BVI Virgin Trip Report
May 31 - June 7
This was our first vacation in the BVI. We have previously spent a week "across the street" in St. John, and decided to put our passports to use and visit the same but different place this time. We are not sailors (yet), so our island time was all land based.
We started our travels at 4:30am with a drive to the Atlanta airport for a flight to San Juan, then a connection with Cape Air to Beef Island. Other than some inconveniences in San Juan, we had a good trip.
We rented the Casa Caribe villa in Little Apple Bay - two doors down from TTOL regular Manpot and his lovely wife - right between Sebastians's hotel and the villas. This was our first, though fairly insignificant, disappointment. The Casa Caribe manager had emailed us earlier the week before our vacation with an upgrade from the small downstairs studio to the larger upstairs one-bedroom villa. That didn't happen. We stayed packed for the first two days while the villa manager promised us that someone would come around to prepare the upstairs unit for our stay. After two days of that not happening we surrendered and told her not to worry about it. We were fine where we were.
First day in we had a good meal at Bananakeet Cafe. It didn't knock my socks off, but it was good. My wife, on the other hand, loved her meal. Plus we had our first BVI sunset.
Officially starting our BVI vacation Sunday, we... um... hell, what did we do? I'm pretty sure we did a quick drive around, had a drink at Sebastian's, went to a beach, swam, supper at The Elms, beer, bbq, and another sunset.
We visited Trellis Bay one day for a view of Aragorn's work - bought some t-shirts, lunched at the cyber cafe (the slow service everyone talks about was nakedly obvious there), back to the villa to sit and watch the ocean.
Third day - JVD! I'm sorry folks, I loved JVD. I loved Soggy Dollar. We sat under a palm tree all day at Soggy Dollar and drank and swam. Really - that's it. It was one of the best parts of our trip.
Fourth day, the wife wasn't feeling great, so I went on my own road trip up to Sage Mountain, to Smuggler's Bay beach, and "around".
Another day - more beaching. Ate our first Caribbean lobster at Cruzin'.
Last day in the BVI we went by ferry to Virgin Gorda and the Baths. We quickly learned that we really should have done that trip at the front of our vacation instead of the back. We had a blast, but it is a physical trip. One cannot simply sit on the beach at the Baths. We had lunch at the Top Of the Baths, ferried back over, cleaned up, and had supper at the Elms again with Malcom, his lovely, their friend, and our new friend, Jim, who works for the BVI tourist board.
Then Saturday's flushter cuck of a travel back home - by 9pm we were safe, secure, and happy back in our north Georgia home, and already plotting our return to the BVI (avoiding San Juan).
Major thanks to the folks on TTOL for your words of advice and suggestions. We didn't do everything we wanted to do, but we did everything we wanted to do. <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/handshake.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/dine.gif" alt="" /> <img src="http://www.traveltalkonline.com/forums/images/graemlins/Clapping.gif" alt="" />
