St. John
June 2000
| St. John June 2000 |
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A large portion of St. John is maintained as the Virgin Islands National Park. Thus vast areas of this hilly island - roughly 12 miles long and 5 miles wide - are preserved in their natural environment. This also includes substantial off-shore areas covering the entire north coast and about half of the southern coast. |
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One odd thing about St. John is that they drive on the left side of the road, but since the vehicles are all standard left-hand-drive as in the US, it's not as hard to adjust to as you might think. Unfortunately, no one seems to have thought of readjusting the headlights, so night driving is kind of interesting. |
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The roads are narrow, hilly and twisting. Some have names and fewer still have route numbers. There are no building numbers anywhere. Instead, locations are referenced by local landmarks such as "brown house on the road across from Cable TV" Can you guess this address? |
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Our activities included a lot of snorkeling. It seemed as though each bay we visited had its own particular underwater attraction. At Waterlemon Bay there were hundreds of starfish, but not the kind you usually think of with long slender legs. These we as large as a dinner plate and thicker, more rounded in shape. Salt Pond Bay had sea turtles, Jumbie had reef squid. At Great Lameshur large tarpon have herded gigantic schools of frye to shelter in the coral reef. You could swim into the middle of such a school and literally not see out! The coral is beautiful around the islands, but you can tell the hurricanes over the last 10 years have taken their toll. It must have been truly spectacular before. We did take one guided tour, a boat trip to the British Virgin Islands. We visited the famous "baths" on Virgin Gorda - giant rock formations called batholiths. Unfortunately we had to snorkel in from the boat, so I did not have the camera. On the way back to St. John we stopped at Norman Island for lunch on a ship anchored in the bay. The fun activity here is to jump off the upper deck of the boat into about 30 feet or crystal clear water. We're tourists right? So of course we did it! Do you see how some of us tan, and others - well - bake? |
| And of course we hiked. Our first was about a mile each way out to Ram Head point, which you'll see later. A longer hike on the Lameshur Trail took us from sea level, over a 450 foot ridge into an old sugar plantation valley. This is in the National Park, and is totally undeveloped. A side trip led to a waterfall area with petrogyphs. (Click to enlarge the pictures) |
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Another side trip - uphill of course - led to this plantation house (the Reef Bay Estate or "Par Force" house) It is being restored on and off by the Park Service. Built between 1832 and 1844, the architecture is finely detailed throughout. It once commanded of view over the whole valley, but now is all but lost in the forest and bush. The sugar mill and a distillery are located below at Reef Bay, and those ruins can also be visited. |
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This is where we stayed, the Concordia Estates. Click the picture for more details and a link to their site. |
St. John, a bat.  |
This is a tropical island with much exotic vegetation. A shopkeeper, noting our sunburn, went out back and cut a stem of aloe for us. The gel, sandwiched inside the tough outer skin of the plant, is indeed very soothing; but it doesn't smell like packaged aloe at all, much "earthier." Fruit trees abound, ready for picking. But what is that sign? |
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And finally - a little bit of history. St. Thomas and St. John are small, rocky islands not ideally suited to sugar growing. So the big European colonial countries weren't too interested, and Denmark laid claim to St. Thomas in 1671 and St. John in 1717. The Danish got very few settlers to move there. Indeed their prisoners were reluctant, even with the promise of freedom in six years. So it happened that most of the settlers were Dutch. Of course most of the residents were actually the slaves forcibly brought from Africa to work the plantations. The Danes bought St. Croix from the English (huh?) in 1733, who then reoccupied the Virgins twice in the early 1800's. The U.S. bought the islands from Denmark in 1917 for $24,000,000 to secure use of a Caribbean harbor at Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. |
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So ... that's how we ended up with American islands in the Caribbean, with Danish place names, but an English speaking African population who drive on the left side of roads which run between the ruins of eighteeth century windmills! This restoration of the windmill at the Cathrineberg plantation would have had a wooden structure at the top of the stone tower housing the blades and mechanism, driving the mill to crush the sugar cane. Below the ramp are large stone arched storage rooms. |
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The neat thing about air travel is that it provides it's own adventure. The United Airlines route to the Virgin Islands is actual a triangle - Chicago, St. Thomas, San Juan. Since the trip down was the Chicago to St. Thomas leg, we got to go to Puerto Rico on the return leg. Well, it seems the radar "broke" on the plane coming down Sunday, so we flew the 70 miles to San Juan to get it fixed. You guessed it, no parts in far away Puerto Rico and no extra flights on a Sunday afternoon. So - we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton as a guest of the "friendly skies." It's probably the only time ever, so for posterity here's a picture of Sue "puttin' on the Ritz." |
