Okay- so it is taking me a long time to describe the cruise vacation to the Eastern Caribbean... there's a lot of other things going on right now, so excuse the delay. Here we go... DAY #6 (day 5 of the cruise) IN THE PORT OF ST. THOMAS, VIRGIN ISLANDS - On Wednesday, Feb. 10th the ship was docked at St. Thomas. We finished our breakfast by 7am and disembarked, walking around the pier for one hour. It was a new dock, recently built, and one Tom was unfamiliar with. We later learned that it was built purposely for cruise ships, because like Grand Turk, you walk into new shops, filled with expensive baubles, jewelry, etc.
It was 83F and sunny. We met with the group of "mature" gay men on the dock, that we were going on the land excursion with. The bus tour was scheduled for 9:30am, but the tour guide never showed. After 30 minutes of calling the tour bus company, a guide finally showed up. It was an older African-American man with graying Rastafarian hair. He was really friendly, and knowledgeable of the island. He drove an open-air tour bus that sat 12 and had no seatbelts, just side railings that came up about 10" from the seat. We all hung onto them because he drove up VERY STEEP hills like a bat out of hell! His driving was like a teenager on the highway, text messaging and talking to a passenger at the same time. We were nervous! We noticed that unlike Puerto Rico, folks drive on the LEFT side of the road there.
When we first started out, we passed a second shuttle with another group of older gay guys, and someone in our tour bus, who was from England, said "Give them all the queen's wave, it's appropriate to all parties." :)
The tourguide took us to three mountaintops where everyone took photos. We also stopped at a "Botanical Garden museum." It wasn't much of a botanical garden, but it once belonged to a wealthy plantation owner and was built on a steep hillside overlooking the "famous Megan's Bay." That was a beautiful view. The home was later purchased from Johnson and Johnson Co. It was destroyed in 1989 by Hurricane Hugo and rebuilt to include lavish furnishings. It was once a 16,000 acre plantation.
We returned to the ship for lunch at noon, wrote postcards and took a nap before getting a massage! Rob talked to Laura, the girl doing the treatment, the entire time, and she wound up requesting a copy of his book.
I don't remember the rest of the day other than sunning, reading, eating, and watching TV. We did enjoy seeing the towel animal "dog" when we returned to our cabin, and we did continue to leave notes with Alain and Alain between our cabins!
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