DAY 2: St Croix!

We had never been to St Croix before and I was super excited to visit. I knew that the one thing I wanted to do was to go to Buck Island. It looked so beautiful from the pictures I had seen.

Buck Island is a small island that is uninhabited and about 176 acres. This is a protected area and a National Park. It is known for it's great reef and snorkeling area and I just knew I had to go!

Thanks to the wonderful people here on the boards, I found that there were several vendors that would take you there: Big Beards, Caribbean Sea Adventures, and Jolly Rogers.

It was next to impossible to get in touch with Jolly Rogers. No email, no return calls. Eliminated!

CSA, I had been in contact with them off and on and when I said I wanted to book, they informed me that they were already full. Ugh-Eliminated.

So that left Big Beards. Now I went back and forth about which excursion to book. They have full day and half day sails. I see a lot of people say they have had a wonderful experience with Big Beards, so I felt that I was in good hands.

However, I didn't feel too comfortable with the full excursion because of our time frame in port and the amount of travel involved. Although I try to make the most of our day any time I get the chance.

The half day trip: 9:30am-12:30pm and also 12:30pm-3:30pm. The cost is $75/pp adults, $60 for children, $22 for tots.

...goes to Buck Island and offers 2 stops. One on the beach at Turtle Beach for about 45 min-1 hour, which is supposed to be rated one of the prettiest beaches by National Geographic. The second stop involves the reef and underwater trail where you snorkel for 1 hour. They give you the guided tour for about 10 minutes and the "cut you free to explore on your own". Then you are returned to Christiansted.

The full day tour: 9:30am-3:30pm and is $105 per person/adults and $26 for children 6-12 years old and $25 for children 5 and under.

...same as above but then you go to a beach (which is back on the main land, but feels like you are on another island and is very primitive and secluded). You have a BBQ lunch here, for about 1 hr 45 min, and then you sail back to Christiansted.

So, you have to take a taxi from the cruise ship area (you meet a rep at the taxi station named Ms Gumbs). You also have to pay an extra $16/pp round trip for the taxi that is NOT included in your excursion price. Check in is at 8:30am at the taxi's and check in at Big Beards is 9am.

Note that you must prepay for this tour with Big Beards!

After considering the travel time and the return boat time was 3:30pm, add another 1/2 hour in the taxi puts us at 4pm, then more time for anything that could go wrong (with all aboard time at 4:30pm), I decided I didn't want to cut things that close and I would just do the half day tour.

I mean really when you think about it, $105 x2 + $85=$295 for the full day. 

versus 

half day... $75 x2 + $60=$210. 

This is a difference of $85!!! Do you really think we are going to eat $85 worth of food? It's hamburgers, hot dogs and chips with fruit and rum punch.

I decided to book the half day...then was told they were SOLD OUT! UGH! Go me for waiting for so long. Now I'm stuck with a full day.

I started frantically researching and seen someone comment about how much they enjoyed their trip with Big Beards and they had really wished that they would have done the full day sail instead and was recommending it. So, I felt a little better after that...but still nervous.

Jill at Big Beards said they would make sure that they had enough taxi's waiting for when we returned to head back to the cruise ship and we would make it on time.

So, the day had come! I knew I was going to be a nervous wreck all day, but yet trying to enjoy myself.

Monday morning and time to rise and shine at 6:30am. I was having problems sleeping...truth be known I was VERY worried about the time frame today.

I woke my family up at 7am and we were out the door by 7:15am. 

Up the elevators we went to the buffet. Only this time...we noticed something...

 All the elevators said "Monday" on them. Hmmm. The day before they said "Sunday" and the hubby even ask me if that might have been the previous name to the ship. LOL So now we know. They actually change them daily to say what day it is. How neat is that!

I feel like such an idiot now. 

We made it to the buffet and there was hardly anyone here. That's weird. No crowd and your choice of tables to sit at. No waiting in line for food. Well this is a first.

Then I discovered it...the ABSOLUTE BEST BACON IN THE WORLD!!! Made right here on the Jewel. It was cooked PERFECT and crispy with no fat or chewy stuff and layered in the tray perfect and best part...NO BACON POLICE! Hallelujah! I had found my favorite place to be!

They also had corn beef hash! It was AMAZING <--- I'm singing that word now in my opera voice.

(Notice the potatoes and no hashbrowns discovered yet.)

Well hello there St Croix..

We were able to get off the ship right at 8am. It was a L-O-N-G pier.

We headed out and tried to find this taxi stand they said to go to.

To read our full day, click the following link below. First up was...

 After our time at beautiful Turtle Beach, it was on to Buck Island Reef:

After snorkeling Buck Island, we headed to Coakley Cay Beach for lunch:

After rushing back to the dock before our ship left.

..a picture from that morning...in happier times and before the nerves started:

So here's my recap of our day and final thoughts... 

The cost of the full day sail was $105.00 per adult and $85 per child. (For us a total of $295 was paid).

Here's the information they sent me on what's included and what to bring:

You are not allowed to wear shoes on the boat and they must be removed and they put everyone's shoes in one huge bag. At the end, they take the bag, turn it upside down and tell everyone to find their shoes...kinda like a Find Waldo moment.

You must take a taxi to get to Christiansted, costing another $16 per person. So, we now had $343 invested in this day.

Here's the information that was given to me over various emails about the day:

Let's see how it holds up to what really happened. 

They said 1 hour spent at Turtle Beach on Buck Island. We spent 1 hour there. 

They said 1 hour at the reef snorkeling. We spent 1 hour there basically from the time we pulled up to pulling away (so not quite an hour snorkeling).

They said 1 hour and 45 minutes at North Shore Beach/Big Beards Beach for the BBQ. We spent 1 hour 30 minutes there.

So as you can see, their times are pretty spot on for the most part. They have this down to a science as far as times spent at each place. However, I think getting the whole trip going was the issue and a late start put us behind. I can tell you it wasn't because they were waiting on people or people checking in. We were all waiting at the boat dock (remember standing in the hot sun instead of allowing us to get on the boat and at least sit?)

They said there would be enough taxis waiting for us to return us right back to the ship on time. This is were the problem came into play. There wasn't ANY taxi's actually waiting on us there and there was no mention of having to walk a bit of a distance to find them. Then the confusion of who is getting on what taxi and how many they can actually fit. When you tell me that taxi's will "be there" waiting, I expect them to actually "be THERE" not blocks and blocks up a hill and around the corner away.

They said 30 minute ride back to the port. The next problem was the very slow ride, people passing us, breaks being put on for no reason, joy ride that we had back to the ship and already being late. With this driver, it actually took us 40 minutes to return. Had they not went all the way down the pier with us in the van, we probably would have been pier runners and late. This is a serious problem with me in the whole full day tour.

So...would I recommend this tour? 

I'm on the fence about it honestly. 

I can say that I wouldn't recommend the full day tour for sure. It just cuts it too close for comfort and if anything was to go wrong (flat tire, construction and so on), you just might miss your ship!

If you have the chance to book the half day tour, sure. 

Even if they got you back way ahead of time...is it really worth paying $30 extra for a meal that consists of hamburgers and hotdogs and chips? (Especially when the hamburgers weren't cooked) I don't think so. I would have rather went back on the ship and ate for free or found a local place to eat something decent.

The beach at Buck Island: Very beautiful island and beach. But, not really much there to see in regards to snorkeling at the beach and nothing there except the beach. No restrooms or shade. Just a beautiful beach that I can now say I've seen.

Snorkeling Buck Island Reef:

I'm on the fence about this one too. Basically because there's so much damage to the reef (either by hurricane or whatever) that there really wasn't much to see as far as fish. A few parrot fish, grunts, surgeons, but that was about it. OTHER than the awesome green moray eel and the schools of blue surgeons. So...that made it totally worth the trip for me (not the full day sail, just the snorkeling itself). Any time I see something new, no matter where it is at, it's worth it! But the corals, yea there were some big ones and decent things to see. But, maybe I've just snorkeled so much that I just didn't get that "wow factor" I was expecting.

So, there you have it. MY experience (and although it may not be yours) it's what we encountered. If I was to go back, I probably would book with another vendor because there are others out there that offer half day trips, but I have already been there and done that, so I probably would not return. It's just not on my "gotta do it again" list.

And one last picture from our day to brighten things up. Although you can't remove anything from Buck Island, since it's a National Park, you can remove things from the main island and Sakari collected some fine pieces of sea glass and some shells from the BBQ area.

Now take a look at the sea glass. Do you notice the dark blue one and the turquoise one? Here's some info on them.

ULTRA RARE COLORS: First off, orange is the rarest color. They did not make much orange glass.

The second rarest is turquoise/teal. There were very little amounts of turquoise glass made and not mass produced. These come from Seltzer bottles, decorative glass, canning jars, and electric pole insulators.

RARE SEA GLASS:

Dark blue. This color came from bottles used for medicines in the 1880's and other medicine from the 1950's like Noxzema, Vicks, Pepto Bismol, Milk of Magnesia and even poisons were put in this color of glass. So, it's very rare as well and you are considered lucky if you find one.

Of course the green are not rare and found all over the place when searching.

Sakari has collected sea glass before in ports. She gets a kick out of the different colors she can find. I didn't even know she was finding any at the time. She does know that the dark cobolt blue is rare. Maybe I need to tell her about all the other colors that she might be over looking. She didn't even know about the turquoise/teal colored glass being rare.

I would say this was a good find to have collect 2 rare sea glass pieces on this day. :D

After getting back on the ship and gathering my wits again...we met up with Kia and hung out at the pool until 5:30pm.

My plan was to shower and get ready to go to the MDR for dinner tonight, then I found out it was formal night and I nixed that idea.

At this point, I discovered I had forgotten my next item...ANY dress pants whatsoever! I had tons of dressy tops, but no dress pants. How could this have happened? I always bring dressy pants. Ugh! I would also discover that Sakari didn't pack my dress shoes with all the cute little diamonds on them. She was in charge of pulling out the summer shoes and putting them in the luggage. Failure on both our parts this time around.

So, we ended up at the buffet and ran into Kia and Xander eating.

Once again, everything tasted fabulous with the exception of the corn on the cob. It seemed like it had been sitting under a heat lamp for way too long. Very dried up for the most part. But everything else was good. Including the desert.

Sakari went back to change out of her dress (we were semi-dressed up with what we had to go on lol) and put shorts on so that she could head to the kids club for awhile.

The hubs and I headed to the casino for about an hour. Did "ok"...maybe lost $20, but that was alright and then I was bored really quick and decided I wanted to head to the show and see this fabulous entertainment everyone always says RC has on the ships.

Tonight's show was "Production Showtime" featuring the Royal Caribbean singing and dancing. Hmm, there's no name for the show or what it's about? That's weird.

We watched the show for awhile and it had something to do with "love" and "being beautiful". They kept singing "I am beautiful" and said a few "damn's" in their songs too. LOL I couldn't help but laugh. Now honestly, I did not like the show. I thought it was kinda cheesy. I didn't think their voices were the greatest (some ok) but the dance moves...hmmm. Many were off beat at any given time or playing catch up a beat behind and I seen a couple, here and there throughout the show, that were definitely behind on the others doing the same thing. I wasn't impressed at all. Actually disappointed. I have always read that they have wonderful shows on RC. Ok, maybe the next time would be better.

I was impressed with the curtain screen on the stage though. It was pretty colors, that represented the ocean and coral, and it actually had moving fish swimming back and forth. How cool! Of course this was the curtain prior to the show starting.

I would find out later that we missed the comedian on the first night. Darnit! I love to go to the comedian shows. The first night is always a blur to me every cruise and it takes me until day 2 to get the swing of things.

We looked around in the shops for awhile and picked out some "at a later date" purchases and then picked up Sakari from the kids club at 10pm.

Back to our room and we would find our first towel animal. A sea turtle!!!

They were playing Finding Dori on the big screen at the pool and as much as I wanted to watch it (I love this movie), I knew I had homework to do. Dedication I tell ya! School before fun.

I decided to check the weather back home and found that the kids were having an enjoyable snowball fight while I'm in the Caribbean (sarcasm).

I started on my homework (although I had started on my reading assignments on the plane trip to PR, I still needed to finish it).

We have a test every Tuesday and I had a decent connection on the internet tonight in the room and I decided since my readings were still fresh in my mind, I would proceed to just go ahead and take my test. 100%! Boom, I'm good to enjoy myself until Thursday. I'm glad that's done and out of the way.

Meanwhile, Sakari is doing her nightly drawing. Her imaginary friend Gola and Gola's love Goldy.

I did a little bit of packing for our adventure in port tomorrow and texted my son back home to make sure that the dog and fish were still alive and we were in bed by 1am.