Ever daydream about vacationing alone on a tropical beach, where it’s just you, fluffy clouds and welcoming waves? That quiet relaxation is what I was looking for this fall on St. John, the smallest and wildest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It has a reputation for being an off-the-beaten-path Caribbean gem. But I wasn’t sure what I’d find.
For an island that is two-thirds national park, with more mongooses than humans, a lot has been in flux on St. John in recent years. Since 2017, to be exact. That’s when two terrifying hurricanes, Irma and Maria, slammed the island just 14 days apart. The devastated island was still recovering when the pandemic hit, and it seemed like the crippled economy was about to tank again. Instead, St. John boomed in popularity, thanks to loose entry requirements — remote workers came with their laptops and U.S. travelers showed up without their passports (For entry, U.S. citizens only need to show their driver’s license).
Now, there is a sense of surging tourism momentum. In 2023, the number of visitors to the U.S.V.I. jumped 32.1 percent compared to the year before, the highest number recorded since 2017, according to the U.S.V.I. Bureau of Economic Research (the government does not keep data specific to St. John).
That did not bode well for my solo beach daydream. Was it still possible to find that chill, backwatery vibe that St. John had long been known for? Or had the combination of Category 5 winds and overtourism left behind a degraded Eden?
‘Irmaria’
The majority of St. John’s land is part of the Virgin Islands National Park and its surrounding sea is part of the Coral Reef National Monument. For a Caribbean getaway, the thickly forested island feels far from the all-inclusive pool parties of Cancún, Mexico, or the golf-course bars of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
There is no airport on St. John; there aren’t even any traffic lights. Getting there requires a boat (or, less commonly, a helicopter ride). Most visitors fly or cruise to neighboring St. Thomas, take a car to the ferry terminal, then ferry 45 minutes to the west side of St. John, before making their way to their accommodations.
That multistep, multimodal route seems to have kept some prevailing threats of unsustainable mass tourism, often the death knells of an island paradise, at bay. There aren’t any garish high rises or McDonald’s on St. John; the only chain hotel is a Marriott resort on the southwest coast.
Cruise-ship excursions bring a large share of visitors to St. John: While there’s no cruise port on the island — they have to go to St. Thomas — visitors are ferried over for hikes through the park. Afterward they end up on the North Shore, where a sequence of coves carve out paradisiacal beaches like Trunk Bay, Cinnamon Bay and Maho Bay. On most days the North Shore is dotted with snorkelers and leisure boats, the sand buzzing with groups of friends and families.
When I first arrived on St. John, I joined them, beach-hopping from one turquoise bay to the next. Just out of eyeshot sat the ruins of the Caneel Bay Resort, the island’s most historic resort, which has remained closed since the storms.
Locals call the hurricanes “Irmaria,” because the distinction of the damage from each storm became an irrelevant detail that even the insurance companies couldn’t untangle. When I asked any local about the storms, they pulled up an “Irmaria” photo album on their phones, mainly because there are no words to properly describe it all. The photos show teddy bears on the floor of roofless living rooms. Sailboats sitting on top of other sailboats. Toothpick forests without any leaves — the winds had stripped them all bare.
In the water, I found that the island’s coral reefs, a top tourist draw, varied from one bay to the next: In some places the coral looked vibrant, and in others, stressed and bleached.
Lee Richter, a National Park Service biologist who studies the marine environment on St. John, explained that the reefs were also affected by the hurricanes’ wrath. Their recovery has been stymied by other threats, like disease and the thermal stress of overly warm water on our overly warming planet.
St. John’s corals, said Mr. Richter, “are currently not doing well.”
“As someone who spends their life studying these systems, it’s been difficult to watch,” he said. “I’ve got to believe that they can recover, though it may take time.”
Heading east
I discovered it’s still possible to experience the classic arcadia of old St. John — on the east side of the island, where the crowds thin out and nature, hurricane-damaged though it still might be, starts to take over.
From the town of Cruz Bay, I drove a four-by-four Jeep on the eight-mile, serpentine drive across St. John to the village of Coral Bay. The trip only takes a half-hour, but it feels like you’ve been transported much farther, from “town” to “country,” as some locals call the island’s two poles.
The island gets wilder and wilder, and starts to take on a “Jumanji”-esque air, as deer leap out of the forest to cross the road, donkeys and goats huddle beneath flamboyant trees, and wild chickens pluck at the ground.
“The most beautiful beaches on St. John are on the North Shore,” said Jennifer Robinson, who runs Coral Bay’s mail center. “But Coral Bay is the place you go when you want to go to the end of the road.”
Coral Bay is a gorgeous natural harbor cradled by lush mountains with around 700 residents, some living on boats. From the mountains, the view is one of the most beautiful panoramas in the Caribbean. (For a spectacular sunrise, this is the place.) But at ground level, the village is quiet and unremarkable. Perfect.
In her book, “Not on Any Map,” the journalist Margie Smith Holt wrote about waitressing at one of the most popular bars in Coral Bay, Skinny Legs, a laid-back hamburger shack with live music that often requires standing in line to get in. When I asked her to describe the village, Ms. Smith Holt laughed. “When you arrive, there’s a sign that says ‘Welcome to Coral Bay,’ but you look around and see nothing and you think, ‘Am I here?’”
“That’s the charm of Coral Bay,” she said.
Coral Bay has been called “the best harbour refuge in the West Indies” thanks to its topography, but Irmaria seemed to laugh at that description: Both storms barged right through the heart of the harbor. During my visit, hurricane damage was still visible. Masts of storm-sunken boats still jutted above the bay’s surface, and a pile of gnarled, vine-covered metal along the shore was all that remained of a favorite bar.
But Ms. Smith Holt described residents as “used to taking care of themselves,” given their remote locale, and today, signs of the community’s resilience far outnumber the hurricanes’ scars.
Skinny Legs continues to thrive. And new businesses have started up, like Surf Club Cantina, a restaurant with an open-air bar overlooking the bay. These spots remain so casual flip-flops are sufficient.
Or perhaps not even necessary. The village’s main attraction these days is Lime Out, a floating taco bar that also opened after the storms. The restaurant, in a pontoon cottage, is surrounded by inflatable floats — lily pads, as they call them — and as you eat, fish nibble at your toes.
St. John’s wild side
The Airbnb that I booked sat straight up the hill from the main road, with a deck overlooking the jungle and Coral Bay. Today, the island is riotously green — that toothpick forest seems unthinkable.
In the mornings, I watched tropical birds zip past, and at night, chirping tree frogs set the soundtrack. There were no honks or sirens, or roaring leaf blowers: the cumulative noise pollution that tortures me back home. It was all that I wanted.
A little farther south, at Salt Pond Bay, a cove accessible by a short hike, I found good snorkeling and waveless water — and, the day I visited, no one else was there. I waded out toward the setting sun and was still just waist-deep when I spotted a sea turtle swimming beside me, gulping a big breath and diving down again. I pulled my goggles on and shoved my face underwater just in time to see her casually skim past me and then disappear, her marbled green shell merging with the mottling of the sun’s rays.
As I tried to keep up, something caught my attention at the end of the beach. The green foliage ringing the bay was cleared in one spot, a door into the forest, and I felt pulled toward the opening. Out of the water and just 20 feet or so down the path, the trail opened up onto another body of water, this time a surreal, auburn-colored lake. I remembered where I was, and that this must be the actual Salt Pond that gave the bay its name.
I looked back toward the low-hanging sun just in time to spot a family of flamingos — flamingos! — taking flight; the baby was still colored gray, but the two parents’ feathers seemed to glow as they caught the last of the light, a blur of shock pink gliding over Gatorade-orange whitecaps.
Basking in the Zen feeling Salt Pond gave me, I started my drive back to Coral Bay, when another animal resident reminded me that I was on the wild side of the island.
Coming around a blind curve, I slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop barely an inch from the nose of a donkey. My heart was pounding, but the donkey simply batted its eyelashes, as if to say, “Slow down and chill, bro.”
Later, I spotted a sign telling me to slow down and watch out for the community’s new baby donkey.
On this side of the island, the animals, and even the road signs, were telling me to relax.
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