Hiking St. John: The Reef Bay Trail
You could hike a different trail every day on St. John for more than a month, but if you only have time for one, make it the Reef Bay Trail. Come and see why Caribbean Travel and Life magazine chose St. John’s Reef Bay Trail as one of the Caribbean’s 10 best hikes.
The Virgin Islands National Park encompasses 63 percent of the island, 7,000 acres of paradise preserved for nature lovers. The Park Service offers guided hikes down the trail including return transportation by boat at the conclusion. You may navigate this 2-1/2 mile hike on your own but you would surely miss out on a plethora of local history as well as facts relating to the flora and fauna that only an experienced guide can provide.
The Park is rich in natural resources with hundreds of species of birds, fish, amphibians, mammals and more than 700 species of plants. You will see many of these along the Reef Bay Trail as well as original petroglyphs carved by Taino indians who inhabited the island for 2,000 years before the first Danish settlers arrived.
Sugar factory ruins from the 1700s are located in Reef Bay as well. Restored by the National Park, these ruins are some of the best surviving examples of a West Indies sugar operation. This trail allows you to closely examine the remains of the boiling room, sugar mill, steam engine room and horsemill. You are likely to spy a colony of bats that take up residence here if you look closely. Bats are the only mammal native to St. John and are instrumental in controlling the mosquito population.
This lush forest that was once laced with sugar cane is now home to a virtual farmers market of edible fruit. Your guide will point out wild pineapples, limes, guava berries and hog plums, and you may even get to sample a few. You will be surrounded by nature’s pharmacy, discovering things like the many uses for the bay rum leaf or that the emissions from the gungolo centipede were once used as an anesthetic.
From the mill it is a brief walk to a worthwhile finale, a soft, white sand beach at the edge of Reef Bay where you can cool off with a refreshing swim before returning by boat. And if you haven’t gotten your fill, there is a trail for every level and interest imaginable!
