St. John is one of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It is located in the Caribbean Sea and is only 19.61 square miles in area and has
a population of just around 4200 people. There is no airport on St. John, but there are ferries that run hourly between
St. Thomas and St. John. There are also ferries between St. John and the British Virgin Islands.
Two-thirds of the island is a National Park and so the land is generally undeveloped. Along the north west side of the island
are many beautiful and famous beaches.
One of the most beautiful of the beaches is Trunk Bay. It is great for snorkeling and has wonderful views of the
ocean and surrounding areas. This picture was taken from a lookout area along the road near the bay:
This picture was taken from the beach. Notice the 3 buoys - a white one in the foreground, a blue one to the left and straight out and a
bit harder to see is a third one that is red. They mark where the path of the underwater snorkeling trail is. I was told that
day that the white one had moved out of place a bit and was closer to shore than it should be. Personally I wasn't that impressed
with the snorkeling trail, but some people might enjoy it.
We saw lots of fish while snorkeling there! Unfortunately we didn't get many nice pictures of them. Both days we were there
though we saw a group of the same fish in the same area. They were kind of big and not too far out - we got a good picture
of one of them:
And just to make a point of how nice and smooth the sand was - click on the following picture to see a close up of the sand.
It would be hard to even know what it is a picture of if it weren't for the bit of water you can see in the upper left corner:
Here is a video of the beach:
There are also many trails and paths for walking and hiking at St. John. We spend some time looking at the ruins of an
old sugar mill that had been there a long time ago:
There were only 6 species of mammals native to St. John - all of them bats. Now there are mongoose, donkey and deer brought
by Europeans. We didn't see any mongoose or donkeys, but did get a glimpse of a deer. Iguanas and small lizards are
also on the island. I saw quite a few butterflies near Cinnamon Bay - mostly zebra long wings - but there should
be quite a few other species of butterflies there too.
One day we saw a hermit crab along a road near Cinnamon Bay:
The ferry ride to St. John from Red Hook, St. Thomas is only 20 minutes and is nice. Although it can get a bit crowded if
you happen to catch it when many of the people who work at St. John are going to or from work. If you take the
ferry from the Charlotte Amalie area, the ride is longer.
The following are some of the pictures I took while on the ferry:
