PMV to St Croix - help!

wapa is crazy, outages occure all over the island but the feeder for downtown christiansted and the feed that has the hospital on it get power back usually quicker than others. lets not forget the cost of wapa. price is about .46 kwh. check your electric to see what you pay kwh.

there is a hospital lots of good and bad comments on that

schools,people will tell you to think about the cost of private education. with three school aged children you will be looking at a minimun of 30,000 for all three children.

cost of food is higher here than stateside. stateside grocery stores have really god sales, we have sales but not as good as the states. if you use coupons, ask the retailer first if they accept them. there are a few on line coupon sites that yuo can print them from. we do not get coupons in a sunday paper.

read these boards for crime info. and read it again.

also check the posts for places that ship here. drugstore.com and barnes and noble are two of my favorites.

gas for your car, my brother lives in ocean city md and pays less than we do by about .20

good luck with your pmv

Hi folks!

My husband and I are taking a PMV to St Croix next week. We are a family of 5 - including 3 elementary school aged girls. I know I need to look at the schools. That is on the agenda. Any recommendations about what else we NEED to look at?

I am wondering about the health care. With 3 little girls, things happen... Is there a hospital that can take care of most problems (i.e. stitches, broken arms, strange bug bites, cancer...all the crazy stuff life throws at you). Is there an ER that we can count on?

There is an ER but expect long waits, there are a few clinic that do ER stuff..

We are a laid back family who think this could be the opportunity of a lifetime, but I don't want to be dumb (DUH!).

I have seen many posts from people who hate WAPA and have outages frequently. Is there a part of the island that seems more stable electricity wise? I can deal with outages, but I think I would go nutty if it was a daily ordeal.

It can be daily and after a storm it can be days before power is restored

I know there is a honeymoon phase with a move to the islands. Great! But I want to know more about the daily grind of getting life going in the right direction when the honeymoon has passed. I know this is vague. I apologize!

One last dumb, dumb, dumb question, but I can't help it! I am an NFL freak! Can I get Directv or Dish with good reception?

both Dish and direct TV are available

Our family is very into soccer and hope to find some good organized sports for the kids (and maybe for the adults).

The youth soccer league is just starting and is very popular

Any thoughts are appreciated!

I agree with everything Bombi said. 😎

Only thing to add is, "be careful" ...you ask about DISH and "is there a hospital",---and those seem like such basic questions you should already know the answer to (and are already answered on this msg bd) that maybe you need to do some more research.

One item that doesn't get much air time here on the Forum but certainly warrants a mention is travel to and from STX. It is very expensive and the number of flights have been cut recently. Of course, if you don't plan to travel much then this won't be an issue for you.

But, if you are like many here, and want or need to get up to the States, the "almost" monopoly of American Airlines causes fares to be high. For instance, to fly from St. Croix to San Juan round trip can be $331 in a couple weeks....this for a 20 minute prop plane flight! Some time ago I put in three experimental trips on American's website starting here and starting in Miami to see what those folks would have to pay to fly to typical US cities. It was roughly 3 times more expensive to fly from here to the same city as leaving from Miami. Of course, it makes some sense because we are farther away but not 3 times farther. So be aware of costly air fares in your planning.

Bombi, FYI...
DirecTV is no longer available on St. Croix. There is not an office here anymore. They are based out of Puerto Rico, and it's DirecTV Latin America. They are no longer taking any new customers from St. Croix, and St. Thomas, as of about 3 weeks ago. If that has changed, someone please correct me.

Maybe you could purchase a phone book and have it sent to you now, and browse the yellow pages, make a few phone calls from home now.

http://www.viphonebook.com

Thank you for the insights! You are of great help as I am doing my research. I know that my questions are very basic, but moving to an island was not exactly a topic of concern a few weeks ago. Thank goodness for the internet that allows us to search and communicate this way!

It sounds like the hospital has an ER similar to many of them on the mainland - long waits. It is a triage thing.

Now another question - what is the 'must see' hot spot for nighttime entertainment? We will have 2 nights to enjoy the island. Even if we don't take this job, well, we might as well have fun while there!

i dont know about nightime, but the beer drinking pig is fun but stinky

For live entertainment and other events on STX, see http://www.stcroixcalendar.com/
It's updated every week, mostly on Thursdays.

also, depends which two nights as to what is going on.

Will the kids be with you? The Guardians of Culture, Mocko Jumbies perform around the island. Our favorite, when my granddaughter visits, is the Carambola Friday night show. Adults enjoy it, too.