We began Sunday morning by exploring downtown Charlotte Amalie, the main town and the location of the original fortresses on the island. We went on Sunday morning to avoid crowds, pushy salesmen, and most importantly, to avoid cruise ship dockings. We did some light shopping at the one small market just as it was opening up, and then walked around downtown to explore and admire the Dutch influenced architecture. We saw the original fort, built in 1671, Hotel 1829, and the famous 99 steps, which Curt ran up. I stayed at the bottom...so I could take his picture. After buying a coffee and pineapple juice at the local cafe so that we could use their restrooms, we ventured on to explore the west side of the island.
And explore we did. We took a scenic route along the southwest coast and mountainside from which there were several picturesque stopping points. We did make it to Brewers Bay, but left before we inhaled too much of the secondary smoke. Accessing the other west end bays was more difficult. We didn't even attempt to reach the appropriately named "Perserverance Bay." On the far end, a nice gated entrance to nothing blocks off access to the two beaches we wanted to reach. We were told we could park and hike the 30 minute trail to the beach. I think we could've made it down, but we're out of shape and Curt didn't want to carry me back up the hill/mountain. So we moved on. We found the turnoff to Bordeaux Bay, but the neighborhood was sketchy and the dirt road looked too bad for our two-wheel drive Suzuki. So, we attempted to reach Stumpy Bay.
Although the access road to Stumpy Bay was marked in brown on the map, which usually means a dirt road, it was short, and the first two-thirds of it was an easy drive. We should have stopped at the cement slab at that point, parked, and walked the remainder of the way. But sometimes you can't tell how bad a road is until it's too late. We made it almost all the way down the steep hill before we saw a rocky, foot tall, uneven, drop off ahead with boards left from where others tried to pry their way out. Turning around was not an option without either getting stuck in the giant gutter or falling off a cliff, so we decided to drive backwards up the hill. Curt did an excellent job and made it as far as the rear-wheel drive Suzuki could have possibly made it going backwards on a steep dirt road that hadn't been up-kept in who-knows-how-long. At the point where the steep incline turned to ridiculously steep incline, we ran into trouble. We made it a few feet more, going up and down repeatedly, before getting stuck behind a very large rock. We were exhausted and needed a break, so we grabbed our sandwiches, gatorades, and towels, and walked down to the beach for lunch. After a few quick photos, we tried again for at least a half hour. This time, I stayed out of the car to help direct Curt around the ruts. Curt got it out from behind rock, and we went up a few feet at a time. But we clearly we not going to make it up this dirt road backwards in a rear wheel drive without causing damage to the car. So we loaded up the essentials and hiked up to the first "villa." The owner of the villa, which might be called an old cottage-on-a-hill in the mainland US was a 93 year old Creole woman on berets who had landscaped and cared for the land for 65 years. Her caretaker, an old woman from Minnesota who relocated to St. Thomas in 1985, let us use the phone to call a towing company. $150 later, we parked on that cement slab where we should have stopped in the first place and walked down to enjoy the beautiful, isolated, difficult-to-reach, Stumpy Bay. The daughter of the owner of the villa, a half-Creole, half-Dutch woman here visiting from the Netherlands, later joined us at the beach. She told us about the birthday parties they had at Stumpy Bay when she was a kid, were they used the leaves of the grape trees as plates, and the giant rocks as both tables and grills. In return for their help, and at the woman's request, we collected as many beautiful rocks as Curt could carry for them. They invited us in and treated us to fresh, home-grown pineapple -- the best I've ever tasted.
After showering and cleaning up back at the condo, we tried to eat out for dinner, but not much is open on Sunday nights. So we ate in, then slept for a very long time.
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