On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Steve from Mendocino
From Puerto Rico, I’ve taken several short vacations in the Virgin Islands. I’ve been once to Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands, and twice each to St. Thomas and St. John in the American Virgin Islands.
My stand out memory on Tortola was scuba diving in an underwater national park. Not being a scuba diver, diving among all those fish inside the ship wreck was unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. I will always carry memories of that experience. I have no photos of Tortola, so the rest of that trip is pretty much a blur.
This first photo pretty much symbolizes for me the Virgin Island experience for tourists with a generous budget. Hire a boat and float around in paradise with your cares parked in some other reality.
The harbor at Charlotte Amalie, the main town on St. Thomas. Sea plane service comes into the harbor, plus there are regular flights into the commercial airport two miles outside of the center of town. Charlotte Amalie is a free port, so visitors buy alcohol, perfume, and all the rest of the stuff sold in tax free zones. The population overall is poor and mostly black.
This and the next two photos are a sampling of the local architecture in Charlotte Amalie.
With this photo we move on to St. John. Lawrence Rockefeller owned somewhere more than 75% of the island, the bulk of which he donated to the National Park Service in 1956 on the condition that it would not be developed. The remaining chunk was retained for the Caneel Bay Resort, which leases the property from the Park Service. My parents generously brought Anne-Marie and me with them for several days to Caneel Bay where we snorkeled, sailed, played tennis, read, ate the surprisingly good food, and sucked down many rum drinks. The facilities are small, refined, and split into three discrete areas that give visitors a real sense of isolation and privacy.
A view from the resort.
There was a small beach and this view 50 feet from the deck of our room.
J R in WV
In 1991 Wife and I and my dad did a week on a trimaran sailboat run by an elderly crusty French guy and his wife, with a young French woman for heavy lifting. Soic was in the French army in the Algerian revolution, which was a very dirty war!
Then the first Gulf War started in Iraq, and all our news was via Radio France, translated by Soic, who ended each late night shortwave newscast in the dark with the same growled and bitter remark… “Zeh Arabs are Dogs!”
The deaths in N Africa dwarfed their losses in French Indochina, and Soic lost many friends as a desert fighter, and no doubt had his own dirty secrets!
It was a very strange experience, cocktails and fine dining in the tropical evenings, followed by the late night shortwave newscast in French… with static and distant lightning and the background sounds of the air war from Baghdad under the reporter’s voice.
Paradise and war at sea…
the antibob
St John had a very tough time recovering from 2017. But the residents, with the help of some generous outside donors, had made remarkable progress before Covid. Not sure what the loss of tourist revenue has wrought this year. Caneel Bay remains closed, post hurricane.
p.a.
Nice shots! Took the ferry to St. John from St. Thomas. Great place to relax and just ‘be’.
Mary G
That hammock shot! I want to be teleported there right now.
HinTN
The first (and to some degree the second) of “the next two” could be of New Orleans. Certainly the first could be in the Vieux Carre. Lovely!
Thanks for this visit.
HinTN
@Mary G: You can physically see that sailboat learning forward into the course with the fore sail up.
JanieM
I’m with Mary G about the hammock one, except that the first picture made me swoon so hard I want to request that view from my hammock. The blurb for that first picture is fun too.
The architecture shots, as so often with with Steve’s pictures, have a dreamlike quality to them that makes me feel simultaneously right there, and looking in from an alternate universe.
I took me a second look to notice the floatplane in the second one. I live right under the approach/take-off path for floatplanes on the lake across the road from me. Noisy buggers, and they’re very low when they come over my house, which luckily isn’t all that often. The first time it ever happened, after I moved here, I didn’t know what the noise was, and I thought a plane was crashing!
Lovely pictures of beautiful places.
Wapiti
Between the time we lived on the east coast and in Texas we had four vacations to the BVI. Twice we did the week-long cruise thing – just the two of us plus the two crew members. Twice we went to a place called Guana Island, which was a private island resort, a bit isolated, which allowed for total downtime. Now that we’re mostly retired, we don’t need a break like that.
gvg
My parents took me to the US Virgin Islands for a family vacation when I was 12 and it is still my favorite vacation ever. We stayed for a week in a cabin in the national park and I learned to snorkle. The cabin was very modest just inside the tree line from the beach. A hummingbird had a nest over the front door so we used the back. Walk out into the water. I was hanging over a raft practicing getting the mask to fit water tight and breath right, when my dad pointed to the outline of a stingray buried in the sand right below me. I screeched and climbed up on top of the raft and made him tow me away from the ray. He spent a month before we went devising a plexiglass box that he could put his camera in, to take pictures underwater. He also researched filters to unblue the colors. Everytime we stuck our heads underwater you could hear parrotfish chewing the coral into sand. Really relaxing and interesting. I set up my first saltwater aquarium when we got back. The nearest saltwater store was within bicycling distance. I kept a sea anemone for years. I would like to go back.
ChuckInAustin
I’ve been to Tortola twice. It’s one of my favorite places. It’s been almost 30 years, I need to go back.
JanieM
gvg — that’s a wonderful memory. Makes me want to go there myself.
Wag
Great photos. I love the photo with the hammock. I need to be there now.
feebog
My brother-in-Law captained a boat in the BVI for four years. We have been on several week plus sails with them, just the four of us, no captain needed because Tim knows the waters like the back of his hand. I have a picture of one of our boats in Cow Bay, which is on the back side of Tortola, we are the only boat in the bay, because the entrance is so tricky. And yes there are cows.
Laura Too
@J R in WV: What a wonderful memory! I love posts like this for the stories people share. It is such an amazing image in my mind. Thank you.
Laura Too
I sit here on a gray cold (40 degree) day sipping tea and looking at beautiful tropical waters…thanks for the warm up!
TaMara (HFG)
Great photos, bringing back happy memories. My ex and I spent an anniversary on St. John in a treehouse. Luckily for me, he could sail, so we rented a sailboat and had an extraordinary day, visiting the uninhabited islands nearby.
Almost Retired
Wonderful photos. My wife’s siblings and their families charter a boat in the BVI every few years as a get together. Alas, insofar as I get seasick in hot tubs, I have opted out. These photos make me want to give it a shot next time, though.
way2blue
Steve. Thanks for triggering some long ago memories. My parents took us to the Caribbean the summer I graduated from high school. St Croix, St Thomas, Antigua, Barbados. I fell in love with steel band music & fireflies… Antigua (where we stayed at a friend of my father’s house) was the first time I’d ever seen abject poverty. Up the hill from where we were staying was a cluster of dwellings made of cardboard. And children with the bloated bellies & reddish hair indicative of extreme malnutrition. Very sobering. A reality check on how sheltered a life I’d had…