Anniversary Trip to St. Croix

This past weekend was our one year wedding anniversary and we celebrated it on the beautiful island of St. Croix! We had an amazing time celebrating our marriage, even though we had a few setbacks (like buying a GoPro specifically for this trip and having it stop working entirely before we even arrived on the island – just my luck… or when JetBlue put us on a broken plane, twice, and then had us sit at the airport for 3 hours while it got “fixed”).

St. Croix is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, and the island is about 22mi long by 7mi wide. We chose this island because I read that it’s the least touristy of the three islands, and that definitely seemed to be true. Granted, it’s the off-season, but there weren’t crowds anywhere we went and it was great! We stayed at the Renaissance Carambola Beach Resort and it was beautiful! Each room is like your own little bungalow, even with a mini-kitchen with a small fridge, microwave, and sink. One thing I really loved about our room was that there were fans (as well as a/c, of course) and I personally sleep so much better with a fan on the ceiling.

Along with relaxing on the beach just steps away from our room, we also went on a snorkeling trip to Buck Island where we snorkeled the reef, went night kayaking in Bio Bay, hiked to Annally Bay to see the tide pools, and even saw a shooting star while star gazing one night. The amount of stars you could see at night there was ridiculous! There’s no light pollution like there is in Florida; it was like I was having a front row seat in outer space. I wasn’t able to get any pictures from our night-kayak tour because I didn’t have a waterproof camera (thanks GoPro that didn’t work 🙁 I’m obviously still bitter), but we booked our tour with Bush Tribe Eco Adventures. While the bioluminescence wasn’t as awesome as I had pictured in my head (I was thinking Avatar-style where my boat would glow all night… but I think I just have high expecations), it was still a great tour and our guides were awesome. We got to see jumping fish, sunken ships, and bioluminescent jelly fish and dinoflagellates. I would definitely recommend the tour if you’ve never been night kayaking or have never seen any of those things.

Here are some pictures from our anniversary weekend…

That’s not St. Croix but it’s an island we passed on the plane ride down…this is about the time my brand new GoPro decided to never turn on again 🙁

The view from the beach at the Renaissance Carambola Beach Resort was absolutely stunning, especially in person. Pictures don’t do it any justice.

Saturday night we got to witness a wedding no the beach. It was fun lounging on the beach and watching them set up. I love weddings 🙂

Our footprints in the sand when we were walking around Buck Island. I wish I had pictures from our snorkel trip, but… lousy GoPro that didn’t work. I did buy a disposable water camera, but haven’t gotten the pictures developed yet. We booked our snorkeling trip through Caribbean Sea Adventures and I would highly recommend them if you’re ever in the area. Everyone that worked there was so friendly and knowledgable, and two of the girls even spent about 30 minutes trying to detangle my hair from my life vest. (Still don’t know how that happened, but it was a mess, thank goodness we didn’t have to cut my hair!)

The prettiest blue water I’ve ever seen on Buck Island, just a short boat ride from Christiansted, St. Croix.

The Renaissance holds the entrance to the hiking trail down to Annaly Bay where the Carambola tide pools are located. It’s about a 2 mile hike each way, but it wasn’t too terrible. Be sure to wear appropriate footwear and bring lots of water! The trail is a little hard to follow in some parts, but trail markers, like this arrow of rocks, helped keep us on track.

The view on parts of the hike were absolutely gorgeous!

We didn’t get to go all the way down to the tide pools because the tide was too high and crashing on the rocks. Several people have died there after slipping or losing their balance and hitting the rocks. Other hikers told us someone just died a few weeks ago, so it’s definitely a dangerous location, but so beautiful.

The beach at Annaly Bay is all rocks/stones and it reminded me of a beach I visited in Italy that also had rocks instead of sand. In Florida all of our beaches are sand, so this was definitely a different kind of beach than we’re used to. I loved the noise the ocean made when it was sucked back after crashing over the rocks. I originally planned on making a video of the weekend, but  you guessed it, no GoPro. I still took some video with my regular camera, I will try to put something together sometime soon, though I’ve never edited video before, so it’ll probs be a disaster. Haha

I can’t wait for our next vacation! My husband really is the absolute best travel partner… he loves adventure and food and is always willing to do whatever I want to do (and he keeps me calm when I’m stuck in the tiniest airport ever with only a snack bar to eat from for approximately 4 hours and when I’m having a panic attack on the previously mentioned broken plane).

I can now say that St. Croix is home to some of the best beaches I’ve ever been to! What’s your favorite beach ever??

XO