Running in St Croix

A year after we got married we decided it was time for the honeymoon. Seriously, who waits so long for the best part?? That’s another sign that there is something wrong with me… but isn’t delayed gratification a constant for some runners? Isn’t it?

I’ve heard it is, so I’ll just chuck it to being a runner… I guess.

So, we did some research figured St. Croix was easier as it’s still the US, no need for visa for my foreign hot candy husband, same time zone, no need to change money, or voltage adapters, and a straight flight to the Caribbean. So Easy. Well, that should have been a sign ;-( Nothing is ever that easy.

There was no running in St Croix. I did searches before I left all over the web. I couldn’t find any routes or anything, weird, right? I checked forums, people said not to run on the streets as it was dangerous (there were no sidewalks in most places) and I looked on those apps like Mapmyrun or Strava to see where people run, and all I saw was people running just a couple of miles on the streets, nothing to se,e and cars quite close. There is a running store, Stamina Sports and I read that I could check with the staff there where to run. I went over, the store only opens a couple of days, it was closed then. Just like pretty much everything else in St Croix. I did manage to talk to some people in the crossfit place next door and told me they run in “Judith’s fancy”, a beach with some sort of park a bunch of miles away, that you couldn’t get to without a car or by bus. Too much work for me. Seems like I had brought my sneakers for nothing, I quickly gave up.

St Croix was like a ghost town. I am not kidding, there were only 3 places to eat and they were crappy (once, true story, we had to wait 65 minutes for a burger). The downtown looked so sad, it was even a bit scary to walk. And I come from a 3rd world country, I know scary, this was beyond that. I was so shocked. This is what downtown and the boardwalk looked like:

Where the hell is everyone???????????? And that is the only nice part in the city.

On top of that, our hotel, Colony Cove Beach Resort, was a hot hot mess, we even came back one night to a wide OPEN front door one day, not just unlocked: OPEN. It sucked royally. you don’t even want more gross details ( you do? like an open condom wrapper by the bed? it was purple) I promise you. So seriously infuriating and disgusting.

Anyway, after spending a few hours in the town, we were a little flabbergasted, and scared. We ended up spending a lot of money in taxis to get out of the way to the nice beaches, however far they were. There was no running, and a week off was fine with me. All the running I did was this:

and that was just to get pictures when we had nothing to do at the beach… shot like these:

What else can you do in a beach, really?

So once we figured where to escape, all I did, for 5 days, was THIS:

I spent many hours pointing at things, mostly under the water. Seriously, SNORKELING. I had never snorkeled before. Well, I did put that thing over my eyes and over my mouth, saw some fish in Mexico, and got bored quickly. This was different. Juan had bought a space mask for the water (which ended up being the talk of the town, even though it was a quite slurred talk as everyone in St Croix was drunk or baked!) which covered my whole face. Well, he bought it for himself but once I put it on… it was mask at first sight! I couldn’t let go of it, I could breathe normally and talk and just float around for hours. Itwassomuchfunyouguys!!!!

Check it!

The snorkeling was soooooo soooooo much fun…

The nicest one and only thing I can recommend about St Croix is the trip to Bucks Island, the beach is AMAZING and the snorkeling is ridiculous. Those pictures up there where I am jumping like an idiot are from Bucks Island, plus these:

There is nothing there other than snorkeing and trees!!! We went with Caribbean Sea Adventures, a few times, and Miles (how could he not be the coolest with that name?) was on top of it all and pretty much saved our whole trip. Those tours were definitely worth the trip! And the snorkeling… was fabo! Until I saw the barracuda and the sharks. I feaked the efffff out and jumped back on the boat screaming!