 |
| Does this look like a beach entry welcome sign. It’s what we’ve come to expect. |
Our
Caribbean clothing optional beach survey continues….
On St. Thomas, we’d heard Magen’s Bay fit the bill. As the crow flies, or here, the pelican,
it was just a few miles across the narrow part of the island from Charlotte
Amalie. However, in between was a shoulderless narrow mountain highway, not walker-friendly trails.
While
Megan Bay is a popular beach, there are no taxi-bus routes going there. We
caught a “Gypsy Cab” – unofficial cabby -- at the Kmart parking lot in
Charlotte Amalie. Cost? $8 for each of us, and our cheapest
option.
But
it still didn’t quite get us there.
Even
though I blog about nude beaches with Wayne’s blessing, he didn’t want to tell
the driver we were looking for the clothing optional beach. We got dropped off at the main beach,
and were unpleasantly surprised with an
$8 entrance fee ($4 each for non-locals) to a broad but crowded “textile”
public beach.
The
options?
- Pay $8, and rock-hop along the shore. Shorter, but less goat-like a hiker than Wayne, would’ve taken me a long time. I'm a decent hiker but not the best rock-hopper.
- Give up.
- Hike, blindly, in search of it.
Still…
we’ll take our chances on this typical pocket beach welcome any day over paying
$8 for a crowded, swimsuits required beach.
 |
| Didn’t get a shot of the iguanas at the beach, but they looked similar to these, in nearby Charlotte Amalie. |
Not
only did we not need to worry about the fit of our swimsuits, we were
enterntained by the antics of several diving pelicans, and a couple good-sized
iguanas. One iguana was mounted
atop another. Were they mating or
fighting? Dunno.
We
also met some great, equally intrepid folks at the beach.
 |
| Beautiful! The not-quite-public pocket beach at Magen’s Bay. No entry fee or swimsuits required. |
One couple offered to make a trade for
the night—they’d spend a night on our boat, we’d enjoy their landlubber shower
and a night to ourselves in their king-sized bed. Another gave us a lift to a place we could and did flag a
taxi-bus, sparing us a rock-hop or long hill hike back. We were grateful. No way would we hike the
shoulderless ridge highway between Magen Bay and Charlotte Amalie, with cars
and taxi-busses careening along its sepentine spine.
Our
take on Magen Bay’s unofficial beach? Tough to get to. Tough to find. Tiny. Definitely worth it. We’ll be back.
We were glad to give you a ride. Going down the road would have been a lot easier that getting up, but you'd had enough walking.
ReplyDeleteJeff/Joyce
JEff & Joyce
ReplyDeleteWe definitely appreciated the ride! From there, we were able to quickly catch a taxicab taking cruise ship passengers back. We were stunned when each couple peeled off a C-note for the driver! We thought we were generous since we paid about what we'd paid gypsy taxi to take us to Magen Bay, which is way more than the busses, which are the same basic vehicles, get on their routes.
Great descriptive post, as usual! The difference between cruise ship passengers and you guys, is you're on a permanent cruise...they're lucky with a week or 10 days...so a C-note has a different value to them. Ethereal
ReplyDeleteRight on as always, Ethereal.
ReplyDeleteYeah -- for us -- that's 2 days budget for EVERYTHING. That's how we can afford to do this instead of taking no more than 10 days vacation a year.
So you win! Ethereal
ReplyDelete