St. Thomas - U.S. Virgin Islands

Unlike a previous cruise we had been on to Alaska, we didn't prebook any excursions in the various ports we went too. This worked out great for us. Everything was a spur of the moment adventure and more spontaneous. Which is usually not my style at all. The ship docked at 7 am in St. Thomas. Russ and I had decided we would hop off the ship and take our run in St. Thomas instead of on the ship's track. We got off the ship and across from the port we saw a gondola that will take you to the top of a large hill so you can get a panoramic view of the island. I had seen this offered as an excursion for around $80. It was early and no one was out. Since we are training to run the Wasatch Back together this year and need to train on hills anyway, we decided to run up the road that took us to the top of the same hill that the gondola went up. It was definitely steep but only took about 15 minutes to run up. Then we had the entire area to ourselves because the gondola wouldn't even open for another two hours. We only had our phone with us to take a picture but the shots are still pretty amazing.

Our ship is the one on the left.

We ran along the beach for the rest of our run that morning. After hoping back on the ship to clean up and eat breakfast we caught a cab to a beach called Sapphire Bay, We rented some snorkeling equipment and snorkeled for about an hour. And then just chilled in the sand and sun for several hours.

Sapphire Bay

While snorkeling we came across a sea turtle nibbling on a some grass on the ocean floor. He had 2 large fish attached to the under side of his shell. He was a fun find. (We didn't have an underwater camera so the following picture is just for your visual interest.)

We also saw this strange iguana just roaming the beach!