Virgin Islands 2026 Day 3: Maho, Little Maho (!!), Francis Bay and Trunk Bay

Friday, March 27, 2026

Ahhh this day was another great one!! I had so much fun. 🤩

Started out again with a relatively slow morning, which is our pretty typical vacation mode.

Ethan had a rough draft of a paper due by Friday night so he was up finishing that up on the screen porch:

I woke up around 7:30, had tea, wrote my post, etc for a bit. I loooove a good balcony or patio + view to lounge on and it is a big priority for me when I book lodging. 🙂

We headed out earlier than the previous day, thankfully. Ha. This would be our last full day on St John, so we wanted to take advantage of it.

Original plan included 4 nights/3 days, and we ended up deciding to do 3 nights/2 days before heading to St Thomas. (After the whole lodging snafu, I thought maybe we’d only do 2 nights here but this place is SO GOOD that we all agreed we should stay Friday night too, to allow us the full day Friday to enjoy.)

The plan for the day was: MORE BEACHES!!

I really wanted to find even better snorkeling. We had had very good snorkeling at Hawksnest Beach but I wanted GREAT snorkeling.

I also wanted to get to the world famous Trunk Bay at some point- which has been repeatedly voted “the most beautiful beach in the world”, apparently.

Decided to head for Maho Beach first. Easy access, some parking, food and amenities nearby. Also, I read there are often lots of turtles, and Ivan missed seeing the turtles the day before.

Stopped off at another lookout on the way:

We managed to snag a parking spot in a small lot directly across from the beach. There’s a very cute food truck/bar area there as well.

Grabbed some waters as we were out and headed to the beach!

Maho Beach ( plus Little Maho Beach and Francis Bay Beach)

The beach was so beautiful! Loved the white boats docked out there, too. Adds another dimension.

This beach is not super wide, and it was a bit busier than I would prefer…. We had lucked out the day before and the beaches were not busy. But it still wasn’t terrible, and I guess to be expected in this season!

We found a good spot in the shade under the trees.

Love this pic of the boys!!!

From here, my photos stop, because I spent the next ~3.5 hours in the water!!

We found THE BEST SNORKELING!!!! I was so excited.

Hard to see, but in the pic below, we swam out to Maho Point (not the big point but the smaller one- you have to look closely).

That whole area is a huge reef and it was absolutely teeming with fish!!! We saw huge schools of fish, an eel, turtles, a puffer fish, clownfish, angel fish, a starfish, some huge grouper, and many others that I don’t even know the names of. Bright colored fish, all different sizes.. it was awesome.

Sadly, I of course have no photo evidence, which you know kills me!! 😅

From there we kept swimming around the point, and we got to Little Maho Beach.

This was the most beautiful spot I have ever been in my life. I can’t even explain. It’s a pretty small beach, only accessible by hiking trail. First, there was not a single person on the beach. Second, the way the hills looked from here it was like a multi-layer view of them (different from on big Maho). It was absolutely stunning and I wished soooo badly that I had a camera!! I tried to just stare at it and memorize it to photograph it with my mind.

We then swam even farther over to Francis Bay Beach! There were multiple reefs all along here.

And the best part- there were NO other snorkelers out there!!

When we finally swam back (it was far!! and so much swimming), I saw all these people just like drinking in the water or sitting there… I was thinking, omg people, put your snorkels on and get out there!! It was so good.

I actually have not snorkeled that many times before, but I realized- I absolutely LOVE it!! I am a snorkeler and I didn’t even know it!!! I just could not get enough.

When we got back, it was probably like 2 pm and I was famished. We went across the street and got some grilled shrimp tacos which totally hit the spot. (2 tacos for $25, no sides included…) 😳

We hung out for a while longer and the boys played some catch in the water, etc.

We didn’t want to leave, BUT I also wanted to get to world famous Trunk Bay yet!! So we tore ourselves away and drove down the road ~10 minutes or so to Trunk Bay.

Trunk Bay

Being later afternoon, it was not as busy! I feel like this is my cheat code for busy places. Go later, not earlier, lol. I’ve had success with this in other places too (thinking about Costa Rica).

Everyone says “go first thing in the morning!” But then everyone tries to do that… by late afternoon, many people start to pack up to go get ready for dinner reservations, or in this case, day trippers from St Thomas start to head back.

We found the enormously popular Trunk Bay to be only moderately busy with plenty of space for us.

It is just stunning!!

Here the main attraction (besides the views) is to snorkel around that little island show below. There’s actually an underwater “trail” you can follow.

The boys, Ivan and I headed back out and saw more great stuff!! I think it was definitely better at Maho today, but there were tons of fish here too. (I think it can vary day to day.)

It was just not full sunshine the whole time at Trunk Bay and the water was slightly choppy, leading to not perfect visibility. It was still super awesome though!!

On my way back in I saw 2 stingrays swimming around below me!

Post-snorkeling and super happy:

Enjoying the views while I dried off. It was even less busy post-snorkeling:

I definitely could have stayed all the way to sunset, but… I really wanted to try to get to the Windmill Bar Restaurant.

It’s a well known place up in the hills very close to our VRBO, actually, just a couple minutes away.

It’s supposed to be great at sunset and they also technically close at 8, so we had to hurry. They do not take reservations.

We all showered and got ready. Realized we didn’t really need to rush to make “sunset” because clouds rolled in and it didn’t look like there would be much of one, anyway!

We got there by a little after 7. The sky was still so beautiful!

There was live music and it was pretty full. It’s totally open seating, first come first serve, but after waiting just briefly at the bar rail, we snagged a 6 top table in the bar!! There was live music and the most incredible views.

Haha, this girl must have taken about 900 selfies. 😆 I mean, it is a good spot for a selfie!

Waiting for our table. Only waited like 5 minutes.

Dinner! This was super fun and I’m glad we made it to this place.

You can’t really see in the pic but all the lights from St Thomas twinkle in the background.

We were done and home by about 8:30 or so, which is early for us!! Ha.

But I was tired. I think the travel and my late night night the night before plus like 4-5 hours of swimming were catching up with me. The tropical drink I had with dinner probably did not help. 😅

I stretched out on the little couch on the screen porch and dozed off a bit! It started to rain and the birds/insects chirping and other tropical sounds literally sounded like one of those “white noise rainforest” tracks. It was heavenly.

After my little nap, lol, I went into bed early and slept great. Sooo relaxing!!!

Now this morning we head to St. Thomas for the next 5 nights.

I’m feeling very grateful and satisfied with the amount of time and things we got to see and do we ended up with on St John!! It’s just the most beautiful place.

And our VRBO is a 10/10!! I will share link later.