January 2023 – More rain in St Croix

Written by Kim

We didn’t arrive in port until 12:30 but booked a brew & rum tour through RCCL. We don’t normally book excursions through the cruise but decided to give it a try on a small ship. We likely won’t do that again. It all turned out ok but started horrible

Lots of confusion on where to go and wait in the rain for our excision but we waited a bit under a tent. Finally after a while some taxis came to take us on our tour. We had a 30 minute ride to the brewery. I had a bit of a panic attack but survived

Our tour guide at Leatherback Brewery, ivy, was from Philly. She’s been in St Croix 7 years and her husband is the brew master. The beer was good. The fun fact we learned is that they brew a limited edition every year during hurricane season. They start at the beginning of hurricane season and release it the Wednesday before thanksgiving to celebrate getting through the season. It was a porter but too much coffee flavor for Alex.

The second stop on our tour was the Captain Morgan Distillery where we learned a bit about rum distilling – St Croix is the largest distillery of Captain Morgan. At its peak, St Croix was the largest sugar cane producer in the Caribbean. Both Captain Morgan and Cruzan have big distilleries here. Also there is a lot of oil refining here for Venezuelan oil.

We had some time after our tour before onboarding so stopped for one last drink at a local bar where we were ripped off for $17 for a rum & soda and Carib beer. We would have had another if the price wasn’t ridiculous.

We made our way down the nearly empty pier with our local friends. It was a fun day.

Tomorrow we are in St Martin – haven’t been there in a while. Until then….