Hello. We are considering spending a week in Tortola next March, and we'd like to spend a day at Smugglers beach, but we will have a rental car, and I’m reading it’s an unpaved road. Is this a problem with the rental car contract? They usually say no off-pavement? How tough is it to drive that road to Smugglers?
Hopefully someone with more recent experience can chime in, but we took a cab to Smuggler's Cove back in 2003 and while the picnic lunch and snorkeling are lovely memories, the cab ride was definitely unpleasant. The road was very bumpy and hot (since it was June and we had to go so slowly that there was no breeze). I felt very carsick by the time we got to Smuggler's, but after a walk on the beach and some snorkeling, I was able to enjoy our picnic lunch (lots of ants under the trees, though!) If you can't get a rental company to allow the trip, maybe you could take a cab just for that one drive? I don't know what the snorkeling is like now.....20 years ago there was supposed to be some kind of route marked underwater that you could follow to snorkel the reef, but most of the markings had faded or disappeared, so we took our own route and just had to be very aware of our surroundings so we didn't get into a shallow area and damage the coral or scratch ourselves. We saw a small octopus and a flounder on the snorkel and the beach was lovely!
