STJ Fall 2010 Trip Report - Day 4
Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 9:54 am
Link to Day 1 - http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/f ... hp?t=18383
Link to Day 2 - http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/f ... hp?t=18387
Link to Day 3 - http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/f ... hp?t=18398
Sunday morning we woke up for the first time at our Fish Bay villa. While we were having breakfast it started to rain. The day before was the first time we'd heard of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Tomas, and we were told that we could see some less than stellar weather on Sunday and into Monday from that system. Since it was south of us, and we were staying on the south shore, we could certainly expect some swells to roll in. While we were still pondering whether (no pun intended) or not this would turn into a villa day, the rain stopped and the sun peeked through the clouds. We took this as a sign that we should get out and play!
Since we expected the south shore to be a little churned up we decided we'd hit a beach on the north shore. By my reckoning, Francis seemed to be as sheltered from the prevailing winds and swells as any, so we loaded up and headed down Marina Rd. We saw a young couple walking with backpacks that turned and looked at us as we approached. They weren't exhibiting any of the standard hitchhiking signals, but something moved me to stop and ask if they needed a ride, which they eagerly responded to in the affirmative. Turns out they were from Switzerland, had only arrived the night before, and had taken a taxi from the ferry dock in Cruz Bay(!). They had never been to the island before, had done some "research" on line and found a cheap place to stay, and were going to be here for a month! We drove them as far as the intersection of Gifft Hill Rd. and Centerline Rd. and wished them well.
We took Centerline as far as the smoothie stand, then turned left onto North Shore to get to Francis. For a moment, I almost changed my mind by taking a right hand turn to get to Leinster (it seemed bizzare to us to have been on St. John this long without snorkeling at Waterlemon) but we stuck to the original plan. We parked in the little lot in front of the trail that goes past the ruins and through the woods and comes out towards the right side of the beach.
It looked as though we had the place to ourselves, so we geared up and got in the water;
Although the visibility wasn't fantastic (we may have been spoiled in that regard by Haulover North on Friday!) it was certainly a great deal clearer than it had been on our trip here in July. We basically drifted down in the direction towards Mary Point. We managed to see several cool creatures on this excursion, including some squid, a green moray eel, a turtle and an octopus. Unfortunately not all of them were being cooperative photo models, but we did get a few pictures worth sharing:
After we got out, we dried off a little, then hiked back to the jeep, then made our way back down North Shore Rd. heading generally in the direction of town. As we neared the entrance to the Trunk Bay parking lot we thought we spotted a familiar face or two, so we turned in and - sure enough - there was the crew that were staying at La Papaya, in various stages of unloading their cars, and gathering at the admissions booth. It seems as though they had engaged in some late night/early morning "discussions" at their villa, and were settling down for a quiet and restful day at a beach with some facilities, and on this day, no cruise ship passengers. We told them we'd try and catch up with them later, and left them to their recovery while we went in search of some lunch.
[Communicating with that group was tricky the whole time we were there. Where we stayed we had no Verizon cell phone service, but the internet connection was fairly reliable. Their wi-fi wasn't working, but there was one place on the property where someone with a web enabled phone could sometimes receive email on it. We exchanged the villas' land line numbers, which helped somewhat, although obviously not when you were out and about.]
Into town and we scored a parking place in the lot across the street from the post office - for the second time on this trip! We call this the "haha lot" because we normally drive through it just for laughs because we've never had any luck finding an available spot to park there. We decided to try out the G-spot for lunch since we'd heard so many good things about the food they put out. Derek was manning the grill and he told me that my first choice, and basically, anything with chicken, was unavailable. I guess St. John Ruth's influence is growing!
I ended up ordering a gyro and Leslie decided to try out their highly acclaimed burger. The gyro was good, the burger, sad to say, not so much. I really expected to see a big, meaty beef patty such as you'd see at Skinny Legs, not the flat little puck that looked like what you'd find in a box in the frozen foods section. I can't imagine how their burgers got such a great reputation if they're always like that.
On the way back to Fish Bay we stopped at the St. John Market, the "new" place, just down from the Westin, to grab a few things we needed, and to check out their selection and prices. They had everything we were looking for except mosquito coils and/or candles. We had hoped to pick up something like that so that we could better enjoy the outdoor spaces at the villa, which were pretty buggy most of the time, especially with no-seeums.
Once we were back at the villa Leslie went inside to put the food away, check the computer, and such while I unloaded the snorkel gear to rinse it off. To my surprise, when I started taking our gear out of the bag, everything had ants all over it! Where in the heck did they come from?
Remember the back window-less jeep? It seems that while it had been sitting dormant over at the Dependable lot on St. Thomas a colony of ants had taken advantage of the easy access to build a nice little condo of their own in the hold below the back seat. Apparently something had stirred them from their slumber and they had determined that it was time to get out and infest, and our snorkel bag and its contents were target number one.
Luckily there was a can of ant spray at the villa, so after rinsing all of the ants off of the gear I located and treated the ant village that was thriving in the spare tire hold of the jeep, as well as a couple of outposts that were trying to stake a foothold in the cab proper.
When you stay at Fish Beach villa (as well as some others nearby as well I suspect) you are given directions to a "super-secret" trail that will lead you to a deserted, private beach. We were given these directions verbally by Jim, (from the villa management company) because our greeter couldn't locate the written set that was supposed to be left for villa guests (it must have been hiding out with the gallon of bottled water that wasn't there either). It seemed like as good a time as any to find that trail and beach, so off we set on foot to do just that.
The trail is little more than a poorly marked and overgrown path that does indeed lead you down to Cocoloba Point. I can envision this being a picturesque beach when there is little wind, no swells, and at low tide. We however encountered none of those, so it appeared to us as a windy and rocky beach with no available entry point and conditions that weren't really favorable for going into the water anyway. Oh well, maybe some other time. It certainly wasn't terrible, but considering all of the catch-and-keep and cactus we had to navigate through and around to get to it, it wasn't exactly what we had hoped for either.
The view towards Reef Bay isn't bad, and we did see a little wildlife on our way back:
Once we got back from our little hike we agreed that our next stop should be Pool Beach! Since it wasn't too close to dusk yet the bugs left us alone to the point where we were able to hang out in the water, have a beverage or two, and just enjoy being on St. John!
After a dinner that featured grilled chicken we enjoyed another beautiful STJ sunset.
The evening hours were mostly spent checking emails, downloading pictures, and recharging batteries - phones, cameras, and ours(!), for the next day's adventures...
Link to Day 2 - http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/f ... hp?t=18387
Link to Day 3 - http://www.virgin-islands-on-line.com/f ... hp?t=18398
Sunday morning we woke up for the first time at our Fish Bay villa. While we were having breakfast it started to rain. The day before was the first time we'd heard of Tropical Storm/Hurricane Tomas, and we were told that we could see some less than stellar weather on Sunday and into Monday from that system. Since it was south of us, and we were staying on the south shore, we could certainly expect some swells to roll in. While we were still pondering whether (no pun intended) or not this would turn into a villa day, the rain stopped and the sun peeked through the clouds. We took this as a sign that we should get out and play!
Since we expected the south shore to be a little churned up we decided we'd hit a beach on the north shore. By my reckoning, Francis seemed to be as sheltered from the prevailing winds and swells as any, so we loaded up and headed down Marina Rd. We saw a young couple walking with backpacks that turned and looked at us as we approached. They weren't exhibiting any of the standard hitchhiking signals, but something moved me to stop and ask if they needed a ride, which they eagerly responded to in the affirmative. Turns out they were from Switzerland, had only arrived the night before, and had taken a taxi from the ferry dock in Cruz Bay(!). They had never been to the island before, had done some "research" on line and found a cheap place to stay, and were going to be here for a month! We drove them as far as the intersection of Gifft Hill Rd. and Centerline Rd. and wished them well.
We took Centerline as far as the smoothie stand, then turned left onto North Shore to get to Francis. For a moment, I almost changed my mind by taking a right hand turn to get to Leinster (it seemed bizzare to us to have been on St. John this long without snorkeling at Waterlemon) but we stuck to the original plan. We parked in the little lot in front of the trail that goes past the ruins and through the woods and comes out towards the right side of the beach.
It looked as though we had the place to ourselves, so we geared up and got in the water;
Although the visibility wasn't fantastic (we may have been spoiled in that regard by Haulover North on Friday!) it was certainly a great deal clearer than it had been on our trip here in July. We basically drifted down in the direction towards Mary Point. We managed to see several cool creatures on this excursion, including some squid, a green moray eel, a turtle and an octopus. Unfortunately not all of them were being cooperative photo models, but we did get a few pictures worth sharing:
After we got out, we dried off a little, then hiked back to the jeep, then made our way back down North Shore Rd. heading generally in the direction of town. As we neared the entrance to the Trunk Bay parking lot we thought we spotted a familiar face or two, so we turned in and - sure enough - there was the crew that were staying at La Papaya, in various stages of unloading their cars, and gathering at the admissions booth. It seems as though they had engaged in some late night/early morning "discussions" at their villa, and were settling down for a quiet and restful day at a beach with some facilities, and on this day, no cruise ship passengers. We told them we'd try and catch up with them later, and left them to their recovery while we went in search of some lunch.
[Communicating with that group was tricky the whole time we were there. Where we stayed we had no Verizon cell phone service, but the internet connection was fairly reliable. Their wi-fi wasn't working, but there was one place on the property where someone with a web enabled phone could sometimes receive email on it. We exchanged the villas' land line numbers, which helped somewhat, although obviously not when you were out and about.]
Into town and we scored a parking place in the lot across the street from the post office - for the second time on this trip! We call this the "haha lot" because we normally drive through it just for laughs because we've never had any luck finding an available spot to park there. We decided to try out the G-spot for lunch since we'd heard so many good things about the food they put out. Derek was manning the grill and he told me that my first choice, and basically, anything with chicken, was unavailable. I guess St. John Ruth's influence is growing!
I ended up ordering a gyro and Leslie decided to try out their highly acclaimed burger. The gyro was good, the burger, sad to say, not so much. I really expected to see a big, meaty beef patty such as you'd see at Skinny Legs, not the flat little puck that looked like what you'd find in a box in the frozen foods section. I can't imagine how their burgers got such a great reputation if they're always like that.
On the way back to Fish Bay we stopped at the St. John Market, the "new" place, just down from the Westin, to grab a few things we needed, and to check out their selection and prices. They had everything we were looking for except mosquito coils and/or candles. We had hoped to pick up something like that so that we could better enjoy the outdoor spaces at the villa, which were pretty buggy most of the time, especially with no-seeums.
Once we were back at the villa Leslie went inside to put the food away, check the computer, and such while I unloaded the snorkel gear to rinse it off. To my surprise, when I started taking our gear out of the bag, everything had ants all over it! Where in the heck did they come from?
Remember the back window-less jeep? It seems that while it had been sitting dormant over at the Dependable lot on St. Thomas a colony of ants had taken advantage of the easy access to build a nice little condo of their own in the hold below the back seat. Apparently something had stirred them from their slumber and they had determined that it was time to get out and infest, and our snorkel bag and its contents were target number one.
Luckily there was a can of ant spray at the villa, so after rinsing all of the ants off of the gear I located and treated the ant village that was thriving in the spare tire hold of the jeep, as well as a couple of outposts that were trying to stake a foothold in the cab proper.
When you stay at Fish Beach villa (as well as some others nearby as well I suspect) you are given directions to a "super-secret" trail that will lead you to a deserted, private beach. We were given these directions verbally by Jim, (from the villa management company) because our greeter couldn't locate the written set that was supposed to be left for villa guests (it must have been hiding out with the gallon of bottled water that wasn't there either). It seemed like as good a time as any to find that trail and beach, so off we set on foot to do just that.
The trail is little more than a poorly marked and overgrown path that does indeed lead you down to Cocoloba Point. I can envision this being a picturesque beach when there is little wind, no swells, and at low tide. We however encountered none of those, so it appeared to us as a windy and rocky beach with no available entry point and conditions that weren't really favorable for going into the water anyway. Oh well, maybe some other time. It certainly wasn't terrible, but considering all of the catch-and-keep and cactus we had to navigate through and around to get to it, it wasn't exactly what we had hoped for either.
The view towards Reef Bay isn't bad, and we did see a little wildlife on our way back:
Once we got back from our little hike we agreed that our next stop should be Pool Beach! Since it wasn't too close to dusk yet the bugs left us alone to the point where we were able to hang out in the water, have a beverage or two, and just enjoy being on St. John!
After a dinner that featured grilled chicken we enjoyed another beautiful STJ sunset.
The evening hours were mostly spent checking emails, downloading pictures, and recharging batteries - phones, cameras, and ours(!), for the next day's adventures...