St. Croix: America's third world

I woke up early the first morning of our cruise and got some pretty decent photos as we made our way to our first stop, the island of St. Croix, in the US Virgin Islands.





Becca had a snorkeling excursion planned for her time in St. Croix, but I hadn't booked anything, so I decided to take it easy and wander around the port, Frederiksted. After marveling at the modernity of Puerto Rico (our cruise started there), I was surprised to find that St. Croix was very much a third world kind of place. Buildings were run-down, streets and other places were dirty, and the level of development was generally low. Frederiksted is just a small town--less than 1000 people--but still...It just seemed odd to me that a US territory would be so third world. We would go to the main city on the island, Christiansted, later in the day, and although it was much bigger, it was still very third world.

I started out my walk by walking along the beach next to the pier. I walked by an old Danish fort, and then as far as I could go until I reached private property. The fort was colorful and interesting to look at, but not open to go into. The beach was small and a bit dirty with trash, but the water was very clear.







Nice view of our ship from that beach:


Typical Frederiksted:




There were lots of churches in Frederiksted, and I heard singing coming out of at least three (it was Sunday morning).



I wandered up a hill toward a large Catholic church, and found a cemetery nearby, so I decided to have a look around. I was surprised to find the cemetery full of trash and not very well kept up. It was almost like people came to the cemetery to party and then didn't bother to pick up the trash after they were done.





I didn't see anything else of interest as I walked around town, so I headed back to the pier and hung around for a while, taking the occasional photo and enjoying the warm weather. Temperatures were in the 80's and I had worked up quite a sweat while walking around town. A couple of locals talked to me while I was in town, and I was somewhat surprised (not sure why) to find that they sounded like Jamaicans. This would be true for every other island we visited as well.



One of my favorite photos from the trip, taken from the pier:


I think Becca had a much better time snorkeling. I had given her an underwater camera for her birthday, and she got some pretty decent photos during her adventure. Maybe I'll post some later. Anyway, we decided to take a shuttle to the main town of Christiansted after lunch, convinced that there would be something more interesting to see there. I took this photo of a storm in the distance as we walked off the pier:



The 20-minute drive wasn't particularly interesting, but we did see some signs of development: Wendy's, Kmart, a Home Depot under construction, an oil refinery, a rum distillery. Sadly, Christiansted was pretty dead and not terribly exciting. We walked along the pier in town for a while, and the weather was pretty decent for photos. The only thing there that looked decent was the beach at the nearby cay, but we didn't go over there or anything.







After walking around and sweating a lot for an hour, we decided to catch the shuttle back to Frederiksted. We waited for what seemed like an eternity, sweating it out in the sun with a few of these:



There are "wild" chickens all over St. Croix, and we'd see them in other places as well.

Back in Frederiksted, we found a small "fast food" place to have something to eat. I wanted to get the dolphin burger that was listed on the menu, but Becca wasn't having any of that. So, we settled on sharing a shrimp burger, onion rings and fries. I had never had a shrimp burger before, but it was pretty decent. Interestingly, the shop was owned and run by some Arabs (St. Croix seems like an unusual place for such people to end up), and the Arab kid working the counter provided the worst customer service I had ever received. Since Frederiksted isn't exactly highbrow, it wasn't a big deal. Still, we quickly left after finishing our food. The place had a shady vibe.

That was it for our St. Croix adventures. All in all, I would say that St. Croix was my least favorite of the islands that we visited. It was, by far, the dirtiest and seemed the least developed. Development is not important to me, as long as there are other redeeming qualities in the place. St. Croix didn't have much going for it on either front. I'm giving it a D+ as a place to visit and would neither go back there nor recommend it to anyone else. Pictures of the other islands in the USVI make them look much nicer and more vacation-oriented, and I'd definitely be interested in visiting them. Someday...