Today we docked bright and early (7am) in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas. The partly cloudy forecast was once again something that I could live with as the temperature reached 27C and any clouds blew over before you even realized they were there.
We had decided the night before that we'd have beach time and walk around the town a little so we didn't see the need to rush off the boat right at 7. We enjoyed another breakfast at the Da Vinci dining room before making our way off the ship at around 9. Our plan was to head to Coki beach and chill out. The taxi ride was about a half hour and the taxi was a safari type truck that could fit about 18 people. The island is quite hilly and the ride took us up and down countless hills with incredible views of the harbours and shoreline.
How to describe Coki beach? In two words: tropical paradise. A place where all your life's concerns are forgotten and you just take in the natural beauty in absolute amazement. We had read that this beach can get quite busy, but when we arrived it wasn't at all busy. We were the only ship in town, which is apparently rather unusual, so that helped reduced the number of people here. The beach is smaller than I expected, but that didn't matter because the white sand beach and crystal clear water all but made up for it being a little small. We rented a couple chairs and an beach umbrella and were set for our day. This beach had good facilities and the staff working the beach were quite friendly and took care of you. Of course everything costs money and we paid $20 for the chairs and umbrella. It was really hot and so we also bought some bottled water. Who knew we'd have to fly all the way to the Virgin Islands to get Ontario bottled water?!?
We did a little snorkelling here too and got to see some cool fish. They weren't as plentiful as other places we've been blessed to snorkel, but just the same the fish were something we'd never see back home. I really should start learning to identify different fish if I'm going to continue snorkelling, it would really help to describe them. People were also feeding the fish while we were there so that likely attracted more and kept them in the area much longer. The water was calmer than at Orient beach the day before, and it was a lot of fun just playing around. Again the ocean bottom was a fine white sand, easy on the feet and with a reasonably gentle slope out into the ocean. It's very hard to describe the beauty of this place in words and the pictures hardly justify it.
We walked the town for a short while. Boy are there plenty of jewelry and liquor shops around. We bought our token souvenir; this one is really cool, a pirate Santa Christmas ornament, and the head back to the ship. I wanted to get back in plenty of time to see us cast off.
Along the dock area, we saw a bunch of iguanas sunbathing on the rocks. I had never seen a live iguana, so that was cool. We also saw a pirate ship in the harbour and thankfully they didn't come on board. :) I think it was actually an excursion you could pay for to take a ride on their ship. When we were leaving port the pirate ship sent us off with a canon shot....that was cool! We actually left a half hour late because evidently some passengers didn't pay attention to the on board time. Our room is port side so we could see all the stragglers coming back, but for these three in particular the ship crew had parked a van at the security check point and drove them to the ship when they arrived...and it's only a 1 minute walk. How embarrassing when our entire side of the ship cheered and clapped for them!!
We set sail just after 4pm and we had plenty of time before the evening events. Tonight was our second formal night so we got all dressed up, head to the Piazza for some gelato before heading to the 7pm show. The production tonight was "Once Upon A Dream" - a musical dream/love story. It was a great show, the performers are very talent both with singing and dancing. The costumes were very elaborate too.
Dinner tonight was at the Da Vinci dining room where we opted for a shared table. We had dinner with a couple from Calgary and a couple from New York but originally from Italy. Dinner and the conversation were good. We skipped dessert, mostly because we wanted to catch the 9:15 Marriage Match Gameshow, but also because we kinda had dessert before dinner.
The gameshow was hilarious. It was just like the TV show the Newlywed Game. Four couples answered questions and then their spouse had to answer the same question to see if their answers matched. It was some good fun.
Being in the middle of the Caribbean is awesome. The evenings are so warm here and star gazing is so easy because there are no lights around, just open ocean, open sky!! What a great way to end another wonderful day in tropical paradise.
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