2014 Caribbean Cruise Day Three: St. Croix

Monday, February 3

We were roused from our solid slumber by room service bringing our eggs and fruit that we’d ordered the previous night. Waking to breakfast being delivered is something that I could really get used to.

We ate the breakfast quickly and went to work out. Manina and I did a high-intensity 7-minute workout as a warmup, and then she ran on the treadmill while I did some weights. We walked a couple laps around the outdoor walking track to cool down. It felt good to get the blood pumping after yesterday’s relaxing day on the beach in St. Thomas.

On our way to breakfast at the Windjammer Cafe, we walked by the basketball court and Manina challenged me to a game of PIG. I don’t lose often at PIG, but she killed me the first game, PIG to nothing. I asked for best out of three, but that didn’t help much because the second game was nearly as quick: P to PIG. I made up some lame excuse about having worked my arms too much lifting weights, but the truth is Manina was just on fire. She rarely missed a shot. Even though I got thoroughly trounced, it was a fun few minutes together.

The Forstners and Francises had a scuba dive excursion booked for the day, so the Denneys, Bergerons and we had a flexible schedule. As we walked off the pier and into Frederiksted we had a few options. We looked at renting bikes, but they were all booked up by cruise ship excursions. We looked at renting a car and driving to Christiansted, but nothing was available. So, we decided to walk down the beach and see what jumped out at us.

One of the first places we came to was the Freedom City Surf Shop. They offered Wi-Fi, chairs and drinks, and had a couple guys out on the water on Stand-Up Paddle (SUP) boards. We’d looked into doing this, but hadn’t found this one in our online research. We negotiated (maybe a little too aggressively) for an hour of SUP board time for about $20 each. Pi was a hard-core surfer and SUP enthusiast and gave us about 20 minutes of expert instruction.

Then we went out onto the water. The boards were surprisingly stable. We all quickly got comfortable on the boards and started paddling North toward Rainbow Beach. We had a lot of fun out on the water, taking lots of pictures and goofing around. I tried doing some SUP yoga. I pulled off a sweet side crow pose (that no one got a picture of), and managed to do a few other poses before ultimately losing my balance and splashing into the water.

We continued paddling, looking down into the clear waters. A sting ray swam underneath me. The water was smooth and clear, it was a perfect paddling session. Several people along the beach waved me down, asking if it was easy and where they could come rent it.

But, after traveling some distance, we started getting tired, and I wished we hadn’t worked out quite so hard in the morning. Paddling was enough of an workout itself. On the way back, I pulled up alongside Manina and asked her how she was doing. I offered to tug her home for a while. I took off my ankle leash, threw it to her, and made her lay down on her board while I paddled her back to the start. She objected at first, but soon relaxed and enjoyed the ride. It was another nice few moments to steal away together.

When we got back, Pi was waiting for us and took some pictures of all of us holding our boards.

After our paddleboard adventure we rented a couple beach chairs for an hour and Manina sipped on a Diet Coke while we sat and figured out what to do next. The chair rental guy was a likeable chap from Seattle who worked in Alaska on a boat in the summers, then beach bummed with his girlfriend in St. Croix all winter. After an hour, he came and harassed us about our chairs, and gave us a couple recommendations on what to do next.

We walked back into town to see if there were bikes available (nope, another cruise excursion), but ended up getting a ride from Matthew the taxi driver down to the Sand Castle on the Beach resort for $4 each.

At the resort, we could rent chairs and umbrellas for $20 a person. Instead of doing that, we decided to investigate the beach-side cafe. We ordered a smoothie and a beach burger with pulled pork as a topping and shared it. We had all gotten a little tired after paddling all morning, so we needed the calories.

We spent about $25, but were able to sit in the shade of the cafe for several hours eating good food, and alternating some time heading out into the water for a swim. Much better than dropping $40 on chairs and an umbrella and no food.

Matthew picked us up and brought us back to the ship by 4:30pm. It was formal night on the ship, so everyone took time getting ready and I must say we were a pretty good-looking crew. Mostly it was the ladies, but us guys weren’t looking too shabby either.

After-dinner entertainment was headlined by a guy named El Goucho. We got to the 9pm event early so we could sit right in the front row, but not by my choice. When it started, annoying cruise director Dennis eventually yielded the spotlight to El Goucho, who was a pretty talented guy in his first 10 minutes. However, sitting right up front was way too loud for me.

Our next event was a “Battle of the Sexes” game show at 10:15pm. Several from our group played and the girls won, of course. But, things did get pretty interesting. Our group was very good at the sing-a-song game, but a few nursery songs and LDS hymns got thrown out there. Then, Manina tried to tackle Brett Denney during a stuff-as-many-balloons-as-possible-into-a-shirt game, but other than those embarrassing moments everyone had a good time.

We retired to our room following the game show, and I spent some time writing down the happenings of the day while Manina read her book.