October 31, Halloween:

This morning I started out calling Boolchards and Royal Caribbean to ask questions about what underwater cameras they had.  I had expected to be going to Boolchards, but that salesman was very abrupt.  The gal I talked to from Royal Caribbean was very helpful and not in a rush, so we headed there soon after breakfast. 

It was interesting driving around on St. Thomas.  Driving on the left didn't seem to be too big a deal this time.  Our driver did a very good job.  But the narrow roads and hills were sometimes a challenge.  I doubt we would have made it far in the Yaris had we all fit into it!  Here are a few views as we headed into town:

 one of the open air buses

 entering Charlotte Amelie

harbor in Charlotte Amelie

 main street shopping area.

   Ken dropped Angie and me off by the Royal Caribbean store and we went in to find the gal I talked to on the phone.  Not only was she friendly and helpful, she was very knowledgeable about all the different cameras including my now defunct Canon D20.  After looking at several styles, I settled on one almost like Angie's.  Both are Olympus Tough Stylus, mine being the Stylus TG-830.  It came with a camera bag and 16G card for $240 .  I even asked if they would throw in an extra battery and to my surprise, her manager said yes.  Plus it was $100 cheaper then my Canon D20 a couple years ago.  Hopefully it'll last longer then the Canons.

 old historic building

 the highway fronting the harbor

 boat with character in Charlotte Amelie.

 The sky tram from Havensight Harbor.

heading back towards Red Hook.

 main drag of Red Hook.

 Our resort is only about 2 or 3 miles from Red Hook and less then a mile from the Ritz.  So we drove down to the Ritz to check out the beach there.  We didn't see anything that looked great for snorkeling, so we continued on.

Since we wanted to check out the beach by the other Wyndham (Blue Beard's Beach Resort), we decided to head there.  The road off of highway 30 leading to the resort was in bad need of some work.  This was a good section of the road.  And, of course, it's been raining off and on for the last couple of days.

We were intrigued by this in the parking lot of Bluebeards Beach resort?!

We found the grounds to be pretty nice.

 The beach at Blue Beard's Beach Resort is really nice, too.

Snorkeling was even interesting.   And my new camera works great!

 Angie researched this fish's symbiotic commensalism partner and found it doesn't harm the fish, just attaches itself near the fish's mouth to eat scraps of food the fish misses. 

 We even saw a couple sand dollars here.

some more of the Blue Beard's beach residents

 more snappers

 topography

 another interesting little blue fish I hadn't seen before---I think it's a juvenile Queen Angelfish.

 Nearby was another beach we had read about and wanted to try, so after snorkeling Blue Beards for a couple hours, we headed there---to Bolongo Bay. 

 There was a restaurant on the beach that we thought about trying, but didn't get around to--Iggie's. 

 We ended up swimming out to the point at the far left (center right of the picture).

The water was pretty murky and grassy, but shallow for quite a distance. 

 Another look at the point as we were heading there.

 One of the many conchs we saw along the way

 A few of the tiny fish we saw along the way.

 Near the point, Josh yelled, "nurse shark"!   By the time I got there, it was gone.  Who would have thought that one day someone would yell shark and I would take off swimming towards it!?

 Another of the locals at Bolongo---lizard fish.

 And another

 This is also the only place we saw any turtles.  I believe this is a Hawksbill turtle.  The water was pretty murky.

 A panorama of the bay with my new camera.  It makes taking pans easy!

 One final look at Bolongo.

By now it was time to head back to the condos and clean up for dinner.  We headed over to Duffy's Love Shack.  It's an interesting little bar restaurant in the parking lot of a little strip mall in REd Hook.  They even serve drinks in souvenir corny, but cute, made in China ceramic mugs.  Angie and I enjoyed them, as well as dinner and watching all the festivities of Halloween.  The waiters were dressed in costumes and some of the clientele were, too.  Plus there was music and lots of drunken people to entertain us.  A fun Halloween!