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My wife and I just returned from an amazing trip to the island of St John in the Virgin Islands. I’m going to give you a few highlights as well as the scoop on what we enjoyed and what we didn’t like.

First off, we went in late February and the weather was wonderful! It was warm, between 70-90 degrees. It rained for very brief intervals of perhaps 10 minutes at a time and mostly during the night. The days were clear and sunny.

Getting There

Traveling to St John from New York City was an all day event. We flew from New York City to San Juan, Puerto Rico and then took a very brief (20 minute) flight from San Juan to the island of St Thomas. From St Thomas we took a ferry to St John. There are two ferries to St John out of St Thomas. One is out of Redhook which involves a longer taxi ride (35 minutes) from the St Thomas airport, but a shorter ferry ride to St John (20 minutes). The other route is out of Charlotte Amalie. This is the route that my wife and I liked the best since it involved less land travel and more water time (45 minute ferry ride, 10 minute taxi ride).

Our Favorite Beach

We stayed in Cinnamon Bay, which we felt was the nicest beach we saw on the island. It was a long, sweeping beach of soft, white sand. Other beaches that we saw that didn’t measure up to Cinnamon Bay were Hawksnest Bay, Leinster Bay, Little and Big Maho Bay, Francis Bay, and Salt Pond Bay. Bear in mind that we only ventured out of the northern coast of St John once to head to Salt Pond Bay. There is an entire southern half of the island that we never saw. But if you’re looking for a great beach on the northern coast look no further than Cinnamon Bay.

Snorkeling

We had read before we left that the snorkeling was pretty nice since there were many coral reefs in pretty shallow water (5-30 feet or so). This was true, the snorkeling was very nice. Lots of brilliantly colored fish. We also saw a few stingray, sea turtles and a nurse shark! The coral itself was ok, not anything compared to the Great Barrier Reef, but still pretty in some spots. Our favorite spots were America’s Point on the eastern edge of Cinnamon bay (lot’s of fish, coral and the nurse shark!), Waterlemon Cay (the best coral plus a few stingray and sea turtles), and Salt Pond Bay (the most varied fish we had seen). The great thing about the snorkeling is that it is all accessible by swimming. We did speak to a few people who had taken some guided snorkeling tours and said that they saw some great stuff that way but we didn’t feel we were lacking in any way by just snorkeling from the shore.

Wildlife

Perhaps our favorite part of this trip was the amount of wildlife we saw. We may have been having a bit of luck because when we spoke with others they weren’t seeing nearly as many different animals as us. We saw lot’s of Hermit Crabs, little lizards, Iguana, Pelicans, Mongoose, Birds (bannaquits, hummingbirds, boobi’s and more) and of course all the fish, stingrays, sea turtles and the nurse shark. Here is a picture of the biggest Iguana we saw:

Cost

The cost of getting there will vary depending on where you’re coming from. And a word of caution, the food is expensive. We didn’t find any real cheap way to eat. Even buying our own groceries was expensive. But flying from New York City was cheap, $280 a piece, and we camped in Cinnamon Bay which was cheap as well. Most places were $80-150 a night, not exactly cheap. All in all, though, it was an amazing trip in one of the most beautiful places I’ve been. I’d highly recommend a vacation in St John!

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Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans AT Next2Friends DOT com