FamBam Cruise 3: St. Croix

On Tuesday, June 24, 2025, we trickled into the Windjammer for breakfast. Linette helped feed wee one while Kelsi got some food. (I love how bibs now have a trough to catch all the falling food.)

The ship had docked at Frederiksted, in St. Croix.

St. Croix, like St. Thomas the day before, is part of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was named "Isla de la Santa Cruz" (Island of the Holy Cross) by Christopher Columbus, which is "Sainte Croix" in French. When the Danish West India Company bought the island in 1725, they partially kept the French, calling it Sankt Croix. When the U.S. bought it from Denmark in 1917, they named it "Saint Croix." English has been the predominant language there all along, but became the official language when it became part of the U.S. in 1917.

Bark "Mary" of Copenhagen, Denmark sailing into Frederiksted, Skt. Croix. Painted by Jens Thielsen Locher, 1848. (Public domain).

Frederiksted Pier led directly to the town of Frederiksted, and had a beach right next to it.

There was a little park near the pier.

By the park was an old building that had been turned into the museum. We asked the guy there if it was the worth the $10, and he assured us that it was. So Linette and I went in with Keli & Eva, Shaylee and Mikayla.

It was pretty run down, but had a few fun things.

The cannons at the top were kind of cool. (Mikayla got Shaylee posing up there).

This picture makes it look like they are targeting our cruise ship!

...And a few cannon pointed at the snorkelers.

One room talked a lot about the slave trade in the area. This bell had a crack, but instead of calling it the "liberty bell," we called it the "slavery bell." It was used to call enslaved persons to labor each day. However, it was later used to rally the enslaved together to protest slavery, and rang again to celebrate emancipation. Slavery was abolished by the Danish in 1792, and no new enslavements happened after 1802, but the enslaved people weren't set free until they demanded it in a revolt in 1848. Hundreds of enslaved people peaceably gathered outside this very building and refused to work the next day unless they were freed. The governor agreed, and now they celebrate emancipation day on July 3.

One upstairs room had some fun old furniture, all done in the same beautiful dark wood.

One room featured several tall figures called "Moko Jumbies." They are walkers/dancers on stilts and were a spiritual comfort to the enslaved people of Africa.

I ran back to the ship to get my snorkel gear, and from the pier, I saw this turtle swimming around.

I had fun snorkeling there. The coolest thing I saw was a "Spotted Eagle Ray" with a really long tail. I followed it around for a while. Here's a frame from my GoPro video footage.

Here's a minute of video out of the 3 minutes or so that I followed this ray around:

After checking in with everyone at Frederiksted Beach, Kelsi wanted to go snorkeling, too, so the two of us went out for a few minutes. We weren't seeing much at first, but then she discovered a sea turtle!

Here's a 1.5-minute video of Kelsi swimming with the sea turtle.

In addition to the ray and the sea turtle, I saw lots of other fish, and used Google Lens to try to identify them.

Here are a couple of the most interesting ones.

- I saw a pair of Porcupinefish. These have spines that lay flat along their bodies unless they are threatened, at which time they puff up like a pufferfish and the spines provide some protection.

- I saw three Red Cusion Starfishes. One was white, which is apparently how these start out when they're young.

- The Black Sea Urchin is one reason you shouldn't walk on the ocean floor near a coral reef. It has needle-sharp venomous spines that can break off into your skin and sting you.

- I didn't know what this was when I saw it, but it turns out to be a "Bearded Fireworm", which has thousands of little stinging bristles that can cause pain and even nausea and dizziness in humans, so you don't want to step on one. (But if you do, you can apparently use adhesive tape to remove the bristles and rubbing alcohol to lessen the pain).

Brain coral always looks interesting.

And here are several more fish that I was able to identify (maybe even correctly). I put the names as captions on each. Feel free to skim quickly past these, but it might be fun to know what they are if you end up watching the 10-minute snorkel video below.

Banded Butterflyfish

Four-eye Butterflyfish

Bar Jack

Black-ear Wrasse

Blue-headed Wrasse (feisty and chased other fish away)

Blue Tang

Eyestrip Surgeonfish

French Angelfish

French Grunt

Ocean Surgeonfish

Sergeant Major

Whitetail Gregory

Yellow Striped Goatfish

Yellowtail Parrotfish

Yellowtail Snapper

Below is a 10-minute video that captures the good parts of the snorkel adventure, including a minute or two of the spotted eagle ray; a surprise visit from the porcupine-fish, and ending with approximately one gazillion fish.

(You can click the [ ] button to go full screen so you can see the smaller fish better; and feel free to hit the right arrow or click on the timeline to skip over the ray if you already watched the video above).

After snorkeling, it was time for me, Linette and Kelsi to go on our scheduled horseback ride with the Cruzon Cowgirls.

They took our size and riding experience into account when assigning us to appropriate horses.

This organization rehabilitates rescue horses, so it was for a good cause.

Soon we were all on our horses and ready to go.

There was a 15-year-old girl who came along on the ride with us as a volunteer. She grew up on the island, so I had fun asking her what it was like growing up there. It sounded like it was like growing up in a small town, where you know everyone.

We walked past some ruins of an old fort on our way to the beach.

Then we rode up the beach for a while. When we passed other people, I pretended to tip my hat, and said, "Howdy!"

Then we carefully crossed the street and rode into the jungle.

Here is a giant mango tree.

Sometimes we had to duck under things.

After a nice, long ride through the jungle, we headed back out to the beach.

The highlight of the ride was when we got to ride the horses into the ocean.

Here's a 3 1/2 minute video of our horseback ride through the jungle and into the ocean.

We had a delightful experience on the ride!

When we got back to the place, they gave us some fresh mangos that were so delicious! The horses loved eating the skins, and then we chucked the pits into the jungle for the wildlife to enjoy.

Our guide was nice enough to drive us into town in her jeep afterwards for free, to save us a long walk or taxi ride.

The horseback ride was my favorite one I've ever done, and was even more fun than I was expecting.

Katelyn, Sienna and others helped watch Eva while Kelsi did the horseback ride.

While all this was going on, Chase and Kyle went golfing at the Buccaneers Golf Course.

I thought the historic tower on the golf course was cool.

Eventually, we all got back on the ship, and via the onboard chat, we found that someone had found a nice secluded area by the Solarium where we could all relax in the shade and read books and such.

The theme for dinner that night was "70s night". Sienna sported some great glasses and a fun sweater vest.

Several of us donned tie-dye. (That might have been more 60s, but it was the 70s when *I* wore it).

Katelyn and Jared made us all laugh with their groovy threads.

As we were waiting for food to be served, Linette reached over and knocked over her glass. Everyone laughed, and the waiter used cloth napkins to dry things off. Just as we were calming down from that, Linette knocked her glass over AGAIN!! This time, everyone lost it.

That evening, we found an empty conference room and Erika gave a Powerpoint presentation about the history of the islands we were visiting on our cruise. There was some text to read on each slide, so to keep it interesting, she used a trick from her elementary school teaching where she reads it aloud, but sometimes snaps and we all read that word aloud. It was fun and we learned a lot.

Then there was a quiz afterwards, and we got points for our Survivor game depending on how well we did.

We also took a 70s picture while we were still dressed up.

That evening we found some tables in the Windjammer cafe where we could play games while we snacked on even more food.

Eva's favorite thing was to pull the little packets out of the packet box that had things like sugar for coffee.

Here's a 1-minute video of Eva going to town on the packets in one of many rounds of the Packet Game.

In the next episode, we visit St. Maarten, where we do a Sea Trek and play with hundreds of parrots.