St. Thomas - hail2skins's Rating: 5+
Our final stop.
This is an amazing place. Beautiful every way you turn your head. Hilly, mountainous terrain like Dominica, but, beautiful beaches sprinkle the shore. The resorts themselves seem to have private beach areas and while the 10 resorts sharing a single big beach is probably all over too, I was attracted to what appeared to be small private little places.
We took the sailboat Bones to Turtle Bay for snorkeling before more sailing and a private beach. This was the best shore excursion we've had of our 8 shore excursion stops. The crew was jovial and fun. Our captain was from Alabama. He came to the island 10 years earlier, fell in love, sold everything and sailed the islands for several years. Our main contact was an islander who was sarcastic, sharp and helpful. Our main water guide was from Texas. He'd just gotten his masters and before going into the world, came down 8 months ago to work the boat.
The crew set this apart from the similar Mi Dushi by being incredibly funny and friendly. They literally LEARNED every person's name and where they were from. They knew us all and what we were like by the time we got halfway through. They took incredible care of everyone and made this seem like a cruise of friends. The Mi Dushi people really stayed to themselves. One couple was on that with us and on this with us and we had no idea they were fun until this one :).
That is a credit to the crew.
The first stop was a long snorkel at Turtle Bay, a nature preserve off the main island. We saw turtles, a stingray and lots of fish. We got to hold a couple of fish as our guide went down and talked about it. Also this is different than the Mi Dushi where we were told to go snorkel but no one came in and really showed us what was what
We had 120 feet of visibility on the day we went and the water was super warm. After the snorkel the bar was open and these guys made sure you were super happy. We sailed across the islands to another small private place, Honeymoon Cove. Two of our excursion group went off to make a baby.
I heard from others at Megan Bay that it was crowded there. But, here, on a Saturday, there was LITERALLY only the people on Bones and a couple of natives. It was entirely secluded and private. We swam to the beach, which was thick and sandy. We got a nice lunch. A small rain shower started to dampen things, but all of us went into the ocean, which was warmer and no one left. We all just hung out in three-feet of water, throwing a frisbee, drinking beer or pop which was brought out to us with the super special floating cooler and relaxing.
St. Thomas was beautiful and this excursion is like no other. I highly recommend it.
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