So I finally made it to St. John, on May 29, luggage, camera and snorkel gear all safely in tow. I asked a local woman for directions to Mongoose Junction, to meet my kayaking group, and also asked her if there was a restroom nearby. “Yes,” she said, “but a pipe broke, so it’s closed.” I asked if there was another restroom nearby. “Yes,” she said, “at [ and she named another place ] but she’s not open yet.” Then she smiled, commiserated with my plight, and, laughingly, told me to “hold it, girl.” She was so warm and friendly that I could only laugh with her. It was a warm welcome to the island. Happily, I did find an open restroom once I got to Mongoose Junction.

Arawak Expeditions is the only outfitter that does multi-day kayaking trips in the Virgin Islands. Mine was a 5-day kayak/camping trip that paddled mostly in the British Virgin Islands. At Mongoose Junction we were issued a dry bag for our clothes and a lightweight cotton sleep sack that would substitute for a sleeping bag. Then we picked up breakfast to go at Deli Grotto.

A word about Deli Grotto. The deli food was great, and I found out later they have computers with internet access for $2 for 15 minutes. It’s a full deli with tables and chairs and a charming atmosphere. I was happy to hang out there for a bit before my return ferry to St. Thomas 9 days later.

Back to the kayak trip. With me on the trip with me were two couples, one from Chicago (in their early 20s) and the other from Orlando (in their mid-30s). Our guides were 23-year-old Sarah and 25-year-old Jesse, who both live on St.John (until the end of June, when they’re moving to Maine). I should mention that I’m 46.

I’ve been on several multi-day kayaking trips with various outfitters, and I’m a fairly experienced kayaker, and I must say that Arawak was excellent. Their equipment was top-notch and well maintained. Sarah and Jesse wouldn’t let us lift a finger to help them cook or clean up after meals. Instead, we lolled on the beach, drinks in hand (mostly water, if truth be told), or swam and snorkeled. And the food was delicious. Our lead guide Sarah, though young, knew her stuff and we all trusted her implicitly.

After we got organized at Mongoose Junction (Arawak stored anything we didn’t want to take kayaking in a secure storage room), we boarded a motor boat, cleared customs in Tortola, and then motored over to Peter Island and set up our camp for two nights. We were in a beautiful protected cove with nobody around. The beach was a bit rocky, but the snorkeling was decent, and the bugs not too bad.

The next day, after a quick kayaking lesson, (neither of the two couples had any kayaking experience), we took a day paddle over to The Indians, a group of three large rocks off the coast of Norman Island. It has some of the most spectacular snorkeling in the Virgin Islands. It was probably the best snorkeling I did during my whole trip, including the several days I snorkeled on St. John after the kayak trip was over.

After snorkeling, we paddled to a cove on Norman Island, where the boat the William Thornton (known as the Willie T.) is permanently anchored. The boat is a replica of an old pirate schooner and is a floating bar and restaurant. It flies the Jolly Roger, and gives T-shirts away to women who jump naked off the stern of the boat (sorry guys, you can jump naked if you want, but only women get T-shirts). The Willie T. is a destination for boaters, and it gets very crowded at mealtimes. The dinghys and small boats are moored to each other, and when it’s busy the boaters have to walk across each others’ boats to get to the dock.

The menu was pretty good; burgers, conch fritters, calamari ceviche, several salads, and some other choices. After lunch several people jumped off the boat – all in swimsuits. After a while we paddled back to our camp on Peter Island to snorkel and relax.

On our third day we paddled 6 miles over to the West End of Tortola, where we had lunch in a very pretty little area shopping area. After lunch we had an hour free to shop or do whatever we wanted while Sarah and Jesse went grocery shopping. We all contemplated having a massage at Serenity Spa to soothe arms and shoulders that were a bit sore from paddling, but we opted for ice cream cones instead. The entertainment consisted of watching the impossibly young and thin contestants for the Miss Caribbean World beauty pageant pose for photos on a boat docked there.

After lunch we paddled another 6 miles to our camp at White Bay on Jost Van Dyke. By this time we were pretty tired, but we took one look at the gorgeous white sand beach and crystal-clear water and all ran splashing in, like little kids, cavorting for a while before setting up camp right there on the beach.

White Bay is the home of Ivan’s Stress Free Bar and Campground, immortalized, I am told, in a Kenny Chesney song and music video. Located right on the white sand beach, it’s stress free because you wander into the bar to make your own drinks whenever you want (after first dipping your bare feet in a pail of water to rinse off the sand). The guy who looks after the place when Ivan’s not there will teach you how to mix your own Painkiller, Banana Whacka or any other drink of your choice (as long as you mix him a drink, too, while you’re behind the bar. By the way, The fruit juice for the Painkillers is already blended in a big jug, to protect the secret recipe). There are sodas, water, beer and ice all available. You keep a tab, on the honor system, in one of the notebooks provided for the purpose, and you pay your tab all at one at the end of your stay (credit cards accepted!). There’s also a community kitchen where you can cook whatever you brought with you, flush restrooms and a shower. And a wonderful hammock right on the beach where I enjoyed one totally stress-free evening, Painkiller in hand, listening to Pink Floyd music that was being played at the bar.

Of course, White Bay is also home to the infamous Soggy Dollar bar and we all took the short hike over there from our campsite. After coming all this way, I couldn’t miss it! I’d had several Painkillers in different spots by this time, but the very best one was at the Soggy Dollar.

Snorkeling in White Bay wasn’t spectacular but it was decent. I saw a skate cruising along the sandy bottom, and a sea turtle who wasn’t perturbed in the slightest by my close-up underwater photos.

The next day, the plan had been to take a day paddle over to beautiful Sandy Cay, where I’m told the Corona beer commercials are filmed. However, after our 12-miles of paddling to Jost the day before, nobody felt like doing it. Instead, we called a cab and went to a place called the Bubbly Pool, where northern swells shoot through a rocky cleft into a shallow pool, turning it into a salt-water Jacuzzi. As luck would have it, the Jacuzzi jets weren’t working that day-- no northern swell. We soaked in the calm pool, had a picnic lunch, and ended up at Foxy’s Taboo. Foxy’s Taboo is another bar on Jost, near the East End Harbor. Another drink not to miss is the Vanilla Killa. It’s a Painkiller made with vanilla-flavored Cruzan rum. Yummy. On the way back, Bunn, who owns this particular taxi company, stopped to pick us fresh mangoes from his cousin's yard.

Every Thursday, Ivan holds an all-you-can-eat barbecue at his stress-free campground, and boaters of all types moor in the cove and dinghy in. That night we gorged on fresh grilled Mahi-Mahi, chicken, ribs, awesome coleslaw, three other types of salads and more. Then, Sarah and Jesse treated us to some of the best Key Lime pie I’ve ever tasted. You couldn’t ask for more.

Our trip ended the next day. We kayaked the 6-7 miles back to St. John, stopping at Henley Cay on the way for lunch and a quick snorkel. Then we cleared customs on St. John, exchanged emails, and said our good-byes.

For those who don’t mind roughing it, this trip was awesome. However, I must say that it wasn’t all Paradise. Despite repeated, liberal applications of 8-hour no-see-um bug repellent, I was pretty bitten up by the end of the trip (I should mention that I have always been a bug magnet). Sleeping in tents with no-see-um netting in the high humidity wasn’t always comfortable; the no-see-um netting shut out some of the breeze. I took to spraying myself with bug repellent and sleeping with the tent door partway open. On Jost, the breeze blew the fine white sand directly into our tents, even with the tent fly fully zipped; we all had little Sahara deserts in there. And for our first two nights out, there were absolutely no facilities; we were provided a shovel with which to dig a hole up amidst the trees and toilet paper to use and then burn. (If you’re interested in trying kayaking, but don’t want to commit to 5 days, Arawak also offers half-day and full-day paddles on St. John).

After the kayak trip ended, I had three more nights on St. John. My first stop was Hospitality Car Rental in Cruz Bay. They told me they usually don’t rent cars for only three days, but the person who had taken my reservation didn’t know that, so they honored my reservation. They didn’t have the 4-wheel drive Vitara that I had reserved. Instead they gave me a 2-wheel drive Suzuki which showed some wear and tear. The air conditioning worked well, but had only two settings; high and off. (The “high” setting was just fine with me. It worked, and that’s what mattered.) The “service engine soon” light was on and stayed on. On the other hand, I got this 4-door car at the same $65 a day rate that I had been quoted for a 2-door, and they were pleasant and efficient in getting me on my way. And as it turned out, I didn’t need a 4-wheel drive for tooling around the main island roads and out to Concordia Studios, where I was staying. The car was easy to drive, made it up all the hills on North Shore Road, and it got me everywhere I needed to go with no problem.

At Concordia. I was in a studio, not an eco-tent. My room had some nice amenities, including a refrigerator, stove, coffee maker, blender and a large deck with a full ocean view. Delightfully, there’s a copy of Feet, Fins and Four-Wheel Drive (revised edition) in every room. There are also laundry facilities, which I was happy to use after camping for 5 days. My room also had a small ice chest that I filled with drinks and ice from the large ice machine by registration, and took to the beach. The area is beautiful, peaceful and very quiet. And it had a large and efficient portable fan that I kept on every moment I was in the room.

There’s no air conditioning at Concordia. Everyone says you don’t need it because of the breezes, but that wasn’t the case for me. Simply moving about the room picking up after myself or making lunch for the beach caused the sweat to start running. Some other downsides: the tile flooring was dirty, there were cobwebs in the shower, and the room had fleas, no-see-ums, mosquitoes and moths (all of which I both felt and saw). Many of the screens (which did not have small enough holes to prevent no-see-ums) had small holes in them which let in insects. The citronella candle helped (you’re not supposed to use it indoors, but I did). The plug-in sonic insect repeller in the bathroom was a joke. I saw more than one mosquito happily buzzing right next to it. I took to wearing socks to walk across the floor, and wore insect repellent most of the time (not nice after a shower). In my three nights there, I added greatly to my collection of bug bites. By the end of this trip my back, legs and arms were pretty much covered with itchy red bites that I am still scratching as I write this. I acknowledge bugs as an unavoidable by-product of camping, but I don't like them in my hotel room.

I must also mention the swimming pool. This is a large freshwater pool at Concordia, and I don’t know if the water is supposed to look like it did because of some eco-conservation thing, but it looked suspiciously murky to me. The water was a kind of green color, and you couldn’t see the bottom of the pool. I did see people happily swimming in it, though.

To be fair, I didn’t mention any of my complaints to the management (which was friendly, helpful and efficient) or ask for another room, so I can’t say whether my experience there was typical or an anomaly. I like to think it was the latter. Most of the other guests seemed quite happy. But if I go back to St. John I’m renting a villa with air conditioning and good screens.

I didn’t have a chance to eat anywhere on St. John; I bought food at Dolphin Market and made my own meals. I did try to go to Miss Lucy’s but hadn’t paid attention to the time and got there after she’d closed. I did stop into Lily’s Market in Coral Bay, which was delightful. If I stay in/near Coral Bay again I’ll shop there. They had more items packaged in smaller quantities (I had had to buy a half gallon of juice and a half gallon of milk at Dolphin Market, which I used about half of). And Lily’s had pretty much every item you would want or need. Dolphin Market had the same, and I didn’t notice much of a price difference. It just seemed easier to shop at Lily's if you're staying out in Coral Bay.

My plan had been to hike some of the trails to great beaches to go snorkeling. I am an avid hiker and backpacker, but I immediately discounted this plan after experiencing the energy-sapping humidity. I drove to the beaches instead. I only visited three of them – you can read all about them elsewhere on this board, so I won’t repeat what everyone else has said. I’ll only say that word has gotten out about Waterlemon; the place was crowded when I went there, especially with noisy groups from the 11 boats that were moored in the bay. The snorkeling was awesome around the Cay. But overall I must say I enjoyed Trunk Bay more.

I got to Trunk Bay the next day about 8:30 a.m. It was a no-cruise ship day, which I’m sure made a huge difference. There were about 20 people there, but I found a quiet shady spot over to the left of the roped-off turtle hatching area (left as you’re facing the water). The underwater snorkeling trail was a bit crowded, but I found the snorkeling to be very good, especially further out toward the back of the little island. The beach got more crowded as the morning progressed, but my spot stayed quiet until close to 1 p.m., when I was ready to leave anyway.

The other beach I went to was at Salt Pond Bay, right near Concordia. The beach was very pretty, and I enjoyed relaxing there, but the snorkeling was disappointing. Perhaps it was because I was there late in the day and it was getting overcast, but I saw hardly any coral and not that many fish. I did see a ray, which was cool. The current was much too strong to swim out around the offshore rocks; perhaps that would have been better.

And, last but not least, I found driving on the left a breeze. On St. John there are no complicated intersections (except maybe the one by the Texaco Station in Cruz Bay), and it wasn’t hard to remember to stay left. The roads were all well paved and well-marked with signs.

All in all, I had a great time. But unlike most of the other vacations I’ve been on, I didn’t instantly fall in love with the place and want to move there, which is what usually happens. But I’m sure I’ll be back!