St Croix

We do pay a price for these exotic holidays you know - and not just in dollars (although the dollar amount wasn't too bad!). We were on an 8am flight out of Dulles, so factoring in the drive out there, Hils and Paul picked us up at 5:30am. Which meant that I was out of bed at 4:30am. And because I was running around until 11pm packing, buffing and polishing, I paid in sleep! And will subsequently pay in extra polyfiller and paint required to make me look human!

When I booked the holiday on Monday, the girl from Expedia had said something about there only being 2 seats each side, so it must be a small plane. WRONG!! The flight from IAD to San Juan (in Puerto Rico) was in business class so we had red carpet treatment all the way!! My goodness, its the way to travel. Life behind the curtain is good!! Proper glasses for your drinks, a cooked breakfast...a girl could get used to it!!

On the red carpet. First class all the way!! (Or at least for the first flight!)

We weren't overly impressed with Puerto Rico when we flew over. It looked very built up - all high rise hotels. We had a short stop-over which we spent in the bar (where else?), before we hopped onto the turbo-prop for the island hop to St Croix (or Saint Croy as we've learnt to pronounce it). They announced a small delay as they were loading more luggage. We decided to accept this with good humour as it looked suspiciously like our luggage!!

The boys went off to sort out the hire car, and Hils and I went off to collect the luggage (and have a complimentary rum punch). We managed this without incident, unlike the boys who were STILL at the Avis desk as the lady on duty was having a moment as there was more than one customer that day... It was a fairly uneventful drive to the hotel. Stephen was navigating (not familiar territory for him!) and there were only a couple of confused moments...mostly down to not recognising that the B road was actually the major highway we were supposed to take!!

The hotel was nice. Surrounded in a horseshoe by hills covered in lush tropical vegetation. The rooms were huge, with a veranda, a sitting room, bedroom, shower area and vanity area. The rooms were maybe a little tired, but the public areas of the hotel were really nicely done. The rooms are due a refurb over the summer, so I guess they'll address the minor issues with the rooms. The pool was lovely - pretty deserted the entire time we were there - so we settled down for some ray-catching and a rum punch. This was something of a recurring theme!! The rum punches were damn fine!!!

Our room

Approaching the pool

The hotel grounds

The utterly gorgeous beach. The water was crystal clear.

The beach

Looking down towards the resort from the road

We were up at a reasonable time, despite being woken at 4am by a huge thunderstorm. As we were sitting down to breakfast Stephen spotted a school of fish leaping in the waves near the shore, their silvery bodies glistening in the (rather subdued) sunlight. This caused much excitement among everyone on the terrace including the staff!

We headed out in the afternoon with the idea of going to Christiansted. We only got a mile or so down the road to Cane Beach when we passed the St Croix Annual Kallaloo and Gumbo contest. There was a band as well as gumbo, so we stopped for a bit. It was packing up as we got there, so we got our bowls of gumbo for free. Very delicious! But the chef wasn't giving away his secret ingredient, no matter how much he was pressed...

We drove on towards Christiansted - which was closed! We walked around taking photos of the town which was pretty in a Caribbean falling-down kind of way. We jumped onto a little water taxi over to a hotel situated on a little island just in the harbour. We got fantastic views back to the town and all the buildings (including the fort) in its vibrant yellow colour.

Christiansted - on the boardwalk

The hotel on the island

View from the island to the town

We had dinner in Bogey's on the way back to the hotel. It had great sunset views and so Hils and I settled down with a drink whilst Paul and Stephen disappeared off to take loads of sunset photos. Both are keen photographers, so we were truly photo widows for a while. Lots of talk of f-stops and white balance. Stephen's camera is brand new and the manual is around an inch thick, so its taking him a while to fully get to grips with all its features!







Hils was disappointed to be denied lobster (it looked delicious) as they were expecting a party of 10 in for dinner and wanted to hold all their available lobster for them. Obviously a lobster shortage on St Croix!!

On Monday we went to Fredericksted (after pool lounging of course!). The drive there was interesting. One minute the road was fine, the next (as we got to the rain forest bit) it was gravel and pot-holed track! It took us a while to bump our way down the road, with Stephen doing a sterling job of avoiding the suspension-breaking potholes. It spat us out on a really lovely beach with a bar! Yay!! We felt compelled to stop for a look around and a drink. Hils had a nasty experience when she was walking through the grass to the beach in her flip-flops and the grass viciously attacked her. Seriously - it was nasty barbed stuff that clung to everything. There was a very "enhanced" young lady on the beach who was the object of much male interest - our two included!! Us ladies were more intrigued by the fact she appeared to be rubbing lotion onto a guy old enough to be her father!! We got to Fredericksted - to find it was shut! It didn't look as appealing as Christiansted, so we basically got back in the car for a drive around the island. We ended up with the Inn at the Wall for dinner. Great pizza. Great Punch. Great guitarist/singer.

Keep off da tree mon!

At the Inn at the Wall - with our pints of punch! Very pink and shiny!!





Hils and Paul looking much less shiny and more refined!

As we had lost all sense by the time we got back to the hotel we had another couple of drinks. Stephen was on a catch up mission as he'd been the designated driver, so he ordered a Painkiller - about 3 or four types of rum mixed together topped off with a miniscule dash of coke - then sent it back because he didn't think it had enough rum in it!! It came back with another generous half bottle or so in it. He could taste it then!! We had an uproarious rum-fuelled time....and struggled the next morning! None of us had anything more taxing for breakfast than toast and fruit!! And it was very telling that the order for lunchtime drinks was 4 cokes instead of the usual 4 rum punches!! Of course, this was the day we had planned to do the rum distillery tour! It took us a little while to find the place. Stephen had got us to the right place, but all of us failed to spot the large signs which said "Cruzan rum distillery tours this way" and other such small hints... It was only $4 for the tour, and it was accordingly informative...I now know that rum is made from molasses, yeast and water and that their stuff is sent to Florida to be bottled before being sent back...and that's about it!! Nothing about the history of the distillery, what molasses is etc. You did get a free rum punch at the end though. I think we all drank it like medicine!! It was cheap to buy their product though - $4 for a bottle!!

Lots of grog

We then went onto Christiansted again for a little light shopping. It was open this time! And there were some charming little shops. Hils got a lovely beaded bracelet, and I got a butterfly wrap which can be worn 5 ways. Its pretty light and scrunches up small, so its perfect for stuffing into my travel bag as I always feel cold on flights. Hils was very taken with the furniture shop across the street - until she realised it was a hotel lobby! Easy mistake to make...it didn't have a name, just a sign which said Open and reception was hidden behind a table and enormous flower display. After an ice cream we jumped back into the car to go to the Eastern most point of the USA - Point Udall. It was another bumpy ride for the last mile or so...which made the sunset chasing on the way back a little interesting! It had been a little cloudy, but suddenly the sun appeared and was making a rapid descent so we were desperately trying to get back to a spot (a bar preferably!) where we could watch it set. Of course, we were at the most eastern point of the island and the sun sets in the west, so it wasn't going to be an easy job...we gave up after trying 3 spots and went back to Christiansted for dinner.

We were walking around the boardwalk looking for somewhere for dinner, when this couple came staggering towards us. The woman could not walk straight - she was literally bouncing off the walls as her husband did a valiant job of trying to keep her upright. As we rounded the corner we came across a whole bunch of similarly plastered people - right off the sunset sailing trip to Buck Island. Everyone was totally sozzled!! They must have been really generous with the rum punches onboard.

We had dinner in the brew pub, and were sufficiently recovered to take full advantage of the 2 for 1 offer on beer and well drinks (which turned out to be G&T and rum and coke etc). Don't know exactly why the call them well drinks, when they're going to make you anything but...

There was a great guitarist singer playing in the bar. Hold on! Doesn't he look familiar to you?? Yes, it was the same guy from last night!! So we had the pleasure of listening to Mercy Childs two nights in a row.

Point Udall

Looking West from Point Udall

I woke up slightly pink this morning, so it was probably as well that the weather was a little overcast. We spent several minutes huddled together under the pool umbrella waiting for the rain showers to pass. Stephen had a little visitor to his sunbed - a little baby gecko. Just as well he didn't crawl on me - otherwise he would have been an airborne baby gecko!

A baby gecko crawling onto Stephen's flip flop

Paul and Hils headed back to DC on Wednesday after lunch, so we hired a jeep and did a little exploring. The USVI tourist office are very generous. When we checked in we got a $100 room credit, a $50 gift card and 4 vouchers which could be traded in for spa treatments, tours, golf and car hire. So we have them to thank for our 2 day jeep hire. We decided to take a run to South Point beach - supposed to be the most beautiful on the island. We got there to discover it was closed until September as there were sea turtles nesting on the beach. Then we decided Whim Plantation would be interesting - Closed! The Botanical Gardens - Closed!! Really there was nothing else for it than to find a nice bar and enjoy happy hour. We headed back to the bar where we had seen the "Keep off da tree, Mon" sign and had a really delicious meal. It was the most "Caribbean" meal we'd had! (Although it was actually fusion cuisine). Jerked chicken spring rolls with lots of ginger, followed by West Indian Shrimp curry which was simply delicious and a slow burner....didn't seem too hot, but had a surprise in store! The chef was from Dominica and the waiter was from Virginia. The place was really busy that night and he was practically running from tables on the terrace to tables on the beach. He could definitely do speed-walking at the Olympics!!



We cashed in another couple of our vouchers for a massage and a manicure on Thursday morning. We hit the pool for a while, but it was really showery and it didn't take long before we got fed up being rained on and headed off and to try and get into the places we didn't see yesterday. Whim Plantation was quite interesting. There were structures all over the island which had been the subject of debate - some in the car had thought they were defensive towers, and others had thought they were windmills for sugar production. Well, all I can say is Girl Power!! We were of course, correct!! At one point the whole of St Croix - even the mountainous bit - were planted with sugar cane and, as all the plantations had to harvest and process the cane at the same time, they each had to have their own sugar mill - and often distillery! The visit answered some unanswered questions, so here is a brief guide to sugar production! After the cane was cut (apparently women were better at this than men), the stalks were fed through the mill once to break up the cane, then again to extract the cane juice. The juice was then heated in a series of copper pans, each smaller and hotter than the last with impurities being scooped off as they go. Finally the damp crystalised sugar (muscovado) was poured into large barrels (hogsheads) and the liquid that drains out is molasses - which is used in rum production. (Interesting fact - most brown sugars these days are made by combining white refined sugar with molasses, whereas muscovado is the real deal).



From Whim we went to the Botanical Gardens which were lovely. There was (another) sugar mill and distillery in the grounds as well as a water wheel and sections of tropical rain forest. We didn't realise that the map was practically lifesize and ended up missing the turning for the short route we had planned to take and ended up trecking through the rainforest section - complete with bitey insects and things rustling in the bushes. Arrgh! Get me out of here!!!!!

The Whim Windmill

The Plantation House at Whim

Ruins at the Botanic Gardens

Beautiful bouganvillia

I have to admit, I'm glad we didn't have the jeep when Paul and Hils were here. It was a struggle for me (with my short legs) to get into the front of the jeep. It would have taken two strong men and a winch to get me into the back!! It was only a two door, so getting into the back would have involved a double stretch. Lets face it - its hard enough getting into the back of a 2 door Fiesta - and that's pretty much at ground level!! But the jeep allowed us to take the scenic drive, so it was good to have for a couple of days.

The scenic drive was pretty scenic! You got fantastic views from the mountains that ringed the hotel, out over the island (views from one coast to the other! its only 7 miles...) and over the clear aquamarine sea. The scenic drive is also "4-WD only" for a good reason!! The tarmac disappeared after about 15 feet, and we were bumping along through enormous puddles, mud and potholes. Then we got onto the really bad bit - and discovered that it was actually route 58!!! We were laughing our heads off when we saw the sign! We weren't laughing quite as hard when we got to a junction of 3 dirt tracks and took one...which quickly degenerated into two tyre tracks though the grass. We stopped to take in the view and I was looking down a sheer drop down a cliff from the car window. We decided that we probably should make our way back. Stephen turned to me:

"I'm going to need your help"

"Okay. What do you want me to do?"

"Get into the drivers seat and turn the car around for me"

Having assessed the options we decided to press on for a bit until we could find somewhere to turn that wouldn't involve us manually lifting the car up to turn it!! Eventually we came to a turning spot, but only after driving along a track with a big drop and a huge camber which felt like we were about to pitch sideways over the edge...which we then had to pass back along to reach the more major dirt track. The adrenalin was pumping!!!

As feared - the shorts do make me look like Lofty! Me beside the jeep.

In retrospect this bit of the road didn't seem too bad!!

Highway 58....

A little bumpier - but again - in retrospect...

Compared to this section anything we had bounced across previously was like the M25!!

The views were worth it though! The resort nestling by the beach.

Look at that view!

Friday was the usual rush of fitting in the packing with the rays-catching by the pool. We shared a taxi down to the airport with another couple who were telling us that the former Attorney General Gonzales was staying at the resort and had been down at breakfast this morning. Can't say that I would have recognised him, but apparently all of the Americans did.

We had fun at the airport. Firstly it seems like American changed their checked baggage policy whilst we were away and wanted to charge us $25 to check a 3rd case. As it was tiny we decided to take it as carry-on. Of course, as we went through security I lost my super-duper tropical strength (necesary in by backyard!) mozzie repellant as I had forgotten I had stuffed it into the case and it was too big for TSA regulations. We also could have had fun when we got to immigration - just as well we actually took our passports is all I can say!! Everyone had told me that you don't need a passport to go to the USVI. And you don't - as long as you are American!!!! Because its a territory rather than a state, different rules apply. We got all the way to Hawaii and back on our US drivers licences...but this was different! No problem getting into the USVI - but it could have been a big problem getting out!!