Lizard Tour 2010 Continues ...

Ground Hog's Day in the Virgin Islands

Early this morning the "Ground Lizard" saw his shadow; six more weeks of paradise.

Since our last blog we visited more of the beautiful island of St. Croix. The tour began yesterday morning. The brochure said we could find Sweeny's Bus Tours across the the street from Government House, downtown Christiansted. We drove up and down every street around Government House and couldn't find a single bus tour office. Getting nervous that tour departure time was near, I asked a charming fellow in a modified truck that said Heritage Safari Tours on the door, if he knew where Sweeny's was. Yes, that's me, he smiled. And again I realized that traditional mainland thinking wasn't going to get us where we needed to go.

First stop was the botanical gardens. We smelled and sampled fresh herbs growing in the ruins of the old plantation kitchen. Kitchens were separate from the big house in case the open cooking fire got out of hand, you would still have a roof over your head. The kitchen had, in fact, burned to the ground.

From the gardens Andre bounced us over to Cruzan distillery. The fermentation vats are open and in a building without any real walls. We can only assume that the additional ingredients would add to the flavor. A ten minute walking tour ended with thirty minutes of product sampling.

Whim Plantation was a lovely restoration of an early 18th century Dutch estate. The main house was three gigantic rooms with 18-foot high ceilings. A center hall flanked by a dining room and bedroom. Nice to visit, we could never live there.

Lunch was seaside at Turtles, a great little sandwich shop in Fredricksted. Stuffed with tropical sandwiches and still happy from Cruzan, we sped through the rain forest and Columbus' landing at Salt River Bay.