Our last day at Moon Cottage and like all days it’s beautiful, hot and peaceful …

Created with iPad Photogene from this original:

There’s a big lizard sculpture by the pool at Moon Cottage, and recently a real lizard chose it as a rock to stand on:

Closer view:

We headed to a new beach this afternoon, beautiful Cinnamon Bay with it’s pristine sand and almost empty off-season … And then a rainbow completed the view!

After heading out to visit some 200+ year old sugarmplantation ruins, and filling up with $4.14 regular gas(!), we stopped for lunch at Cafe Bordeaux (excellent food!) and got a great view from the top of the hill, down to Coral Bay:

So far we’ve seen lots of animals on St John, some, like the cat begging at the restaurant, or the lizards everywhere at Moon Cottage, are not so unusual, but how about this wonderful Hermit Crab that visits in the evening …

Or the Tree Frog that prefers to hang out and catch insects under a light on the wall:

A few more animal pictures in the Gallery

Although we have loads of romantic peace, and our own pool, at Moon Cottage, we wanted to try the ocean too – and it was fabulously warm and beautiful!

The roads here I St John are incredible, constantly uphill or down, tight turns, switchbacks, blind side roads – thankfully the speed limit is 20 and we have a four wheel drive Jeep for when things get really tricky!
I’ve tried taking pictures but the roads always look much flatter and easier than they really are, so how about this picture taken from the other side of Coral Bay:

(click for bigger)

The cluster of homes at the bottom is where we start climbing, straight up the road you see to the right of them. Then a 160 right climbing to a near 180 left and climbing again – you can see the two angled lines slicing through the trees going up the hill.
After that, it gets challenging; the road is dirt and rocks with big potholes and bigger culverts to negotiate. My MINI wouldn’t make the first 100 yards!
At the very end, to the house, is a straight climb at about 25 degrees, having to pull a severe left at the top in to the parking spot, before hitting any trees. But it’s quite fun …

The moon is nearly full and casts lots of light here in the evening; here is the Moon:

And here is our moonlit view; note the bright patch on the ocean which must be non-cloudy sky!

Yesterday Margaret and I flew from Boston via San Juan to St Thomas in the US Virgin islands, rented a Jeep and took the ferry to St Johns where we were met by Bob, who took us on a short tour of the island before guiding us to our home for the next week, the beautiful and peaceful Moon Cottage.
High on a hill with very steep and narrow roads to reach it (hence the Jeep) but well worth it once you get there – look at the views:

Perhaps a panorama gives a better impression – click for wider!

This view is available always, even when you’ve just woken up:

Even at night it’s beautiful (though at night very noisy with all the tree frogs and other night animals!):

Inside is lovely too – these pictures from when we arrived last night …

The bedroom is an annex off from the main building, set back behind the pool:

More pictures in the Gallery

This is the view from our room, perched right at the top of a steep hill on the ocean’s edge, in the Point Pleasant Resort on St. Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean …

(as always, click for a bigger picture)

The downside of this view was the incredibly steep roads and paths to get anywhere in the resort – after one day we rented a car so that we could get around! Another reason was that the resort had no restaurants offering breakfast, only one for lunch (and with not a very wide menu choice); I supposed we could have cooked, since our room had a kitchen …

Here’s our room, from a nearby road – you can see how high it is (our room is top right on the rightmost building):

St. Thomas was quite strange; it’s single main town catered primarily to cruise ship tourists, offering loads of jewelry shops! Elsewhere the island was all hilly with steep twisty roads, regular chances to bottom out part of the car, and a cross-section of different homes, run down areas, etc … but the views were so spectacular that any downsides were forgotten!

Another highlight was touring Coral World, with it’s sting rays, sealions, lorikeets and an underwater viewing area:

Then there was the amazing sight of watching weather roll in across the ocean – here it’s raining over part of St. Johns (another nearby U.S. Virgin island):

And sometimes when it rains, we get rainbows:

And, eventually, we found a nice (but tiny) beach where we could swim in the warm blue-green waters of the Caribbean ocean:

For lots more pictures, visit the Gallery!