Today is St Thomas day.... we were here 2 years ago with Heather and Tim and had a fantastic time so I knew we were in for a great day.

As we did last time I had hired a car from Avis, at Havensight, unfortunately it didn't even occur to me that our ship wouldn't be docking there like last time!! Instead we anchored in the bay and were tendered into downtown Charlotte Amalie. The tendering process was very slow, we were on deck at 7.30 am to pick up tender tickets and got group 8... how does that happen when they started giving them out at 7.30?? The ship anchored at 8 am and it was 10 am before we got our tender so I was a little annoyed that we had already lost 2 whole hours of our snorkeling time and we still had to get ourselves over to Havensight.

We had decided to walk over as it's a lovely pathway along the waterfront and only about 15 mins... you know us, walk, walk, walk, it's all we ever seem to do on holiday..... mind you we have to work off all that food and drink somehow!! Along the way we saw a couple of ladies on the other side of the road and then a crash and looked over to see one of them had tripped and fallen. Rodd being the wonderful man he is dashed straight across the road to lend a helping hand with me close behind only to find this woman bleeding profusely from a head wound and cuts and scrapes all over her hands and legs. She was obviously dazed and quite unresponsive and just as I was ringing 911 a local guy pulled up so I passed my phone to him to give precise directions. Pretty soon we had another couple pull up, a lady from the house we were in front of and a K9 police officer. The local guy kept saying" take photos, make sure you take photos" so I took several photos and got an email address from the 2nd lady, they were off one of the other ships so not a very nice day out in St Thomas for them. I did email her the pics and she replied saying her friend ended up with 21 stitches in her forehead and 7 in her hand!! 

After this slight diversion we finally made it to Avis and set off to Mountain Top in our car. I had my phone with maps so managed to direct us there with no side trips (unlike last time when Tim was our navigator and decided to take us the "scenic" route!!). We didn't spend long here as we'd been before and just wanted some T-Shirts, a shot glass and magnet so quite soon we were on our way to Sapphire Beach. I had done a fair bit of research and this was supposed to be a good snorkeling spot, unfortunately today it was pretty windy and the water was choppy.

  I went in the water but quickly realised it wasn't going be good so we decided to go back to Secret Harbor where we had had a great time snorkeling last trip. As we were chatting about what to do an older lady walked up to us and asked if we were on the Gem and when we said we had a car she asked if she could get a lift back with us. We said we were going to Secret Harbour so she tagged along with us..... I think she might have been a bit nervous with Rodds' driving cos he kept pretending to veer into traffic.... only because I kept telling him he was too far over and I was having kittens every time I saw an approaching car. The problem here is that in St Thomas they drive on the correct side of the road - the left - but the steering wheel is also on the left........ that means the driver is sitting on the shoulder of the road and I, as front seat passenger, was within cms of every oncoming vehicle!! I wish I had been videoing some of the driving we did because MAN it was harrowing at times. The roads my "maps" took us down were like driveways and many times as we went to turn into them we both said "are you sure this is right, isn't this someones driveway"? Skinny, rough surfaces and not much room for passing.... reminded me a lot of the drive with Deb and GJ through the backstreets of a town in Greece!! 

Anyway we finally made it to Secret Harbor and it was just as perfect as we remembered. We found ourselves a spot and almost right away there was a waitress (in a bikini) taking our drink order. Of course we had a chat with her as she had noticed Rodds' akubra (with Aussie flags flying) and commented on it. The snorkeling was as good as we remembered and we spent a couple hours in and out of the water. At one stage we were right up the end of the beach and as I surfaced I saw the waitress walk past so I swam in and asked her to drop a drink off at our spot.... she knew where we were sitting and we were running a tab so no problem with ordering from the other end of the beach.... great service and what a job!! 

Too soon it was time to pack up and head back to drop the car off.... once again we easily found our way back and we had actually found out when picking up the car that there is an office in town. On the way past the tendering spot we pulled up and dropped off our "hitchhiker" and continued on to Avis.... from there we had a 10 min walk back along the waterfront. Poor Rodd had his hat blow off his head and go tumbling along the ground with him running along behind, just as it was about to roll into the ocean Rodd managed to stomp on it but in the process twisted or twanged his bad foot!!!! He barely managed to hobble back to the line up for the tender and I could tell he was in agony but stoicly soldiered on.

Nothing too special about this night... stumbled around having drinks, chatting, eating. Rodd went back to the cabin fairly early to ice his foot and I ended up at Magnums sitting with a group from cruise critic listening to Leo singing.