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We had heard that you had to do the Reef Bay Trail, but since we were coming from the other side of the island we took Lameshur to Reef Bay. It was a steep hike, so that combined with the heat had me sweating more than I ever have! It's kind of hard to tell in this picture but every ounce of my shorts were dripping wet.
We stopped at the Petroglyphs on the way, which were really cool. And we saw a little waterfall!
Supposedly they put the "writing" by the water so they would double with their reflection.
The end of the trail is the Reef Bay Factory. It was cool to see more ruins once again right by the ocean!
We started the hike back up the mountain and thought we would take a picture together with a pretty view!
That afternoon we came back to the Villa and relaxed by the pool for a couple hours. Kyle even braved the hot tub... tooo hot for me though!
For dinner on our last night we decided to go out instead of cooking the delicious meals we had been having (taco night, mac & cheese ha). We chose Shipwreck Landing, a local place in the heart of Coral Bay.
It overlooked the water as well and we had a great time recapping our entire vacation over dinner.
And that was our last full day of our vacation in St. John! Went by too quickly, but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!
Wednesday morning we checked out of our villa, dropped off our rental car then took the ferry back over to St. Thomas. After a quick lunch we went back to the airport for our flight back to Atlanta. It's always sad for vacations to end but we were excited to get back to our animals for sure! (A HUGE thank you to our amazing neighbors, Chris & Serina and friends Chris & Kathleen for watching Tyson & the cats while we were gone!!)
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.
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!
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)
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!
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.
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!
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. 
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!
