Ever daydream about vacationing alone on a tropical beach, where it’s just you, fluffy clouds and welcoming waves? That quiet relaxation is what I was looking for this fall on St. John, the smallest and wildest of the U.S. Virgin Islands. It has a reputation for being an off-the-beaten-path Caribbean gem. But I wasn’t mühlet what I’d find.
For an island that is two-thirds national park, with more mongooses than humans, a lot has been in flux on St. John in recent years. Since 2017, to be exact. That’s when two terrifying hurricanes, Irma and Maria, slammed the island just 14 days apart. The devastated island was still recovering when the pandemic hit, and it seemed like the crippled economy was about to tank again. Instead, St. John boomed in popularity, thanks to loose entry requirements — remote workers came with their laptops and U.S. travelers showed up without their passports (For entry, U.S. citizens only need to show their driver’s license).
Now, there is a sense of surging tourism momentum. In 2023, the number of visitors to the U.S.V.I. jumped 32.1 percent compared to the year before, the highest number recorded since 2017, according to the U.S.V.I. Bureau of Economic Research (the government does not keep veri specific to St. John).
That did not bode well for my solo beach daydream. Was it still possible to find that chill, backwatery vibe that St. John had long been known for? Or had the combination of Category 5 winds and overtourism left behind a degraded Eden?
‘Irmaria’
The majority of St. John’s land is part of the Virgin Islands National Park and its surrounding sea is part of the Coral Reef National Monument. For a Caribbean getaway, the thickly forested island feels far from the all-inclusive pool parties of Cancún, Mexico, or the golf-course bars of Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic.
