Virgin Islands National Park

[bassclarinetgrl]

My cruise (at the end of March) is stopping in St. Thomas and since I have the goal of visiting all 62 National Parks, I was hoping to take the ferry to St. John to see Virgin Islands National Park. Is this easy to do on our own, or would we be better off doing a ship excursion that would probably limit our flexibility?

[the2006Junket]

Hi, it is very easy to do this on your own.  You can take a ferry to St John from three places on St. Thomas:  Crown Bay https://www.interislandboatservices.com/products/cruz-bay-to-crown-bay-2, Charlotte Amalie and Red Hook https://usvi.net/information/transportation/ferry-schedules/st-thomas-to-st-john-ferry-schedule/.  If your ship is docking at Crown Bay, that ferry would certainly be most convenient, since you could walk there.  Once on St. John, the National Park Visitor's Center is a short walk from where the ferry drops you off.  There are many hiking trails as part of the Park, but it will likely be very hot during your visit, so I would recommend hopping into one of the easily available open air taxi/jitney's available in the center of Cruz Bay to either Trunk Bay or Cinnamon Bay beaches and enjoy a day of snorkeling and swimming at these incredible beaches.  Both have food, bathrooms and other services.  Despite what the official Park website says, Cinnamon Bay is open for camping and going to the beach (I was there last week).  I think Cinnamon is a bit more interesting to visit because there are planation ruins on site to tour and a Visitor Center with maps available.  Note that the jitney's usually wait to leave Cruz Bay until they get a couple of people heading to the beaches and they will stop at the beaches along the way.  When you are ready to leave either Trunk or Cinnamon, there will usually be jitney's waiting at the exit to bring you back to town.  You'll want to leave plenty of time to get back to Cruz Bay for your ferry in case the Jitney driver waits a few minutes to get more people.  Enjoy St. John!    Lynne

[travel_frog]

Thank you so much for information on  Cinnamon Bay.

 

To piggyback on the question, does anyone know if it's possible to go from one beach or trailhead to another on the island using open air taxis? If everything goes according to schedule, we will have 12 hours on St. Thomas, so I was hoping to take this opportunity to explore St. John and include two beaches and maybe a short hike... Is it possible to walk from Trunk to Cinnamon Beach?