Part 6- STJ Day

Please ignore any funny characters in my post, I copied text fro mWord and it picked up some characters where commas should be.

Sunday.

This was our day to go to St John. Originally, we¡¦d been planning to rent one of the dinghies and hit the beaches and waterlemon, but the big kids said they wanted to come along (we were graced with their divine presence, at long last ;).

The dinghy was $205 for the day and holds 4, so 6 of us would have required 2 of them. That just seemed like an expensive day, considering we'd just spent a day on Born to Rhumb, which doesn't come cheaply. I suggested we just take the van onto the car barge. Our group of 6 fit really comfortably in the van with all of our gear, chairs, noodles, etc. So, we decided to barge over and drive to the beach. The only downside was that the car ferry stops running at 6pm. That meant no staying late in Cruz Bay for dinner. Bummer!

First, we got up early and went to Blue Moon for breakfast. The SH resort is just down the hill from the villa. We parked and had a nice breakfast overlooking the beach in Blue moon's open air restaurant. It is covered in one area and there's also another area that is open to the sun on a stone patio, but it has umbrellas. Then there's a beach bar new the stone patio area. We opted for the shade. They have tons of ceiling fans and it stayed cool. The view is excellent. The STT Dump is in the viewable distance, but looks like just a brown hillside- way far off. If you ignore it, it goes away 🙂 - had things like crab eggs Benedict, Caribbean banana French toast, steak and eggs, and something else I can't remember.

Came back to the van, which was parked under a large, but low-hanging tree for shade - and found HUGE chunks of iguana poop on the van, in several places. I mean, this iguana must have been 5-6 feet and we swear their must have been at least 2 to make that much poop. Piles were larger than a fist and running down my passenger window in the front on MY door. Eoooooooowww! Everyone realized what it was, looked up into the trees and RAN! We feared being dropped on. Once we had the keys ready, we dashed in -- and I had to enter from the driver's side. Drove home talking about our poopy van. Pulled up and I instinctively opened my door!!!!!! Guess what - POOP dropped on me!! OMG!!! I screamed so loudly! Everyone got scared thinking the killer poop iguana was in the car, so they jumped out- Except Geoff, who leaned over the steering wheel and laughed his head off. I had to laugh. For the rest of the visit, I was "the poop lady¨.

Off to STJ, we caught the 10am car barge over. Bought a one way ticket in case we need to jump on the fist available barge coming back. It seemed that the barges were relatively busy.

On STJ, went to Dolphin mkt for ice and snacks , and cheeses. Had a cooler full of Heineken of water to begin with. Then off to Trunk Bay.

Hit the beach and walked left. found a really cool sheltered area under a roof of trees. Parked our things in there and put our chairs at the perimeter for nice shade. Our villa had these chairs that fold up and have backpack straps on them, as well as a large pouch area that serves as a sort of beach bag/storage. We were able to fit all of our stuff, sans the snorkel gear and cooler into the chair storage area, then carry them like backpacks on our backs. We had a soft-sided rolling cooler and mesh bag of snorkel gear. The system worked.

Beware: seagulls at trunk will eat your food -- and fight you for it if you resist! Seriously. We saw the warning signs at the concession, but didn't take it that seriously. As soon as we had our food, they came swooping down on this and one was actually tugging at the paper food tray that my sandwich was in. I tugged back and he actually held on and tugged more until Geoff nailed started waving a palm branch around. LOL -- Then we got back and gave the girls theirs and sure enough, one of the gulls came and took her hamburger, just seconds after I'd put the ketchup on it. Gone. Everyone had to protect their food and on person had to stand guard with the swim noodle while everyone else ate. Good grief.

We tried to take underwater pics here, but it was an overcast day and things just weren't clear.

The girls did their usual 4 across snorkel deal and we all went to the far right side along the rocks. It was a really interesting snorkel, but I was the closest to the rock wall and I kept getting pushed in pretty close and had a hard time maneuvering my way out with 3 people aside me, so I decided that it was too dangerous to continue to snorkel like that there. We did see squid¡But no turtles. The squid are so cute.

The girls had enough snorkeling, so Geoff and I decided to circle the trail while the big kids watched the girls. It was a really good snorkel, but, again, the sky was overcast¡Kso lots of the brilliance as lost. Also, people were going around and swimming like wild bantams¡Kicking and thrashing their arms like crazy. C'mon.......that is not snorkeling and when you do that, you scare the fish away. We had to hang back a few times to let the wild bantams pass. A good snorkeler just guides along floating and watching, becoming one with the sea.

Took us at least an hour to circle the island. We took our time.

When we got back to out little settlement, we had a beer and decided to pack up and head to Cruz Bay to shop and get an early dinner. It was about 3:30.

Packed up and drove to CruzBay. Walked to STJ Spice right away and found Ruth in STJ kids. Chatted it up with her while the girls shopped and shopped and shopped..and bought. At one point, Ruth's employee suggested that Geoff and I visit the Spice store and leave the girls with her, which we did. This is when we picked up 5 or 6 different hot sauces. They're all gone now.they didn't even make it home because my family is Ruth's hot sauce addicted, including the girls.

Rhumblines, but there weren't serving til 5:30 and we had to be on the 6p ferry. Hey, we also wanted local food, so we went to the village food fair and started to inquire about saltfish pate. No luck, they weren't yet ready to serve the pate - nobody had their pate ready. Some had a couple of things ready, though and we started out with whelks, which we all shared. I got the Kalalloo soup with seafood. Everyone shared some curried chicken and also some conch in butter and garlic. Of course, we cracked our Ruth's hot sauce here and really turned up the heat on our local dishes.We couldn't eat it all, so we brought it home.

Geoff at the food fair vendor

Looked for our rings for a brief minute, but were late for the ferry. We knew we'd be back on the 4th, and maybe more vendors would be out then, so we decided to wait.

We finished just in time to get the van and head back to the barge. The line was looooong and we feared being stuck on STJ that night and having to people ferry over and return for the car the next day. But, we made it on by the skin of our teeth. I chalk it all up to Festival - lots of people on STJ.

Back on STT we all went to bed early, as usual.