Today was day 5 of our trip, day 4 of the actual cruise. We arrived in St Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands. Yes I said U.S. as in United States. The U.S. Virgin Islands are a territory of the United States, we purchased them back in 1917 for a cool $25 million dollars. What a deal, we saw yachts in port that were worth more than that.
Since we were actually going back into the U.S. after being out of the country we had to go through immigrations. When the ship docked immigration officials boarded. I believe it is pretty much just a formality for the U.S. citizens, for the foreigners on board I am not sure as they go to a different location on the ship to go through immigrations. It was a pretty smooth operation even though it started out chaotic. The reason for the initial chaos, in my opinion was a combination of poor communications by the staff as well as people in a hurry. We heard initially from the pursers desk to go to the disco at 10:00, then when we received our Capers it said cabins would be called by deck. One gripe I have had on every Carnival ship is the inability to hear the announcements in our cabins or on the balconies. That I believe added to the chaos of going through immigrations. Back to the immigration process, it was very simple once everything started flowing. They had a line on deck five from the main elevators to the disco, the promenade was divided by ropes so that you walked down to the disco on one side and retuned on the other. Once near the disco , you handed your ship card to an official at the first check point where he read the bar code into a computer. You then continued into the disco where you had to show another official your passport. At that point you were done and ready to get off of the ship. Sounds simple enough but with poor communications and 3000 guests wanting to get to shopping or other activities it can quickly become a mess.
On to St Thomas!
St. Thomas has a very unique transportation system with their taxis. They are basically pickup trucks with a passenger section mounted in the back. To visualize this, imaging the train ride at the zoo, the passenger car has a number of bench like seats. They are open on one side to board and closed on the other side. No windows but a roof. Well this is exactly what is mounted on the back of these pickup trucks, except the have fewer rows of seats.
Some of the taxis are colorfully painted and have murals. I saw one with a firefighter theme. Ours had a mural of a body builder painted on it. The driver we had was a body builder in his earlier years, his name was Muscle Man. He had numerous photos of himself posing, as well as family photos taped up inside the taxi. He appeared to be a very religious man, as do many on the islands. He had religious photos and bible versus posted inn the taxi.
Muscle Man took us to Coki Beach, a smaller beach on the other side of the island. The beach has very nice fine sand and is in a bay protected from the wind and waves. In the bay next to Coki Beach you will Find Coral World, we did not go there but it has some interesting attractions. Be sure to check out the website for a list of what they have. Coki Beach had the typical beach vendors renting chairs and snorkeling equipment. The service on the beach was very good, you would not go thirsty or hungry and the prices were reasonable.
Chad and I decided to go snorkeling so we rented the equipment. It cost us $10 each for our snorkels and fins, we were also given Milk Bone dog bones to feed the fish. The snorkeling was great for fish viewing, not so much for the coral at least in the areas we went. We did find some coral closer to Coral World, but the majority of the area was sand. We were amazed at the numbers of fish we saw.
The majority of the fish were Sergeant Majors, a silver fish with yellow on top and vertical black stripes. Body wise they were similar in shape and size to large bluegills. We also saw quite a few Yellow Tail Snappers, fish similar in shape and body size to that of bass, but blue and yellow in color. I saw a couple of small purple fish but I am not sure what they were. I also spotted a large school of long slender fish, they were very long and thin, maybe 16 inches in length and had a long bill with numerous teeth. Don’t fear the only thing that came close to biting us were the Yellow Tail snappers when they were trying to get the dog bones we had in our closed fists. It was quite a feeding frenzy at times with upwards to 50 or 60 fish swimming around you. I did take a number of pictures with my new waterproof digital camera, movies as well. It did end up leaking and shorting out, not sure why as I did not go down to the documented 9 ft maximum rating that it had. The good thing was that the pictures were ok when I took the SD card out. After snorkeling we had a few drinks on the beach and about that time the taxi retuned to pick us up. When Muscle Man dropped us off he asked what time we wanted to be picked up at, surprisingly he was right on time.
We made a quick stop at the local fire department to see their equipment and say hello. They had some unique communications as the command card had a huge satellite dish mounted on it to overcome the difficulty communicating with all the hills on the island.
They also have some very cool firefighter license plates for their personal vehicles. Once back in Havensight at the docks the shopping started. I had wanted to go up to paradise point to see the port and town from the top of the hill but most of the group wanted to shop and I did not feel like spending the money to get up there. So on to shopping I went, there were many store in the port area, the typical gift, jewelry and liquor stores. With as much as I have been enjoying snorkeling I decided to head over to the local dive shop to purchase some snorkeling equipment. I found just what I wanted at Water World Outfitters, www.scubadivevi.com .I purchased a mask, snorkel, fins and a bag to carry it all. I was ready for my next snorkeling adventure. I took my gear back on board and then went back on land to find the rest of our group. I could find them in the shops so I headed to the next most likely places, the local bars. I did not see them in any of the bars but visited a few nice establishments myself, including Hooters which had just opened their St. Thomas location, very nice and just across the street from the port.
Back on board we dined at the Red Sail buffet, had a few drinks and watched as the ship left port. We found out that 2 guests in our group became engaged on St Thomas. Gary knelt down in the sand on the beach and asked Carrie to marry him, she accepted. We retired early as we wanted to be ready to go for the highlight of our trip, St. Maarten! 
Tonight we found a frog made out of towels on our bed, every night our room stewards would leave us a pet when the cleaned our rooms, tonight it was the frog.
Today was day 5 of our trip, day 4 of the actual cruise. We arrived in St Thomas U.S. Virgin Islands. Yes I said 
Some of the taxis are colorfully painted and have murals. I saw one with a firefighter theme. Ours had a mural of a body builder painted on it. The driver we had was a body builder in his earlier years, his name was Muscle Man. He had numerous photos of himself posing, as well as family photos taped up inside the taxi. He appeared to be a very religious man, as do many on the islands. He had religious photos and bible versus posted inn the taxi.
Muscle Man took us to 
Chad and I decided to go snorkeling so we rented the equipment. It cost us $10 each for our snorkels and fins, we were also given Milk Bone dog bones to feed the fish. The snorkeling was great for fish viewing, not so much for the coral at least in the areas we went. We did find some coral closer to Coral World, but the majority of the area was sand. We were amazed at the numbers of fish we saw. 
The majority of the fish were Sergeant Majors, a silver fish with yellow on top and vertical black stripes. Body wise they were similar in shape and size to large bluegills. We also saw quite a few Yellow Tail Snappers, fish similar in shape and body size to that of bass, but blue and yellow in color. I saw a couple of small purple fish but I am not sure what they were. I also spotted a large school of long slender fish, they were very long and thin, maybe 16 inches in length and had a long bill with numerous teeth. Don’t fear the only thing that came close to biting us were the Yellow Tail snappers when they were trying to get the dog bones we had in our closed fists. It was quite a feeding frenzy at times with upwards to 50 or 60 fish swimming around you. I did take a number of pictures with my new waterproof digital camera, movies as well. It did end up leaking and shorting out, not sure why as I did not go down to the documented 9 ft maximum rating that it had. The good thing was that the pictures were ok when I took the SD card out. After snorkeling we had a few drinks on the beach and about that time the taxi retuned to pick us up. When Muscle Man dropped us off he asked what time we wanted to be picked up at, surprisingly he was right on time. 
We made a quick stop at the local fire department to see their equipment and say hello. They had some unique communications as the command card had a huge satellite dish mounted on it to overcome the difficulty communicating with all the hills on the island. 
They also have some very cool firefighter license plates for their personal vehicles.
Tonight we found a frog made out of towels on our bed, every night our room stewards would leave us a pet when the cleaned our rooms, tonight it was the frog.
