Day 4 - Hiking & Shells

Brock started his day at 7:30am aboard the Sea Monkey with Chris and Jude. They dove the Rhone, a well known wreck dive that was a 300-ft English royal mail ship and the first ever iron-hulled boat…it wasn’t supposed to sink, but in the 1860’s it hit the tip of Salt Island, which they now call the “can-opener”. Over 300 people were on board, and all but one of them died…that lucky survivor stayed in room 26, and legend has it that when you dive down you’ll find the #26 port hole, and if your rub it 3 times clockwise, it’s good luck. So of course Brock rubbed the hole! Other than diving, Brock helped out and learned what it really takes to work on a boat…filling tanks, tying off boats, etc…

I on the other hand, had a very relaxing morning…slept in, came down to the pool for some sun, and otherwise relaxed…again, tough life. I picked Brock up about 12:30 and we came back to the condo for a left-over lunch & to get ready for the rest of the day.

We decided since we had been doing a lot of eating, it was time to get a little activity in…so we took on Gorda Peak. It’s the highest point in VG and takes about 30 min one way to hike to the lookout platform. From there, you can see a 360-degree view of the island and all the surrounding islands that share the Virgin Islands waters…it really was worth the hike! On the hike, we saw a hermit crab (have no idea how that guy got there!?!), a couple of lizards, a blackish-gray snake that scared the begeezus out of me, and some pretty butterflies that looked like bumble bees because they were black and yellow striped. Side note: have you ever tried to take a picture of a butterfly?? Practically impossible!

Then we headed down the road to Nail Bay…I think this is the only road on the island we hadn’t been on yet, so we wanted to see what was down there. Apparently a bunch of wealthy people live down here, because the houses are out of this world! (and the road was in really good condition…had to be privately commissioned…) We stopped at the Sugar Mill ruins, but there wasn’t a ton to see, so we went to a beach called Mountain Trunk Bay Beach…we had the entire thing to ourselves! We just walked up and down the beach looking for shells, and ended up finding some pretty cool souvenirs to take home. It started sprinkling on us, so we decided to head back to the condo. Since we had been pretty active this afternoon, we decided to keep the evening simple, and just ate at the pool bar at the condo. Fell asleep watching “Couples Retreat”…another tough day in VG…