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Frederiksted, VI → Christiansted, VI 21.3 mi (34.3 km) |
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Hail up, all yo!
My final year of national park questing has begun with a turbulent overnight to Chicago, then a long leg to the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands! It’s my third trip to a U.S. territory, and visiting this former Danish outpost couldn’t have come at a more awkward time: just over a week ago, Donald Trump demanded that Denmark give up Greenland, even after the U.S. promised to leave Greenland alone in the Treaty of the Danish West Indies (1916)! Anyway, Greenland is home to Northeast Greenland National Park—the world’s largest—and the thought of putting Greenland between me and my goal gives me the shivers!
Ugh, I can’t think too much about that now, because I am in the opposite kind of climate, journeying on the brightest Caribbean blue to Buck Island Reef National Monument with Big Beard’s Adventure Tours! I’d spent the last month building a dive suit for the occasion, and I was super excited to test it out in a spectacular reef, especially after Dive Suit 1.0 leaked in Biscayne National Park! I hadn’t seen much on that trip, which was all in sea grass, but the Buck Island Reef was highly, highly acclaimed!
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Except that, as our 9:30 boat, the Renegade, pulled up to the snorkel tutorial beach, the 9:00 boat, Adventure, was still there! What that said to the captain was that the ocean was too rough to snorkel safely! We would not be going in the water today after all! Super bummed, I looked for other things to do on the beach, like hunt for seashells, but it’s illegal to take seashells from St. Croix! Luckily, one of the crew members named Charlie offered to lead a group of us on a hike, promising ample time to explore snorkel options afterward. Even if I was disappointed not to see the reef, a hike sounded like a great alternative!
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There are no deer on Buck Island, and it wasn’t named after anyone called Buck! It’s probably from the Danish Pockholz, or Pocken Eyland, which refers to the ironwood trees that were growing there! When the national monument was first declared in 1961, it was pretty much just the island itself. Years later, in 2001, Bill Clinton expanded it to protect 18,135 acres of reef!
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Anyway, a group of us set off into the woods, which, for all intents and purposes shouldn’t have been here! Starting in the 1760s, the valuable ironwood was cut down, and agriculture and goats reshaped the island until the 1940s! It has taken years of recovery work for the native forests of Buck Island to return to at least an approximation of how they once looked!
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Amid the forest were some surprising native plants, like these towering tree cacti, a species only found in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and whose scientific name was only changed from Pilosocereus royenii to Pilosocereus armatus last June! It’s unusual in that it has hairs on it, in addition to spines, but when it produces its red fruits, they’re sweet and edible! Alas, it was the wrong time of year for cactus fruit, so it was all careful scramble up and careful scramble down.
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Nestled among them were huge airplants, giant airplants in fact (Tillandsia utriculata)! These were just like the ones I saw while floating through the Everglades back in 2023! Some were tiny and clinging to the stems of trees and cacti, but others had fallen to the ground and grown to enormous size! The leaves of these bromeliads collect water, which makes them very important for other creatures who live and make babies in water, but because they are so slow growing and only reproduce by seeds, they’re becoming endangered in other parts of the Caribbean! I sure was glad that Buck Island offers these ones some refuge.
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After maybe a mile, we arrived at a lookout platform, where we could gaze out on the turquoise blue of the reef that we would not be snorkeling in today. Down below, the elkhorn coral rose almost four stories from seabed to surface, a real high-density housing project for conchs, turtles, lobsters, and thousands of fish! It was a stunning view that only made me want to dive in deeper.
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But when we got back to the trailhead, what was pitched as an hour more time was actually fifteen minutes, so no snorkeling was done at all. One by one, we all floated back out to the Renegade, which was tossed back and forth by the waves, to be treated to Mutiny Island Punch and a barbecue feast on Big Beard’s private beach, surrounded by hungry hermit crabs. Unlike the coconut crabs in American Samoa, these curious crustaceans were not keen to be photographed. Nor were the feral cats or mongooses, who slunk about the edge of the clearing, waiting for handouts!
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I thought about booking another trip tomorrow, but the forecast called for rip currents all weekend. Besides, I booked an underwater adventure today to give my dive suit extra time to dry before my flight home. Dang it. I’m disappointed I didn’t get to dip below the surface of the Buck Island Reef, but I’ll hold out hope for a great time next month when I visit a different Virgin Island with two parks built around reefs! For now, some more fish tacos.
Chek you latah!
More 2026 Adventures |
Total Ground Covered: 21.3 mi (34.3 km) |
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