Rocklyn Home Page: St. John March 2024

This being our 3rd trip to St. John, we were looking forward to sharing some of our favorite places with friends who had not yet visited the island. Much like our trip in 2023, this trip also was in celebration of friends hitting a milestone birthday. This time we had 5 couples in total - myself and Lynn, Doug and Angie, Rob and Angela, Lee and Erika, and Lance and Morgan. We would be staying a full week from 3/16 to 3/23, again at Seashore Allure in Cruz Bay. We absolutely love this resort and were able to book 2 condos, one with 2 master suites and another with 3 in order to accommodate the entire group.

All 10 of us were on the same flight to St. Thomas so we pretty much took over the plane with the party starting as soon as we got in the air! From the airport in St. Thomas we had a private limo service drive us to Red Hook, where we take the ferry over to St. John. The weather was beautiful and the trip was getting off to a really good start.

Once we disembarked at Cruz Bay, Doug and I went to pick up the rental cars. Seashore Allure is walking distance from the ferry dock, but with all of our luggage we thought it best to pick up the rentals right away so we could load up and drive the short distance to the condos.

The view from the condos:

Our first dinner was Banana Deck in Cruz Bay on Saturday evening. Excellent food!

What a motley crew we all are:

With the next day being our first full day, the plan was to visit Salt Pond Bay in Coral Bay. Salt Pond offers a beautiful beach and a hiking trail to Ram Head, which is a small peak at the end of the peninsula. This beach is more secluded than most and is usually not crowded, but a bit of a rocky trail to get there (so we had to remember not to pull the cooler on wheels full of glass bottled beer)! :)

Lynn wanted to experience driving on the island. The steering wheel is on the left like in the States, but you drive on the left side of the road. Takes a little getting used to. She quickly became the default driver for our car.

It is a short hike to get to Salt Pond but definitely worth the effort.

After spending the day at Salt Pond we headed for The Wind Mill Bar, which is situated high above Hawksnest Bay. We had met the owners of this bar on our previous trip but were never able to stop by. We had been told that this is the best place on the island to enjoy the sunset and after visiting we completely agree.

This being 3/17, St Patrick's Day, we headed back to the condo to get cleaned up and then out to Cruz Bay bars for shenanigans.

The next day the plan was to visit Maho Bay. This is a great beach with paddle board rentals, a tiki bar, and a food truck. You can easily spend all day there, which is exactly what we did!

After a great day of sun and painkillers, we went back to the condo to get ready for dinner. Morgan's Mango is one of our favorite open air restaurants in Cruz Bay. This was an excellent meal with a really good island vibe ambience (and the key lime pie was exceptional).

Tuesday's plan was a chartered boat to take us over to the British Virgin Islands. We had chartered a 38 foot boat with a captain for the whole day. Plenty of room for all of us and a captain to handle all of the navigating and details of getting into and out of BVI.

We were loaded up and out on the water by 9:00am. The weather was fantastic!

Our first stop was the West End Terminal on Tortola to get checked into the British Virgin Islands. Since we had booked this ahead of time the boat rental agency (Low Key Watersports) had taken care of everything. All that was needed was for the captain to get our passports stamped and we were back out on the water in no time.

The next stop was The Bight Bay on Norman Island for some snorkeling.

Captain Ben did a great job putting up with all of us!

After snorkeling we stopped at The Pirates Bight for lunch in the same bay. Open air dining on the beach was excellent!

Our next stop was White Bay in Jost Van Dyke and a visit to the famous Soggy Dollar bar.

From there it was back to the USVI where we had to go through US customs to get back in. This took a lot longer than getting into BVI due to a large tour boat full of people in front of us in line.

Thanks to Captain Ben for a wonderful day!

We enjoyed the sunset at Seashore Allure before heading out to Drink Bar for drinks and to pick up take out to bring back to the condo.

Drink Bar in Cruz Bay is owned by a young woman from South Carolina who bought the bar at the age of 21 and has now lived in St. John for 8 years. She is living her best life for sure!

Enjoying take out under the Gazebo is exactly what we all needed.

The next day, Wednesday 3/20, was to be the last full day for Rob and Angela, Lance and Morgan, and Lee and Erika as they would be leaving early Thursday morning. Since they enjoyed Maho Bay so much we decided to spend another day there.

As I mentioned before, Lynn had become the default driver for our vehicle. She is an excellent driver. We did have an incident worth mentioning, however, that was no fault of hers. Maho Bay was crowded that day and we had to drive around looking for parking. This put us further up North Shore Road past Maho. The roads are narrow and speed limits are low. A car passed us in the opposite direction going very fast and came so close to us our side mirrors collided. A couple of inches more and it would have been much worse. No damage but shook us both up a bit. If I would have had my arm out the window I may have had it torn off. Needless to say once we found parking we both headed straight to the tiki bar!!

The afternoon at Maho Bay was very relaxing and even though it was a bit more crowded, the beach is really long and does not feel crowded at all.

That evening we went back to Drink (for, umm, drinks). This was an evening to bounce around, so over to Woody's we went and then to Tap and Still for burgers and fries. Tap and Still is on the main road across the street from Woody's and is a great place to hang out and enjoy the local vibe.

The next morning it was time to say good bye to our friends and it would be just myself and Lynn, with Doug and Angie for the remainder of the week. We dropped them off at the ferry and then went to return one of the vehicles and then headed over to Hawksnest Beach to spend the day. Hawksnest is a favorite of the locals.

Hawksnest Beach is a bit different than Maho in the sense that it drops off deeper more quickly and also has some rock formations at one end. Water is clear and beautiful. Chances of seeing rays swimming close to shore is high here also and you can dive for lobster nearby.

The young woman that owns Drink was on the beach at Hawksnest that day also!

After a relaxing day at the beach we went out for dinner at The Longboard, which is one of our favorites in Cruz Bay. The food is fantastic and the vibe is laid back.

Friday would be our last full day on the island so we chose to spend it doing a little exploring, shopping, and whatever else came up along the way.

We started out by driving over to Coral Bay to have lunch at Skinny Legs. This is a bit of a shanty that is a bar/restaurant and gift shop. Food is good and a strong local vibe.

A beautiful morning at the condo before we left:

On the road to Skinny Legs (even the animals are on "island" time):

And at Skinny Legs:

Jolly Dog for shopping was our next stop.

After our excursions we walked back into Cruz Bay from the condo and had drinks at, well, Drink. Definitely a regular stop for us at this point. From there, we grabbed pizzas from Lovango (just upstairs from Drink) to take back to the condo to relax for our final night in St. John.

On this trip, we found a shortcut path from Cruz Bay to the condo and this sweet female peacock had roosted for the night above the path that night. Sort of scared us because it was so dark, but we moved around her to respect her space!

There were a handful of peacocks around Cruz Bay which were quite vocal and not seemingly afraid of people! Such beautiful creatures.

The next morning it was time to pack up and start the journey home. What a wonderful vacation with good friends, good food, good beaches, and new memories to cherish. We love to travel and are fortunate enough to have friends that will travel with us as well.