The park includes traces of the original Taino indians who inhabited these islands for 2,000 years before the first European explorers arrived. Danish settlers came in 1717 to seek their fortunes with sugar mills built on the backs of slave laborers from Africa.
The 2-1/2 mile Reef Bay Trail runs from the Virgin Islands National Park headquarters in Cruz Bay to Reef Bay, passing through dense dry and moist tropical forest that transitions to tropical rainforest at higher elevations, and ends at a pristine bay where the only exit is via boat. St. John tends to have long, dry winters followed by intense rains, and if you visit in the late spring (usually May and June) the forest is alive with blooming flowers.
Tracing the path of an old Danish cart road, the trail offers glimpses of sugar cane fields and -- if you are lucky and observant -- three species of lizard, mongoose, snakes, tree frogs, and whitetail deer. Some native trees are identified with plaques, but it's well worthwhile to join a ranger-led hike. Expert guides like U.S. Park Ranger Don Neer are a font of information about local history as well as the native flora and fauna, pointing out termite nests, wild coffee, the Bayrum tree whose fragrant leaves are used to produce men's cologne and aftershave, and a 200-year-old Kapok tree, which the Tainos used to make their canoes. In the wood of these trees you also may spy the faces of jumbies, the mischevious woodland spirits of local lore.
The forest has long served as a pharmacy as well as a pantry and sort of a general store: native broom palms were used as thatch and, yes, brooms, and here and there you'll also see sweet, edible red limes and pinyons -- wild pineapples. the stinkey toe pod -- actually the fruit of the West Indian Locust -- smells like an old shoe but tastes like a mango. The iodine-like emissions of the gongolo centipede were once used as an anesthetic.
The land occcupied by the park was once a busy plantation and home to more than 3,000 slaves. Most left after emancipation in 1848, but 600 remained and continued to work the land, subsisting on the barter system and communal living until the 1950s. Terraced hillsides are a reminder that much of this area was once sugar cane fields.
Remnants of human habitation range from the mundane (an old kraal, or animal pen) to the awe-inspiring ruins of an ancient sugar mill. There's a strange beauty to the ruins, but Ranger Neer reminds us that this is the "physical manifestation of a horrific time," when African slaves were forced by their Danish masters to work 12- to 14-hour days in the sweltering heat. The broken-down walls exposed yellow and red brick from Holland, massively constructed to resist hurricanes and earthquakes.
From the mill it is a brief walk to the edge of Reef Bay, where you can cool off from the hike with a plunge in the warm tropical waters before catching a hired boat to your hotel or retracing your steps back to park headquarters.
