Roenblog

We had a fabulous vacation in Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. It was a needed respite from the winter weather in Milwaukee.

Day 1: Travel Day. We woke up early and drove to Chicago O’Hare. Jen had to get a new passport recently, and the kindly airport security guard informed her that she had forgotten to sign the new passport. Whoops! Probably should have been grounded for that, but a disaster avoided.

We flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico, and then hopped a smaller plane to Tortola. From Tortola, we took a 20-minute boat ride on the Rosewood Little Dix Bay catamaran. We were lumped in with big group from a tech-company that were on the same flight as us. After a beer on the beach and a rum punch on the boat over, Jenny had chatted with nearly all the tech company people. Apparently, they all thought she was with their company.

We spent the evening eating pizza at the hotel bar and watching the waves come in. Instant relaxation.

Day 2: We got up early (even though the time change was only one hour earlier) and hiked one of the trails leading off our resort to Savannah Bay. It was a steeper trail than we had imagined and cool weather when we started our hike. About half way up, we realized that we had forgotten to bring any water. Thankfully, we arrived at the beach on the other side in time to cool down in the waves. There was no one else on the beach, giving us the feeling of being on a deserted island.

We spent the rest of the day lounging at our resort’s beach, then we cleaned up for dinner in Spanish Town. We walked into town and had drinks at The Bath & Turtle overlooking the harbor. Then, we headed to dinner at Chez Bamboo. Chris ordered his first Antigua lobster of the trip there, which was a sight that made other diners’ heads turn — a two-pound (or three?) lobster served in the shell with a mound of mashed potatoes in one end.

Before our trip, we had debated on renting a car to drive around the island ourselves. There is really no need for this. The whole island only has about eight miles of road, and the local driving is scary enough that you’d rather take a taxi. British rules of the road dictate driving on the “wrong” side of the road, but all the cars are American, so the driver ends up being on the far side.

Day 3: The best part of our resort was a beach drop-off service. We could ask the resort to take us to any one of the smaller islands surrounding Virgin Gorda — or other beaches on the island itself. The resort would pack a picnic lunch, give us a beach umbrella, and the little boat would run up on the beach and kick us out. We took advantage of this nearly every day to see different parts of the island. Our first drop off was to Mountain Trunk Bay on Virgin Gorda, which was completely deserted. We stayed there for four hours, snorkeling around the coral reef and lounging on the beach.

That evening, we went to Bitter End Yacht Club on the other side of the island for dinner. Again, we were very glad that we didn’t rent a car. We had a nice taxi driver named Andy who took us over the steep roads on the island (at one point, a goat jumped in front of the truck while it was on a 45-degree decline) to the Gun Creek ferry, which is a public ferry service that takes visitors to the Bitter End Yacht Club, Biras Creek and Saba Rock. Apparently, Richard Branson’s island is near there. The ferry took us past huge yachts and some small cruise ships, like the 245-square foot Caledonia that we saw anchored in the harbor. The Bitter End Yacht Club itself was decked out like the Pirates of the Caribbean ships with dark wood and yacht flags on the ceilings. It was an odd mixture of people with cruise ship folks mingling with sailing enthusiasts, and us. The island doesn’t have any natural beaches so there is only a sliver of man-made beach around the resort — so don’t stay there unless you’re a sailor.

 Day 4: We scheduled another beach drop-off for a popular tourist destination called The Baths, which are a collection of giant boulders that form pools. At least two cruise ships had already unloaded boats of Italian and French-Canadian tourists before we arrived, so the beach was very crowded. We walked through The Baths in 30 minutes, which was a challenge because the rude Italians were just steaming through the nooks and crannies that you had to maneuver and weren’t courteous enough to let passersby through. Jenny took over by using the international hand gestures for “stop” and plowing through. Chris was nice enough to help a drag a bottom-heavy lady over a boulder. We were scheduled to be stranded with the Italians and their mankinis for four hours, but got lucky when we saw our resort’s boat dropped off another couple. Chris flagged them down and we were out of there in less than 45-minutes total round trip.

The Baths were nice, but we’d go early in the morning next time to avoid other people. To unwind from this trip, we were forced to spend the rest of the day drinking beers on our resort’s beach. We barely had enough energy to get cleaned up for dinner at the Pavilion Restaurant in our hotel where Chris ordered his second Antigua lobster, which was a little less of a spectacle this time. It’s less sweet than Maine lobster and more chewy.

Day 5: We scheduled another boat drop off for more snorkeling at Great Dog (or George Dog, they’re right next to each other, and we really couldn’t tell which we were on). The beach wasn’t as great here. It was obviously less used and more rocky — but we had the whole island to ourselves with just a few other snorkelers nearly a mile away diving off sailboats. The snorkeling was great with intricate coral reefs and natural wave breaks that allowed clear, calm waters.

The locals drivers were a great source of gossip. On the way back from the beach, our boat driver pointed out the new cliff-top house being built by the founder of Miracle Grow. Our taxi driver earlier had pointed out another villa owned by a New York big shot who had “gotten in trouble” and Morgan Freeman’s house, which is also empty due to a family dispute.

We cleaned up and headed into town for dinner at The Rock Café, which seemed a little cheesy at first with life-size cardboard cutouts of rock stars in the basement. Thankfully, we were moved to the patio near several huge volcanic rock boulders that had been made into a water fountain. Dinner was easily our best of the trip with garlicky spaghetti and clams, red snapper with caper sauce, key lime pie and tiramisu. The only downside were the cheeseballs sitting next to us who had been given a wine pocket guide and were giving the waitress a hard time about the specific vintages.

Day 6: Travel day home. The Virgin Gora airport has chickens and pregnant cats roaming freely throughout the terminal. Chicago O’Hare’s courtesy and American Airlines’ professionalism strike again with a 45-minute delay while on the ground trying to find a gate, but we arrived safely at home with our bags too. The weather was even warm enough for a decently easy adjustment back to the Northern Hemisphere.