Video: Hiking St John, USVI

Position: 18°21’05.2″N 64°46’40.1″W

The Backstreet Buccaneers take a hike on St. John. Along the way we stopped at a couple of ruined buildings of indeterminate age. 150 years ago the hills you see in the video were terraced and covered in sugar cane. One of the highlights of our walk was visiting the Annaberg Sugar Plantation, now part of the St. John National Park. St. John has a long history of sugar and slavery. By the mid-1700s slaves outnumbered the Danish settlers by 5:1. Denmark, the previous colonizers of the US Virgin Islands, abolished slavery on July 3, 1848. July 3 is also my sister’s birthday. The United States purchased the islands from Denmark in 1917.