Cruz Bay, St. John - USVI

Cruz Bay is the main town on the island of Saint John in the United States Virgin Islands.

Cruz Bay, located on the west coast of Saint John, is the island’s largest commercial center and the location of the main port on Saint John.   The primary access to Saint John is through Cruz Bay Harbor.

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St. John, the smallest & most idyllic of the three United States Virgin Islands, is best known for its dozens of post card perfect white sand beaches, turquoise bays abounding in colorful corals & rainbows of tropical fish & endless vistas of green velvet hills. Only nine miles long & three miles wide, two thirds of the island is the Virgin Islands National Park, so its spectacular beaches & untouched forests will remain that way for generations to come & be accessible to all. There are tours of the National Park by Jeep or safari bus & hikes on spectacular trails led by Park Rangers who enrich the experience with talks on the island’s history & geology as well as its flora & fauna. Frequent visitors to St. John are beach lovers who aren’t content to only read about it in books but are always ready to go back to the beach.

While it is only twenty minutes from St. Thomas by convenient hourly ferry, St. John is the peaceful, uncommercialized paradise of island fantasies.   It has no high-rise buildings, cruise ship docks or airport.  Visitors can obtain discounted air fares to St. Thomas.

Despite its unspoiled atmosphere, it offers every facility & amenity found at major resorts.

Read More at  stjohnusvi.com The Complete Guide to your St. John Vacation

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By Doris N. Truong, Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 25, 2009

What do you feed a racing champion?

“Little children,” Da Crab Mon says.

Meet Ted Scheer, a jack-of-all-trades, master of some (specifically, being a handyman and gardener) and the longtime ringleader and keeper of the racing crabs of the U.S. Virgin Islands of St. John and St. Thomas.

This is not quite the sport of king crabs, though. These are hermits, some the size of an adult’s fist, others barely larger than a thimble, and they all carry their homes on their backs as they scuttle toward the finish line.

Scheer, a Wisconsin native who moved to St. John more than 20 years ago, collects the crabs on the islands — the best time to go harvesting, he says, is just before a storm, because “nature’s barometers” climb trees to avoid the rain — and returns them to the wild after the prizes have been awarded.

At the Westin St. John, crabs race on the beach near the resort’s pool. Scheer makes the racetrack with his foot, drawing concentric circles in the sand. A spot in the center is the starting line.

His 10-year-old daughter, Marina, is a crab racing pro. She helps a racing novice choose an active specimen with long legs. We dub the choice “Speedy.” Other guests, both children and adults, make their picks. One boy names his Spider-Man, but we’re on the islands, so Scheer rechristens the crab Spider-Mon. The crustaceans are plunked into a five-gallon bucket, which is then upended in the circle’s center.

Scheer encourages spectators to call out to their just-named crabs (they are “sound-sensitive — the more you scream and holler for your crab, the faster it’s going to go,” he says), but foot-stomping and other physical action is off-limits. As one crab breaks from the pack and crawls through the sand to the outermost ring, Scheer picks it up. (more…)