St. John Trip Report Day 7: Perfect beach day

[dreamshark]

Detailed report here


Getting to Creolla
Days 1 & 2
Day3 - into the water
Day3 - afternoon
Day 4 - snorkel cruise
Day 5 - Fourth of July
Day 6 - Miss Lucy's
Day 7 - Perfect beach day
Day 8 - Last Full Day
Heading Home

In which we discover that Francis Bay is our favorite beach on the island It's sheltered from the wind and a great little snorkeling reef comes right up to the smooth powdery white sand beach. It's also just hard enough to find that it is never crowded. And it's one of the closest beaches to our villa. What's not to love?

	Francis Bay - typical snorkeling shot Sunlight twinkling on the shallow reef rocks, schools of easy-going yellow grunts punctuated by spiny sea urchins.
	Francis Bay squirrel fish - one of my favorites The creepy looking translucent red fish with the big black eye is a squirrel fish. They are very common, but hard to photograph because they prefer to hide under rocks.
	Red-lipped blenny! My favorite snorkeling shot of the trip. This fish looks like exactly like it was designed by Dr. Seuss. Hard to photograph, not particularly common, and very skittish, usually crouches on its tail in the shadow of a rock. Too bad I couldn't get a little closer shot so you can see the silly little smiling mouth and pop eyes. A totally funny fish.
	Smooth trunkfish - another favorite It's not obvious in a top-down shot like this, but the trunkfish is shaped EXACTLY like a steam iron. Remember the old Flying Toasters screen saver? It's just like that. Hie-larious.
	Psycho sergeant major This macho little fish spends all its time obsessively patrolling one piece of the reef close to the Francis Bay shoreline trying to chase away snorkelers. Note that this fish is maybe 3.5" long and lacks any kind of teeth that could possibly hurt a human. He doesn't actually try to bite - just whips back and forth as you see in the picture getting closer and closer, then charges directly at you and veers away at the last second. He chases other fish too, which is not unusual for damselfish, but this is the only one I've seen go after people.
	Juvenile French angel, Francis Bay This is gonna be one looker of an angelfish when it's grown, that's all I can say. Wow.
	Annaberg Sugar Planatation Ruins On a whim we stopped here on the way back from our 2nd snorkel trip of the day, and it turned out to be an incredibly beautiful place. Unfortunately, I'd used up my camera battery at the beach, but I managed to coax one more shot out of it before it gave up the ghost.
	Trunk Bay - reportedly the Most Beautiful Beach in the Caribbean Also the most overused beach on St. John, partly because all the day-trippers from St. Thomas come here. This is how it looks one hour before sundown AFTER all the cruise ship tourists have cleared out. Imagine how it looks at peak time.
	Trunk Bay at sunset - well, okay it IS a pretty beach I have to admit that the little Cay so close to shore is very picturesque. If you scrupulously avoid the horrid "snorkel trail" directly in front of the cay and go around to the right side, there's pretty good snorkeling here. We saw giant parrotfish and squid!! Extremely cool.

Comments

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Well, sure it looks nice, but one would imagine that they don't get much in the way of snow.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

You almost make me want to go there myself, just like the last time you raved about it. If it weren't for the gallons of sunscreen I'd have to use, I'd be tempted.

Say, what have the temps and humidity been? My sisters went to Aruba (in December, I think it was) and were surprised at the very high humidity. They said there was a constant breeze/wind, which kept it pleasant and tolerable, but it gave me pause.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

The temps in St. John in the summer are high 80's during the day, low 80's at night, and about 5 degrees cooler up on the mountain. As in Aruba (and probably elsewhere throughout the Caribbean) it is always very very humid, which is offset by the constant trade winds, assuming you're on a beach or mountain where you get the breeze. We were told that the mountain villas didn't need AC because of the temperature differential and the breeze, and that turned out to be correct. Sometimes it was a little warm during the day, but at night with fans blowing it was cool enough for a blanket.

In the winter, shave another 5 degrees off the above temps.

[pameladean]

I really love the underwater shots.

P.