The Frolicers: Hiking Eastern St. John

St. John is a unique island in that 75% of it is National Park and almost all the water around it is part of the National Park or the Coral Reef National Monument. There are about 35 hiking trails on the island that is less than 9 miles long and less than 4 miles wide. The trails are a variety of lengths from 500 feet to 2.6 miles, which takes a little over 2 hours to hike. The park service provides maps of St. John and its trails, but a more detailed map, The Trail Bandit Guide, can be purchased from most stores.

Waterlemon Cay

Ruins overlooking Waterlemon Bay our boat in the arch

After saying good bye to the Vargas, we sailed on back to Francis Bay and grabbed a mooring. The next day we went around the point into Waterlemon Bay and took a mooring next to Waterlemon Cay. From there we dinghy into the beach and hiked the Leinster Bay Trail down the beach and up to some ruins. Then back along the bay to the locally famous Annaberg Ruins. This was a sugar cane plantation with horse and wind driven cane crushing devices to get cane juice which was then boiled down to sugar or molasses. This was then exported or fermented into rum and used locally or also exported. The ruins are in fairly good shape and maintained by the National Park Service.

Leslie in another ruins over Waterlemon

A short walk down the road brought us to the Annaberg School trail. This short trail brings you to the ruins of the Annaberg School. It’s the oldest school in the Caribbean and was established by the Danish plantation owners for their kids and the slave children. However, when slavery was abolished the children went to other schools and the building was deserted and abandoned. The building has a plaque that shows it was a 2 room, center hall school house with lower grades on one side and upper grades on the other.

Looking into Waterlemon Bay

Skinny Legs

The next day we hiked the Johnny Horn Trail over Base Hill to Coral Harbor. There we found the Bar, Restaurant, and tourist shop, Skinny Legs. It’s a fun place with good food and drinks as well as the meeting place for the Coral Bay Yacht Club. The Yacht Club is made up of locals who for the most part live on their boats in the bay. One of the ways they support the community is by running a few fund raiser events to provide additional funding for the local school. From Skinny Legs we had to walk down East End Road to Hermitage Ruins and Browns Bay Trail. The hike to Brown’s Bay took us by a shooting range and over Base hill again to Brown’s Bay. The beaches here were covered with Sargasso Weed so we didn’t take a swim break, but continued on back up to meet the Johnny Horn Trail and back to the boat.

Donkeys on the road to Brown Bay Trail

We sailed back to Maho Bay the following day and took the dinghy into Cinnamon Bay beach. This is a National Park beach with water sports equipment for rent, and an archeological dig, general store, bar and restaurant as well as tent sites and cottages for rent. Across the street we hiked the Cinnamon Bay Self-Guided Trail of another sugar factory ruins and a nature trail with signs labeling a lot of the trees and bushes as well as pictures of animals to be seen in the area. The hike was short and about half of it was made handicap accessible. Then it was a steep hike up the Cinnamon Trail to Center Line Road. To get back we had to hike down the road a mile to the Cathrineberg Road where we found the ruins of another sugar mill which brought us down from Peter Peak to the North Shore road on the coast and back to Cinnamon Bay.

self guided trail of sugar cane mill

Cinnamon Bay Beach

Part of the Mill

plantation house lived in until 1970

redition of plantation house

Cottage at Cinnamon Bay

On Cinnamon Beach we met Kendel who ran the water sports on the beach. He is a great guy and a big surfer. We found out that there is surf on St. John most of the year. We also met Torri and her son and his friend. We ran into them again at the Weston were they came for dinner bringing a Wahoo her son caught yesterday, and she was very interested in getting a boat after having dinner on ours.