Found STJ much more to our liking, much less hussle/bussle, generally felt cleaner to us which may or may not be true but that was our impression. Walked the town of Cruz Bay on arrival, hit the Starfish for groceries, never did find the marina Market so we used Starfish for the whole trip. Got to try out the jeep on the way to our villa, you have to try driving from one end to the other some time, pick any road.
Spent our first week at the "Tradewinds", which is a small villa in Coral Bay just before you get to Salt Pond Bay. The tradewinds blew through the villa night and day proving the nonexistant airconditioning was not needed. Absolutly great view from the deck, we sat out there pretty much anytime we were at the villa, up until the rains came.
Pretty much our days entailed getting up early and hitting a beach, snorkling, laying in the sun, going back to the villa, or out somewhere for dinner, then pig out on Ben and Jerry's, watch for sattelites for a few hours, then do it again. I think it was like this till about thursday when the rains started. We still snorkeled a couple times each day as the rain came and went, with
the sun occationally popping out for brief stints, but we couldn't just lay out in the sun.
From what we saw the thing to do in the islands when it rains is sit int he bars, unfortunatly being ex-drinkers this was out, so we read a lot and just generally did nothing.
We did get lucky and went out on the Whitewing on Tuesday or Wednesday (I lost track of the days by then) and really enjoyed snorkeling some of the off shore spots. My wife found out that she could ride on a boat without drowning, which is a good thing. She had as great time as did I. Of cours the other 4 passengers had a good time sampling painkillers (big samples) while we layed out in the sun up on deck. Going out on a smaller (46') sailboat with just a few people (6 max) was deffinitly to our liking. We ran into a couple of the snorkel tour boats a couple days earlier when they invaded Honeymoon bay and knew that wasn't for us. I'd guess they had 30 or 40 people on each. When we called White Wing it was really our only question, how many people are you taking.
Saturday we moved over the hill to the Concordia Eco-Tents. Very nice compared to the cabins we're used to. If you've ever been camping in the rain you know it can be a bit of a downer, this wasn't nearly that bad. We did find that anything that got wet, stayed damp. The tents keep the water out very well, they are clean and well cared for, and the bads even worked out well. Being on the wrong side of the hill there was no breeze, it was hot during the day but far from unbarable, it was very muggy at night which made it more then a bit uncomfortable, the little 12v fans help some. If I were to know then what I know now I would have tried the villas they have, they were only 10 or 15 dollars a night more. They looked to be pretty much regular hotel rooms, hot runing water and all. The newer tents, which we were in, have a sun activated water heater, which the clouds took care of for us. Even though they were decent, with the rain and all I won't do them again. The bigs weren't bad at all in the tents, we did use spray at night before bed as it was too hot to cover up with the wheets. It was real nice when we checked out of there and spent our last night on STT in a real hotel room.
Didn't eat at too many of the restaurants in STJ as it was too far of a drive to go back to Cruz, I did want to try Sogo's but never got the chance. Found Skinny legs to have decent burgers but not up to the hype, I'd never heard of a blue cheeseburg before but will try them on my own now. It did seem a great place to party though.
Island Blues was good but had no Blues playing, it was more like easy listening or some such, but the food was good.
There was a fairly new Bistro in the center of town which we liked the best. It had a nice cover over it from which to watch the rain on the harbour.
The shipwreck was good too, it's the first time I've eaten while chickens, cats, and a dog wandered around. The birds flying through the room where a hoot too.
I'd say that over all we spent about 50% more on groceries then we do at home, not including eating out. The fish at the market was outragous, much more so then the beef. 19$ a pound salmon...
Gas was from 2.69 in Coral Bay to close to 3.00 in Cruz Bay.
All the beaches were fabulous as was the snorkling. Our favorites were Honeymoon bay for the beach, and also had good snorkling, at least till the tour boats showed up. Maho for parking close to the beach although the water had a bit of green in it close to shore (algea???). Jumbie beach looked great if not small, too bad it was raining.
We liked the snorkling at Waterlemon (watch out for the mongooses, they stole our lunch) the best, followed by Salt Pond bay and little Leminster (if I got the name right).
Found it too hot for us to hike much, once we got in the bush the heat and humidity was too much. We did the guided reef bay trail, which was okay but took way too long, we should have done it on our own and gone round trip as it was actually an easy hike. In the rain it didn't seem that hot. Did a couple others when it was sunny that did us in, enough so where we turned around without finishing, Annaberg being the one I remember the name to (nice place to visit though.