St. Thomas - Leaping Lizards!

Leaving Monkey Island (St. Kitts), we journeyed now to the Land of Lizards - St. Thomas.  A U.S. protectorate, whatever exactly that means, St. Thomas has long been known as one of the shopping capitals of the Caribbean.  In fact, the symbol of St. Thomas my mother got for her charm bracelet while she was there is a shopping bag!

While shopping certainly is big business in St. Thomas--especially if you are a jeweler, which make up at least half of the shops on the island by my estimate--there are many more things to enjoy about the island.  To begin with, St. Thomas has also been known for its aquatic wildlife, a fact brought home to us by our visit to Coral World which is located not too far from the ship by shuttle.  I actually had arranged for this trip for us through the Shore Excursions Group, which is a partner of CruiseOne, and I have to say that it turned out to be a good choice to use them.

To begin with, Coral World is a very popular attraction in St. Thomas and the lines to go on this tour with Princess were quite long.  Not so with Shore Excursions Group.  A short walk down the pier got us connected with them and we traveled with a group of about 10 of us in a private shuttle that brought us right to Coral World's door ahead of the rest of the crowd.  Later on, this shuttle would bring us back to the ship via the downtown shopping area so we ended up kind of getting a two-for-one deal by asking the driver to drop us off there on the way back.

I have to say that while Coral World was interesting, this is not a major Sea World extravaganza where you are going to spend an entire day.  Nonetheless, their staff was extremely knowledgeable and their exhibits allowed you to get really up close and personal with a lot of the aquatic wildlife.  I mean, you can go anywhere and pet a sting ray, but can you play soccer with a sea lion or climb in the water to swim with sea turtles for half an hour?  Not any other place that I know, anyway.  At the same time, while this may be a for-profit operation, some of the space could use some renovation as it appears to be getting a little dated and blasted by years of salt water abuse.  Overall, I would say this little excursion--including the sea turtle swim and the cost of the shuttle there--was not worth the $300 dollars we paid for the four of us, however, it was worth at least $200.  Of course, it was comforting to know that people who arranged the exact same thing with Princess dealt with larger crowds and paid more, so there is that to consider.

St. Thomas, more than any other island we visited, was indeed quite capitalistic and this was especially true of the many, many gypsy cabs always on the prowl to take you some place or another.  Unlike Antigua, however, where you felt you were getting your money's worth for whatever was being offered, here there was a definite feeling that you were being taken advantage of a bit.  Still, for the smart shopper or someone that may be looking to pick up this or that, there were some bargains to be found.  Not being a smart shopper, however, I didn't really take advantage of the vast cornucopia of offerings primarily because most of what they have is more in the category of luxury rather than necessity.

And then there were the lizards.  Everywhere.  Of all different shapes and sizes, but mostly the larger size.  I really don't feel the need to contribute another picture of a lizard on St. Thomas to cyberspace so you won't find one on this blog, though I am convinced that every single picture taken here probably has a lizard somewhere hidden in the frame anyway.   People feed them like pigeons there and some will even let you touch them, which is probably a bad idea from an ecological standpoint, but for most tourists these creatures are a novelty and petting and feeding them is still a better alternative than what some of the natives do with them (hint: it almost certainly involves salt and pepper in some capacity). 

For the first time, we actually got some serious rain on the trip, though it was the sort of sporadic, sudden downpour that's common in the tropics.  This tended to put a bit of a damper on our shopping excursion in town, so we just paid the fare to a gypsy driver to take us back to the ship which was actually a bit of a hike from the downtown area.  Back onboard, though, we realized that our most excellent vacation would be drawing to a close since we had one last stop to make in the Bahamas before we finished up in Fort Lauderdale...