Never underestimate what you’ll find in a public bathroom when vacationing in a Caribbean paradise
Being travelers who prefer less touristy things, my wife and I always look for activities that don’t draw the crowds like the glass-bottom boat, dinner cruises or excursions on pickup trucks converted into open-air taxis – all tourism staples on St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things - we just prefer to zig when others zag.
Ironically, it was in the bathroom while waiting to get on a glass-bottom boat to the snorkeling Mecca of Buck Island Reef where we spotted a poster offering our kind of trip – an off-road jeep tour to locations few tourists see. Making things better, the maximum group size of four was perfect for us and the couple traveling with us.
With a small armada of modified jeeps, Tan Tan Tours takes intrepid tourists off the beaten track into the heart of St. Croix. Tours begin in Christiansted, a charming seaside town with cobbled sidewalks and narrow old-world streets dominated by pastel-colored Danish colonial architecture dating back to the early 1700s.
Although we started with a "safety briefing," that briefing also informed us of a beer cooler conveniently strapped to the jeep’s front bumper and the consumption of alcohol in a moving vehicle is not illegal in the Virgin Islands – driver excluded, of course.
With that nugget of information under our belts, our first stop was a gas station that sold beer and ice. With the cooler full of beer, our off-road experience began with the roar of the engine and the pffft of opening beer cans.
Just before going off road, our driver Carl stopped to show us the company’s namesake – the tan tan tree. As the company’s motto goes, "Where the tan tan trees grow, we go." And the tan tan grows everywhere on St. Croix, much like the Scotch broom covering Vancouver Island. Like Vancouver Island’s Scotch broom, the tan tan tree is an invasive species choking out native vegetation despite attempts to eradicate it.
Going off road anywhere on the Virgin Islands can be a bit of a relief. Sure, you’re bounced around like a bingo ball and low-hanging branches tend to whip passengers in the head and arms, but you don’t have the disconcerting feeling of driving on the wrong side of the road. The Virgin Islands use left-hand-drive vehicles but you drive on the left as in England. Despite a week of driving a rental car on St. Croix, oncoming traffic from the right still had the effect of migrating your heart into your throat. Being on the left and knowing you’re in the right seems to only work when speaking politically.
But I digress. Back to the off-road experience.
Leaving the paved road, we began ascending a very steep rocky hill. Shortly thereafter, the jeep started lurching and making weird noises. We stalled a couple of times and then discovered the accelerator was sticking. Despite the mechanical difficulties on a remote mountain road, we never felt stranded or in danger. Our driver was very experienced and in constant contact with the office via walkie-talkie. Besides, how stranded can you get on a small island?
Carl jerry-rigged the accelerator cable and we continued toward Goat Hills summit, which offers incredible views of the surrounding aquamarine Caribbean Sea and neighboring islands of St. John and St. Thomas. The jerry-rigging, unfortunately, didn’t hold and we stopped on a plateau about halfway up the mountain. As Carl attempted to fix the problem while communicating with a mechanic back at the base, we cracked open more beers, checked out the views and took a few pictures.
Carl decided it wouldn’t be safe to continue up the mountain and arranged to have a mechanic meet us at a nearby resort. We limped our way down the mountain and got to the resort – stopping once to let the engine cool. While Carl waited for the mechanic, we perched ourselves at the beach-side bar and ordered a round of Painkillers – a concoction of dark rum, cream of coconut, pineapple and orange juice all topped with fresh-grated Grenadian nutmeg. The drink is ubiquitous throughout the Virgin Islands, but originated in the 1970s at the Soggy Dollar Bar on Jost Van Dyke Island in the British Virgins. Jost Van Dyke and the Soggy Dollar are worthy of a story on their own, but if you ever find yourself in the Virgin Islands, not making a trip to this tiny island and famous bar could be considered vacation sacrilege. It’s worth a day trip just to see how the Soggy Dollar got its name.
Once again, I digress.
As we polished off our Painkillers, Carl announced the jeep was fixed and it was time to hit the road. Four more beer cans went pfffft and all was good in the world – but not for long. Minutes later the engine started making a very loud clacking and produced a smell that usually precedes an engine rod pushing through the hood. Carl pulled into the next service station, radioed the office and ordered a different jeep. Minutes later a new jeep arrived and with it, Max – our driver for the rest of the day.
All this fun and action and it wasn’t even noon yet.
After a lunchtime pit stop at a palm-studded beach, we returned to the mountain trails, stopping at the ruins of a sugar mill abandoned since the early 1800s. Walking through the structure’s remains, it was difficult not to think of the slave labor that built the mills and sustained the Caribbean economy for a few centuries. At the same time, it was easy to see how much the world has changed, especially with the rise of Barak Obama whose image is emblazoned on the t-shirts of many locals a full year after his election.
From the sugar mill ruins to our next stop, the jeep was in 4x4 low most of the way, traversing trails with deep gullies between the tire tracks. Navigating these gullies formed by runoff from frequent tropical rains meant our jeep was often precariously balanced on two diagonally opposed wheels.
It was worth every hair-raising moment once we got to the beach at Annaly Bay. A short hike along some pretty rugged coastline brought us to a massive tide pool filled with warm Caribbean water, sheltered from the surf by a huge rocky wall. It was also free of any other people. According to Max, the tide pools are only visited by their clients and a few other adventurous tourists who take the 4-km hike from a nearby resort. Rarely is there more than a half-dozen people at the tide pools at any given time.
We spent at least an hour in the tide pool just floating in the super-salient water, watching the colorful tropical fish and listening to the surf crash on the rocks between us and the open ocean. Had the day ended here, we’d have gone home happy, but there was more.
Backtracking past the mill ruins, we eventually reached the aptly-named Mahogany Road, lined for several kilometers by huge mahogany trees with their branches creating a massive green tunnel leading into the island’s rainforest and our final stop for the day – the Montpellier Domino Club.
Looking at the club’s construction, it’s difficult to believe this long-standing bar and restaurant is in the buckle of the Caribbean hurricane belt. This dirt-floored, open-air structure is basically a bunch of posts holding up a thatched roof that looks like it would blow away in a stiff breeze. Despite its haphazard appearance, it has wonderful atmosphere and serves up killer ribs, roast chicken, johnnycake and a rum-honey-spice concoction called the "Mammawanna." Unlike the painkiller, Mammawanna ingredients are closely guarded by the club’s affable owner and drink inventor “Miss Norma” whose wide smile defies her incredibly tight lips.
The food, drink and rustic ambiance, however, is not the Domino Club’s main attraction. That honor belongs to a couple of beer-drinking pigs. Yes, you read that correctly. I said beer-drinking pigs – and I’m not referring to the hygiene of any undesirable customers.
These are true porkers who guzzle cans of non-alcoholic beer fed to them by tourists who line up to pay $1 admission plus $2 per can of brew. Taking the entire can into their mouths, the pigs create an explosion of suds with an initial chomp, chew until they can’t squeeze out another drop of brew then spit out what’s left of the can.
In all our travels, the jeep tour was one of our most enjoyable experiences, even with the mechanical problems. It ranks right up there with the shark diving we did in Hawaii and visiting an indigenous family in the Ecuador Andes. My wife and I are in our mid 40s, but the off-road tour made us feel like teenagers again. We did all the things we weren’t allowed to do. We rode in open vehicles without seatbelts, consumed alcohol in a moving vehicle; we laughed and screamed as we bounced over the bumps, we fed beer to pigs.
We had a blast – and no one lost an eye.
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