Slowing down to absorb paradise
IDLE NES S is generally not something visitors to remote corners of the Caribbean need to seek out. It is forced on you. Your rental car breaks down on a Saturday morning, stranding you at a beach parking lot, for instance, and you call the number on your key to find out that a) they are closed on Saturdays, and b) the person answering the after-hours line says they might – just might – be able to get you a working car sometime.
Eventually, you realise that the reason your calamity is being treated as a mere inconvenience is that that is what it is. And, in my case, such inconveniences might be reminders to follow the advice of an acquaintance who has lived on St John for more than 20 years: Slow down.
St John unfurls itself in unexpected ways if you just give it time. Slowing down was how I found a little path near a lookout point called Peace Hill that led down to a deserted beach; most tourists walk right past it on the way to the main attraction, an old windmill ruin.
Slowing down was how I saw sea life dart in and out of mangroves when I went snorkelling on St John’s East End; at first the crustaceans and tiny fish are invisible, but if you move as little as possible and wait, they slowly come to life.
Unless you slow down, you might miss St John itself. There is no airport or cruise ship dock, which keeps the tourist hordes down.
You won’t find the kind of garish development that chokes other parts of the Caribbean. There are no high-rise hotels, no strip malls filled with Tshirt and tchotchke shops, no barking beach vendors asking to braid your hair or sell you a drink in a coconut.
I was no stranger to St John. What I always remembered about it – and what drew me back there after more than a decade since I moved back to the US mainland from St Thomas, where I was a reporter just out of college – was that it was the place Virgin Islanders went when they needed a little vacation.
When I returned there last year, I realised I’d never really taken the time to get to know St John as well as I thought. This time, with my partner, Brendan, I would take it slow.
Over four days we took our rented Jeep Wrangler on as many of the passable roads on St John as we could, stopping at all the beaches, bars, scenic lookouts and trails we had time for. Here is everything you might miss. I should know, because I did the first time.
Caneel has a reputation as one of the most luxurious resorts in the Caribbean. But it, too, is hidden from people in a rush. When passing it on a boat you have to look hard to notice its green and tan low-rise buildings, which disappear into the surrounding hillsides.
Everything there, it seemed, was designed to be inoffensive to the eye. The taxis that run guests around the sprawling property are painted a pale green, as are the landscaping trucks and housekeeping golf carts. The beach chairs are a sandy brown. Locals tell a story about the time the former owner of the property, Laurance Rockefeller, went sailing by and saw that the staff had set out new turquoise chairs. Horrified, he ordered them banished. The resort auctioned them off, and soon many of the homes on the island had brand-new turquoise deck chairs of their own.
As St John’s busiest harbour and a hub for ferries coming from St Thomas and the British Virgin Islands, Cruz Bay is the closest thing St John has to a city. It is easy to think that you’ve covered Cruz Bay after walking its narrow grid of streets for 20 minutes or so. But the best thing to do is to ask the locals where to go.
Two of our best finds for food and drinks were also off the grid, although easy enough to locate by asking around. The first was the Bowery, a little respite of a bar where we stopped for happy hour one evening. It is peacefully removed from the clamour of the beachfront bars along the water in Cruz Bay, sealed off by a glass door. “It keeps the drunks out,” our bartender said, sounding quite pleased. We ordered a crisp, dry rosé and a generously sized charcuterie-and-cheese plate that more than held us over until dinner. Another bonus our bartender took pride in: The Bowery has no blender for frozen drinks. If the Virgin Islands had an unofficial state song, it would be the rattling whir, buzz and chop of a bar blender.
Our other hidden-in-plainsight find was a funky Asianinspired restaurant and bar called Rhumb Lines, inside the Bayside Mini Mart. Just walk past a few aisles of potato chips, travel-size toiletries and soft drinks, step past the cash register – and a dinner of shrimp pad thai, grilled mahi-mahi or sesame-crusted Sichuan tuna is waiting for you.
Most people, including many who live on St John, never get all the way out to the East End. It’s not that far, about a half-hour’s drive from Cruz Bay. But in a lot of ways, the East End is its own island. The beaches are smaller here. The vegetation is drier, with more cactuses.
The most distinctive feature is the mangroves, which line some of the bays along the south shore. From the road, they look like ordinary brush growing alongside the water. But with a snorkel and a mask, you can see an underwater forest come to life.
We parked our car on the side of the road just a few steps from the water and got in. Then we made our way slowly along the shoreline, stopping every couple of feet to look closely at what was stirring inside the intricate network of roots before us: lobster, fish of different sizes and colours, fringed coral that danced in the current. It was unlike any snorkeling experience I’d ever had.