Jump to content
Cruise Critic Community

Yes you can do St. John on your own!

CaribbeanBound

By CaribbeanBound,
in St. Thomas/St. John

Recommended Posts

CaribbeanBound

CaribbeanBound

Posted
Posted

We were in St. Thomas from 7:00am - 5:00pm. Our destination this trip was Trunk Bay and Cinnamon Bay on the Island of St. John for snorkeling. Just like our second trip, we caught local transportation for $2 per person in an open-air taxi to Red Hook to catch a ferry to Cruz Bay on St. John. The drive takes about 20 to 30 minutes each way depending upon traffic.

 

[Despite what everyone at the Havensight pier will tell you (and they will lie to you), you can get local transportation for $2 per person in an open-air taxi to Red Hook. Simply walk out of the Havensight pier main gate, cross the street, turn left and walk until you get to the Bus Stop (there is a pullover area) across from K-Mart and cross the street so that you are standing on the K-Mart side of the street. It is a leisurely 10 to 15-minute level walk. When you see an open-air taxi drive up, flag him down, tell him where you wish to go and enjoy the trip].

 

The taxi will drop you off at the Red Hook ferry terminal. Pay upon exiting the taxi, go through the gates and hop on the ferry to St. John. We caught the 8:00am ferry and paid our $5.00/pp fare. Normally, you would pay at the booth prior to boarding. The very pretty ride across the bay runs about 15 minutes. Upon arrival at Cruz Bay, St. John, we caught a 10-minute taxi ride ($6.00/pp) to Trunk Bay, stopping once along the way to take pictures of Trunk Bay from a picturesque spot along the road. We arrived at 8:30am which allowed us to get in free. Once the admission booth opens, it costs $4.00/pp to enter this beautiful white sand beach with clear waters, awesome views of islands and cays, nice facilities, and an underwater snorkeling trail. The snorkeling trail can be found on the right hand side of the beach. It begins on the far side of the little island and works its way around the island and ends on the closer side. The snorkeling is very good, with lots of fish and colorful coral. Including the four of us, there was a total of 7 people enjoying this beach from 8:30am to 10:15am when larger groups began arriving —– at which time we left and caught a $4/pp taxi for Cinnamon Bay. (Trunk Bay is now one of our top three Caribbean beaches).

 

Cinnamon Bay is part of a campground with good facilities, snorkeling equipment rentals, and kayak rentals. The beach is not as pretty as Trunk Bay but offers good snorkeling as well. Sea Turtles can be spotted here in the middle of the bay feeding on the sea grass, but we did not spot any this trip. We caught a taxi back to Cruz Bay ($7/pp) at 11:40am. We just missed the noon ferry so we ate lunch at High Tide Bar and Grill adjacent to the pier. We enjoyed the Virgin Island Pale Ale (a fruity beer made for distribution in St. John by a brewery in Maine), and especially liked the sweet mango salsa which accompanies the chips and salsa appetizer. We shopped until 1:45pm and bought tickets for the 2:00pm ferry, which was 30 minutes late arriving. A very large crowd anxiously waited in a long line in the hot sun on the pier. There was no problem getting everyone on the ferry. We arrived back in Red Hook at 2:40pm. Ignore the $7/pp taxis and wait for a $2.00 taxi again EXACTLY where it dropped you off. (Do not cross the street). We got dropped off a couple blocks closer to Havensight than the K-Mart where we picked up the taxi. We look forward to doing this excursion on our own again.

 

Here are more of our Secrets of the Caribbean!

http://www.lavasurfer.com/info/caribbean-secrets.html

These are our very detailed personal reviews, hints, and tips for ports of call that you will be visiting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
mykidsrock76

mykidsrock76

Posted
Posted

Thanks!!! That info was great!!! Does the ferry run all day? Or only certain times? We are in port 10AM-8PM and I want to make sure the ferry will be running while we're there. This will be my 3rd trip to St. Thomas and would LOVE to check out St. John. There aren't any tours through the ship for our sailing, but it sounds pretty easy to do on our own. How is it for kids? We have 3 of them with us- 4, 5, and 15. Thanks again!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
karen&roy

karen&roy

Posted
Posted
Thanks!!! That info was great!!! Does the ferry run all day? Or only certain times? We are in port 10AM-8PM and I want to make sure the ferry will be running while we're there. This will be my 3rd trip to St. Thomas and would LOVE to check out St. John. There aren't any tours through the ship for our sailing, but it sounds pretty easy to do on our own. How is it for kids? We have 3 of them with us- 4, 5, and 15. Thanks again!!!

The ferries sail every hour on the hour starting at 8am. Same on the return trip. Your kids will love trunk bay. The water is very calm and clear

Link to comment
Share on other sites
sysguy

sysguy

Posted
Posted

Hey Jen!

We're on the same Glory cruise with our kids ( 11 & 8 ) and are thinking St.John as we've also been to St.Thomas before!

It sounds like our kids would love the snorkling, we are still trying to decide where to go as this port was going to be a beach day anyway.

Are you on our roll call yet? If not, hope to see you over there!:D

 

Cindra

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
rocky3

rocky3

Posted
Posted

We just got back and used your information without any problem. The only things that concerned us were the taxi/busses fill up quickly from all the workers returning in the afternoon, but others came by very soon. and we hit some traffic but still had time to go into the kmart before returning to the ship. Just plan a little buffer to get back in case of traffic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Krazcruiser

Krazcruiser

Posted
Posted
We just got back and used your information without any problem. The only things that concerned us were the taxi/busses fill up quickly from all the workers returning in the afternoon, but others came by very soon. and we hit some traffic but still had time to go into the kmart before returning to the ship. Just plan a little buffer to get back in case of traffic.

 

GF and I are planning a trip to st.john and are hoping to maximize our time at trunk bay, our schedule is from 8:00 - 5:30, what time did you leave St. John, thanks

Link to comment
Share on other sites
seagypsea

seagypsea

Posted
Posted
Thanks CaribbeanBound for the very helpful information. We are not sure yet if we dock at Havensight or Crown Bay. As I understand it, it is possible to walk to the ferry terminal near Crown Bay; can anyone verify that for me?

 

The Crown Bay Marina is right there where the ship docks at Crown Bay so it's an easy walk. However, the ferry only goes to Water Island.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
duncanmaria

duncanmaria

Posted
Posted
If we cannot find the $2 taxi... how much does a taxi normally cost? The excursion through Carnival to go to the beach on St John is going to cost us about $370.. so if we could do it cheaper that would be great!!!! Thanks!!!!!

 

The $2 local cabs can be caught in front of the K-Mart, about a 15 minute walk from Havensight. You may have to wait for one as we couldn't figure what kind of schedule they were on. Also, they make ALOT of stops between the K-Mart and the Ferry Terminal at Red Hook. I'd recommend taking a taxi from the terminal but try to get as large a group as you can as it will reduce the per person cab fare. Here's the breakdown of our travel expenses to St. John (for 4 people one way):

 

Taxi to Red Hook - $32 (4 x $8)

Ferry to St. John - $24 (4 x $6)

Taxi from Cruz Bay pier to Truck Bay - $24 (4 x $6)

 

That's a total of $160 the round trip to Trunk Bay for the four of us. If we had taken the ship's excursion, the cost would have been about $240 round trip but we would have been herded along with a group and only had about 1 1/2 hours at Trunk. We ended up spending over 3 hours there. It was fantastic!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
seadrifter

seadrifter

Posted
Posted
The Crown Bay Marina is right there where the ship docks at Crown Bay so it's an easy walk. However, the ferry only goes to Water Island.

 

Thanks seagypsea for helping me straighten out the ferry situation. I must have misunderstood a previous posting about which ferry dock was near Crown Bay. DH and I are planning on taking the Red Hook ferry to St. John's, and I now realize that Red Hook is quite a distance from Crown Bay.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...
Texas Girl

Texas Girl

Posted
Posted

Thank you Caribbean Bound. We just got back from St Thomas/St John and your advise about the local taxi's was fantastic. I printed off your instructions and they couldn't have been better. You are so right about the people at the terminal trying to tell you lies. They kept saying, you will get into trouble if you take that other taxi, blah blah blah..... They were charging 10.00 per person taxi ride over to Red Hook so we saved 8.00 each and there were 6 of us. So worth it!!!

 

First we went to Trunk Bay and it was nice but it was high tide and there was hardly any beach at all. We asked about chairs and they wanted a 50.00 dep and 14.00 per chair rental fee. We thought that was a bit high since we'd only been paying 5.00 per chair at other beaches we had been to. The snorkeling was great but then there got to be way to many people so we left and went to Cinnamon Bay and it was really nice and the snorkeling there was fabulous. You did have to go out further but was worth it. Chair rental here was 25.00 dep and 7.00 rental. Now these chairs here were just lawn chairs with no legs. I guess they have a problem with people running off with their chairs. After seeing the chairs I can't imagine why anyone would want them. lol

 

We got over to the ferry dock at Red Hook about 9:00am and we took the 2:00 ferry back to St Thomas. We could have stayed forever at St John. What a wonderful island. There is a resturant right there at the ferry terminal called High Tide and I have to say we had some fabulous food there while we waited on the ferry to leave. Super nice people, I would recommend this place to anyone looking to have a drink and snack or if you want a full meal, it was great and they couldn't have been nicer.

 

Thanks again for you help on getting to St John. We will do this again on a future cruise.

 

Lori

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Texas Girl

Texas Girl

Posted
Posted

Frisquito, the only reason we didn't try the ferry from Charlotte Amalie was because my husband doesn't do so well on smaller boats (gets sea sick) so I thought it would be better if we took the shortest ride on water that we could. I probably would have liked to take the longer ferry ride and maybe we'll do that someday because I do plan on going back someday.

 

Whatever way you choose to get to St John I think you'll love it.

 

Lori

Link to comment
Share on other sites
beautifulbc2

beautifulbc2

Posted
Posted

Caribbean bound

I had checked out your post of all your caribbean ports & excursions that you had been to. It was very informative and I was going to print it off once my printer is working. Now I can't find info or your link. Can you let me know where I might find it? or email me at bcf93@hotmail.com.

Many thanks,

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing
  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • ANNOUNCEMENT: Set Sail Beyond the Ordinary with Oceania Cruises
      • ANNOUNCEMENT: The Widest View in the Whole Wide World
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Cruise Critic News & Features
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...