeymooned on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. John.

Andy says: Saint John’s one and only town is Cruz Bay, home to well over half of the island’s 4000 inhabitants. However, for such a scant village, it has better dining options than some medium sized cities we’ve visited on the American mainland. As for specific spots to eat, Waterfront Bistro has a really impressive French influenced menu with especially good wines, Rhumb Lines has a great Caribbean – Asian fusion, and Sheila’s Pot has humble but not to be missed “island” or Caribbean-style fare.

The must-have at all of these spots is Mahi-mahi (when in season of course) – it is often prepared in a coconut sauce – which left us craving it long after we left. Just be prepared to shell it out here: Saint John isn’t called the “Beverly Hills of the Caribbean” for nothing, and it’s nearly impossible to dine at any of the island’s restaurants for less $100 a meal for two. In a place where even mediocre bar food will cost you dearly, your best bet is to “get your money’s worth” and go for the nice spots, since after all they are very, very good (and not that much more expensive, given the overall prices, than burgers).

Clearly, many of the folks around us were used to coughing up these kinds of prices without batting an eyelash, but we, as a couple of public-sector employees, kept a stiff upper lip, often having deli sandwiches for lunch and fresh fruit for breakfast to control our budget (but hey… it was a honeymoon!).

This is not to say that there are absolutely no bargains to be had. Our favorite idea for a cheap snack, which seemed to be overlooked by the other tourists (but not lost on the islanders) was found hanging on the trees around us. For a couple dollars as “tip”, some of the guys employed in pruning back the coconut trees would, with a few swift licks of the machete, crack open coconuts (don’t forget the all important ‘spoon’ cut to get the juicy pulp) and voila – a tasty beverage and snack in one go! This being the tropics, there are also a plethora of fresh squeezed fruit juice stands selling mango and passion fruit concoctions (and they can, for an extra charge, add a little rum if want an extra spring in your step). Now that’s paradise.

Arriving by boat to beautiful Saint John

Allyson — Mon, 03 May 2010 13:19:19 +0000

RH note: This week we’re happy to feature posts by Andy and Shaira, who honeymooned on the beautiful Caribbean island of St. John.

Andy says: After a wonderful wedding weekend (but a hectic 6 months of planning) we were thrilled to get out of New York and down to the Caribbean. Saint John is one of the US Virgin Islands, a very small archipelago located off the northeast corner of Puerto Rico and about a four hour flight from New York. Since there is no airport on Saint John itself, (the roughly Manhattan-sized island is mostly covered by Virgin Islands National Park) you have to fly into the larger island of Saint Thomas. From there you catch a boat for the 45 minute ride over to the Island – there’s simply no better way to start a vacation than getting almost straight out of a cramped airliner directly onto the brilliant blue Caribbean waters.

Saint John has a number of places to stay… although we’re not big resort types we ended up at the Westin Saint John; it had the right promotion on and – since we gambled by booking at the height of hurricane season – was not terribly crowded.