December 26, 2016. Sting-ray encounter!!

LOCATION:  House-sitting in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands

WEATHER:  Mostly sunny.  Highs in 80s  

From our deck during morning coffee, we watched three huge cruise ships sail into the marina below us.  Some of these ships hold 3000 passengers!  One local guy told me that last year at Christmas, there were 7 of these here at once.  It is sort of a love/hate relationship.....the ships bring in revenue, but create terrible traffic and spoil beaches, etc for the locals.

From our deck on a clear day, you can see St. Croix (another one of the US Virgin Islands) and part of Puerto Rico.  I hadn't realized how close they all are.  The cruise ships go pretty slowly between islands due to their proximity.

We met our new downstairs renter.  He has his whole week planned out with activities.  We are much more laid-back.  Today we just hung out here until it cooled off at about 3:00.  We then returned to our favorite beach, the one with not too many people.

  George doesn't like to snorkel much, but I could swim around with my goggles for hours, gazing at all the fish and sea life.  I was starting to get a little disappointed in not seeing much when a HUGE stingray appeared right in front of me!  With heart palpitations, I got out of there fast!  This is what it looked like....

Later, when I went back to snorkel some more, I found a large sea turtle and followed him for a long time.  Lots of fish, too.

On our way home, we stopped at this cemetery.  They stack up the coffins above ground.

This is a new one.  Instead of "date of birth" and "date of death" it says "sunrise" and "sunset".

 Speaking of sunsets, we watched a pretty one this evening from our deck.  

DINNER:  We still have a large bag of frozen shrimp to get through so......shrimp cocktail followed by shrimp in pasta with feta cheese and artichoke hearts.