St. Thomas, part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, offers a mix of beautiful natural scenery and some downsides associated with development. In this video, we explore the less developed west side of the island, with its remote beaches and ruins of old sugar plantations. While the area may be less crowded and more secluded, it also lacks the pristine white sand beaches found on the island’s more popular east side.
Despite some disappointing roadblocks, our video captures the natural beauty and quiet charm of this less-traveled part of St. Thomas. We encounter overgrown trails, abandoned sugar plantation ruins, and secluded beaches with yellowy brown sand, all while highlighting the unique character of the island. We discuss the impact of development on the environment, including local signs protesting overdevelopment and ecological destruction, and offer a glimpse into the local lifestyle and culture.
Join us as we navigate the challenges and rewards of exploring the good and bad sides of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And despite some hiccups along the way, we manage to make the most of our adventure while celebrating a special occasion. Check out our video to discover the lesser-known, authentic side of this tropical paradise.
Watch the video by Jumping Places
Good morning everyone once again here from the island of St Thomas in the US Virgin Islands and today we’re planning on exploring the west side of the island which seems to be way less developed more deserted we’re going to go to some remote beaches too maybe some beaches
That we’ll only be the only people there we’ll see and right now we’re in the parking lot of the breakfast place that we just went to called the north side grind they had no seats inside cuz it was quite busy yeah so we went for the latte
And I went for a egg and cheese English muffin yeah and I got like a bacon sausage muffin very small though I thought it’d be bigger than that I also got the latte too and that was $25 Overall so after about 3 minutes of driving we’ve already gotten out of the car because check out this view that’s the beach that we went to in the first video here wasn’t it yeah it looks so much better now because the sun is hitting yeah when we were there like the
Sun was going down not even sure what the name of this Viewpoint is I think it’s the Drake seat Lookout Drake seat yeah okay there you go Carol no and I guess we’re staying around here somewhere cuz we can we can see the view of this Bay Maybe over there one of those Buildings So we arrived at our first place of the day called uh Santa Maria we got to do like a trail to get there the weird thing is is this part here so this looks like the main entrance and it says no trespassing violators will be prosecuted according to the
Law but then where we just parked here right now there is a trail I mean someone’s put the fence down but we read recent reviews and many people are doing this Trail so yeah we’re going to go for it anyway passing mosquito repellent so in the reviews that we read it said it
Should take around 12 minutes to go downhill and it did say in some parts it’s very overgrown I mean right now it’s already very overgrown probably shouldn’t have come in flipflops but we always do trails in flipflops should be okay really beautiful though the west side of the island it actually
Reminds us more of the British Virgin Islands TOA which was way less developed than uh some areas of St Thomas we even saw a lot of signs I think from the locals complaining about the developments on this island like too much development signs like uh people over profit stop destroying the nature
Things like that I did mention in our first video here that we felt like it was a bit of a pain all the traffic and yeah just kind of a bit overdeveloped on the east side but at least all this west side is like This Yeah so now it’s getting more overgrown at this part above two we just saw a couple come up so they were probably in that truck that was parked in front of us they said it’s worth it though so let’s see but definitely bring some pants cuz some of them have like little spikes
On wow look how beautiful this part is opened up a bit beautiful nature hopefully no snakes around here wouldn’t be able to see it if there are okay back into the the thick jungle W cool like entering another world and here are the ruins so from what I read this is another one
Of the sugar plantations the ruins I wonder if the path that we’re on is the path that they used hundreds of years ago yeah this one is real overgrown nice so we finally made it I think it took about 15 minutes overall so it was pretty quick spooky and quick and here we
Go all to ourselves as you expected yeah the weather’s not too great today so I don’t know if it’s going to really open up with the sun even over here there’s like some big mansion looking house there overlooking the bay that’s about it I don’t see any other
Constructions on either side so the reviews also said that this place is good for snorkling we don’t have any snorkles doesn’t matter though there’s no chance we’d be doing snorkling in this way too rough to He actually pouring it down now too not sure if that will make the trail extra muddy luckily we have the thick jungle to protect us so the plan for today was to do something different because we’re celebrating Chris’s birthday I’m 35 yeah and I had something in my mind it was
Going to be a surprise but since we could not do it I told Chris already so I wanted to do like a boat trip that included some snorkeling and they also stopped in a like a pizza place but like a floating pizza restaurant so it would be something different and I was excited
For that uh drinks included and also sunset at the boat but with this weather we had to cancel it and that’s why we decided to do something on the island uh still not ideal to go to a beach but uh it’s better than being on a boat yeah so
Instead my my birthday day is sketchy trails and bad weather I’m happy Though So I think the west side of the Island’s probably not as popular too because I think the beaches are like less white sand here it’s more like a yellowy brown sand this your hangout spot yeah maybe there’s another Beach on the right Flor corner I don’t know are you going to
Check it out you can go I’ll go yeah I don’t think there is another beach around here just more rocks yeah I wonder what that sign was about where it said it was against the law to do the the trail I guess the land the hillside belongs to someone but they’re not doing
Anything with it don’t think there’s any security here Anyway O So that sucks we just drove all the way to the West Point of the island cuz we were going to head to a beach called Sandy Bay that looks absolutely beautiful but then when you arriving the road stops at some sort of gated community called botony Bay and then the
Security guard said the only way you’re able to go to the Sandy Bay is you have to park outside the gated community and walk all the way there because apparently the law is that they cannot obstruct access to the beaches they’re all public but then you got to walk like
Um like 30 minutes it shows on Google Maps this skated Community cuts off the entire coast and there’s all these public beaches there and it shows like there’s a parking on Google Maps but you’re not allowed to go and pack there and because of the weather we don’t
Really want to walk 30 minutes and maybe get caught in like a rainstorm get soaking wet and then have to walk back but yeah that’s a a real shame I always hate it when they do that like so they’re not obstructing the access but they’re making it super difficult to
Deter many people from even going and besides that if you want to go and hike to the beach you have to like many rules to follow you have to sign a paper and you have to show your ID just to go to a beach which a public beach a public
Beach I guess that’s why there was so signs around here saying people over the profit Right so we stopped at one of the food trucks here in the West End I think they only have food trucks on this side no like proper restaurants in buildings so this one’s called Mor’s cultural Cafe we already ordered some Burgers I’ll show you those I got ginger beer this time
It’s actually really tasty wish I had tried this before B Stone ginger beer since 1874 it’s not alcoholic though and car got a Coke so I think yours was 150 yeah and mine was too so we got the burgers I went for a cheeseburger with fries Carol got the veggie burger and
Mine was just $9 and yours was1 yeah with the fries in St John I think you paid like 20 22 and they didn’t have fries just like chips there you go so you can get a good bargain at this place Mor’s cultural Cafe I don’t know if it’s
On Google Maps though I don’t think it is but if you’re heading towards that bodony Bay Resort thing it’s on the way you’ll see it this is like the main road M really good too the meat very tasty mine is really good too approved what’s the veggie part made of there you know
Um beans no it’s I don’t know but it’s not beans but it’s good yeah it’s like tastes like meat but it’s not Meat So we’ve now come to Lindberg Bay Beach so this is a public one it’s also free too you don’t have to pay anything some of the other beaches around here you have to pay sometimes once again you can’t really see how beautiful it is cuz of all those guys up
There but in the pictures this would be like the amazing blue color might become Sunny though I mean there’s some blue areas back there think we’re going to be here for a few hours right just chill out yeah relax a little bit no crazy jungle hike this time yeah this one’s
Nice and easy to get to there’s parking back here the airport strip is right here so we’re right next to it and then on the other side of the airport strip there’s br Bay that we went to on the first day and that’s also a nice secluded beach not many People so the original plan for this video was to go to the West Coast and kind of say how awesome the untouched side of the island is the untouched beaches but obviously that’s not really gone to plan cuz we went to the first Beach and it says that you’re going to get prosecuted
If you get caught going to the beach and then the second one they’ve just completely like gaded off the entire Coastline cuz that road is the only way there we asked some locals if it was really true that that was the only way to get there and they said it was and
They cleared weren’t happy about it either for obvious reasons right it makes it difficult for for them to go to the beach so even though this island is very beautiful I’m just not really seeing the benefits over the other Virgin Islands that we’ve been to all
The other ones just seem so much better less hassle like on torola you can go to any Beach you can park anywhere near the beaches there’s no charges for parking there’s no charges for beaches can access every single one so it’s just way better probably the only benefit here is
Like the the town the town area is pretty cool lots of nice buildings you have the fort so it seems more interesting for like the town part here we’re also planning to go to a place called French town in this video after this if the weather permits so yeah I’d
Say that’s the only benefit but for like beaches and stuff it just seems like more Hassle and more traffic on the island yeah but it is still a nice place I don’t think you’re going to be like disappointed if you come here but we just prefer the other islands that we’ve
Been to that’s all we’ stay at them instead the last swim in the Caribbean yeah for a while yeah I don’t think we’re going to be in this region for quite some time we might come back next year though we always usually do like a month or two here usually a month we
Don’t stay that long yeah cuz it’s usually kind of expensive to stay long term for us stay long term yeah but we we love the the Caribbean and we’ve loved every single one that we’ve been to we’ve never been to a Caribbean country that we haven’t enjoyed and
They’re all quite different to each other too so that’s nice like I said even here in the Virgin Islands each island has a bit of a different vibe a different feel to it so yeah they’re all Good So it is the next day now yesterday it just ended up raining for the entire rest of the day and we come to French town that I said we’d come to which was like a old French settlement from the 1800s I think there’s still French people here got some cool fishing boats
At this place it’s kind of like a little fishing port we actually arrived right here on the ferry from torola what’s going on the dog is going after the RO The Roosters is that why they’re going nuts yeah and I think now we’re going to
Get a bite to eat at this place cute coffee shop French Town Delhi coffee shop and then we’ll walk around French toown a bit so we saw a lot of people walking this way I don’t know if they were just going on the sailboats to do
Some boat tours yeah I guess so don’t think there’s anything else this way got some really nice views from here though beautiful day not like yesterday so apparently a lot of people that come to the Virgin Islands they arrive and then Charter sailboats and just go around all the islands and sleep
On the boats so when we were seeing all the sailboats in the British Virgin Islands we thought that they were the sailboats from people that own them that came from other places but I think the majority are just chartering them maybe these ones are too probably be the best
Way to explore the islands an amazing experience we should do that one day yeah I hope one day we can try the sailing uh the sailboat life and like properly sailing cuz we have left in a sailboats in the past but just like stopped in a point we haven’t really
Explored all other places and like saing yeah I imagine here on these islands it’s pretty expensive but I think it would definitely be worth it hopefully one day I got the French flag here and I guess that’s the flag of the US Virgin Islands I I don’t actually know what the
Flag is I think that’s probably it So French town is looking like a a ghost French town today it is a Sunday so maybe the places are all closed I’m not sure we’re just going to head up this hill here cuz there’s a chapel that’s actually the chapel there Saint an’s Chapel we could see on top of the
Hillside but once again just really cute nice buildings everywhere not sure if there’s any buildings from the 1800s though maybe these ones at the top so one of the cafes that we went to in the main town the guy told us to come here he said it
Was a nice place to walk around so that’s the main reason that we’re Here so they have these wires so I don’t think we’re allowed to actually go up there has the date on it is from 1921 so we’re in look on the opposite side it’s open let’s see if the the views are any good oh yeah they are they are pretty
Nice so that’s the main town over there Charlotte Amal Charlotte Amali I’m not sure what this Bay is looks like a port big Ships the guy at the cafe that I mentioned also talked about this how there’s these nice little Alleyways that you can walk around here nice flowers too look at these vibrant mhm like the buildings and that guy has been living here for 35 years he’s from Boston and
He said the majority of the locals have actually left the island they gone to Mainland us for better opportunities so he said that the majority of the workers that we see here and not actually local they’re from other Islands so there’s like Haitians people from the Dominican Republic Trinidad and
Tobago not the people that were born here but overall the majority of the people that we run into are just from Mainland us so from places like Florida California come here to open up businesses or retire I think some just come for like work at the bars and
Restaurants yes yes I think so the majority were from there in the restaurants yeah and that’s why we don’t feel like a Caribbean Vibe when we are here uh like when we were in torta we we still had that that Caribbean Vibe but here is just like you are in the US
Really the mainland Yeah We’ve now come to one of the famous viewpoints here called Paradise Point and this is a place where people come on the cable carts you can just drive up here though but a lot of people get the cable car up and down the people that have come on the cruises this might be
The the coolest views that we’ve seen actually got these other decks where the people are good shot of the the cruise port as well one big Cruise right now I think some days has been like three that size how much was the cable cart thing uh
$25 uh per person but you can just drive here like you said another thing that we’ve really liked about the Virgin Islands is they’re all quite small so I think even this one you can probably drive from one side to the other maybe in like 45 minutes they were all kind of
Like that so it’s not really tiring to get around sometimes when we making these travel videos and we’re trying to get like a lot of different places in the videos it’s quite tiring cuz we have to drive quite a long distance and constantly going in between the places
But on islands like this it’s nice and easy A So they also have some souvenir shops up here if you want to do some shopping and this is definitely the the perfect spot for a drink I’m almost tempted to buy a drink just to sit here with the view yeah we should have had breakfast here yeah probably right certainly a better view
Than that Delhi place I should have bought one of these girl yeah the Gringo or Foreigner super Gringo looks pretty cool though yeah if you’re going to eat here maybe save your meal for this place cuz look at the views that you get here probably some of the best views on
The island to have a Meal M
Video “U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS 🇻🇮 THE GOOD & BAD SIDE OF ST. THOMAS” was uploaded on 01/17/2024. Watch all the latest Videos by Jumping Places on Gretopia