This was our first time visiting St. Croix, but have been to many other islands in the Virgin Islands. We had some things we wanted to see on the island, and we had reserved a Jeep through Centerline Car Rental on the island from their mid-island location. The cost to rent a Jeep for the day after taxes and insurance was $107.10 which is what I was quoted before we arrived. It would have been cheaper but I opted for the $28.95 insurance waiver. I’ve driven on enough islands to know, you need insurance. US auto insurance does not cover you in St. Croix so I wanted to be covered.
We were supposed to meet our shuttle at the pier at 9:00am. There were many people waiting around the pier for the shuttle to pick us up. Finally about 9:30, they brought 2 small vans to take many people to their location to get their vehicles for the day. When we arrived at their location, there was 1 person checking people in at a VERY slow pace. Nobody was happy and we were all frustrated. I did leave a negative review on TripAdvisor, Google Places as well as Yelp. They did respond, and here was their response:
Josh, we'll start with saying that we're glad you were happy with your Jeep rental and your visit to St. Croix. Knowing that you created good memories on St. Croix is of utmost importance, and we hope you may consider coming back to stay longer someday. We’d like to take this opportunity to give our account of events: Our team dispatched three vans due to exceptionally high demand from the cruise ship that morning and they were approximately 15 minutes late, arriving a little after 9:15. We apologize for their late arrival, which was due to an unexpected detour enroute due to road works. Once at our Mid-Island location, our agents worked as quickly as they could to get you and your fellow renters on the road, though opening rental car contracts is a process requiring a number of due diligence steps. A combination of the detour and having the highest volume of cruise ship passengers we’d ever had at one time, meant the process of getting you to our location and into a vehicle took a little more time than it ordinarily would have. Again, we apologize that it took so long to get everyone into a vehicle, especially given that time is precious when visiting for one day.
After we finally got our Jeep, we were on our way. Our first stop we wanted to hit was Point Udall which is on the eastern-most point of the island. This is also the furthest eastern point of the United States. There are beautiful views from Point Udall and we were the only ones there.
After we left Point Udall, we headed back to Christiansted. We rode around the town exploring a bit before parking and walking along the boardwalk. The Christiansted Boardwalk has a few restaurants and shops around it and spectacular views. We did a little shopping around downtown Christiansted before getting back in the Jeep to head to the western part of the island. We ended up driving up to Ham’s Bluff Lighthouse and checking it out. The road to get there was horrible and you couldn’t get there without a Jeep. Once we got to where the lighthouse is, you had to park and hike to the lighthouse. We ended up not doing the hike and heading back down the mountain. We rode over to Rainbow Beach to check it out since that’s where all of the cruise passengers went. We did not stay because that beach was SUPER crowded. It looked miserable with all of the people. So we went down to Loops Beach where nobody was. This was a neat little area that the locals have done their own artwork at.
We rode around Frederiksted a little more exploring before finally making our way back to mid-island to drop off the Jeep. We dropped off the Jeep and got in the shuttle to come back to the port. Once at the port area, we shopped around a little more before going back to the ship. St. Croix had some pretty points but it was not our favorite island. We would go back, but it’d have to have an amazing itinerary with it.
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