St. Thomas V.I. - Day 4

Our stay at St. Thomas was so memorable. None of us had been there before and were really excited. We heard from some friends that the best place to snorkel was at St. John's Trunk Bay. This is an island that's part of the Virgin Islands. We had to take a boat ride to St. John's. It was about a 45-minute ride. They had a tour guide pointing out houses of famous people like Madonna, Michael Jordan, and Tim Duncan, just to name a few. It was pretty hard to hear because the speaker system wasn't the greatest and the wind and waves from the outside were loud. But Blaine was able to understand some cool facts. The craziest one was that a gallon of milk cost $10! They don't have any cows in the islands and have to import a lot of goods. It's all brought in by ship, since they don't have any airports that are big enough for cargo planes.

Once we arrived at St. John's, we were greeted by our taxi drivers. So the "taxis" were F150s that were seriously hooked up. They put some seats in the beds of the trucks with a little roof and there you go! The drive to Trunk Bay was pretty crazy. First of all, they were driving on the right hand side and were driving super fast. The island was very mountainous and the streets were very narrow. Every time we made a sharp turn, we couldn't tell or see if anybody was coming our way! They stopped several times so that we could take some pictures with the bay in the background. It was a very beautiful island.

Trunk Bay was so awesome. I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty scared of snorkeling. I've never been good at it. Never. The area where we could snorkel was pretty far away and I didn't know if I could be there that long. To my surprise, I was able to snorkel successfully for the first time ever and loved it. They had signs at the bottom of the ocean with arrows pointing you in the right direction. They also had signs with information about the fish and coral that we were seeing. It was really relaxing and a lot of fun. We were out there for about an hour and half. We couldn't touch anything because it was a reserve. So we had to keep afloat the whole time. Damaris' underwater camera came in handy here. We were able to take pictures of the fish and fun pictures of us snorkeling.

As soon as we were done snorkeling, it started raining! So the timing was perfect. We grabbed a quick snack before being taken back to St. Thomas. I wish we had more time to check out the rest of St. John. They had a lot of cute little shops that looked interesting. At St. Thomas, we walked the mall. We didn't really buy much other than some souvenirs. My family has this thing where we buy a magnet of every place we've visited. My grandma started this tradition and now we won't leave a place without one! I didn't like any magnets that I saw, so I bought a Christmas ornament and converted it into a magnet.

Once on the boat, we showered and got ready for dinner. After dinner, Blaine and Papo headed to the arcade again. This time, they were literally there for hours. They played one racing game, over and over again until they finally beat it. While they were doing that, the rest of us just played card games. At one point, Damaris and I just wanted to go to the club right next to the arcade for a song or two. The security guy didn't let us go in because we didn't have our I.D.'s and he thought we were under 21 despite the fact that we were both wearing our wedding rings. We were both so upset that we went all the way to our room, grabbed our I.D.'s just to show them to this security guy. It was so ridiculous. We were laughing the whole time we were going to our room. What bothered us was that some younger girls in from of us that were dressed pretty skimpy weren't even asked to show their I.D.'s. We went inside after proving our legal age status, and danced for a couple of songs. We laughed for a while. I love having a sister to share these simple, yet ridiculous moments with.

We went to bed earlier than usual because we were docking in Puerto Rico really early and had to be well-rested for our ziplining adventure!