St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
Foam Plus' agent in USVI     St. Thomas is part of the US Virgin Islands, straddled between the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the busiest cruise ship harbor in the West Indies, and the 2nd largest of the Virgin Islands (St. Croix is bigger). It held certain curiosity for me (Scott) because Kathy's sister Sue once worked and lived here, and Kathy had visited some years ago. The place is promoted as the best duty-free shopping in the world: it envisages a  first-world (it is part of America, after all...) Shoppers' paradise, shiny streets lined with gold, awaiting Tourist dollars. It proved to be a veneer.

If like most visitors (especially cruise-ship passengers, the Zaandam and a Norwegian ship were both in port) you never get past the two main shopping streets, this is the view you'd take away from St. Thomas. This would be a shame. We see what we want to see, and it may be that American travelers want to see smiling "natives" and shopping centers. That's why we came, right?

But this is typical of the Caribbean; in fact its typical of all developing countries with tourist economies. I expected a little more "upscale" living in the USVI because its a Territory of the United States. But literally 5 minutes walk from the shopping "strip"... wandering chickens, tin shacks, broken glass and garbage.

We seek this stuff out, because its where the real population is, not an illusion. Local people smile genuinely, initiate or return your "Good morning's!". The neighborhood alcoholics are having their morning beers, Rastafarians are about — generally a cheery lot. None of them see many tourists in their neighborhood and it makes us a curiosity, a welcome(?) change in the daily routine.

The town center is called Charlotte Amalie and is a fair walk from Havensight port. We joined about 10 other passengers from the ship in a minivan-taxi, and each paid $3 for the 2.5 mile trip. If the operator did this a couple of times a day, it wouldn't be a bad living for him. Once we'd learned the simple route, though, we knew we could walk back without too much effort. After escaping the Tourist strip we wandered around the periphery of Charlotte Amalie, and then back to the shore line and away from the cruise port. As we were walking, the neighborhood became a bit more seedy (the line between "poor" and "seedy" is a find and subjective one, you develop a certain instinct about the difference. As we were walking toward this neighborhood, a man called out from his car something like "go no further, not safe". We're not entirely sure what he'd said, but it sounded ominous enough to head. We turned around, and wandered back through the shopping street on the way back, enjoying the air conditioning that blasted from the jewelry shops along the way. We bought nothing 'cept a couple of Cokes and a pair of postcards. The price for each of these doubled on the "shopping street"; making our purchases a little off the strip both saved us 50% and helped out a less-fortunate merchant.

Selected photos (click on any image for full-sized version)

Lovely tropics Franko's Food Mobile Tacky souvenirs anyone? The view off the Tourist beat