Annaberg Plantation, St. John

In March, during our visit to St. John, we spent several days in Leinster Bay.  Located on the north side of the island, Leinster is a beautiful bay with great snorkeling.  During our visit we hiked the shoreline trail to the Annaberg Plantation ruins, an easy walk of about a mile.  Annaberg Plantation was an estate and mill built in the 1780's.  The windmill tower of the sugar mill, slave quarters, vats for making molasses and rum, storage rooms and part of a dungeon are still visible.

The buildings were constructed with ship's ballast, stone and coral.  The beautiful patterns of the coral are visible in these bricks.

While walking through the grounds we spotted this beauty, an American Kestrel.

There's a small garden on the grounds where we saw sugar cane, papaya, banana, limes, herbs and more.  The garden is there to educate the school children who come on field trips as well as the adults who visit.  The gardener gave us some sugar cane to chew on, always a favorite treat!

East from the anchorage is a short trail up the hill to the ruins of a house.  What a spectacular view!

If time permits, we'll visit St. John again on our way east.  We love the anchorages, the snorkeling and the hiking trails.  It's one of the prettiest places in the Caribbean! 

The weather in the Virgin Islands has been windy (15-20 knots out of the east) with some rain so we are waiting for some improvement before we head out.  It looks like conditions will improve next weekend.  We are headed east to St. Martin and then south through the islands to Grenada for hurricane season.  The hurricane predictions are for an active year but it's the locals who we've been listening to.  Several people have said that it could be a bad year because of the warm water temperature, a factor in hurricane development.  A friend told us she talked to a scuba diver who said that the water is very warm even at a depth of 60 feet.  We are feeling like we should get moving!