St. John Vacation - Day 6!

Monday morning we took it easy as my legs were throbbing from the sunburn :( And we had really been doing such a great job at putting on sunscreen every time we went outside too- eugh! I finally convinced Kyle to let us go outside and go for a hike.
We decided to stay on the Coral Bay side of the island, and explore Brown Bay. It's a 1.5 mile hike to the beach, which we thought would be perfect! There were some ruins along the way, but we really enjoyed hearing all the solider crabs. Their defense mechanism is to curl up into their shell, so if they are on a hill, they'll all just fall all the way to the bottom. It was really funny as about every 5 seconds another one would come rolling down towards us.
And look! There was actually some blue sky for a couple hours!
We LOVED Brown Bay. The beach was BEAUTIFUL, and no one was there! Here are a bunch of pictures put together so you can see the whole view:
Just us:
We loved spending a couple hours here sunbathing and hanging out in the water. Kyle even found a whole conch shell!
What's relaxation without the hammock?
We headed back to the villa for a late lunch, and decided to stay there the rest of the day. We loved our pool!
What's in Kyle's hand you ask? Oh that's just the RAID coil that we put EVERYWHERE. The mosquitoes were still attacking Kyle in the water so he just held the coil on the raft hahaha
And another funny picture that I have to include is the bird watching. I've mentioned on here before how much Kyle likes birds, and of course at the villa there were 2 sets of binoculars. I humored Kyle for a second and tried them out. There were a couple ducks on the salt pond that I liked watching :)
And that was Day #6!

St. John Vacation - Day 5!

Woah sorry for the long break... these vacation posts take so much time!
Sunday morning we woke up, cooked breakfast in the villa then drove back to the North side of the island to explore the Sugar Mills! We decided to go to Annaberg, which is one that has a lot of ruins.
Kyle and I were the only ones there touring it, so that was a treat. I can't imagine working in that kind of heat all day, with no shade!
After the sugar mill, we took the Leinester Bay Trail down to Waterlemon Bay. I forgot to mention the Solider crabs, or as we like to call them "hermit crabs"!! They are EVERYWHERE. We really enjoyed seeing them everywhere we hiked.
We were getting eaten alive by mosquitoes on the trail so instead of walking all the way to the beach to jump in and snorkel (like our book told us to) we just hid our stuff in the bushes and jumped in. We decided to snorkel over the longest part of the Bay, which was still only 300 yards so we weren't worried about it. As soon as we jumped in we saw a turtle, how cool!! (it's in the "snorkeling" picture picture on the top right)

Now this is where it gets scary. We start swimming towards the island of Waterlemon Cay as that's where the amazing snorkeling is. In about 3 minutes of snorkeling we can't see the bottom anymore. So we start swimming a little faster because I hate not being able to see what's below me. When we are about half way into the swim we see a 6-7 foot dark shadow down below us. I squeeze Kyle's hand as hard as I can, and we start booking it to the island. Both of our hearts were pounding so fast, and I know I said about 20 prayers before we reached the island. We are assuming it was just a nurse shark, but not sure. This was the view from the island:
Man do we wish we just swam from that part of the land haha look how close it is to the island!! Once we took a couple breaths we headed back into the water and circled the island. It was so cool, there were fish everywhere.
We rounded a corner and all of a sudden it was starfish land. I just love starfish!
I can't believe the amazing snorkeling. All in all we saw: a turtle, 3 stingrays, tons of starfish, tons of fish and 4 baracudas. Would definitely recommend this place!

We decided to go the longer way back to our gear, which was swim to the beach (where it stays shallow almost the entire time) and then swim along the shore to our stuff. Oh man funny memories. We realized later that I forgot to put sunscreen on the back of my legs before getting into the water. So my legs were a dark shade of purple for the next couple of days!
After snorkeling we headed over to the Cinnamon Bay Campground for lunch and to lay on the beach for a couple of hours. We had looked into staying here, but Maho is much nicer and I'm glad we stayed there for the beginning of our trip! I didn't take one picture when we were on Cinnamon's beach, but had a lot of fun laying out, floating and taking naps.

We then headed back into town to fill up on gas, as there is only 1 gas station on the whole island and we didn't want to get stuck somewhere! Here are some views of Maho that we saw:
I put some of my pictures together so you can see the view of Maho:
Once back to the villa we cooked dinner and layed by the pool the rest of the night! The owner of the villa had so many movies, so Kyle and I enjoyed watching 1 or 2 a day!

And that was Day #5!

St. John Vacation - Day 4!

Saturday morning we woke up early and decided to hike down from the camp to Big Maho Bay. (With all the bug spray and sweat from the humidity we already couldn't wait to wash off). We had heard this beach was amazing, and it really was. We were the only ones down there for like an hour which was so nice, so we really got to soak it all in.
Just us in our 'big salty swimming pool' :)
Around 10:00 am we packed up all of our stuff from the "tree house", checked out of the eco camps then rode the white donkey to coral bay. (I forgot to tell you why we named the jeep, "white donkey". In St. Thomas there is a road called Donkey hill where they had horses climbing up bringing housing materials. The horses would stop halfway and refuse to go any further. During that time there was a donkey on the road and it walked all the way up. From then on they had donkeys bring the housing materials up the hill.) Since it's so mountainous in St. John, we thought it only right to call the jeep WHITE DONKEY :)
The drive there was beautiful, and was only about 15-20 minutes. I forgot to mention how they drive on the left side of the road, so I was constantly reminding Kyle "LEFT, LEFT" when we saw cars coming haha. We saw lots of goats and donkeys on the side of the road near Coral Bay too.
Seriously the water is just UNREAL. Wish that we had seen blue sky when we were there, but most days it was hazy like this.
Once in Coral Bay, we met Carol from the rental company who would give us the keys to the villa we rented for the rest of the week. Here is the official sign for Coral Bay:
We drove on the main road for 10 minutes, went on a bumpy gravel road for 2 minutes and then we arrived at LILLE PARADIS.
It was completely different then we imagined! This was the top floor that you walked into: (kitchen, table, family room, loft with a twin bed, and outdoor shower!).
Then you went out the back and saw this view:
And then walked down these stairs:
To the second floor down which was where the master was located, along with an amazing shower and view:
Then you went down the outside stairs again and got to the pool floor:
We LOVED it. I think our favorite part though was the air conditioning :) hahaha. No in all seriousness we really loved the pool. It was so private and fun to go out there and relax after a long hike. Incase you are wondering the view is of a "salt pond" but since they had so much rain before we came that's why it's a little brown. The view of the ocean behind it is Kiddle Bay. There was actually a walkway from our house to Kiddle Bay but we never made it there unfortunately.
After checking out the 'digs' we went back into town to eat lunch at Skinny Legs (a highly recommended place for burgers) back in Coral Bay and then went to the grocery store to buy food for the rest of the week.

And that was Day #4!

St. John Vacation - Day 3!

Friday morning we woke up early and headed into town to catch our New Horizons Charter to the BVI's that we had booked! The crew was really nice on the boat and even provided breakfast. We arrived at the Baths in Virgin Gorda before we knew it and were so excited to see these huge boulders. There was a short trail to the beach, and some of the people on our tour were hilarious. They obviously had never hiked before, and Kyle was cracking me up mimicking them, climbing rocks instead of walking on the path.
It was beautiful. Man the water is so gorgeous.
We relaxed at the beach for a while then started hiking to go into the boulders
Once you hike for a while around the boulders you arrived in this cave. (It's famous because of Tyra Bank's Sports Illustrated Cover)
Our next stop was to snorkel at Diamond Reef! One of the crew members had brought food so fish came flying from everywhere. It was really fun even though we had to wear the life jackets.
The next stop was Marina Cay for lunch, which was absolutely delicious. We ate nachos and a chicken wrap with our group, and enjoyed the beautiful views of the water!
And last but definitely not least was the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke. This is an island where they do not allow boats to beach themselves, so everyone has to swim in. There is a famous bar there where everyone gets "painkillers" and pays with their soggy dollars. While Kyle was scoping out the bar I chose to take a nap in one of their hammocks. It was awesome!
Floating in the clear water:
The charter was so much fun. We would totally recommend it! Once we got back to St. John we changed and then headed back into town for dinner. We had heard so many good things about Morgans Mango, so we ate there. The food was amazing (again really expensive), but since there is no AC in most of these restaurants Kyle sweated the entire time. He was cracking me up. But they also had live music so that was really fun.
And that was Day #3!

St. John Vacation - Day 2!

On Thursday morning we checked out of the Marriott and took a taxi to Red Hook, which is where the ferry leaves for St. John. Once we arrived we gave a quick wave to our friends and family on the webcam and then headed into the market for some lunch.
We then picked up our rental car, a white Jeep Wrangler who Kyle later named as "the white donkey". Then we were off to find some beaches! Of course we got to see these views along the way...
The first beach we stopped at was Jumbie Bay. This is a small cut out right next to Trunk Bay (pictured above) where you don't have to pay to go in. We inflated our rafts and went out to soak in some sun! (Those rafts were the best $1.50 I've ever spent... SO worth it!)
The view from Jumbie:
We drove around a little bit and then decided to check into the Maho Bay Eco Camps where we would be staying for the next 2 nights. Here is our "tree house":
Now unfortunately this is where the mosquitoes come into play. By the time I had gotten out of the car I had 20 buzzing around me and 6 bites already... it was horrible! (St. John had gotten 3 straight weeks of rain so there was a lot of standing water which are breeding grounds for mosquitoes!) We quickly checked in and basically ran up the 300 stairs to our "tent". Below is the front desk and the drinking water fountain we had to get all of our water from.
Our tent was truly a tree house, with a little view of the ocean. It was definitely 'roughing it' as we had lots of lizards and other insects in there with us, but for the most part the mosquitoes stayed out! It came with a little kitchen, sofa, 2 twin beds and a porch. We ended up sliding the twins together to make a bigger bed and that worked perfectly. Oh and if you were wondering, there is no AC and the bathrooms are communal. Thank heavens for that box fan that was in the room... because IT.WAS.HOT.
From Maho there is a hiking trail down to Little Maho Bay. We snorkeled there until the sun went down, then decided to head up for dinner.
On campus is a "mess hall" where most everyone eats dinner. This picture is pretty blurry but it's a nice open pavilion with a beautiful view of the ocean.
It was also movie night so we watched a little of Star Wars then decided to head back up to bed! And that was Day #2!