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Photo by: Zach Stovall

Wednesday, May 9

Fresh pineapple for breakfast as sunburn forced us to a wonderful morning tour of Drake's Seat, Mountain Top and Magens Bay, as we covered the island by bus for three hours. Lovely shots from above as crystal clear waters lapped against white beaches. Hibiscus still in bloom and bougainvillea dots the roads. Beautiful night with heavenly moon and piña coladas.

Tours are still big business on St. Thomas – it's not uncommon to see open-air vans (locally called "safaris") shuffling dozens of visitors from one attraction to the next – but we prefer going it alone in the Jeep. Our first stop is Magens Bay, where we find find the half-mile crescent packed with day-trippers. When I asked my mother about Magens, she'd said there were a handful of people on the day of her tour, surely less than a dozen. For us, romance requires at least a modicum of privacy, so after an irresistible dip in the crystalline sea, Joy and I hop back in the Jeep. We're not far from Drake's Seat, the hilltop lookout from which 16th-century explorer Sir Francis Drake supposedly watched his fleet. It's a stunning down-island view and yet another popular spot on the safari trail. We're hoping the next stop on the honeymoon map brings a measure of tranquility, but we're suspect when we pull up to the colorful hand-painted mural that says, "Welcome to the World Famous Mountain Top Home of the Banana Daiquiri." This being St. Thomas' highest point at 1,500 feet, the place sees plenty of action.

Fortunately, however, it's well after 4 p.m., and since most cruise-ship passengers have long returned to their motherships, we've got the place all to ourselves. Two potent banana daiquiris later, Joy and I sit and admire the sweeping panorama: We can see uninhabited islets like Hans Lollick and Great Tobago, the British Virgin Islands, including Jost Van Dyke and Tortola, plus St. Thomas' sister island of St. John. We steal the moment to smooch like newlyweds. The glow lasts as we tick off the last item of my parents' itinerary with a beautiful evening on the Lady Lynsey. The 53-foot catamaran is owned and operated by the Ritz-Carlton St. Thomas – the island's grand-dame hotel and spa – and we're thrilled to be greeted aboard with guava coladas. Under clear skies and on smooth seas, we watch the sun dip into the horizon. The mystical green flash eludes us yet again, but when the pinks turn to purples and the purples fade to black, we count shooting stars until we reach the shore.

Thursday, May 10

Spent the afternoon at Coki Beach with our first exciting experience with snorkeling – a marvelous underwater sport provided you blow correctly through the pipe. Delved beneath the remarkably clear water invading the kingdom of beautiful tropical fish. Iridescent, blue, orange, large and small – a lovely, magnificent world to behold as the gazer loses track of time and space. Swam hand in hand, perusing coral and darting denizens of the deep – simply thrilling.

Until then, the only shade of water my folks had ever seen was the murky Atlantic – forget about ever having breathed through a tube while swimming. It was all very new. My mother remembers being simultaneously frightened and amazed. "I was absolutely stunned by the brilliance of colors," she says. "It was like nothing I'd ever seen in my entire life." Coki Beach was the premier snorkeling destination of its time, with fully intact coral reefs and schools of fish. Excited to test the water – and to try something new ourselves – Joy and I head to Coral World, a marine park and undersea observatory just a stone's throw from Coki Beach.

We're here to try Snuba, a cross between snorkeling and Scuba: Instead of air being provided from a tank on your back, it's pumped through a hose from a raft on the water's surface – sort of like diving with a 20-foot umbilical cord, no experience necessary. After a quick orientation, we plop into the azure water and follow our guide. Instantly, we're surrounded by brightly striped wrasse, rainbow-colored parrotfish and schools of blue tang. At a depth of 15 feet, Joy points out thriving brain and elkhorn corals. Bright shafts of sunlight pierce the Caribbean Sea as we clasp each other's hands, exploring for nearly an hour. We vividly relive the details of that awe-inspiring experience over grilled mahimahi sandwiches at Fungi's on nearby Water Bay. The dockside cafe overlooks the old Pineapple Beach Resort, and when Joy recognizes an aged wooden pier where my parents posed for a photo, we can't help ourselves. We find our way to the beach, set up the camera and shoot away. A few minutes later we're dangling our legs off the pier.  "Do you wanna move back?" says Joy. We lived in the islands long ago, having met and fallen in love on St. Croix. "It's not a bad idea," I say, and it dawns on me that our experiment is working: Following my parents around St. Thomas, we have rediscovered our own romantic island dreams. As we stare at the horizon and fantasize about what kind of life we could have here, nostalgia and a sense of possibility wash over us. The view hasn't changed in more than 35 years, nor has the enchanting power of the Virgin Islands.

Sunday, May 12

Hunted for last- minute seashells as we harbored thoughts of our final morning pineapple. Dressed and packed in time for a farewell piña colada ...  the end of a marvelous and perfect honeymoon.

My parents have always been avid shell collectors, and it's a favorite pastime of ours too, so with last-day blues setting in, Joy and I set out to find a beach to call our own. Working on a tip we got a few days earlier, we search for Lindquist Beach on the island's northeastern shore. It takes us awhile to find the unmarked entrance road, and when we finally pull into a dusty lot with two other vehicles, one of them has a bumper sticker that reads, "Jah Is My Co-Pilot." Island cars. Jackpot. When we reach the sun-dappled shore, we regret we hadn't found Lindquist sooner. The white-sand beach is nearly empty. Two boys – both with ribbed tank tops and thin rows of braids – are racing by their dad in the shallows, and a 20-something former mainlander is enjoying a dip with her visiting mom.

That's it. On a beach that's perfectly pristine, there's no one else in sight. As we gaze into the distance, there's not even a building within eyeshot. Just an endless island view from a place that feels so evocative of the St. Thomas of my parents' past. We laze the day away, and when Joy and I troll the water's edge for shells, my father's sentiments echo across the decades: "the end of a marvelous and perfect honeymoon."

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