June 22, 2017- St. John Day 5

Another spectacular day in St. John!  Weather was perfect again today- blue skies, white puffy clouds, and plenty of sunshine. We stopped on the way out to the beach to take some pictures looking down at Cruz Bay.   

 

 

Where we are staying is up and to the left of those two purple roofed buildings. In fact, if you look closely, and zoom in you can see the roof of our villa just peaking out of the tree tops. 

 

As we are coming to the end of our stay, we went back to Maho Bay today to redeem ourselves from not seeing any sea turtles. Today was a totally different experience, in a good way.  We had no trouble spotting the sea turtles today and swam around following them for a while. The first one we saw had a long gray fish attached to the turle's shell. When the turtle went up for air, it came off and a yellow fish came out from under the turtle where it had been attached. Both waited for the turtle to swim back down and they resumed their swimming with the turtle. (The gray one we found out later from a book in our villa is called a remora or "shark sucker".) We also found some great snorkeling off the rocks at the end of the beach. We saw large schools of yellow fish together just hanging out next to the rocks. It seemed like they were just swaying in the current and not swimming at all. 

 

 

 

 

When we took our cool floaty things in to float and cool off, we even had turtles surfacing close to us. It was really fun to watch. 

 

Mike is a sneaky guy!  He forgot his phone in the jeep and went back to get it. Upon returning, he took these lovely photos of our beach setup. He would later move his chair back under the shade of these trees for some relief from the sun. 

 

 

 

And, another gorgeous sunset to end the day. 

 

 

 

June 21, 2017- St. John Day 4

Today's weather has been the best we've had. Really sunny.   

 

 

 

The blue sky is a welcome change from the clouds and gray overcast of previous mornings. 

 

Today we began with a driving tour of the east end of the island. We took the removable roof panels off the jeep, slathered on the sunscreen, and off we went!

 

Our first lookout point was down to Coral Bay. Coral Bay is the other "town" if you can call it that on the island. 

 

 

 

Not sure where we are here, but there was a nice view. 

 

 

Now we're looking across the water to Tortola, BVI. 

 

 

 

We stopped at Hanson's Bay, got out of the jeep and walked on the beach.  While this was a lovely beach, we decided to drive back to the other side of the island to snorkel and spend the rest of the day. 

 

 

 

We stopped on the way back to check out Haulover Bay. 

 

 

Also came upon this warning sign. 

 

 

We spent the rest of the day hanging out at Hawksnest Bay. The views here were beautiful. 

 

 

 

When we first got here, we went into the water to swim and float around. We weren't in the water 2 minutes before Mike pointed out the stingray that was swimming right below us. It was crazy!  We proceeded to watch that ray swim back and forth along the shoreline all afternoon- back and forth. People always seemed to notice it, but didn't really move out of the way. The ray kind of swam around them.   The snorkeling here was amazing, too. We saw lots of fish and beautiful corals. 

 

Back at the villa, we were finally treated to a beautiful sunset right from our own patio. 

 

 

 

 

Yes, a perfect end to a perfect day in paradise. 

 

June 20, 2017- St. John Day 3 AND Our 30th Anniversary

 

We started the day by hiking Leinster Trail to Watermelon Cay for "the best snorkeling on the island".  

 

 

 

I'll just quickly say- amazing!!  We saw tons of coral and beautiful fish. We even saw a baby nurse shark swimming the shoreline as we were walking out towards the cay.  We also saw a large stingray and- i saw a large nurse shark. It freaked me out, of course and Mike was roo far away from me to get his attention. 

 

Our next stop was Cinnamon Bay for a picnic lunch and some chilling on the beach. 

 

 

 

 

Mike had dinner reservations for us at Zozo's, an Italian restaurant at the Caneel Bay Resort. Before we left we took some pictures from our patio. 

 

 

 

Here's where we ate. 

 

 

It is actually built around a some sugar mill ruins. So we were able to take some nice pictures here, too.  

 

 

 

Our special table along the railing provided us with a spectular view of the sunset. Only its been cloudy every day and we've yet to see a really amazing sunset. Oh well!  We're still in paradise and have no complaints. 

 

 

We bought each other matching anniversary cards!  Clearly there was only one option for 30 years. 

 

 

 

Dinner was delicious!  Mike had swordfish and I had Osso Bucco. We did share the Chocolate Torte dessert. Yummy! 

 

 

 

 

 

June 19, 2017- St John Day 2

We walked into town this morning and did a little exploring.  Found this guy...

 

After lunch we drove out to Maho Bay to do some snorkeling.  As we drove we came upon some wild donkeys in the road. Mike had read about them but thought they were mostly on the other side of the island. 

 

 

 

 

The next thing we knew, this one was walking right towards our jeep. Mike quickly rolled up his window!  And it's a good thing he did, too. 

 

 

 

Here's Maho Beach as we head down towards it. 

 

 

It's a view you can get used to, for sure. This next one is from out beach chairs. 

 

 

So this beach is known for its sea turtles. You can look out over the water and see them popping up for air. Do you think we saw any while snorkeling?  Not. A. Single. One.  In fact, we didn't see much of anything. After the cool stuff we saw yesterday, we were a little disappointed, to be honest. ( Since then we've overheard several people talking about how great the turtles are there. One guy even said if you dont see them you must be doing something wrong. Well, we may have to go back and give his beach another chance.)

 

On our drive back into town we saw our donkey friends again. 

 

 

For dinner, we ate at The Terrace. 

 

 

We had a lovely table with a view to Cruz Bay. 

 

 

 

The night ended with this dessert.  Profiteroles- basically cream puffs.