St. Croix - U.S. Virgin Island

Annaly Bay

This last weekend we got to go to St. Croix.  St. Croix is owned by the United States, so they use the U.S. Dollar and speak English.  The only quirky thing is they drive on the left side of the road, even though the cars are still designed like ours with the driver on the left side.  Apparently, the accident rate is super high because of this.  There is a U.S. Naval base there as well. 

We were only there a couple of days, but it was a beautiful island and one we would definitely go back to.  We stayed at the Renaissance Marriott Carambola Resort which is situated on the north side of the island.  Marriott acquired this property 8 months ago, and it is truly a unique property for Marriott.  Most of the Marriott properties on the beach or high rises with tons of rooms, but this one was made up of villas.  There were about 4 villas in each building and each villa has a living room, screened-in patio with furniture and table,  fridge, sofa pull-out bed, and a lot of space.  

We went on a hike to Annaly Bay, which starts right from the resort.  We got to hike through the jungle, the grassy hill-top, and eventually made our way down the other side of the mountain into Annaly Bay.  Annaly Bay had a natural tide-pool, which the ocean feeds during high tide.  Our favorite part of the hike were the hermit crabs all over the hill-side.  As you would walk, the hermit crabs would get scared and go into their shell and start rolling down the hill-side.  When they got rolling too fast, they would come out of their shell briefly to try and slow themselves down by grabbing onto something.  It was rather comical to see a shell come rollind down the hill-side over the trail every 30 seconds. 

On the hike out from the bay we saw an old looking structure decided to hike up to it.  We got to it, but still don't really have any idea what it was used for.

The hike only took a few hours, so we still had the rest of the day to play on the beach.  We tried to go snorkeling, but the ocean was really choppy so the visibility was not great due to a lot of sand being kicked up in the water.  We gave up on that pretty quick and decided to boogie board on the beach instead.  The waves were the perfect size to catch and we had a ton of fun.

Later this evening after we were both thoroughly worn out from boogie boarding and hiking, we built a sand castle. 

Our last morning there we decided to give snorkeling another shot.  We had seen a sting ray on the first day we arrived and snorkeled, but the 2nd day wasn't good at all.  Hopefully the 3rd  day would be a charm.  The visibility was much better, but still not completely clear.  My favorite part of snorkeling at this location was all of the neat plant life.  There was bright purple and yellow kelp and a large unspoiled reef.

 It was a short trip, but we were just happy to have the opportunity to go and see this beautiful island!