Skyflower 2013 Trip Report - Part 1 (Getting There)

dreamshark · Post by **dreamshark** » Fri Jul 26, 2013 7:29 pm

WEDNESDAY - travel day
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Up at 4am, and off to St John! Both flights right on time (has that ever happened before on American? I don't think so!) Arrived at 3:25, but missed 4pm ferry by a mile due to huge crowds at taxi stand. Let a porter take our bags at the ferry terminal and had painkillers at the bar: best decision of the day.

To StJ Spice for coffee, grill rub, wristbands. Spent $2 on a bag of genips on the street sold by a gentleman named Lion, who was also kind enough to show me how to eat them. Interesting fruit. Checked in to Boutique Hotel, then met up with Eagle Ray Lover (and canine friend Patches) @Beach Bar. Had nice chat, drinks and appetizers. Tuna bites were spectacular. But then, our first meal in the USVI always tastes spectacular, so my judgement may be suspect here. Leslie, thanks SO much for greeting us to the island! It made me feel really at home. R was getting a cold, and was exhausted and grumpy. However he pulled himself together enough to shower and shave off his 'stache (for snorkeling, y'know). He felt a little happier after a bushwacker or two.

: Cruz Bay Boutique Hotel

THURSDAY - into the villa
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7:00 am. Continental brkfst on patio. Beautiful day, but even the locals were calling it hot. I got up early so I could hike around Cruz Bay, checking out the whereabouts of some of the rental properties I've looked at online (because, you just never know). R let me drag him to an early breakfast, but decided to skip the hike and nap in the air-conditioned room until they kicked us out. I walked up, over and down to Frank Bay, up and down a couple of other hills, then back up Seagrape Lane. Frangipani (my favorite of the Star Villas) turns out to be close to the Battery Hill Condoplex, very walkable to town. Aqua Bay is halfway down the hill to Frank Bay from Battery Hill. Took pictures of various villas, Frank Bay, and every cemetery I passed (more than you might expect).

: Frank Bay

2:10 PM We arrive at Skyflower! On our own, as greeter flaked out on us. Magnificent villa - even better than the online pictures. Many places claim to have the "best view on St. John" but this one may actually be it. Wow. Minor crisis when we couldn't find the blender, but R located it in a pantry and created a new drink to christen the place: the Coconut Skyflower.

: Approaching Skyflower

: The Coconut Skyflower

4:00 pm or so: 1st snorkel @ Maho. Successful but not outstanding. I decided to start simple, leaving my weight belt and camera behind (thus no pictures). R's new equipment worked great. I'm not so sure about my new fins. Water was murky & coral on right side in terrible shape. But R found a huge green turtle almost immediately. A few colourful reef fish (queen angelfish, French parrot, and some of those black & white angels). Another snorkeler found a moss encrusted conch shell inhabited by the world's biggest hermit crab. That was cool. I dropped it when it suddenly snapped at me.

Dinner: Dreamshark Sandwiches, fresh apricots and more rum drinks on balcony.

A few issues with the house, which is gorgeous and well designed but sort of complicated to operate. And I knocked down the post holding the keypad for the donkey gate. Oops. I'll have to call somebody about that tomorrow.

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FRIDAY - first full day in villa

: First Dawn

5:45: Sun comes knocking on our bedroom window. I grab my iPhone from the bedside table, take a picture of the dawn, and bury my head in the pillow for another hour of sleep. Then I get up and make coffee and eggs Florentine, using that as an excuse to drag R out of bed. Small disappointment when we realize that if you get up this early the sun is still coming under the roof of the splendiferous 40-foot balcony and shining in your eyes, so we end up having breakfast inside at the kitchen island. You can still see the view, but you have to turn your head. Hmff.

Somehow it takes another half day to get settled. I call caretaker Roy with some questions about the house and the bad news about the keypad post. Then we head down into Coral Bay to look for Josephine's Greens, stock up on rum and ice cream, and pick up sandwiches at Pickles. By the time we get back to the villa Roy has come and gone, remounting the keypad and helpfully connecting my iPod to the inscrutable Home Entertainment Center via a mysterious cable he fished out from behind something.

Then we sort our gear, reassigning pieces of our carefully packed carryon-only luggage to serve as beach bags. Sometime in mid-afternoon we finally head out for a snorkel at Haulover South. I have a great time, starting right out with a couple of sightings of our mascot Lucky Trunkfish, and nice coral and reef fish up the left side of the bay. Starting to get the hang of the new Aqualung fins. They are awesome for free diving, but I'm finding them cumbersome for ordinary surface snorkeling. They seem to be angled wrong for that, keep popping out of the water. Richard still loves his new Tusa travel fins, but has a lot of trouble with his mask fogging up. This is because we have forgotten the lessons that Cap'n Phil taught us 4 years ago, and we haven't gotten to the part of our trip where we relearn it (foreshadowing!).

We are unable to get the grill to work, but the gourmet kitchen includes a huge stainless steel skillet which R uses to whip up a stir-fry with pork and fresh vegies from Josephine's served with rum ice-cream drinks. Delish. We wrap up the evening hot-tubbing under the perplexing southern stars. I vow to look up that strange checkmark-shaped constellation on the Internet, but then I forget.

pcs15 · Post by **pcs15** » Fri Jul 26, 2013 9:20 pm

We'll be making our second visit to Skyflower in Oct. so are reliving our first trip vicariously through your posts! Glad to hear the blender is still there and you are enjoying your trip!

Pat

EagleRayLover · Post by **EagleRayLover** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 12:53 am

My pleasure meeting up with you guys! So many fun things to share with forumite friends!

dreamshark · Post by **dreamshark** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 1:36 pm

pcs15 wrote:We'll be making our second visit to Skyflower in Oct. so are reliving our first trip vicariously through your posts! Glad to hear the blender is still there and you are enjoying your trip!
Pat

Well, you'll be happy to hear that Roy mounted a little flag on top of the re-welded keypad post to make it easier to NOT run into as you're making that sharp turn into the driveway.

Also, I labeled some of the 20+ light switches in the great room to make it a little easier to turn on a ceiling fan without disabling an outlet, and wrote up step-by-step instructions for switching the Home Entertainment Center from TV to CD/DVD player to MP3 player (look in the drawer of the coffee table).

That's what I meant by "issues with the house." In all the important ways it is still an incredibly beautiful villa in impeccable condition. :

GotToGetAway · Post by **GotToGetAway** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 2:40 pm

Curious how you liked being in Cruz Bay for a night since I know you are Coral Bay kind of people?

Love the view from Skyflower! Is that off Bourdeaux Mtn Rd?

dreamshark · Post by **dreamshark** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 3:34 pm

GotToGetAway wrote:Curious how you liked being in Cruz Bay for a night since I know you are Coral Bay kind of people?

That doesn't mean I hate Cruz Bay. It's a cute little tourist town, fun to walk around in. But I purely HATE driving in it (and DH doesn't like driving on island at all), which severely limits the amount of time I spend there. Since we'd both rather sit on our balcony and look at the view than spend the evening in a bar or restaurant, we usually stay on the other side of the island. But I thought it would be fun to plan the trip so we got to spend a little time in Cruz Bay either at the beginning or the end. That was definitely fun, and I'd do it again. I've also played with the idea of taking a solo trip and staying in town, just for variety.

GotToGetAway wrote:Love the view from Skyflower! Is that off Bourdeaux Mtn Rd?

Yes it is. In fact, it is one of the highest rental villas on the Coral Bay side of Rte 108 (which Google thinks of as Bordeaux Mtn Rd, but the locals call Costanzo Rd.). Monkey No Climb is on a side road just a little further up 108, but it's located a little below the road so I think it's at about the same altitude as Skyflower. We drove on up over the top to Centerline and didn't see any other houses between us and the peak except scary looking hillbilly houses.

pcs15 · Post by **pcs15** » Sat Jul 27, 2013 9:44 pm

YAY!!! is what my husband said when I read your post about labeling the light switches! I had forgotten that challenge! And the directions for the DVD, etc. will be very helpful as well. We didn't have issues with the keypad but it is a really tight turn.

It sounds like you drove up the road to get to Centerline instead of going back to Coral Bay? How is that drive? I was cautioned against it here on the forum so we never tried it. I would imagine it is much shorter unless you have to go incredibly slow?

I agree with your philosophy of preferring to be at the house enjoying the view instead of in a restaurant. Our solution a couple of nights was takeout from Shipwreck - love their grouper fish and chips.

Enjoy!!!!
Pat

dreamshark · Post by **dreamshark** » Sun Jul 28, 2013 12:16 am

It sounds like you drove up the road to get to Centerline instead of going back to Coral Bay? How is that drive? I was cautioned against it here on the forum so we never tried it. I would imagine it is much shorter unless you have to go incredibly slow?

We took the Centerline route a couple of times. It's a little shorter, but doesn't save you much time, if any. There's only about 1/2 mile of road still unpaved, but that 1/2 mile is very slow going. By all means give it a try and decide for yourself which you prefer. But try it first in the daytime - it is actually possible to get lost.

mindehankins · Post by **mindehankins** » Mon Jul 29, 2013 9:53 am

I started out not liking Cruz Bay, then sort of liking it then loving it and now I'm on to not minding driving around there one little bit. At least you tried something different. I'll bet your investigative walk was alot of fun!
Can't wait to read about the rest of your trip

Foreshadowing.... Duhn, Duhn, DUHHHNNNNN....

Bluestreak12 · Post by **Bluestreak12** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:28 pm

Hi Dreamshark!

We just got back home early this morning at 1:30am! The pictures of Skyflower don't do it justice. It is an amazing view!

We had an amazing time. Each day was perfect.

Love reading your report and thanks for having us over on Saturday!

-Steve

dreamshark · Post by **dreamshark** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 4:52 pm

It was fun to meet you - hope it wasn't too overwhelming on your first night.

One Particular Harbor is prettier than its pictures too, imho. It's hard for any amateur photographer to do justice to those views. I hope you'll write a trip report. Did you ever get any mountaintop pictures of thunderstorms? How about anti-crepuscular rays?

Bluestreak12 · Post by **Bluestreak12** » Tue Jul 30, 2013 7:15 pm

No such luck with the thunderstorm or rays

I may do a quick summary on our trip. I don't have a gift though like you do for relaying how wonderful everything was. I was quickly brought back to reality driving on St. Thomas. What a difference between the two islands! I worked today even though we just got back early this morning. That too was a wake up call.

Looking forward to the rest of your trip report!

cindygad · Post by **cindygad** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 12:33 pm

Enjoying your report. I have never ate a genips are they good? Looks like a great way to start trip staying at Boutique hotel.

Care to share your icecream rum drinks?

Looking forward to the rest.

dreamshark · Post by **dreamshark** » Thu Aug 01, 2013 3:03 pm

cindygad wrote:Enjoying your report. I have never ate a genips are they good?

They're a perfect thing to eat while sitting on the balcony looking at the view. They're grape-sized, but with an inedible shell. You delicately bite down on the shell until it cracks neatly in half. Then you pull off one half of the shell, and daintily squirt the genip into your mouth from the remaining half shell. The fruit is custardy and clings fairly tightly to the cherry-sized pit. So really, you have no choice but to swish it around in your mouth for awhile, sucking it off the pit. Then you throw the pit off the balcony into the mango trees, saying "Grow, little genip!" I hope the next time we go back to Skyflower we'll find genips growing among the mangoes.

cindygad wrote: Care to share your icecream rum drinks?

Hmm. That seems like a good subject for a separate post. If I forget, you can do it - I'm sure everybody has a favorite thing to do with the villa blender.

dreamshark · Post by **dreamshark** » Mon Sep 02, 2013 1:42 pm

Yes, I am replying to my own post.

I just wanted to add links to the other segments of my trip report:

Pictures: https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1093 ... 0589524033

Part 2: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... +2#p282448
Part 3: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... +2#p282514
Part4: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... er#p282558
Part5: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... +skyflower
Part6: http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/v ... er#P282659

usvi-on-line