St. John, USVI | Day 3

We saw some really cool clothing shops … Unfortunately, the majority of them were really overpriced ( I am not paying $50 for a T-Shirt). Soo Charles and I decided we weren’t going to buy souvenirs in this area. But we did continue to window shop around and came across some cool artisan stores. The artwork we saw was sooooo colorful. My favorite piece of art I saw was the window painting shown above … I would have loved to put that painting on a wall in my bedroom to look at especially during the New York winter seasons…

Around 12:25pm, we headed to the Visitor’s Center to meet with everyone After signing liability forms that said  we wouldn’t sue if “we drowned or get eaten by sharks”, the wedding party loaded onto the Island Spirit.

Once aboard, the crew introduced themselves and informed us the activities planned for the next 4 hours. We were going to Christmas Cove and snorkel then simply cruise around the sea with food, dranks and fun! Christmas Cove is a cove located right off St. James Island near St. Thomas.

It took us about 20 minutes to get there from Cruz Bay. On the way, everyone was taking in the views and snapping pictures. The clouds looked like they were gonna rain on us but luckily, they held off the entire time of our trip.

Snorkeling in the cove was an amazing experience. I was a little worried about my knee and swimming for such a long period of time (I’m recovering from knee surgery done in March) but having a life vest and flippers really helped me get around. There was a guide that got in the water with us which was also comforting. Because we had sooo much area to swim, there were moments when the crew on the boat had to call groups to come in because they were swimming way out towards the channel. But swimming way out there did reap some benefits… I was swimming back to the boat when a group yelled out that they saw a sea turtle!!! Despite the fact that they were so far away from the boat, I knew I couldn’t miss it so I swam as fast I could with my bum knee to the group.

And I made it right on time! I didn’t see the turtle at first but Charles swam up next to me and pointed it out. It was laying on the floor of the cove with two baby sharks/fish swimming above and beneath it it. This turtle was pretty big; about the size of super-large size yoga ball. It must have noticed the commotion up top with all the snorkelers because it started to swim off …

And what do you do when a turtle swims away???

You swim after it!!!

There we were, a group of about 10 snorkelers, swimming after a sea turtle further out of the cove towards the channel. The turtle was slowly making it’s way to the surface and eventually came up for air. You would’ve thought we had witnessed a miracle because everyone in our group started cheering when it breached the surface of the water. After that, I had had my fill of snorkeling. Snorkeling is exhausting. Eventually everyone made it back to the boat and we were greeted with yummy sandwiches, cookies and drinks. I think I can speak for everyone by saying that we were all famished.

For the rest of the boat trip, we sailed and relaxed. It was crazy how close so many islands were in proximity to each other. We sailed back around past St. Thomas and St. John and saw the British Virgin Islands from afar. Eventually we made our way back to Cruz Bay and docked the boat. We gave a huge yell of thanks to Caitlin’s parents for renting the boat for us.

We went out in search of some food to hold us over until we met up with
everyone else at Castaways. Walking around, we finally settled on
Woody’s because their dinner menu compared to the rest of the bars
around was much cheaper. Bellies full, we headed to the next stop.

We went to Castaways Tavern under the impression that there would be karaoke happening on this night. No Go. They only do it on Mondays and today was Friday …We tried to speak to the bartenders to change the theme of the night but it wouldn’t work sooo after staying at the bar for less than 30 min. we went around in search of a bar that did offer karaoke. Don’t get me wrong, Castaways was a cool spot and had good music and drinks but we wanted Karaoke and we were gonna find a place if it was the last thing we did that night.

Lmya and I walked around, from spot to spot scouting out bars for the Bride to choose from. We didn’t find a place that specifically did karaoke but we did find a restaurant in the Lumberyard that had a speaker system with iPod hookup and a loud Speakerphone … It had potential. So we brought everyone there and had a ball with our make-shift karaoke machine.