I went to St. Croix of the US Virgin Islands this past week to attend the wedding of by bff's older sister. They graciously invited me AND guido to attend! To make sure I don't forget any of my great Caribbean adventure I'm going to post each day as I remember it :-)
Sunday
Very early flight to San Juan with a two hour layover before landing in St. Croix. The only airline at the time that I could book with was American Airlines. Jet Blue was a tad late on offering flights to San Juan, otherwise I'd be on Jet Blue. I'm surprised American Airlines stays in business when the competition offers so much more and better service for their riders. Their planes show considerable age, the seats have no lumbar support, they charge for food and snacks (I didn't even get a bag of peanuts!) the TV that sat in the aisle rattled the entire 3hr. 50 minute flight I feared it would fall on someone, and the tickets were far more expensive than I've paid in the past. I didn't know they still made planes with wing propellers on them.
As soon as we landed in St. Croix we felt the hot and humid air! While we were waiting in line to get our rental car the bride and my bff arrived to meet us and guide us to our hotel. In case you didn't know, they drive on the left side of the road down there and it was nice to have some practice before driving off on my own! At the airport there is a booth where a woman hands out shots of Cruzan rum to the new arrivals much the way Hawaiians lei their arrivals. Sweet!
We got to our hotel with no problems, The Hibiscus Beach Resort. Great place! I've never had a hotel offer more complimentary services. Have you ever had a hotel give you snorkel gear, fresh beach towels daily, bug spray, breakfast, water bottles in the fridge, and two rum punches for no cost? If you have, your hotel must have cost hundreds more than mine did :-) Our room walked out on the the beach and directly to the water. The water, by the way, stayed consistently 80 degrees. At one point we were so hot and sweaty from just standing outside in the sauna that is the island, that the ocean couldn't even cool us down. It was trippy!
That night was the bachelorette party. Guido and I had diner at H2O, a restaurant connected to our hotel, and then I left later on to catch up with the girls at Bacchuas in Christensted to then go skating. They had reserved the skating rink for their party for the night. What I didn't know was that it was a 70's themed party and the skating rink didn't have roller blades. I'd never used skates before, and proudly didn't fall down once! It was a blast!
Monday
Family Fun Day! The bride and groom put together a big beach party with lots of food and drinks for all the family and friends who'd arrived to their Island home for the wedding. They called it cowboy beach, however they failed to realize that they themselves named the beach "Cowboy Beach" not the local islanders. So no one we asked knew where it was and guido and I had no idea how to find it. We drove around aimlessly for about an hour following driving instructions from various different people. Driving on the left, I had it down now. We did finally make it to the beach located on the other side of the island from where we were staying, and my bff met me with a drink! They had the best fried chicken I have ever had, ever. We floated around in the water, we drank some more, ate some more, and floated more. When people started to leave, guido and I stuck around to check out the rocks and shells on the shore. While standing on an algae covered large rock (can you sense the doom?) I bent over to look at a rock when a wave washed up and then pulled my legs from under me and I landed on my knee and elbow directly in front of a passing group of horse riders that were on a beach tour. It was pretty painful and I was pretty cut up, followed by massively embarrassing bruises. Oh yeah, injured on the first day! :-)
After cleaning the salt off of ourselves we went out for dinner at Salud around the corner from our hotel. The meal was amazing. We got a macaroni and cheese appetizer that was to die for. I am a huge mac n'cheese fan and I would gladly clog my arteries for more of that. We had a rabbit and something entree, it was too freaking yummy to retain any memory of it's details. For dessert we had churros upscale style. I'll never eat another churros and enjoy it because the Salud churros were so good I'll accept nothing less. We went home full and happy.
Tuesday
Crucian Pub Crawl! Guido and I learned what Island time means today. It was scheduled to start at 12pm, but people didn't arrive until like 1. So after scarfing down our lunch and some water to make sure were weren't late we sat around like tools waiting for the pub crawl bus. When the crowd of people did arrive it turned out that the meeting spot was also the first pub spot, so we got drinks with everyone and then got on the bus for the next spot. I don't remember the names of all the places, but I did remember where they were. We stopped at one place in Christensted where all us girls broke away for an excursion at a few jewelry stores to find the best Crucian hook bracelet. The Island has fame for their hand made jewelry and uniquely crafted St. Croix hook, originated at "Sonya's". I got an infinity bracelet and the St. Croix hook for a coworker who so graciously covered all my shifts so that I could go on vacation!
After that stop we moved on the Mount Pelliers Domino Club known for it's beer drinking pig, and moonshine "Mamawanna". They also had a Mamawanna BBQ sauce that guido absolutely loved. He and the bff went to buy some but she was all out of it for the day (we returned later to buy some when she restocked!) The Mamawanna is a honey and spice flavored alcohol that is very strong but still sweet and warm afterwards. It was used in place of champagne at the wedding toast! We made two more pub stops before the last one in Fredericksted called Dog something... we got Pizza and Red Stripe to finish off the night! Guido and I went home exhausted.
Wednesday
Buck Island Tours! The bride and groom arranged for a private boat for everyone to go out to Buck Island for a day of snorkeling and beach bumming. The island is completely protected by the national park service and is the largest underwater preservation site. Only approved boats can go there and docking at the island is limited to a very small area on one side. It was a really exciting snorkeling experience! The bride guided us most of the time and knew where the best stuff could be seen or found. I saw schools of tropical fish, a spiny lobster, a barracuda (before i knew it was dangerous), squid, and lots of other fish and creatures I don't know the names of. I got lots of pictures of it with the underwater camera, I can't wait to see how they turned out! I could have snorkeled for hours. We moved from the snorkel spot to a spot on to the beach where we laid in the sand and floated in the water and acted like bums.
Guido and I went to Bacchus for dinner, the bride and grooms place of work (at least it was? I can't remember) that came highly recommended. It was 2 for 1 wine wednesday so we got two bottles of wine to go with our magnificent meal. The bread and balsamic dip and love butter was amazing. The lobster and creame sauce appetizer was delicious!! I got a twice baked stuffed lobster with white garlic cream sauce that was to DIE for. God was it good. Guido got a veal over horseradish mashed potatoes and almost licked his plate clean. For dessert, we had a bread pudding made for kings. Holy crap it was so YUMMY!!! I did take a picture of my dinner, to be seen on Facebook later. We took our second bottle of wine back to the hotel as we had stuffed our bellies to the brim. We watched a movie in the hotel room and attempted to drink the wine and then passed out in a food coma.
Thursday
Lots of stuff!! We took the car out to go buy some mamawanna bbq sauce and do some island sight seeing. We got a pretty early start to the day and were at Dominio by 10am. On the way there we stopped to get pictures at the site of Columbus' second landing. Once there, it wasn't as awesome as we thought it would be. So we moved on. While driving from the Domino club guido navigated to get us to a lighthouse and some other sight seeing spots. The road map failed to let us know that the road we ended up on was for 4x4s. The map clearly said that it was paved. By the way, my rental was a Yaris. I 4x4'ed the north western shore of St. croix in a yaris and lived to tell! We passed a group of ATV riders on our way down one side of a mountain, I can only wonder what they were thinking. haha! Before we ended up on that road a white bird flew in front of us as if it were showing us the way. It lasted for so long, guido took a picture. Of course it was when we lost sight of that bird that we ended up on the wrong road. Birdie come back!! When we finally made it to paved roads and rejoiced that our car made it through alive, and we started on our way back. We never found the light house.
Once back to our hotel we got suited up for jet skiing!! We had previously attempted to go on jet skis in the bahamas but the weather cancelled that opportunity. We got out there and of course with in the first 30 seconds they're already yelling at me because I had done something wrong. I swear he pointed and said "go out there and spin in circles". So I did. Apparently I went too far. Anyhoo, once we got out of the harbor our guide took off at top speed. So I followed at top speed. THRILLING!! My speedometer read 60-70mph (guido later said I was way off, but I know what I saw, and I know how it felt!) and I jumped over little wave bumps and was like a pro! The jet ski tour was supposed to take us out to find stuff to see but it was going to rain with in the hour so most of the water was dark, BUT the first place we stopped at we saw a dolphin fin, then I saw two of their shadows deep underwater, THEN about 6-7 of them started swimming around us and coming up out of the water. It was AWESOME!! I really hope those photos turned out!
After cleaning up we headed out for the rehearsal dinner at EAT@Cane Bay. I don't think I ate any bad food on this trip. It was all good every where I went. Speeches, toasts, drinks and food, the night was great! the flowers and decoration were so pretty! I can't wait for more photos. Have I mentioned yet how humid the island is? Your body sweats like a glass of water, I didn't bother doing my hair all week, and I showered an average of twice a day.
Friday
We drove out to the western most point on the island called the Point of Udall. It is a monument that was erected in 2000, roman numeral MM, and the pilers look like an M when you stand at just the right angle and as you walk around it the M repeats itself. It is the eastern most point of the United States. Kinda neat, more photos! Then we ventured down the south eastern side of the island and took more photos and enjoyed the view. Got back to our hotel and ate a light lunch before heading out to our own beach for some snorkeling and beach bumming. We swam out to the reef and started to look around when a HUGE swarm of little fish passed by. As we were watching it all I saw down below in the shadows the biggest fish I'd ever seen. I was swimming amongst the Barracudas lunch. I freaked the fuck out grabbed guido's arm and pulled him in the other direction. While swimming as fast and "calmly" as I could, two smaller ones crossed my path as I quickly made a sharp turn to avoid them and continued to the shore. I was shaking with fear, I'd never been so afraid in my life! Guido patted my fearful head as I cut our snorkel time early. We passed a guy on the beach getting ready to go out to snorkel and we told him about the baracudas. Apparently he didn't give a rats ass as he made his way in the direction of DANGER. I'm sure I was just a chicken shit, but whatever it was SCARY!!!
After lounging around in the sand, and swimming in the shallower water we went in to jump start our packing and clean up for the wedding!
The beautiful ceremony was at Sand Castle on the Beach near sun down. The brides dress was hand made in Chile where she and the groom spent 10 months exploring. The dress had a detachable skit that later revealed a tango dress for the reception! The ceremony was just perfect, and everything was beautiful. The only glitch was the homeless homosexual man sitting on the rocks on the shore wearing very little and splashing around in the water drawing a little too much attention to himself. He seemed to enjoy himself, drunk, high, or whatever. At least he was just far enough away that he won't show up in any of the photos.
The reception was held up the shore at Northside Valley in outdoor tents. The cocktail hour hors'durves were yummy! The bride and groom came out and thanked everyone for attending and we all toasted the with our mamawanna shots. They then had their first dance, the tango. They had been learning it in Chile and practicing for the last year for their wedding, it was so romantic and sweet! We ate great food, drank and danced! Just like every wedding should be :-) I think this was a the most humid night to date. I was melting by the time I left, but that didn't keep me from doing the electric slide and dancing like a fool!
Saturday
Guido and I got up early for another early flight and made our way home. We left the hot and humid island and came home to cold and rainy. I miss home! but I also miss the awesomeness of the island. If you ignore the jail bar covered windows and doors, the 5 pm closures of everything due to crime, the pot hole ridden roads, and my favorite: "drinking and driving is legal, but driving drunk is illegal", You'll find that this Caribbean island is a jem to visit. Don't just stop by on a cruise ship, go and stay, there is so much to do!
