Goodnight,
I can’t stay with my bad or bad experiences for hundreds to live and with my uneasy conscience. We spent 5 days in Saint Thomas and Saint John, from the first day I simply wanted to get out of this place, in 24 hours unpleasant events happened that justified 17 people in our group leaving this island, which in the end I determined as if it were a purgatory. I will inform you that 170 dollars for a 3-kilometre journey from the airport to the hotel is a robbery, they hide behind saying that the local government requires it of them, which I think is not true, so they let all tourists know. That week, according to them, the rate for having a taxi for a few hours a day would be $6,000.
Already in Amalie. hotel for dinner, we walked only three streets and a person took out a knife and put it to the back of my neck, we all ran, this was on the sidewalk where Veterans Drive is, it was only 6:30 p.m., in the return, a vehicle left at more than 80 kilometers per hour from the side of the Windward Passage hotel and for half a meter it did not run over my daughter-in-law who is seven months pregnant.
The bitterness of the population is evident, nobody but nobody is happy on this island, people are angry, tourists are the ones with whom their evil is released, for example, I saw an older woman and to spend some money I wanted to buy a lottery ticket, I took out $5 and checked it and returned it to me throwing it in my face, he never understood that I only wanted to buy him some lottery numbers, until a Dominican told me what I did or said to the lady, to which I replied that nothing, I explained to him that I only had to buy some lottery tickets, he patiently explained and then he sold me the lottery, I left there disappointed with how people are there.
In Saint John, the matter was worse. Black Lives Matter was too present. A white man in my group, from Utah, being all on the ferry, put his mask under his nose, and was taken from the Ferry, our walk went from a beautiful beach to a fight with five men from the boat, it was an angry mob, I never saw this before, their faces reflecting their hatred.
One of the explanations that we all hear from a person is that there in the islands a weekend in a house pays up to $60,000, so our costs and budgets were ridiculously poor, hence we were treated as homeless.
People always have an aggressive and hurtful response, you should never ask about prices, places or things, it is collective.
Our grandchildren swam in the beach, ate in restaurants, bought jewelry, bought drinks, walked and breathed MARIJUANA wherever they wanted to go, move, get around, be Saint Thomas on the beach that is by the airport where the CAPO was selling drugs and surrounded by women and smoked marijuana for 5 long hours and the whole beach too, a way to “promote his business”, the police were at the airport with more than eight vehicles there and the military receiving tourists… I thought I was in Cuba. The worst was mainly Saint John at sunset, lots of drug dealers smoking and selling marijuana.
Each one of the 17 people who were there knows more things, I will not say more, but I assure you that I will never return to this place where I felt the real risk in which we subjected my family believing that it would be different. They cannot hide behind Covid because people are hoping that tourism will arrive, anywhere in the world.
I hope that the treatment received on the island is not the same as what I am writing, what I want is to say it and I will do it and I will repeat it to whoever wants to visit these islands, that they know how they can be treated, I felt like an offender without doing anything bad for it, the only thing we wanted was to enjoy nature and it was not possible.
Our experience may not be of interest to you, but could you do something so that this does not happen, you know that there are 17 people who did not do well, how many others are the same?
Signed:
RPG
San Jose, Costa Rica
EDITOR’S NOTE: Mr. Phillips said his vacation group was comprised of eight North Americans, seven Mexicans and two Costa Ricans.