Scott Beach to Trunk Bay

Afternoon finds us heading to Scott Beach.  Our beach bag burden gets lighter each trip as we learn what we can do without.  We spend a wonderful lazy afternoon on the beach.  The Professor heads out to snorkel while I read . . . I go to search for the pina colada man with his golf cart full of tropical rum drink pleasure.  He asks about why we’re there, and how long, and what our plans are. When we tell him that we’ll be heading to St. Croix later in the week, he launches into some story about beer-drinking pigs . . . apparently you buy the pig a beer, and for your two dollars fifty you get to see the enormous thing leap upright onto a fence, grab the beer in his teeth, crack the can open with his tongue, swill it down, and spit the crushed can out. Animal rights activists, feel free to shudder – the good news is that they found out that drinking so much beer was not good for pigs (hmmmm . . . you don’t say?) and so now you can only give them NA beer. After he says “NA” a few times, I figure out he must mean Non Alcoholic.

After our conversation, the husband and I snorkel once more. My feet still hurt from the flippers, so I kick lazily around, and see: a school of bright yellow fish, so tightly packed and synchronized that I think they are a sea lettuce, until I disturb them and they take off, still perfectly aligned. A “mosaic” fish (my name for it), a checkerboard patterned flat dinner plate thing with a huge cartoon eye, looks and moves like prehistoric cave art. Coral candelabra stretch toward the sun, the colorless broken-off pieces rolling back and forth with the tide. I paddle through so many fish, some large and constantly chomping their little mouths like a sea full of Pac Men, some tiny and silvery and darting, like metal shavings. It is not a particularly colorful tableau, but startling nonetheless, and I could drift out here for hours (the salt content in the water is very high, so it is very easy to stay afloat). I keep thinking I see jellyfish, but it’s actually bubbles in my mask. Eventually my loudly complaining feet force me to the shore, and the Professor and I lounge on the beach a bit longer before heading back to our room.

Tonight is the free cocktail hour with the managing director, so we rush through quick showers and stroll hand in hand across the grass to the Equator restaurant. I have champagne, the Professor a rum punch, and both of us eat so many conch fritters and spring rolls that we skip dinner. Instead we linger, standing on the stone floor of the restaurant, looking out over the low mushroom-like lights of Caneel’s property. They look like candle luminaries from up here, lining the meandering paths. We chat with a few fellow guests, pay our respects to the managing director, and then head to the rooftop of the beachfront bar. A snuggly pair of island drinks later, we decide to head for our room. A new larger shell greets us on the turned down bed, along with another little quotation card.

Our final full day on Caneel dawns warm and overcast. We have decided to rent a car to explore St. John, and had arranged for one the previous day at the front desk, pick-up scheduled at 9:00 this morning. And so we dutifully arrive at the rental car desk with snorkel gear and other accoutrements slung over our shoulders. The car rental man gives us a blank look – even our printed reservation confirmation doesn’t make him blink. He mutters something along the lines of bloody hotel staff can’t make a phone call why do they keep overbooking god I hate my job, and tells us to come back at 10 am when he thinks he’ll have a car returned. The Professor and I give each other raised eyebrows, but trudge back to the porch of our lovely room and bide our time for an hour. When we return at 10, he looks as if he’s never seen us before, and we start to think we may not be renting any cars today. But at last we get through to him, and he sits us down on a couple of chairs to fill out the paperwork.

Thirty minutes later our lean, lanky, and TALKATIVE new friend has filled out one name and one driver’s license number. He unfortunately doesn’t seem able to talk and write at the same time, and apparently prefers to do the former. As precious explore-St.-John minutes slip away, our new friend describes his Olympic running career (cut short by a false accusation of doping, he’s still awaiting the payout from his lawsuit), his personality (his friends think he’s mad, and his girlfriend is always yelling at him for being so crazy, but he’s just living life), his parents (his mother is from London, his dad’s here, they don’t get along), and other various personal details. I sense the Professor’s body stiffening, jaw tensing; he stops speaking altogether and his mouth gets smaller and harder while I try to encourage the talking man to write while he talks – “Do you need any other IDs from us? Can you read that clearly? What’s that rate again?” Finally – perhaps it’s the sight of a half dozen other families waiting at his door for their own dose of his family history – he finishes our paperwork. Or at least he decides he’s filled out enough (though it’s only half done), and we snatch it from his hands and leap out the door before he can take a breath for more conversation. We then wait 10 more minutes before our guy realizes that the Haitian assistant he sent to get our car for us didn’t understand English and went somewhere else; at last he goes and fetches it for us.

Shortly before noon we’re bundled in and ready to drive – on the lefthand side of the road, though the steering wheel is in the same place as here. And so begins our St. John exploration adventure. We decide to drive along the coast and take in the beaches and national park land before stopping for lunch on the other side. The first beach with a free parking spot is Cinnamon Bay. We stroll out onto the beach and loll in the sand for a few moments taking it all in. It’s a wider and deeper stretch of beach than any on Caneel, but much more crowded. We don’t stay long – it is beautiful, but our car-rental ordeal has pushed back our timetable, and we are starving for lunch. We drive across the island to a place called Skinny Legs – recommended by fellow blogger NJaney (THANK YOU!) – and what a fabulous place. It’s an open air restaurant with a corrugated tin roof and various livestock wandering through it, including goats, chickens, and tourist children. I have a beautifully greasy hot burger with chips, and soak up the laid-back island feel of the place. After sweat has formed a little puddle at our feet and we’ve licked our plates, we leave Skinny Legs and head to a national park trail that the Professor has read about. It is a long-ish but gentle hike out onto a point of land that affords spectacular views. We pass a large number of people, and also several random piles of clothes (?) on our way up. At the summit we munch on some fruit salad leftover from our gargantuan Honeymoon Beach lunch, and sit on a rock gazing around us at the sea.

At the foot of the trail is a small rocky beach with some decent snorkeling, and upon our return we paddle around in the water cooling off for an hour. Once we’re dried off and back at the car, I sit in the driver’s seat while the Professor my map-loving husband navigates us to the “scenic trail.” Scenic my foot – it is a nearly impassable 4WD track full of boulders, enormous holes, and hanging foliage. I grit my teeth every time a branch screeches along the side of the RENTED car, hoping we won’t be paying a fine for damage. We bump along slowly, the Professor yee-hawing and me slightly less enthusiastic, and pass a sign saying “Tourist Information Center. Free Information – You’re Lost!” Oh good. The Professor tells me to ignore it and press on, and I look skeptically from him back to the incredibly steep “road,” and back to him. He says if I’m nervous, we can turn back, because he knows that will make me want to push forward all the more. We bump along on the track for an eternity, and my certainty that we are going to get stuck and die out here grows. But we don’t die, instead we crest the hill and turn back onto the paved Centerline Road, and look triumphantly at one another.

Our next stop is Trunk Bay – easily the most beautiful stretch of beach I have ever seen in my life, also recommended by our personal tour guide, NJaney. The beach feels wilder, more adventurous, and also more pristine than any other we’ve seen thus far – by the time we get there all the other people have gone and we are, for the most part, alone. It has rougher surf and an underwater snorkel trail with plaques to read and follow. It is reaching the end of the day by the time we get there, and the sun is going down, so we only have time to go through the snorkel trail and then play in the waves for a few moments before we must towel off and turn back for the car.