Cruise to St. John and you’re guaranteed an interlude with nature in its most idyllic, unspoiled state in the smallest, least populated, and most secluded of the U.S. Virgin Islands. There are no cruise ship docks or airports, so you arrive by ferry from nearby St. Thomas or smaller vessel if your cruise ship anchors offshore. Not that St. John is a totally primitive island. Although you can seclude yourself amidst untouched natural beauty, the little town of Cruz Bay has a surprisingly large selection of restaurants, bars, and boutiques.

Of the 44 beaches dispersed throughout St. John, there’s one to satisfy most every craving. You’ll find sailing, kayaking, snorkeling, scuba diving, and other water sports, or you can let time stand still on the quiet shore of an undeveloped beach. The island’s gems are the north shore’s white-sand beaches replete with clear, calm, shallow water thanks to the protective embrace of an offshore coral reef. The reef makes snorkeling a top draw, with eye-popping views of butterfly fish, angels, damsels, squirrelfish, parrot fish, tangs, grunts, groupers, snappers, wasses, sponges, and starfish.



Trunk Bay has been listed among the world’s top ten beaches, featuring a unique “underwater nature trail” that provides a great snorkeling experience as you peer 20 feet down at wildly colored fish and several kinds of coral. For a quiet, relaxing day at the beach where it’s just you and a few locals, try Hawksnest Bay. Cinnamon Bay offers snorkeling and kayaking with nary a tourist, as well as extensive archaeological digs that have yielded cultural artifacts from as far back as 300 AD.

Highway 20 winds along the island’s north coast to less-populated beaches, such as Francis Bay, known for its green turtle population, Leinster Bay, and Mary’s Creek. To get there, you’ll need a four-wheel drive vehicle and the patience to match the 20 mph speed limit.

A large part of St. John consists of Virgin Islands National Park, created in the 1950s as a 5,000-acre contribution to the U.S. National Park Service. Now part of the biosphere reserve network designated by the United Nations, it has expanded to 14,689 acres covering two-thirds of the island. Half of it extends across the undersea terrain to St. Thomas, half covers the surface. The amount of rainfall varies so greatly between different areas of the park, it’s possible to find a lush rainforest on the north side and a dry forest of cacti and thorn bushes on the eastern and southeastern sides.

Trek the rainforest and you’ll find yourself nestled beneath a 75-foot canopy of mango, kapok, saman, sandbox, genip, and Sandbox fig trees. Deep within the rainforest, Reef Bay Valley houses some of St. John’s most important traces of lost Indian cultures. At the base of the valley’s highest waterfall, the haunting faces of Taino petrographs carved into the blue basalt rock put you in touch with the natural and supernatural world of a culture dating back to 900 AD.

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