Hello Barbara,

Are you wanting a catch a Safari or a Bus? To different things. The Bus - would be the public transportaion bus. A Safari is a taxi service.

If you are catching the public bus, well you would have to walk several blocks to get to the right bus stop which is by the hospital, perhaps a 30-40 minute walk from where you would get off the cruise ship, maybe shorter if you walk fast. Then you would have to get on the correct bus to get you to Tutu I believe, where you would need to change buses and get on a Red Hook direction bus. This is not the most reliable means of transportation, and you might waste time doing this.

To catch the safari taxi, you can catch a taxi right when you walk off the cruise ship, there are lots of taxis waiting to drive you where you need to go. I think a taxi, whether Safari or regular car/truck would run around $10 a person, $8.50 for the second person - or there abouts.

Or if you were trying to catch a dollar safari like the locals do, well there is no schedule, locals just wait at the bus stop, the one for the public buses, and if one drives by that is heading the way they want to go, they jump on and get off when they get to where they want to go. Generally the locals know where and when to wait and so. This is not regulated, or schduled. Usually you would need to agree on a fare with the driver, if your stop is not on the route he is taking, which again is not posted anywhere on his van, just need to ask the driver. If you were on island for a week or so and wanted to try to learn to use this, then I would say go for it. But again for a day stay, you might get stuck trying to get around.

--Islander

Hello,

I had another post about the bus, so I asked someone about the Red Hook bus. I am copying the post I wrote.

I usually try to recommend visitors take taxis, usually because it gets them where they want to go the quickest. It is not the least expensive way to get around, however it works. You can take the public bus sure, however it is not that easy to use, particularly because it is not that realiable and secondly because of this flaw local taxis have began running a 'dollar taxi' service.

However you can certainly try. Here goes, you would need to walk from the cruise ship pier (Havensight) out to the main road, walk to the left (with the cruise ships behind you), past Wendy's, don't turn left at Wendys are you will end up in Charlotte Amalie, instead go right at the intersection, pasted K-mart, passed McDonalds, at McDonalds (which will be on your right) you will see a bluish building, blue and pink, baby colors, big building - thats the hospital. walk towards it, on the road side in front of the hospital entrance there is a bus stop. Thats the stop you want. You need to wait for and catch a Red Hook Bus, the Red Hook bus will take you to Tutu area then around in a circle usually through Bovoni, Red Hook. There is another bus which I mentioned before, that takes you to Tutu and then you have to switch buses. You don't have to take that one, take the Redhook Bus as it goes directly there.

Its a good idea to ask the bus driver, to tell you if you are taking the right bus to get you to Red Hook and to tell you which stop to get off at, usually they will, sit close to the driver. Also ask him/her which bus to take to return to Cruise Ship and what time to expect it.

Good Luck.

The dollar safari or dollar bus, runs often the same route as the public bus, you would need to ask the driver of the dollar safari, which often has a taxi sign on the roof whether they are going to Red Hook area and agree on a price. Make sure if it is a dollar bus they aren't charging you the regular taxi rate, they might try if they see that you don't know how the system works, and they can charge you the regular rate because the dollar bus is not a regulated system just something some drivers started doing to make money when it was slow visitor season and it worked so they continued doing it, but they are taxi drivers so can charge you what the rate should be if they wanted to.

--Islander