St. John, Virgin Islands

Just got back from our second visit to St. John! We had a great time, got very relaxed almost instantly, and got very nice tans! We did mainly all new stuff while we were there, which is amazing considering it's such a small island. I still feel like we could go back yet again and there would be plenty of new things to do and see.

For those who don't know, St. John is - unlike the other U.S. Virgin Islands - almost entirely set aside as a National Park. It's largely unspoiled, largely undeveloped, has no night life to speak of, and is not crowded. I think there's only something like 4,000 people on the whole island. Even when the cruise ships come by (and I think they land at St. Thomas), the most adventurous cruise ship denizens ferry to St. John and take these 30-seater taxis to specific 'must see' beaches. So it's easy to avoid the herds, and we often had entire beaches to ourselves or with only a few other people around.

I've put two maps in this entry (click to open) that show exactly where this island paradise is located, and I'll be posting entries just as I did with the London trip. I didn't enter anything down on St. John because I didn't bring my laptop with me. Not that there was a chance in hell I was going to log into my work email or surf YouTube rather than go outside, but part of me wanted to leave the PC and everything it represents behind.

Nice idea, but I'll never do that again! The villa had wi-fi, so I could have pulled up star charts to identify the stars we saw at night, done my blog entries on site, and maybe even researched some deep sea fishing places. Plus I could have watched DVDs on a nice large screen during the plane ride down. I should have trusted myself more. Next time, the laptop comes!

Anyway, on to the entries...