March 19, 2019
Today was our last chance to explore St. John before heading back to St. Croix, where our journey began. We started off with an elegant egg frittata paired with savory bacon, which fueled us for the hike ahead. We then motored into Cruz Bay and met our guides Kent and Joe, two National Parks Service volunteers, on the dock. We took Safari cars up to the Reef Bay trail head and began our educational journey. Along our three-mile hike, Kent dove into different aspects of the trail and the history of the park. We learned about the stinking toe, a fruit from a tree high in the mountains. The smell was awful but the taste was like a sweet banana! We learned how the trail was used by native people for resources and religious purposes, then by colonizers to transport goods in and out of the plantations, and finally by the National Parks Service for recreational purposes. Midway we stopped and ate lunch while studying the petroglyphs of the native Taino people, who inhabited the island before the Europeans. We then visited the ruins of a sugar factory where Kent told us the evolution of sugar production in the Virgin Islands. It started with horse-drawn mills, then turned to a full steam-powered engine which produced sugar more efficiently. We then finished our hike at the beach and where the waves swelled high. After, we efficiently set sail, like true crew members, and anchored in Cruz Bay. Tomorrow we set sail for St. Croix with our sights on Colorado.
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