St. John

[celia]

Here's a little bit about our vacation. St. John is a gorgeous little island (3 miles wide, 9 miles long) in the Virgin Islands. 2/3rds of the island is national park. It is considered more tranquil and low key than its neighbor St. Thomas.

This was the perfect vacation for us given our health status...improving but not yet 100%. We stayed at Maho Bay Camps, an award winning eco-resort that consists primarily of wood framed tent cabins hidden among the trees on a hillside right above the ocean. You can check out the view at www.maho.org

The tent cabins are large (16 ft x 16 ft) and are set up in four quarters. One quarter is a deck, one quarter the kitchen, one quarter the bedroom, and the other an indoor sitting area. It's much more like a cabin than a tent and the beds were very comfortable. Basicallly a wooden frame with white plastic for "walls" and many, many screens so a great sense of openness. Since we booked so late, we had to move three times during our stay, but we lucked out and got great sites each time. In fact, the last week, our tent was right above the water with a completely open view.

No bed bugs, Tex! The bug bites were from sand fleas they call "no-see-ums" because they are so small, you don't see 'em! I guess that's the price of paradise.

We are used to being in more remote places on our vacations, so this was a little different for us. We heard that the Camp has a great restaurant on site, but we of course cooked all our meals on the two burner propane stove in our tent cabin. Just like home! We ate simply, meat and veggies mostly. Starfish Market in the main town of Cruz Bay has just about everything. We went there every three or four days to stock up...as much as our ice chest would hold. And we also had canned salmon, tuna, etc. for in between our runs to town. The roads are definitely steep and windy, but being SF veterans this did not phase us.

Eating simply makes it so easy to see any reactions. My husband tuned into his strong reaction to wheat when he tried pasta one night. I tried a small portion of cantaploupe (low sugar, right!), but alas I still react to fruit. I was able to stay symptom free the whole time, except for the cantaloupe experiment.

We were extremely lazy! We rarely got out of bed before 8 am and just lazed around a lot. We had three beautiful beaches just a stone's throw away---little Maho, big Majo, and Francis Bay, but we went to several other incredible beaches too. Naturally, we swam and played in the water two or three times a day!!!! We also did some hiking on a few of the many trails scattered around St. John.

There were lots of dive bombing pelicans, iguanas, and geckos.

One of my favortie places is called Leinster Bay and Waterlemon Beach, where we did some snorkeling and actually had a quiet moment with nary a person to be seen for 15 minutes and a wide open ocean view. We like that sense of being the only people on earth in a vast open space. But the Caribbean is quite a busy place, so we weren't able to hold onto that for too long! If it isn't people, it's ocean traffic that breaks the silence.

We both read lots of mindless sci fi and detective novels. But we also had fun reading and discussing the book "What the Bleep Do We Know" about science, the brain, quantum theory, and consciousness.

It was 118 steps down to the beach from our level, so we got our exercise whether we wanted to or not. I was impressed by how many seniors were staying in the camp, people in their 60's and 70's as vigrous as could be. Very inpsiring! Lots of families too. It's great to see people so committed to eco-tourism. Also, it's the only reasonably priced place to stay on the whole island aside from Cinammon Bay Campground, but their tents and cabins aren't as nice.

All in all, it was a very satisfying and relaxing time. We hope one day to move to a warmer climate like that!

All the best, Celia

[Liz]

What a beautiful place to veg out Celia. Sounds like you had a wonderful relaxing time. Fraser Island, just a way up the Queensland coast has a similar eco friendly resort. We visited there when we had a few days up at Hervey Bay recently.

Love

Liz

[Umber]

I wanna go! That is what I call a vacation!!!! What a wonderful get away for you & hubby.

Hugs

Lori

[Lucy]

Celia,

Sounds WONDERFUL -- how far to the nearest Whole Foods?

You really sound like you are off and running (no pun here) with your control of symptoms by diet. Terrific! Hope now you are all rested and will feel refreshed to start back on the job.

Yours, Luce

[Mars]

Welcome back Celia!

Thanks for the link, beautiful! It sounds like such a relaxing, "back to nature" place to be! Glad it was relaxing for you and hubby!

Love,
Mars