Renaissance St. Croix Carambola Beach Resort & Spa

Stayed 2 weeks at Carambola in St. Croix 2013. It was a great trip, with lots of relaxation time on the beach.

The Good:

on the beach St. Croix

We loved the beach and would sit out and read books all day long.
Snorkeling, to the left of the rocks, was decent. Though the resort recommends you don’t snorkel there because there’s no way to get out if you get in trouble. If you are a strong swimmer and comfortable in the water, the corals are closer to the surface and the water clarity was better.
Wave riding, we had afternoon storms while we were there (end of rain season) so you could get up to 5′ waves. During this time I liked going out just past the break and riding up and down in the waves.
The resort staff was super friendly, and the rooms were nice yet basic. The layout of the rooms was in pods of 6, but they did a good job of not having adjoining walls so noise levels from neighbors were low. (1 exception see not so good)
The netted in patio was nice. As we were getting afternoon rain we would retreat to our room and just read on the patio.
Very little bug issues. We started out covering ourselves in bug spray the first few days, but by the end of our trip, I wasn’t using it at all. Never saw a mosquito, but still got some bites from ants and no seems.

The Not So Good:(since nothing was really bad)

Rooms on bottom floor could hear people walking on the floor above. I’d recommend getting the second floor if you can. No problem the first 10 days but then got a loud walker the last 4 and could hear him pacing around all night.
Food choices, there was only really 1 restaurant open while we were there. One restaurant didn’t have a lot of choices but enough for us. Prices seemed very high for what we got. Alcohol drinks were very expensive at about $12 for a glass. We stuck to just buying bottles of wine, though halfway through we figured out that the gift store had the same bottle selection for half the price, we switched to that the second week.
The hike to tidal pools- this was a little bit of a letdown. The hike itself was nice, through the jungle with 1 decent overlook point,Hike to Tidal Pools but the tide pools were not impressive to me. Overall I think they said it was 2.7 miles round trip. I would recommend regular close-toed shoes as some parts were steep and would be hard in flip-flops.
You can’t really use all of the beach to get in the water. About 4/5th of the whole beach has urchins off the shore and they have a bad sting. The beach itself is still great to lay out on. But if your getting in and out of the water stay to the end with the rock wall.

The only other comment would be that the resort has nothing really close by (besides the jungle) unless you have a car or want to take a taxi out. To me this is great but for people wanting shopping or restaurants, they will need to travel.

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