Photo by Gary Sibley

Sunset from the Cruz Bay Overlook

Watching the sun set at Mallory Square in Key West, Florida, has become a tourist attraction and a nightly arts festival featuring artists, food carts, and street performers.

Here on St. John it appears that a similar, if quite a bit smaller in scale, activity has begun at the Cruz Bay overlook on the North Shore Road, minus the street performers, artists and food sellers that is – at least for now.

Little Hawksnest

Hawksnest Bay

Just to the west of the popular Hawksnest Beach, lies a much smaller and far less visited stretch of soft coral sand known as Little Hawksnest.

I revisited this little beach yesterday and realized that it has been some time since I had been there. The tide was high and the surf was up (our St. John winter season is just about upon us) and there wasn’t much beach to speak of with waves washing up almost to the vegetation line.

It isn’t always this way and on more normal days one can find a quiet little beach just to the west of the public beach.

To get to Little Hawksnest, you’ll need to walk to the far western end of the public beach, take the trail through the woods that parallels the shore until you get to the rocky coastline separating the two beaches. A relativity easy scramble will bring you to the beach.

Thinking back (all the way to 1972) I remember attending the wedding of Charlie Deyalsingh (Trinidad Charlie) and Cathy Hartford on this very beach, where among other festivities we had a pig roast.

Remember I said relatively easy scramble, but thinking about it, setting up a pig roast on that beach must have been fairly challenging. I guess we all were a lot tougher in those days.

Little Hawksnest

Trail to Little Hawksnest	Little hawksnest Rock Scramble
Entrance to Little Hawksnest Beach	Little Hawksnest Beach looking west