St. Croix and Mt. Victory Camp


Natural Beauty and Sustainability

"We floated the last two nights through tropical soundscapes on the landship...."
     --Ben and Sarah Jones, Jasper, GA.

St. Croix is the best-kept secret in the Caribbean. It's where people go to avoid the crowded, hyper-commercial islands overrun with cruise ship packaged-experiences. St. Croix has seemingly endless amounts of coral reef, deep valleys with ruins, hiking spots, wacky beach bars, get-down music of all types, a high quality local cuisine, jazz groups, and the cruzan culture of independent thinking, an ethnic kallaloo, fertile ground for artists, dreamers, and poets. Our local Cruzan Rum and afro-caribbean cuisine are exceptional.

There's a long tradition of Caribbean camping, tents or shanties on the adjacent beach, country camps (called a campyard in Jamaica) for small farming and peaceful retreat from the more hectic life in town. A steady flow of fresh fruits and veggies, farm meats and poultry filter down the hill to the extended family throughout the island.

We're located on the edge of thousands of acres of Caribbean cattle country, grass covered hills, deeply forested guts, views out over the Caribbean Sea. Some of the best hiking on St. Croix!

Also within the grounds of Mt. Victory Camp is an important captive breeding program for red-footed land tortoises (geo-colonius denticulata), now in it's 20th year. It is housed inside the 1840's ruin of the Mt. Victory schoolhouse. Built in 1841, the building was part of the island's first school system. We hope to restore it for use as a function hall. Until then our fifth living unit (partially constructed from west indian almond tree that fell into the streambed) will be located on a platform inside the ruins.

We live here at the camp with some chickens, horses, and the camp dog. I've planted hundreds of tropical fruit trees. There's a sawmill to make lumber, kitchen gardens for food, and fresh fish from the sea down the hill in Frederiksted.

Close to the We're rustic, not fancy. There's horses...and manure, there's chickens...and roosters (crowing very early). It's the sub-tropics so there are giant millipedes, 5 types of lizards, giant toads, Cuban tree frogs. Iif you're easily creeped out, you might want to stay with the more conventional tourist hotels.

Want to know why the locals are so laid back? We don't sweat the small stuff. Units must be cleaned by users before leaving, linens changed weekly, there's power outages, sudden odd calamities, that's the point of falling off the earth, isn't it?

Buy groceries or hang-out in the remarkable town of Frederiksted. A colonial/gingerbread town, there's nothing quite like it anywhere, a heady mix of old Cruzan, latin, Caribbean Creole, ex-pat statesiders. The world famous Blue Moon Jazz Club, alongside hot Santo Domingo bachata bars, and blazing calypso joints, fresh fish, shimmering turquoise on big sand beaches...nothing phony, the real thing! Five minute coast down the hill, our west-end beaches where the sea is calm and clear, the sand like sugar. Mt. Victory Camp is right up the valley from the famous Sunset Grill.