The Alpha and the Omega of my September 2011 trip

Two views of nature in the islands, one of immense strength and another of delicate beauty.

That's St. Croix on the left, with the waves breaking over coral rock and tossing Atlantic water onto the shore of this American territory in the U.S. Virgins. The orchids resided on Barbados, our first island stop where 30,000 orchid plants resided 850 feet above sea level in the middle of this island. You can learn more at www.orchidworldbarbados.com. These two pictures represent the bookends of the cruise, starting in Barbados and ending in St. Croix, from rare beauty to awesome power of water meeting land. And it also represented both ends of my travel - by bus to the Orchid World, and by bicycle six miles from Frederiksted to Ham's Bay (and back another six). A little known fact about St. Croix - the only American territory where people legally drive on the left side of the road. Of these two islands, I think I'd have to rank the last visited better than the first.