Hike, Beach and Shop on our own?

[mommyof2]

We will be in St. Thomas/St. John from 8:30 - 4:30. We want to do some hiking, as well as hang out at a beach and do some shopping. Will we have time to do all of this? Can we do it on our own? There are 8 of us and are wondering if we should book an excursion or if the transportation won't be a problem. We're thinking of doing the hiking at the Nat'l Park on St. John. Any advice on what trail to take?

 

Thanks!

Heidi

[bUU]

We faced the same questions... we'll be visiting St. Thomas/St. John the week after next on Serenade of the Seas.

 

Our conclusion was that this is one of the best places on the cruise to do-it-ourselves. First, it's America, eh? Second, it's mostly English-speaking. Third, there's a lot you can do with relatively little knowledge.

 

We made a compromise though. The best hiking is the Reef Trail (?), but arranging transportation is either costly ("please wait here for a few hours"), unnerving ("please pick us up here in a few hours"), or impractical ("surely a cab will meander by here and be willing to pick us all up in a few hours"). So we found a few trails that'll keep us busy all day, and make a nice do-it-yourself excursion.

 

We're going to St. John, and hiking the Caneel Hill/Margaret Hill trails first. This is a good 800 foot ascent to some really nice views, including views of San Juan (!). It's not the highest point on St. John, but still a very nice hike from what I understand, and the trailhead is easily reachable by foot from the ferry dock in Cruz Bay.

 

At the Margaret Hill trailhead, we're not far from Caneel Hill Resort. We know we can walk through, but I'm kinda hoping we can find someplace there to actually have lunch. (If not, I suppose we'll have to call a cab to take us from there back to Cruz Bay for lunch.) Assuming that we can find lunch at the resort, we can walk out of the resort via the beach and end up at Honeymoon Beach for a swim. Then we can take the Lind Point Trail back to Cruz Bay. That's a much less strenuous hike, but a nice end to the day.

 

If that sound interesting to you, let me know and I'll try to find the links to the resources we've used to plan our day there. You can find a lot of the information in the St. Thomas/St. John forum here.

[mommyof2]

Thanks for the info! We do have the website for St. John's Nat'l park, so we can look up the trails on that too!

heidi

[bUU]

Here's a link to the thread where we got our best info:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=113829

 

You may be especially interested in the messages from lookin4calm.

[mommyof2]

Thank you bicker! That link had a ton of great info...my husband will love planning out our route, I'm sure!

 

heidi