St Croix Days 1-2: ATV by Land and Sea

Girls' trip to St. Croix! I usually travel with my friend, Brenda, but found a new travel buddy to add to the mix in my friend, Melissa. We both needed a break from life so decided to do a five day trip over the 4th of July.

We had an early flight so Melissa came over the night before to spend the night at my house. We went to a movie nearby and I made the unfortunate decision to have a chili dog at the movie theater. Fast forward to the next morning at 5am at the airport waiting to board and the food poisoning hits. It was a miserable flight to Miami, an even more miserable layover where I vomited in the airport waiting area, and another miserable flight to St. Croix. Upon arrival, we had to wait in line for at least an hour in the heat and humidity to pick up our Jeep then drive across the island to our condo. By the time we arrived, we had been traveling for a good 12 hours and I'd spent most of that time in the bathroom. Poor Melissa had to rummage through the cabinets and freezer to find food for herself for dinner. She managed to scrape together some shrimp and rice, made me some tea, and I was down for the night.

I was still a little shaky and bubbly the next morning but feeling much better. We had booked an ATV and jet ski rental and I didn't want to cancel so off we went to Frederiksted across the island. We stopped off at Turtle's Deli to get some coffee for Melissa since we hadn't been able to hit the grocery the night before. It was close to the waterfront and the famous pier I hoped to snorkel later in the week.

We met up with the ATV crew and followed them out to Rhythms at Rainbow Beach where we would start the ATV drive. They got us set up on our machines with helmets.

We rode up through the hills and stopped off for a break at an overlook.

Then we made our way to some sugar mill ruins.

When we got back to the beach, it was off the ATVs and on to jet skis. We spent about an hour tooling around on those out in the water in front of the beach. By now it was about 1pm and neither of us had eaten. I was ready to brave it, having had no food whatsoever since the chili dog. We ate some lunch at the beach restaurant there and then claimed a spot on the beach to relax.

We hung out there for the rest of the day then went back to the condo to clean up for dinner. We made our way to Cane Bay for the pizza at Off the Wall.

It was really crowded and the food was just ok. We had to park along the very dark road because so many cars were there. When we came back out, it looked like someone had tried to break in to our very touristy-looking Jeep. Luckily they weren't successful and we didn't leave anything in it anyway. It's not my first rodeo. We headed back to the condo and made it an early night.