We went to St. Croix to meet up with my family for our holiday get-together. We caught the red-eye to the east coast on Friday night, then arrived Saturday afternoon to the island. After a very tiring day of flying, I didn’t get to catch up on sleep too much because we had a dive scheduled for early the next morning. Two boat dives along the outside of the reef protecting Christiansted. Current was too strong at the first site we tried, so we had to come a little closer to the reef. I focused on photography with my new housing on this trip. It was my first time using it on Scuba gear. The video light died quicker than I was expecting, only lasting for the first dive and a few minutes into the second. We saw lots of interesting, large coral formations, as well as a few lobsters and plenty of fish. After the dives we got lunch in Frederiksted, explored the “Rainforest” and ended the day with dinner in Christiansted.

On Monday we set sail to Buck Island, where we snorkeled the underwater trail. The ride out was quite rough and wet, and it rained on us during our snorkel. But after we sailed around the the leeward side of the island, the weather cleared up and we had beautiful sunny skies to explore the island’s famous beaches. We hiked to the observation deck near the island’s peak, a trail that took us across the island. The low-lying forest was full of interesting plants, including several different cacti and massive air plants.

Our last full day on the island was spend relaxing a little bit, me and Claire walked from our AirBnB to the beaches of Chenay Bay, where we found a secluded spot nestled among the Portia trees, although there was a sharp reef just offshore that kept us from being able to get in the water. We had our “Christmas Dinner” at Savant.

Our flight home was another long day of travel with a hop over to San Juan that presented an interesting juxtaposition of the refineries and beach condos.