Stace and I spent two days on St. John, camping in Cinnamon Bay and hiking around the national parks. It is only about a half mile across the water from Tortola, but was like going home in many ways.
We saw the old familiar brown National Park signs, which brought back a ton of memories. We saw zero abandoned cars or heavy machinery rusting along the sides of the roads. We saw road crews dressed uniformly, conducting road work in safe conditions with more than a single, filthy cone to warn traffic of the 10ft deep hole taking up half of the road way, and they actually had men and women holding flags to warn drivers up the danger up ahead!
We saw national park officers who seemed to actually give a damn, and experienced a park system that looked like it was actually cared for!
Here are a few pics!
We hiked a few miles up and down to some 1000 year old petroglyphs, carved into the rock of a rare freshwater spring by Taino indians.
This anole showed Stace his dewlap.
Stace taking a dip, mere feet from out campsite.
Not sure what this is, but birds were loving it.
Mongoose, if you look closely.
Stace's new favorite picture of some thing.
Taino indians were big South Park fans, apparently.
Stace treading all over the priceless petroglyphs.
Giant termite nest that someone had thrown rocks into.
Plantation ruins dot the jungle.
A very spiky sandbox tree.
Stace at the base of an old windmill.
Ruins of an old Dutch school, which was used only for 6 years in the 1700's before an earthquake destroyed it.
Hercules strutting his stuff.
Some very huge trees.
Orb-weaving spider.
More plantation ruins.
These were sugar cane plantations.
A brick oven.
Coral pieces used in construction.