SCUBA at St Thomas

One of my main enjoyments at ST Thomas is SCUBA. Hank and I get a 10 tank package from Coki Beach Dive Club and this gets us 5 boat trips to various locations. It is a small boat and is licensed to carry only 6 paying passengers so it is a nice personal situation. Here is Pete the owner, Hank and me at about 40 feet under water somewhere around St Thomas.




















Here is a spiny lobster, one of many we saw. If you click on the picture you will see it larger and if you look closely you will see there are actually 3 lobsters in the picture. We saw plenty of other sea life such as a small nurse shark, sting ray, eels, barracuda, sea turtle and a shovel nose lobster.

We do not normally do any "hunting" for sea life, but on one of the dives the dive master brought up a spiny lobster for me. I had told him how Carol was wanting to have one for dinner and he got it for her, not me!! Here it is back at our condo waiting to be dinner for us!!

And here it is ready to be eaten for dinner!! Caribbean Lobster do not have claws as do Maine Lobster and I was surprised how much better the tail meat was on this lobster. Much better than Maine Lobster. It was a large enough tail for us to share with a salad and have enough .... with some rum of course!!!

Yum Yum. Can't wait until next year and maybe I can talk them into several lobsters.

Partying at St Thomas

We always have a great time at St Thomas but his year was even more fun as Hank, Jim's dive buddy, had his sister visit for about a week. Also Rich and Wendy were there during our second week and we had not seen them for several years. Here is Carol with Hank and his sister.

The Room With A View is our favorite place to have happy hour appetizers and drinks. Here is Carol, Wendy and Rich (plus some others ?? in the background) getting ready to party. How can you go wrong for $5 drinks and appetizers. The appetizers are large enough for Carol and I to make them our dinner.

One of the evenings we went to Red Hook and had drinks and dinner at Duffy's Love Shack. Here we are in the outside dining "room", a parking lot!!!! It get to be a little wild there at times so we did not spend the entire evening. We did run into a fellow that works at the Ritz Carlton (very plush place) and he invited us to come over to use their beach and pool.

Here we are at the Ritz Carlton enjoying the style of the Rich and Famous. You know it is a plush place by the price on a hamburger .... $21 and drinks for $9 to $12 and more!!! They also have their own beach and the grounds are quite beautiful. A fun day for all.

After rubbing shoulders with the Rich and Famous at the Ritz, the next day went to Sapphire Beach and hung out with the more common folks!! The beach was in good shape but the condos and other facilities were run down and in need of a lot of work. At one time this was a fine place but time and lack of money has taken it's toll. And then while Carol was lounging under the trees, an Iguana above her in the trees decided to relieve him self on her!!!! At least the poop was small round pellets but there was some juicy stuff at first!! Naturally she went into the water to get washed off.

Of course we always have fun in St Thomas and are already looking forward to the next trip.

Virgin Gorda, BVI Trip

Last year Carol won a two- for-one trip to Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. So we took the trip this year. Baths does not refer to taking a bath in a tub as you do at home. Baths is a shortened term for the gigantic volcanic rocks but I do not recall the proper name for them!! You can see some of them in the background of this photo. There is a trail which winds through these rocks and some of the caverns formed by them. It is an interesting and rigorous walk as there are some really tight places to squeeze through.

After leaving the baths we went to Norman Island and did some snorkeling. There were three caves you could snorkel into but they were not deep enough to be scary!! Carol, did get off the boat and did some swimming while I was snorkeling. When I got back to the boat there was a large Barracuda swimming around under the boat. It was about three feet long but was not bothering anyone. It is a frequent visitor and they have named it Homer!!

After leaving Norman Island we went to Jost Van Dyke Island home of the world Famous Soggy Dollar Bar. It is named that because there is no boat dock there and you must swim to the beach to get to the bar. It is said that this island is one of Jimmie Buffet's favorite places. Naturally we had to have at least one drink there and you can see Carol getting ready to head for the bar!!

The following two pictures show us in the water with our boat in the background. The water is deep enough that you have to swim in very close to the beach before you can stand up. Getting your drink back out to the boat is the real challenge!!

After having left at 8 AM and returning at 5 PM we were tired!!