St. Thomas Mountain Top and Downtown Tour

One of the major attractions in St. Thomas is Mountain Top. With Norwegian’s $50 excursion discount, I was able to get this tour for $19 which is cheaper than any other form of transportation to mountain top. Actually my research suggested if you want to visit Mountain top you should book a tour because sometimes taxis won’t even go up there because there is too much traffic with the tour buses alone.

The lady by with the tour sign told me the orange bus. I asked that driver he pointed me to a waiting area. I made sure I was at the back of the line. Well in less than a minute the driver came and announced I was the front of the line.

I left plenty of space if anyone wanted to get in front of me. But the group behind me from Seattle was backing me up. This lady came over whining that she was the front of the line and the guy from Seattle told her to eat a big rock and go to the back of the line….Except he didn’t say rock…I was happy to have them as row mates in the front of the bus.

We are heading up to mountain top.

Our first stop is this view point. We have 10 minutes here.

The guide would take pictures if you wanted it. I took my own.

Magen’s bay on our way up to mountain top.

We have arrived! I’m going to have to get a banana daiquiri here. This is where it was invented.

That is the rum used in the banana daiquiris.

That is our bus.

This is a huge gift shop with the banana daiquiri bar at the back and a view point behind it.

We are 1,550 feet above sea level.

It’s daiquiri time.

On our way back down these guys are having a conversation in the middle of the road.

Our driver Butch drops us off in a parking lot downtown at 4pm and says we have an hour and a half. He says he will pick us up in that general area at 5:30.

Back on board is 5:30. Everyone agrees the ship won’t leave without us because we’re on a ship excursion. But I’m uneasy about it because we have to find and get on this bus in which is just going to be in this general area.  I’m not sure I’m going to rely on the bus.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park

They have one for each branch of service.

Now I’m heading up to Blackbeard’s castle which was built in the 1600’s.

You can see it in the middle of this shot.

This is the route I took up.

This is Three Queens Statue.

What is in Blackbeard’s mailbox?

sunglass lenses

Blackbeard made scaling his wall too easy.

I think this is on the map as “99 steps” but it’s closed. I’m taking another staircase.

It started raining for a minute or two.

I decide to head to the fort on the waterfront 

I decide to walk back to the ship instead of sitting around hoping to find that driver in that general area at back on board time.

My google maps told me 25 minutes and it was pretty close. And that was actually directions to a restaurant close to the ship. It was a bit longer walk to the actual ship. I left at 5pm and was on the ship at 5:35. It felt like I was the last one on so I don’t know if that bus left early or what. But I made it back.

I enjoyed the tour. My research said you need to do a tour to visit mountaintop because so many people go up there that taxis usually aren’t allowed. This tour was a good fit for me with my $50 tour discount. Maybe it’s just a luck of the draw on drivers, but based on this experience I wouldn’t recommend this tour if you aren’t willing to make your own way back to the ship as I did. I was extremely uncomfortable with the driver not giving us a specific meeting location. 

If I was going to miss the ship today would’ve been the day to do it. We’re in Tortola tomorrow and it’s only a 20 minute boat ride from here to there. But I don’t want to have to do that.