07-30-2005, 10:04 AM
well as most of you know, i got married on the 16th. we were initially supposed to be going to the Mayan Riviera (right next to Cancun) for our honeymoon but hurricane Emily said "all your beach are belong to us", so Jen and I were on the horn with our badass travel agent for the next 3 days before the wedding trying to figure out where we could go as an alternative for the same amount of money. thankfully we had traveler's insurance, so the whole process was relatively painless :thumbup:
we settled on St. Thomas, USVI, as our destination. we stayed all inclusive (the only way to go, honestly) at the Wyndham Resort in Sugar Bay, St. T. we were there from wednesday to monday, and it was by far the best vacation i've ever had, and next to coming through the trees on the access road at VIR and seeing that awesome track, probably the most beautiful place i've ever seen :lol:
after driving to our apartment in atlanta from roanoke on monday the 18th, we took tuesday to settle and pack up, and then caught an early as hell flight out of atlanta on wednesday, and flew to charlotte for the connecting flight to St. T. it was all pretty streamlined, we didn't hit any delays, and although going through all the customs BS is annoying we still managed to get to St. T 30 mins. ahead of schedule. Jen took this picture from our 757 as we were coming in to land. you can see how steep the terrain is, the highest point on the island is 1600 feet. on an island only 3 miles wide at best, you can imagine how steep the mountain range running down the middle of the island is in order to be that altitude.
![[Image: plane.jpg]](http://mmsports.org/members/albums/userpics/10010/plane.jpg)
the airport on St. T is really different from anything i've ever experienced. open air, very relaxed security, and advertisement/sales for duty free stuff (especially booze) everywhere. the humidity really feels like a brick wall when stepping out of the A/C of the plane! our baggage made it safely and we hooked up with the Tropic Tours desk by baggage claim....they were in charge of taxi'ing us across the island to the resort. unfortunately, Tropic Tours wasn't expecting so many people to be coming in on this flight for some reason or another (we came to find out that a HUGE amount of people had their vacations detoured to St. T). after we got in the van to go, there were some paperwork mixups and the driver wanted to turn around and go back. when he radioed in to the dispatcher at the desk, we could hear the guy frantically telling the driver to just go, because they needed all the vans they could get. woops! driving through Charlotte Amalie (the main city named after a Dutch queen) was an eye opener....the cars all drive on the "wrong" side of the road despite having normal left-side controls, and the infrastructure of the island is pretty poor. everything is so old, but because the island's population is expanding so much, it's very difficult for them to update and repair things. the island is truly choking on way too many cars, and the driver's drive like they're on crack. this turned out to make for a fun experience when riding in their "taxis", which are really just pickup trucks with benches in the back and a wooden roof over the benches. it's all open air, no seatbelts, mountain drifto stage fun!
the resort was amazing. it was set up like a small village and everyone was very friendly. our room was a huge suite (bigger than i expected) with an amazing view of the water between St. T and St. John, the biggest neighboring island. the coast was literally 30 feet from our window...very nice to fall asleep to the water crashing on the rocks. we spent most of the time at the pool area, which connected to the resort beach. the pool was a freshwater pool that they somehow filter, so there was no chlorine smell or stinging in your eyes. it also had 3 waterfalls and alot of palm trees for shade, but those things were hard to pay attention too when you've had 4 margaritas before lunch, haha. which brings me to my next point....open bar! being at the resort was great for many reasons, but one of my favorite was that it was totally acceptable to have alcohol for breakfast and be wasted by noon. and the bartenders were goooood too. i watched Jen ask one for a rum and punch that was a "little strong", and the bartender literally filled the cup 3/4 with rum. rum, btw, is very popular to put in everything since the Cruzan distillery is on St. Croix, so it's real cheap (duty free, remember) here. best drink we had was on St. John, called the bushwhacker. it had like 7 flavors of rum in it and tasted like a pina colada/mudslide.....all i can say is that it was awesome. oh, and don't ever let your wife con you into asking the male bartender for a "sex on the beach". it was very embarrassing, but hey i love my wife and i'm not the brightest guy. anyway, this is a view from the buffet area, right next to the bar.
![[Image: bar%20and%20pool%20area.jpg]](http://mmsports.org/members/albums/userpics/10010/bar%20and%20pool%20area.jpg)
and a view of Coki Bay, right next to our resort beach. this is a view from the patio of our room, no less.
![[Image: coki%20bay.jpg]](http://mmsports.org/members/albums/userpics/10010/coki%20bay.jpg)
so when we weren't drinking, or frying out by the pool we were on the beach. mostly we stayed on the resort beach, it was big and very pretty so there was little reason to take the $8 death-ride via taxi to some other beach. there was alot of wildlife hanging out by the pool and beach too, we had to watch our food on the beach because if the seagulls didn't get it, the iguanas would! they were pretty tame though, as you can see:
croc hunter Jen!
![[Image: wildlife.jpg]](http://mmsports.org/members/albums/userpics/10010/wildlife.jpg)
we went snorkeling on thursday after riding to an adjacent bay on a sailboat. the boat ride was awesome (so silent) and the snorkeling was phenomenal. i'm very interested in marine biology (some of you know about my hobby of keeping a salt water tank) so i was going ape shiz when i saw some of the reef life. truly amazing. unfortunately, all the pictures i took were on a disposable underwater camera and i havent been able to scan the pictures yet.
friday we went to St. John, right next door to St. T. the ferry ride over was interesting....the lady selling tickets (and pretty much the local populace in general....i don't know how they accomplish anything. must be the heat) was so freakin lazy, she wouldnt tell us anything and kept halfway falling asleep. so getting a ticket was a mess, if there was any alternative, i'd recommend it. then when we finally got on the boat we saw a bright red sign on the cabin that said "today's terrorist activity level: high". well that's just great. we finally landed in Cruz Bay, on St. J. the place is incredible, very quaint and clean. apparently back in the day, the island was pretty much owned by the Rockefellers, and when he died he had his property on the island willed to the US parks agency or what not. so 90% of the island is park land that you can't build on....which is great, because it will preserve the beauty of this wonderful place. Jen and i hopped around some of the shops, which are all painted in eccentric colors and are generally really nice to look around in:
![[Image: st.%20john.jpg]](http://mmsports.org/members/albums/userpics/10010/st.%20john.jpg)
we bought a little jerk seasoning and carribean grill rub from a spice shop, and that was about it. most stuff there is pricey and we wanted to save most of our money for some duty-free booze on the way out 8) . we then caught a taxi to Hawks Nest Bay, the most beautiful place i'd ever seen. it was very sheltered so the water was calm and incredibly clear. we had recieved recommendations from many locals to go here and we were not dissapointed. thankfully i had signed out some snorke gear from our resort and toted it along, so we took full advantage of it and snorkeled until our legs hurt. it was so worth it though, even better than our trip on thursday. we saw corals that towered to nearly the water's surface, schools of cuttlefish, and even a mass of small minnows being attacked by what looked like mackeral. as you can see, the water is like being in a pool:
![[Image: hawks%20nest%20bay.jpg]](http://mmsports.org/members/albums/userpics/10010/hawks%20nest%20bay.jpg)
after that amazing time we hit up a taxi again and caught the ferry back after getting soaked by a squall that was gone in 5 minutes. oh well, good thing we had our bathing suits on.
the next two days were spent just chilling out at the resort, we decided after two days of spending money and trying to time schedules we had seen what we wanted and felt like taking it more easy (if that's possible). so not much to say about that, just that it's hard to beat spending an afternoon in a better way than laying in a chaise lounge under a mangrove tree on the beach with a tasty libation in hand and no where to go! later in our stay it was even clearer than usual at night and i caught this shot off of our balcony:
![[Image: full%20moon.jpg]](http://mmsports.org/members/albums/userpics/10010/full%20moon.jpg)
we flew out on monday after an incredible stay, and i have to say reality sucks. our trips back were just as uneventful (we did pick up two liters of Cruzan Rum and a liter of Sheridan, some kind of awesome coffee liquor) and we got back home late on monday night. thankfully we didnt have to drive from charlotte to atlanta, that would have been awful. all of our luggage made it back too, i was pretty happy about flying with USAir.
i have only good things to say about St. T, if you ever have a chance, go! i also thought 5 days was plenty of time to see everything, i wouldn't bother staying longer than that. also read Mike's review, it came in pretty handy....thanks for writing it dude.
sorry for such a long post, i can't help writing novels.
we settled on St. Thomas, USVI, as our destination. we stayed all inclusive (the only way to go, honestly) at the Wyndham Resort in Sugar Bay, St. T. we were there from wednesday to monday, and it was by far the best vacation i've ever had, and next to coming through the trees on the access road at VIR and seeing that awesome track, probably the most beautiful place i've ever seen :lol:
after driving to our apartment in atlanta from roanoke on monday the 18th, we took tuesday to settle and pack up, and then caught an early as hell flight out of atlanta on wednesday, and flew to charlotte for the connecting flight to St. T. it was all pretty streamlined, we didn't hit any delays, and although going through all the customs BS is annoying we still managed to get to St. T 30 mins. ahead of schedule. Jen took this picture from our 757 as we were coming in to land. you can see how steep the terrain is, the highest point on the island is 1600 feet. on an island only 3 miles wide at best, you can imagine how steep the mountain range running down the middle of the island is in order to be that altitude.
the airport on St. T is really different from anything i've ever experienced. open air, very relaxed security, and advertisement/sales for duty free stuff (especially booze) everywhere. the humidity really feels like a brick wall when stepping out of the A/C of the plane! our baggage made it safely and we hooked up with the Tropic Tours desk by baggage claim....they were in charge of taxi'ing us across the island to the resort. unfortunately, Tropic Tours wasn't expecting so many people to be coming in on this flight for some reason or another (we came to find out that a HUGE amount of people had their vacations detoured to St. T). after we got in the van to go, there were some paperwork mixups and the driver wanted to turn around and go back. when he radioed in to the dispatcher at the desk, we could hear the guy frantically telling the driver to just go, because they needed all the vans they could get. woops! driving through Charlotte Amalie (the main city named after a Dutch queen) was an eye opener....the cars all drive on the "wrong" side of the road despite having normal left-side controls, and the infrastructure of the island is pretty poor. everything is so old, but because the island's population is expanding so much, it's very difficult for them to update and repair things. the island is truly choking on way too many cars, and the driver's drive like they're on crack. this turned out to make for a fun experience when riding in their "taxis", which are really just pickup trucks with benches in the back and a wooden roof over the benches. it's all open air, no seatbelts, mountain drifto stage fun!
the resort was amazing. it was set up like a small village and everyone was very friendly. our room was a huge suite (bigger than i expected) with an amazing view of the water between St. T and St. John, the biggest neighboring island. the coast was literally 30 feet from our window...very nice to fall asleep to the water crashing on the rocks. we spent most of the time at the pool area, which connected to the resort beach. the pool was a freshwater pool that they somehow filter, so there was no chlorine smell or stinging in your eyes. it also had 3 waterfalls and alot of palm trees for shade, but those things were hard to pay attention too when you've had 4 margaritas before lunch, haha. which brings me to my next point....open bar! being at the resort was great for many reasons, but one of my favorite was that it was totally acceptable to have alcohol for breakfast and be wasted by noon. and the bartenders were goooood too. i watched Jen ask one for a rum and punch that was a "little strong", and the bartender literally filled the cup 3/4 with rum. rum, btw, is very popular to put in everything since the Cruzan distillery is on St. Croix, so it's real cheap (duty free, remember) here. best drink we had was on St. John, called the bushwhacker. it had like 7 flavors of rum in it and tasted like a pina colada/mudslide.....all i can say is that it was awesome. oh, and don't ever let your wife con you into asking the male bartender for a "sex on the beach". it was very embarrassing, but hey i love my wife and i'm not the brightest guy. anyway, this is a view from the buffet area, right next to the bar.
and a view of Coki Bay, right next to our resort beach. this is a view from the patio of our room, no less.
so when we weren't drinking, or frying out by the pool we were on the beach. mostly we stayed on the resort beach, it was big and very pretty so there was little reason to take the $8 death-ride via taxi to some other beach. there was alot of wildlife hanging out by the pool and beach too, we had to watch our food on the beach because if the seagulls didn't get it, the iguanas would! they were pretty tame though, as you can see:
croc hunter Jen!
we went snorkeling on thursday after riding to an adjacent bay on a sailboat. the boat ride was awesome (so silent) and the snorkeling was phenomenal. i'm very interested in marine biology (some of you know about my hobby of keeping a salt water tank) so i was going ape shiz when i saw some of the reef life. truly amazing. unfortunately, all the pictures i took were on a disposable underwater camera and i havent been able to scan the pictures yet.
friday we went to St. John, right next door to St. T. the ferry ride over was interesting....the lady selling tickets (and pretty much the local populace in general....i don't know how they accomplish anything. must be the heat) was so freakin lazy, she wouldnt tell us anything and kept halfway falling asleep. so getting a ticket was a mess, if there was any alternative, i'd recommend it. then when we finally got on the boat we saw a bright red sign on the cabin that said "today's terrorist activity level: high". well that's just great. we finally landed in Cruz Bay, on St. J. the place is incredible, very quaint and clean. apparently back in the day, the island was pretty much owned by the Rockefellers, and when he died he had his property on the island willed to the US parks agency or what not. so 90% of the island is park land that you can't build on....which is great, because it will preserve the beauty of this wonderful place. Jen and i hopped around some of the shops, which are all painted in eccentric colors and are generally really nice to look around in:
we bought a little jerk seasoning and carribean grill rub from a spice shop, and that was about it. most stuff there is pricey and we wanted to save most of our money for some duty-free booze on the way out 8) . we then caught a taxi to Hawks Nest Bay, the most beautiful place i'd ever seen. it was very sheltered so the water was calm and incredibly clear. we had recieved recommendations from many locals to go here and we were not dissapointed. thankfully i had signed out some snorke gear from our resort and toted it along, so we took full advantage of it and snorkeled until our legs hurt. it was so worth it though, even better than our trip on thursday. we saw corals that towered to nearly the water's surface, schools of cuttlefish, and even a mass of small minnows being attacked by what looked like mackeral. as you can see, the water is like being in a pool:
after that amazing time we hit up a taxi again and caught the ferry back after getting soaked by a squall that was gone in 5 minutes. oh well, good thing we had our bathing suits on.
the next two days were spent just chilling out at the resort, we decided after two days of spending money and trying to time schedules we had seen what we wanted and felt like taking it more easy (if that's possible). so not much to say about that, just that it's hard to beat spending an afternoon in a better way than laying in a chaise lounge under a mangrove tree on the beach with a tasty libation in hand and no where to go! later in our stay it was even clearer than usual at night and i caught this shot off of our balcony:
we flew out on monday after an incredible stay, and i have to say reality sucks. our trips back were just as uneventful (we did pick up two liters of Cruzan Rum and a liter of Sheridan, some kind of awesome coffee liquor) and we got back home late on monday night. thankfully we didnt have to drive from charlotte to atlanta, that would have been awful. all of our luggage made it back too, i was pretty happy about flying with USAir.
i have only good things to say about St. T, if you ever have a chance, go! i also thought 5 days was plenty of time to see everything, i wouldn't bother staying longer than that. also read Mike's review, it came in pretty handy....thanks for writing it dude.
sorry for such a long post, i can't help writing novels.
2010 Civic Si
2019 4Runner TRD Off-Road
--------------------------
Past: 03 Xterra SE 4x4 | 05 Impreza 2.5RS | 99.5 A4 Quattro 1.8T | 01 Accord EX | 90 Maxima GXE | 96 Explorer XLT
2019 4Runner TRD Off-Road
--------------------------
Past: 03 Xterra SE 4x4 | 05 Impreza 2.5RS | 99.5 A4 Quattro 1.8T | 01 Accord EX | 90 Maxima GXE | 96 Explorer XLT
