Coconuts on the Beach, St. Croix

When visiting a new tropical place, we always try to scope out the funky beach bars and the locals hangouts. Before visiting St. Croix, we asked the folks at St. Croix Lime for recommendations. They obliged and also reminded us to check the calendar on their website for live music and updates.

Coconut’s on the Beach was a bar we saw mentioned on the website and passed by it while driving through Frederiksted and thought we’d stop for some liquid refreshment.

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There was a cloud looming overhead and no cruise ships in port that day so Coconuts was quiet, but looked like a great place to sit back and relax.

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We ordered a few Corona’s, sat down and took it all in. From Coconut’s you can see the cruise ship pier at Fredriksted, you can catch a glimpse of the lovely Sandy Point Beach or you can stare out at the beach right under the bar.

Would have loved to have been there to enjoy the nightlife and some live music! By the time we left, a few more tables had filled up and as we walked through the Wall of Lost Soles, we figured we’d be back someday…

Coconuts 2 (600)

For another Corona, or perhaps a Cruzan Confusion!!

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To find out more, visit Coconuts website here:
Coconuts on the Beach

More posts on St. Croix that you might be interested in:

Rum Therapy On St. Croix

Turtle Beach, Buck Island, St. Croix

Sandy Point, St. Croix

Cruzan Rum Factory Tour

Snorkeling at Buck Island

Mt. Pellier Domino Club, St. Croix

copyright©Rum Therapy Beaches, Bars & More, Tropical Travel Guide, 2013
Pictures and other content may not be re-used without written consent from Rum Therapy, LLC

Bones Rum

As we prepared for a recent USVI adventure, we read about the Bones Rum shops in St. Thomas and St. John and had to add it to the list of places to visit. Little did we know, we would actually end up visiting both Bones Rum locations the same day!
(Note: the Bones Rum Shop closed in St. John in 2013, so be sure to visit Bones at their store in St. Thomas)

We weren’t able to find an address for the Bones Rum Shop in St. Thomas but read that it was located across from Charlotte Amalie, so we started walking. After searching a bit, we ran right into it. It’s located on Waterfront Drive just a little west of where you catch the ferry (from Charlotte Amalie) to St. John. (Find Bones Rum on our St. Thomas Map)

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Bones Rum, St. Thomas

The store carries a variety of branded merchandise and features a bar with free rum tasting and “self pour drinks” – excellent concept! We eagerly agreed to the free rum tasting and must agree with the Bones Rum slogan “Smooth Rum for the Rough Seas”…

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For $8.00 you can  get a glass of one of the featured varieties of frozen drinks (including Painkillers) and then add the rum yourself! For an extra $3.00 you can get it in a Bones Rum glass that you can take home.

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We sampled some of their tasty BBQ sauces along with our rum drinks.

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At the time of writing, Bones Rum is only available in their store on St. Thomas, so be sure to bring a bottle (or two) home if you like it.

Here’s one of the recipe’s from the Bones Recipe Card

Pirates Grog
(makes one)

2. oz. Bones Rum
2 oz. water
3/4 oz. Lime Juice
1 tsp Brown Sugar
2 cloves
1 Cinnamon Stick

Heat in a saucepan and serve in a mug.

Find the Bones Rum Store on our  St. Thomas Map

To see more posts on these and other islands, check out our Island Blog Directory

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Pictures and other content may not be re-used without written consent from Rum Therapy, LLC

Cruzan Rum Factory Tour

We just returned from enjoying a week of Rum Therapy in St. Croix. We’d never been to St. Croix before, so there were many things we wanted to check out. One of the top things on our list was a tour of the Cruzan Rum Factory.

Finding the Cruzan Rum Factory was an adventure in itself. For those of you who have been on St. Croix, you may know that there aren’t a ton of signs directing you to different sites, and the map didn’t show many of the small roads. We probably could have purchased a more detailed map somewhere, but how lost could we get on an island????….

Anyway, we headed to the west end of the island. John was driving, ’cause they drive on the left side and I volunteered to navigate. He may have ended up with the best end of the deal! We turned on 64 as the map indicated, only to find that 64 was actually a loop and we needed to be clear on the other side of that loop. Finally figuring it out, we saw the factory through the foliage. As we turned in, we could smell a wonderfully sweet aroma…molasses!

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We found our way to the building where the tour started and anxiously awaited our guide. Tours at the Cruzan Rum Factory are $5.00 per adult and run continuously from 9:00-11:30a.m. and 1:00-4:15p.m.

Turns out, our tour guide was Karen Nelthropp Low, a member of the Nelthropp Family that has produced Cruzan Rum for 7 generations on St. Croix. She certainly knew her stuff and eagerly answered all of our questions and then some.

St. Croix used to produce quite a bit of sugar cane until the 1960’s and up to that point the Cruzan Distillery used mainly molasses made from local sugar cane. Now a high end molasses from Guatemala is shipped into the local port daily and then delivered by trucks to the distillery.

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We began the tour by walking past enormous vats of molasses, tropical rain water and yeast fermenting. It is quite the active process with lots of bubbling and gurgling occurring. The aroma was strong and sweet and it was tempting to just stick your finger in to give it a taste.

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When the bubbling and gurgling stop, the molasses has fermented and is ready for the next step.

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Karen told us the the Nelthropp family and staff sit down daily to test rum in various stages of production to ensure the quality of the product. Wonder if they’re hiring?

We also learned that Cruzan takes extra time and care to remove the fusels (heads and tails as she explained it) from the rum during distillation. The fusel oil is an impurity that can cause a slightly antiseptic smell and taste and can contribute to hangovers! We inadvertently tested this statement several times during this trip and must say – they may have something here!

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The way in which a rum’s age is calculated was a bit confusing, but I found it quite interesting that Cruzan uses one-time use bourbon barrels from Jim Beam Bourbon Distillery to age their rums.

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After appropriately aging, the rum is removed from the barrel by tapping out the cork and emptying the rum and allowing it to flow from a cistern to a holding tank.

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The rum is sent to Florida to be bottled. Cruzan used to bottle its rums in St. Croix, but due to the increase in demand for their rum, they needed to move that part of the process off island.

The tour concludes with a rum tasting and a cocktail of your choice! We had a good time and learned a bit about rum manufacturing. The tour is well worth it if you get to St. Croix someday! Cruzan Rum website: http://cruzanrum.com/

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More posts on St. Croix that you might be interested in:

Rum Therapy On St. Croix

 Turtle Beach, Buck Island, St. Croix

 Sandy Point, St. Croix

 Snorkeling at Buck Island

Glass Bottom Kayaking in a Bioluminescent Bay

Mt. Pellier Domino Club, St. Croix

Copyright©Rum Therapy
Pictures and other content may not be re-used without written consent from Rum Therapy, LLC.  All information is correct to our knowledge at the time of writing, but be sure to verify current information before your visit.