what our family did in St Thomas

[KAP]

St. Thomas was our big adventure as we took the ferry from Red Hook to St. Johns and Trunk Bay. We did it on our own. The taxis that are inside the pier want $10 per person. I had read that if you walked out of the pier area to Kmart, that you could take a local taxi to Red Hook for $2 per person. With our large group that was a huge cost savings so we took the free shuttle from the ship to the pier area gates and started walking to Kmart. If you are in good shape, the walk is about 10 to 15 minutes. Little kids and older folks might find the walk too hard. One of the grandparents in our group had to stop walking after about 5 minutes. Fortunately for us an enterprising taxi driver noticed our dilemma and stopped and made a deal with us for $3 dollars per person each way to Red Hook and we took it. The ride to Red Hook from the pier took 15 or 20 minutes. The ferry to St. Johns runs every hour. The ferry was full but still had space both ways. When we got off the ferry, we took a taxi to Trunk bay for $6 per person. The beaches on St. Johns are beautiful. The biggest difference from the other Islands is that the beaches have trees right by the sand that give good shade. We got to Trunk bay all excited to snorkel when to our dismay we discovered that there was high surf and no snorkeling was allowed. We almost left but decided we would go down and look. The beach was just so beautiful and from what the park rangers told us every beach would have high surf we decided to stay (we learned later this was true from other cruisers). There were life guards at the beach warning that swimming probably wasn’t safe. We sat and watched the waves for a bit and realized they were much gentler than the ones on St. Maarten and many of the beaches of Hawaii. The older boys and I went out and tested the waters and quickly determined there were no strong current, just large gentle waves. The whole group started body surfing. We drove the lifeguards crazy but they really couldn’t do anything but warn us about the “dangers”. It was some of the best body surfing I have ever experienced. The waves carried you a long ways and gently dropped you to the sand. Even one grandma and grandpa got in on the action. It turned out to be a great day (I still wished I could have snorkeled there). We caught the 2 o’clock ferry back and called our taxi driver before getting on the ferry. She was waiting to bring us back to the ship. We had several hours to shop at the pier (the best of all the islands for pier shopping).