A total of five ships are in town! Three at the downtown dock and two more at a nearby dock. One bigger then the next. The biggest ship has more than 3000 passengers and comes from Europe.
The town looks much like cities in the US. But there is a big difference: traffic flows like in the states but the cars have their steering wheel on the left (British) side!
We go with Godfred in a safari minibus. First he drops us downtown for some shopping. And there is a lot of it. And lots of tourists. The crowed swells as the day goes on. It rains multiple times but we always happen to be under cover. Later we drive up to the tallest point where it rains. He does a good job of explaining: Much of the island was destroyed during hurricanes and some homes did not get rebuild because people had no insurance and that was because insurance had gotten too expensive after a previous hurricane. It took $3.2billion to rebuild St. Thomas after the last hurricane. The city also had to deal with theft and looting after power and water outages. Many folks were homeless.
The Island was bought from the Netherlands in 1917, a small remaining piece was bought in the seventies.
Many more islands can be seen from lookouts. One island is owned by the DuPont family. Some are too small to live on.
Cruise ship business in their No 1 industry. But it is only 6 out of 12 months. Ships stop coming during the hurricane season.
Godfred takes us to Coki beach. We rent and snorkel gear ($5) and get some fish food. The fish are coming in swarms or better schools :). There are several different kinds of fish and they are very tame and about a foot long. They literally eat from our hands. Li enjoys this too. Bianca doesn’t want to use the swim mask but also has much fun with the fish. It showers a few times but that hardly bothers us.
Back on the ship. It’s Chocolate night. The displays are really impressive. I go for chocolate covered pineapple and strawberry.
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