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I’ve been to St. Thomas on several occasions as a day trip aboard a cruise ship, so I’m always looking for new things to do from Charlotte Amalie. This time, I opted to take an excursion to Cas Cay in St Thomas, USVI. While I’ve spent the days there exploring the Charlotte Amalie cruise port, relaxing on beautiful beaches, snorkeling in St. John, and even hopping on a local ferry to visit nearby Water Island.

This adventure in Cas Cay is a half day tour where you go kayaking, snorkeling, and hiking around the Cas Cay Mangrove Lagoon Marine Reserve & Wildlife Sanctuary. It’s the best eco-friendly tour in St Thomas and involves plenty of soft adventure to paddle and see amazing local wildlife.

Cas Cay St Thomas USVI: Our Amazing Ecotour

This tour is operated by VI Ecotours and they offer two time options for tours, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The morning tour starts at 9:30am and the afternoon tour starts at 1:30pm. If you’re visiting from a cruise ship, I recommend doing the morning tour, but it all depends on when your ship is in port.

The Cas Cay Kayak Snorkel and Hiking Tour is a three hour tour and they recommend that you arrive 15 minutes in advance. The meeting point is at the VI Ecotours Mangrove Lagoon Marina (6526 Estate Nadir, St. Thomas Mangrove Lagoon Wildlife Sanctuary & Marine Reserve).

You’ll need to make your own way there, though you shouldn’t have any issues hiring a local taxi. From Havensight Pier where most cruise ships dock, it is a 17 minute car ride to VI Ecotours. You can also ask your taxi driver to pick you back up at a set time.

Once you arrive, the folks at VI Ecotours will set you up with all the necessary equipment you’ll need. The tour begins with kayaking, so you’ll receive a lifejacket and a tandem kayak to use. Yes, you’ll be kayaking with your travel buddy or you’ll be matched with someone from the group if you’re traveling solo. They’ll also provide you with snorkel equipment and a safety briefing.

Kayaking the Cas Cay Mangrove Lagoon

After a quick safety lesson and explanation of where we would be visiting, we were ready to kayak around the Mangrove Lagoon. We left many of our belongings behind as we didn’t want them to get wet, and they were locked up safely in a storage locker.

We boarded the tandem kayaks. Yes, the kind that you share with another person. As our tour guides joked, “We’re tour guides, not relationship counselors!”, they can be both fun and frustrating to navigate depending on your partner. Thankfully, we had way more fun than frustration.

My sister, Robyn and I had a great system going where she sat in front and led the paddling. Left, right, left, right. If she wanted to paddle more on one side, she would yell out, Left! or Right! And with that, we were cruising along quite nicely.

Though we didn’t see very many birds while kayaking, this protected area is a large habitat for resident and migratory birds on the island. Cas Cay is amazing for anyone interested in bird-watching. It’s also ideal for kayaking and paddling with its calm, peaceful waters. We kayaked our way towards Cas Cay, a wildlife sanctuary island off the coast of St. Thomas.

Cas Cay Wildlife Sanctuary: Hermit Crabs

We left our kayaks on the shores and hiked on one of Cas Cay’s forest paths. Cas Cay is a deserted 15-acre tropical island, compromised of mangrove forests to the south and volcanic cliffs to the north. Our first stop was just off the shore to see all of the hermit crabs.

They truly are fascinating creatures and they were everywhere! From above, they looked like small shells, scurrying across the forest floor. I was really worried that people were going to step on them, but our guide reassured me that their shells are extremely strong. In fact, they can withstand 500 pounds of pressure! Even if someone stepped on top of one, it wouldn’t be enough weight to injure the crab or its shell.

I really enjoyed how knowledgeable the guides were in explaining the significance of the hermit crabs in the mangrove forest. Apparently, hermit crabs “upgrade” their shells up to three times a year, discarding their old one for a carefully chosen new one.

Hermit crabs are also nature’s meteorologists; we can tell what the weather is going to be like by how far the hermit crabs have climbed up the tree trunks. They can often predict wild weather changes too, like hurricanes.

Cas Cay Wildlife Sanctuary: The Local Flora

We continued our hike down the forest path, as our guides pointed out some of the local flora. There is a very poisonous tree that grows in St. Thomas called the Machineel tree. We were informed that all contact with this tree should be avoided. The leaves, bark, and fruits contain a caustic sap that can seriously injure or kill a person.

Christopher Columbus called the fruit of the Machineel tree the “Death Apple” after several of his men ate the fruit. The sap can also cause permanent blindness if it gets into your eyes.

On this hike, we admired the view from Cas Cay looking out to the surrounding wavy waters. The ocean water crashed against huge boulders and volcanic rocks along the shore. That water filtered back into the calmer areas where we first kayaked.

It had started to rain, though we were in our bathing suits and were already slightly wet from the kayaking. We were going to be in the water soon enough snorkeling, so the rain water really didn’t matter. I thought that the hazy atmosphere in the rain was very pretty. I’m sure that this place looks simply gorgeous on a sunny day, though the rain delivered a rather enchanting aura.

Cas Cay Wildlife Sanctuary: Red Point Blow Hole

One of the highlights of the short hike was witnessing the spectacle at the Red Point Blow Hole.  A blowhole is a geologic formation in which a wave enters the mouth of a sea cave and is pushed upwards towards a cavity existing above, resulting in a powerful blast of water.

With the short rain storm we experienced, the waves were crashing furiously against the cliffs and water was fiercely spraying into the air. Though we did spend a good amount of time here, I could have watched this beautiful scenery all day.

Snorkeling in St. Thomas

We hiked back towards our kayaks and grabbed our snorkel gear: it was time to explore the underwater areas around the mangrove forests out to sea. It’s a very unique area to snorkel and one of my favorite places to snorkel in the Caribbean. Swimming away from the shore, it appeared as though there were only a few coral reefs here and there.

There are many volcanic rocks buried beneath these waters that provided great hiding spots for the fish. There’s a large variety of fish, some I had never seen while snorkeling in the past. For instance, I saw a huge porcupinefish that was massive compared to all of the other fish. Another unique fish that I spotted was a Spotted Trunkfish that glided through the water with ease.

Robyn even saw a very unique carnivorous plant. It looked like a very normal reef plant, though when our guide skimmed the surface of it, the plant contracted at a rapid pace to trap its prey. Though we didn’t see any that day, others in our group saw barracudas, and on other occasions, stingrays, small sharks, and octopus have been seen at this snorkeling site.

I highly recommend donning your snorkel mask and swimming around Cas Cay. This is one of the best places to go snorkeling in St Thomas, USVI. At the end of our snorkeling trip, we swam by the mangrove forests. We observed their extensive roots intertwined beneath the surface of the water. This also happened to be home to numerous species of juvenile fish.

How to Book Your Tour

I highly recommend this tour to Cas Cay in St Thomas, USVI. It was great to see a less-traveled side of St. Thomas, especially when there are several cruise ships in port. It’s very quiet and peaceful there, even with a couple of tour groups.

Furthermore, we saw a region of St. Thomas that was largely untouched and preserved. The tour guides were very knowledgeable and the trip was very educational. It felt great to be active on a tour getting a bit of a workout with the kayaking, hiking, and snorkeling. You can book this tour here.

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