Planning my First Caribbean Travel
Ever had a bad day at work? How about a whole week full of long, hard days. Ever get to Friday and just say “I need a vacation!” Yeah… me too. So after a long week of work in mid-May, I decided I needed to get away. I had been planning on “getting away” for a while, but just hadn’t done it yet. In fact, about 18 months ago, I bought a pre-paid vacation package and it has been burning a hole in my pocket for quite a while. In fact, if not used by Thanksgiving, I’ll have wasted about $4k. So that’s when I decided to look at options for Caribbean Travel.
So, how far away can I get from work and stress? For an easy answer, all I had to do was turn on the radio and listen to the familiar Jimmy Buffet lyrics of Margaritaville. I looked thru my travel options and found availability 2 weeks out at the Margaritaville Vacation Club by Wyndham in St Thomas. St Thomas is one of the islands in the US Virgin Islands. The airport code STT had reasonable flights from different locations. I talked it over with my wife, ran some numbers, and planned my escape. Let’s get into the details.
Where I Will Stay
For my first experience with Caribbean travel, I have a Wyndham Discovery package. We bought it while finishing up our WorldMark Discovery package in October of 2022. Therefore, it needs to be used by November of 2024. The package included 400,000 points. With none used so far, I had plenty of options for this. For the desired week of June 3rd, they had rooms available for 17k to 51k per night. My wife wanted to invite her parents to join us, so we went with the 51k per night option. This landed us the 2 Bedroom Presidential Ocean View Suite. The idea is to check in on Monday and Check out on Friday. Since this is a vacation to get away from it all, I opted for the full week and the best room available. It’s Wyndham’s job to make sure I enjoy it because they would of course love to get more money from me.
How I Will Get There
Getting to St Thomas is a bit trickier. There was much debate about if we go visit her family in Florida first and then go to St Thomas from there… or just go straight from home. If we go from home, we can use United MileagePlus miles to pay for the trip. If we go with cheap flights to Florida, we can just pay for flights to Florida and then probably use Spirit to fly from Fort Lauderdale to St. Thomas. In the end, I made my decisions to just use miles and fly from home. Her parents can fly from Fort Lauderdale. However… one of the nice perks that goes with using MileagePlus miles is that if something better comes along, I can always change my mind and not lose anything. And of course, I will be checking to see if other/better/cheaper Caribbean travel options emerge over the next 10 days.
What Will I Do On My Caribbean Travel?
So what do I plan to do in St Thomas? Most of all – relax. But along with that I want to be able to tour the Pirate Treasure museum as well as visit Coral World Ocean Park. There is also the St Thomas Skyride at Paradise Point along with the World Famous Mountain Top – and yes, those are two different things. Compared to a week at work… this trip is sure to bring in some much needed relaxation. Be sure to stay tuned for updates about travel plans… and exciting stories about this adventure.
