Now this week's hike was something special!
Since everyone who experiences our weekly hiking adventure was on Deb's 50th birthday cruise, and enjoying the sun, fun, and the hot tub for a whole week, Bob and I had our weekly hike in mind. Folks... we have been hiking every single week for about 64 weeks now, and that number is still growing. We were not going to let a fun-loving, 7-day, Royal Caribbean cruise to some of the most gorgeous beaches on earth that streak. So when Bob decided to spend one of his days at St John's on an eco-hike, I decided to join him.
Our day started out like most of our mornings on the cruise. Our home away from home, the Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas, slowly sailed into the port of St. Thomas while we were getting out of bed Saturday morning, April the 12th. We eat breakfast, showed our passports and photo id's to the customs agents, and made it to our excursion's meeting place on the pier not far from where we were to board a fairly large motor boat for a 45 minute ride to St. John's, all before 8:30am.
Our ride over to St. John's was mainly uneventful, except for a few well rehearsed (and I'm sure much repeated) wise-cracks by the boat's crew. I do recall however that a few glamorous hotels were pointed out to us, along with the beach homes of Micheal Jordan, Madonna, and also a few other famous people that I don't remember at the moment.
We eventually docked in Cruz Bay, St. John's and we who signed up for the eco-hike excursion were the first to disembark. Bob and I were with our tour guide, and walking toward the trailhead in no time flat.
The trail we hiked this past week was the Lind Point Trail on St John's. It began with a 0.3 mile ascent to the scenic Lind Point Overlook where we took most of our pictures. All along the way, our tour guide stopped numerous times to educate us about the various plants and animals that we came across. At the overlook, we could see both the Atlantic and the Caribbean oceans and the view was simply awesome! We snapped numerous pictures not only with our cameras, but with our neighbor's cameras as well. We then hiked to the summit of Lind Point, and then onto Honeymoon Beach. We all spent about an hour or so swimming, and taking in the sun, while some of us went snorkeling to view a nearby coral reef while our guide pointed out the various fish that passed us by. We eventually got back into our hiking cloths and followed the North Shore Road which lead us to an old sugar plantation alongside the famous Caneel Bay Resort. At the old plantation we photographed a beautiful tree, which was in beautiful bloom, and then were given a short history lesson about the plantation. We were then driven back to our boat ride which brought us back to St Thomas where we met up with our cruise ship again. This week's hike was without a doubt one of the most beautiful hikes to date.
See everyone next week,
Joe
