We first stepped foot on St John in 1993. We were young and adventurous and just looking for an interesting place to go on a vacation. As we looked through various travel brochures that we waited for patiently in the mail (those were the days before the internet) one particular resort looked interesting. It was the Hyatt on St John, USVI (now known as the Westin). The beautiful palm trees, and beach, and oh that gorgeous swimming pool – that’s what got us.
We didn’t know about the National Park, the great snorkeling and sailing, but boy was that one nice swimming pool. Down went the deposit and we counted the days for our winter vacation! After a flight from cold NJ and a tipsy turvey taxi ride to Red Hook we said where’s the ferry terminal? Taxi driver pointed to a little wooden shack and said that’s it over there, welcome to the Virgin Islands. Ok, we purchased our ferry tickets and boarded the boat headed for the great unknown. What grew larger as we approached was a vision of green mountains and water with all the blues of an artist’s pallet. The closer we got, the more excited we became. After a couple of days lounging around the resort we decided to see what else was on this rock so we rented a 4 wheel drive vehicle to go exploring.
We got a Diahatsu Rocky, 4 on the floor, keep left – have a nice day! Our little Rocky took us out to the East End and back, yeah we stopped at all the usual lookouts, took tons of photos, and the beaches and the snorkeling were fabulous – yes we where in paradise. As all vacations do this one went oh so fast. All we had left when we got home was the panoramic photos of this beautiful isle hanging in our kitchen. Day in and day out the photos hung there but we still had more places to explore so the next 5 years were composed of various trips to warm places with a few cruises thrown in for good measure.
Fast forward 5 years and we said, “wouldn’t it be fun to go on vacation with the whole family, everyone is so busy we never see each other as often as we would like?” Back into research mode to find a place when the pictures in the kitchen spoke up and said, hey dummy, stop looking and come back to see me! Done. First villa rental with parents, sis & hubby, and bro & wife and 18 month old niece, and a Jeep with automatic tranny and A/C – we were good to go! Everyone had a great time and it was agreed that this would be our annual January family pilgrimage.
Years came and went and as the family grew larger so did the villa. When we topped out at a 6 bedroom villa in Peter Bay in 2006 with 14 family members we thought life couldn’t get any better. Go back home and work really hard to feed our now deep rooted STJ “addiction”. Back in the states in a particularly cold February we started thinking (usually a dangerous sign)….where are we and where are we going??? Time to think about the future – very scary! Knowing that northeast winters are not so much fun we thought about our options: Florida, too NY, North Carolina – not bad, Costa Rica – very affordable and stable government, but too far away from family. Buy a sailboat and sail around the world – we are too practical for that and we would never see our family. Hmmm, let’s hop down to STJ just to “look around and see what’s available”. Oh, and let’s do our due diligence and fly over to St Croix while we are there cause everyone knows STJ is soooo expensive and there are some good buys on St Croix, besides we had never been there and a sea plane flight for a day sounds like a fun adventure. Yeah, St Croix was nice, but just nice. While we were there we could hear STJ calling us, pick me, pick me! After 2 full days crawling around STJ with a realtor who patiently took us to every nook and cranny – who knew that this little island had so many roads tucked away, not us for sure even after visiting for the past 13 years! I guess the realtor was getting the idea that we weren’t crazy about what we were seeing: the Cruz Bay side was “standing room only” in our price range and when we got into our price range we weren’t impressed. What were we looking for??? How about quiet and peaceful, great water views with twinkling island lights at night, and “humps” – we wanted to see other islands, not just a great expanse of open ocean.
The realtor had one rabbit left in his hat – Dreeket’s Bay. Where is this Dreeket’s Bay, I thought we saw EVERYPLACE on this little 8 mile long island that was habitable by now, maybe we just can’t buy on STJ? Back in the car we drive out east, through Coral Bay, past Skinny Legs, hello & good bye Estate Zootenval, hello Haulover and End of National Park. First left and oooh, this looks promising! Paved, 8 inch thick concrete roads; a good sign, stacked stone walls with underground utilities; is enticing, ok let’s get out of the car and take a look around. This is a nice subdivision that the developer definitely put a lot of thought and hard work into. 1 + acre lots with a view down the Sir Frances Drake Channel, north shore views directly across from Tortola, and yes you can see White Sand Bay/Soggy Dollar Bar! Check, check, and check – what’s not to like?
So there we are sitting on the Winston Wells ball field at the STJ Blues Festival in 2006 after putting down a binder on our piece of the rock. As the bands wailed on we looked up at the stars and wondered, did we really just buy land on St John? I think we did.