Agile Trekker: USVI Day 2 - Cinnamon Bay snorkeling and Cinnamon Bay Factory Ruins Loop Trail hike

Date	Distance	Time	Elevation Gain	Average Moving Time	Year to Date Miles
4/21/2024	0.6 miles	43 minutes	146'	1.1 mph	264.9 miles

Parking:

Trailhead is directly across the street from Cinnamon Bay Campground

Map:

Gaia GPS

Directions:

See map at trailhead. Explore ruins and do a small loop.

Our hotel arranged for a taxi driver for us, who was much more mellow than our driver yesterday :) He took us to the ferry which would take us to St. John. The ferry ride was around $12. The ferry ride was fun, and the views were gorgeous. We had heavier luggage this trip. I prefer to travel with just a carry on, but we were camping, so I ended up bringing a normal size suitcase in order to accommodate camping gear. We dragged our luggage to a grocery store to pick up some food, though we didn't really need it. On the way back to the ferry, a taxi driver picked us up. In touristy areas it's so easy to get a taxi here. We took the taxi to Cinnamon Bay, where we were staying for the week.

At the campground, you must camp on tent platforms, and they only allow 2 people per tent platform, so we had to rent 2 platforms for the 3 of us. The platforms are around $50/night, if you provide your own tent. We got different answers as to whether we were allowed to have two tents on a platform. One person said yes, one person said no. I brought a large 3-person tent, just in case Tara and I had to share, and she brought a 1-person tent, in case we didn't have to share. We did end up putting both tents on the platform, one mostly hidden behind the other. We didn't get any complaints while we were there. Yeah! Dian got a platform close to us. Our tent platform also had a clothesline with clothespins, which we did use every day.

After settling in, we walked to the beach at our campground, and I tried snorkeling for the first time. I did okay, lol. Snorkeling is pretty straightforward, but I did feel like I improved throughout the week. I saw lots of fish, but I have no idea what they were. I swam wearing a long sleeve shirt in order to prevent my pasty white skin from getting sunburned. You can only use reef safe sunscreen (zinc or titanium dioxide) here and getting burned is very easy out here. I also hung out in the water wearing a bucket hat for a while before we snorkeled. The water is a stunning turquoise blue.

After snorkeling, we changed and went for a mini hike across the street from our campground at Cinnamon Bay. It was the ruins of a sugar plantation. There are many sugar plantation ruins across the island from when the Danish ruled the island and brough slaves from West Africa to work on them. We saw a lot of wildlife. There are mongooses all over the campground - they look a bit like squirrels. They were introduced by the Danish to control rats on the island (which they failed to do). We also saw wild chickens, many very tame deer in the campground, and a large iguana.

We met the woman solo camping next to us. It was her last night, and she gave us hike recommendations, as well as her extra food. At night, it is very loud outside. People were very quiet at the campground, but we fell asleep to the sound of waves and crickets. In the mornings, bird sounds would be added to that mixture.

I was so excited by every lizard I saw at first.

View from our hotel.

Some morning pool time.

The hummingbird trying to squeeze in.

A historic castle next to our hotel, though it looks closed.

Studying a list of hikes at the ferry terminal.

Ferry ride

Turquoise water!

Grocery shopping near the ferry terminal.

Way too much luggage!

Our home for the week.
Although there is a tarp above the platform, it is not 100% waterproof.
We wished it was, so we could have slept without our tent flies on.
Note there is really no way to stake out your tent.
I just put my suitcase in my tent to weight it down.