Category Archives: 2012 VI & East Coast

This was a friends & family trip covering the US east coast from the Caribbean to New Hampshire, a trip we had planed for earlier in 2012, but had to postpone it due to infirmary. So over a 3 week span starting in September we traveled to Florida, the Virgin Islands, Boston & New England, Mamaroneck & New York City.  Along the way we visited John’s niece Betty & sister Skeets, and Jessie’s friend Joan, and attended John’s 50th High School reunion.

If you get past all the photos from the trip, you’ll find Jessie’s blog entry from our stay a Maho Bay on St John USVI.

 

(Note: this was in the blog but “unpublished” until Aug 2 2014)

27-Sept-2012 As we’re sitting in our tent-cabin overlooking beautiful and pristine Maho Bay, US Virgin Islands we’ve returned to our blog to catch up on our travels.  We had planned to take this tip in May, but Jessie’s sciatica intervened.  After a full recovery and our return from the trip to Ecuador in July, we re-planned a 3-week trip for mid September (the Caribbean hurricane season) and included stops in Miami Florida, USVI, then up to Boston Mass, and will be flying out of JFK in New York a week later to return home to California.

Now we’re on St John island at Maho Bay Camps watching the turquoise water below as pelicans dive into schools of fish for their diner. Maho Bay is one of the few remaining private undeveloped areas on the northwestern shore of St John about a 20 minute taxi ride from Cruz Bay bordering the VI National Park.  The camp is an “ecological” resort with rustic tent cabins on wood platforms dotted along a tree-covered hillside linked by elevated walkways and stairs connecting the beach and dining pavilion.  Viewed from the sea, its hardly visible on the hillside, especially compared to the opulent villas on other parts of the island.

We were drawn here because (a) John’s sister, Skeets, lives on near-by St Thomas island, (b) John was pleasantly impressed with the ambiance when he stayed here (just after his divorce) in 2009, and (c) the camp is scheduled to close in 2013 because the land owners are seeking out a buyer and cannot extend the camp’s lease.

Our first two days of the trip were spent in the Miami area, more precisely Ft Lauderdale.  There we visited John’s niece, Betty, and her two grown children, Felicia and Stephen.  We had a delicious Italian meal at Cafe Vincenzo the first night with Betty, and we then found Tumi, a Peruvian restaurant, via Zagat for an even more delicious meal the following night with Betty & kids.  Our one day of sight-seeing was reduced to an afternoon so Jessie could get some work done, so we simply went to the Ft Lauderdale beach and had lunch, a great blackened fish sandwich, and drinks at Anglins Beach Cafe on the fishing pier listening to a local musical group.

Then we flew to St Thomas (STT) and were met by Skeets at the airport and spent two nights at Sapphire Bay on the east end near Red Hook.  The first night Skeets drove us back to Charlotte Amalie for diner at **  where she had an Ole Wife fish plate and we shared a . Gladys’ Cafe

On our second day at Maho we took a boat tour on Breakaway charters to the British Virgin Islands of Virgin Gorda, Scrub and Jost Van Dyke. The tour included stops at the ‘Baths’ (huge bolders piled on top of each other at the water’s edge), snorkeling on a beautiful reef, lunch at the Scrub Island resort, and finally a beach landing for drinks at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke.