The Island of St. Thomas. Part 5

Our second Island of the cruise was St. Thomas. And it was hands down our favorite location of the trip. The island is very pretty and I highly recommend picking a cruise that visits this location if you ever get the chance. Due to ruff seas the night before we were late getting into St. Thomas. But thats ok cause it gave us time to grab a good large breakfast in the main dinning room and also got to watch us pull into port.






Before the cruise I looked into things to do In St. Thomas and we decided to take an Island tour with one of the locals. His name is Henry and he owns EEE Tours. I highly recommend his tour if you go to St. Thomas. He has many different tour options and he will show you the entire island as well as take you to a beach of your choice for a couple hours. We had a great time with him and he was very imformative and we had a great time spending the day with him. Even though our ship was an hour late getting into dock he was still there waiting for us.





After leaving the pier our tour of the island started right away. One thing was evedent in St. Thomas and that is all the drivers here are crazy. I didn't even want to imagine driving there. And to add to the shock they drive just as crazy on these mountain passes that are all over the island. What and adventure lol. before heading up into the mountains Henry drove us thru the city and stopped at an spot overlooking the airport.











Henry next drove us thru the mountains showing us many of the different plant life that grows there and also the fruit. He also told us info about the island like all the homes being built out of cender blocks due to termite problems there and also most houses have no running water. They collect the rain water from there roofs to reuse.







Our next stop was at a place called the St. Peter Greathouse. Here there was an observation deck built with excellent views of the island and Magens bay. They also had a botanical garden that you could walk thru. The entire property was very pretty and I'm glad we got to stop here.













Our next stop was back to another lookout spot on the other side of the mountain that overlooked the city. This view was also spectacular. We also got a good view of Magens bay where you can see the hearts shape the beach and bay has.








The next portion of the tour was the beach part. Henry gave us a choice of 3 beaches we wanted to spend around 2 hours at. Due to recomendations of friends and family we decided to go to Coki Beach. Once there we soon realized that Coki Beach was diffenitly the popular Tourtist beach of the island. It was very packed. But Henry took care of us contacting some of his friends to find us a spot on the beach and taking care of getting our snorkling gear.





Coki Beach is known for its snorkling. You only have to go out about 15 feet into the water and you will find fish all around you. With our snorkling gear they also gave us dog treats to feed the fish. With these treats the fish would swim right up and eat it out of your hand. This was my first time snorkling and I had alot of fun with it. The water was so clear and pretty. We had Kieras mom's underwater digital camera with us as well to be able to take these pictures while snorkling.













After snorkling for an hour we decided to get our of the water for a little bit to let the camera dry off. While walking back to our spot on the beach this is when Kiera stepped on the sea urchine. She said it hurt and burned so bad. She could barely even move when it happened and I helped her limp back to our towels. The picutres of the sweeling are posted a few blogs back. Luckly the pain and burning had died down by the time we left the beach. But needless to say our snorkling was done for the day. By the time we got out of the water as well many of the people had left so the beach was starting to look pretty empty. This was when you really got to see the beauty of Coki Beach. It is very pretty when its not crowded with tons of people.












We meet back up with Henry and then made our way over to Magens Bay to pick up the rest of the people in our tour group. We originally only planned on doing the island tour and beach package. However we decided to pay a little extra and do the shopping package as well. So we made our way back over the mountains and back into the town to do some shopping. Just like many of the other islands there is alot of higher class shops in St. Thomas. We found a small flee market though where we did our shopping and Kiera found herself some new jewelry type items. We also found it funny how chickens just roam randomly around the city.







After shopping our tour was over so we started making out way back to the ships with the option to do some shopping at the pier shops as well. Everyone else on the island must have started heading back to the ships at that time as well because the roads were packed and we were stuck in traffic for a while trying to get to the port. We were so exhausted though once we got there that we decided to just be dropped off back at our ship instead of trying to do more shopping.





We had a great time in St. Thomas and as I said before it was by far our favorite part of the whole vacation. The island is so pretty in almost every way. In my opinion it is a must see if your into cruising. Henry was awesome. I would hope that if any of you visit St. Thomas to take his tour. I promise you won't be dissapointed. His company is called EEE Tours. Just google search that and you'll find him. He was very knowladgable and did all he could do to take care of us and make us happy. He was great. We were late getting back on the ship so we missed our dinner time in the main dinning room. So after dinner at the buffet and getting changed and ready for the night we were able to see the city lit up at night before we left. We loved St. Thomas and hope we get the oppertunity to go there again someday. Maybe next time we will try out some of the other beaches.