I’m back from this special spot in the Caribbean, so I’m not just going to explain why I think this is one of the best islands in the world but I’m also going to share 3 lessons I learned from St. Thomas in the USVI.

This was an express trip to St Thomas USVI just before the pandemic and there’s some things I wanna share with you today that go beyond the usual “top things to do”. These are reflections about this island as I always prefer to share an alternative perspective when we travel.

But before starting let me just put some context. St Thomas is part of the US Virgin Islands (USVI) in the Caribbean and what’s really interesting is that this island is the perfect example of a financial transaction because St Thomas was sold to the US by Denmark for $25 mil in gold coin in 1917 (equivalent to $587 million today in 2021) just because the colony had been running at a loss. Today they even have a national holiday to commemorate it, 31st March.

Before I forget, I’ve also made a video about this in case you want to check more of St. Thomas.

Let’s go to the point and as always I’ll share my experience in 3 parts.

3. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BEACH

Magens Bay is arguably the most famous beach on St. Thomas and according to National Geographic one of the best in the world. It has soft white sand, beautiful palm trees and calm blue water just because it’s protected by hills. Personally, this is one of the places I’ve ever seen.

That being said, it can get really busy, especially if there are multiple cruise ships in port. The best times to go are in the morning and during the late afternoon early evening hours. Obviously if we just do a day trip, this doesn’t really matter. But if we want to avoid the large number of people, we can walk down to either end of beach.

We spent over three hours enjoying the sun, swimming in the ocean and watching the pelicans dive-bombing. Worth mentioning that the admission is around $5.00 (for non-residents) and if you drive, an extra $2.00 at the time we speak. The money is reinvested as this place looks very clean and pristine. So even though this is one of the nicest places in the world, we might also want to pay attention to the extras.

On the other hand, there’s a lot of water sport options  but if we don’t want to do any water activity, there’s a beautiful trail that goes through forests and the beach itself.

2. COFFEE PARADISE

There’s something about St Thomas and Coffee. I’m not sure how to explain it but you know when we feel happy, comfortable and excited about something, this was my feeling when having coffee in the island.

And there’s one coffee shop that I really enjoyed (this not sponsored by the way!) called Virgin Islands Coffee Roastery. They say that the secret for such a good coffee lies in their method of artisanal small batch roasting because roasting their beans in smaller quantities leads to better quality control, and let them capture flavours and aromas rarely found in mass produced coffees.

Overall I felt like the coffee experience in St Thomas was just so real. Like, when I think about coffee for me there are 2 factors:

a) Technical. This is about having a good balance of acidity, sweetness and bitterness in one sip with a smooth flavour and no off-notes. I don’t like it burnt or raw. I’m by no means an expert, but that’s how I like it.

b) How does the place make me feel? And this is even more important than the technical side. For me having coffee it’s not just to drink something hot but it’s a taking a break from the reality. It’s like an open eyes meditation where I pay more attention to what’s around me while I release some stress. So it’s super important the context or the place I’ll be buying my coffee. In St Thomas I found myself in the right atmosphere to enjoy coffee which ultimately improved my state of mind.

1. NO WIFI

So before we mentioned how this island is a coffee paradise. On that note, there was one bar by the beach that had no wi-fi and they put a big sign “NO WI-FI Please feel free to talk to each other… and Pretend It’s 1995″. That blew my mind.

How technology changed the way of communication between us? From a place that once in the 17th century played a key role in social interaction to today. When we go to a coffee shop, our most frequent question we ask to staff is “What’s the Wi-Fi password?”. And probably we get nervous if we don’t get it. We don’t even ask anymore if the place actually has Wi-Fi. We just assume it and then we go for the password.

In St Thomas I was thinking… how much time do we spend on talking to our families and friends? How much social media is controlling us? When Wi-Fi came to our lives, then these coffee shops became a new form of a computer room, so nowadays we barely talk to each other. So this my open question… how do we feel when there’s no wi-fi in a coffeeshop? Or in other words… what if we don’t have our phone in the coffee shop? When was the last time that we talked to somebody for more than 5 minutes without checking our phones?

At least for today, I’ll enjoy my cup of coffee without Wi-Fi and talking face to face.

If you missed my previous article and you’re interested in the Caribbean, you can read it here.