Tuesday, June 16, 2009

BVI Vacation A Day on Virgin Gorda

It's very hard to try to pick out which sunrise picture is the best. As I sit on the deck drinking my coffee and reliving the fun we had yesterday, I snap one and think this is IT! Then I wait a little longer and there's this one... and IT's the best.









Then before long a brief shower graces the hillside with a rainbow... make it a double. Why decide, I'll take them all. I'll store the beauty up in my mind to bring out and review when I'm back at work in the real world.

We had some trouble with our water supply on Trinity. Long story short, it has one very large forward tank and one extremely small one aft. We thought there was something wrong with the pump as we quickly used up the aft tank thinking there was no way it could be out of water. We had assumed the tanks were the same size. Anyway, Brittney went ashore to take a long hot shower in the morning and radioed to be picked up. I sent Bruce and Melissa and had a few moments to myself. Brittney is becoming quite the little dinghy queen!
Here is Melissa enjoying the morning while Brittney made breakfast down in the galley.




Brittney seemed to take to life aboard the boat and was a whiz in the kitchen. I was only too glad to let her have it. She produced some wonderful taquitos.


We went ashore after breakfast and found an open air taxi to take us on the scenic tour over the top of Virgin Gorda to the Baths far at the other end of the island. We climbed up and up while the driver screamed around the sharp curves on the "wrong side of the road".




Our first stop was for a look to see the view back from where we had come. It was breathtaking.




We loaded up for the next portion of our drive and found ourselves over the summit and beginning the descent on the other side. This afforded us a spectacular view of Savannah Bay on the right and of Spanish Town in the distance.
We couldn't get enough. But we still had a ways to go, so we piled back into the taxi for the last leg through Spanish Town and up through the boulders to The Bath's. This is a very famous spot with the charter boat people. Some people anchor for the day and dinghy over to the beach. We prefer to take the taxi ride for the view.




We wound our way down from the top through the giant rocks strewn hither and yon down the path to the beach below. We had a great time playing with the rocks. This one looks like a half buried skull.




We deposited our valuables into a locker and went into the caves to have a look around.




The caves have a pathway that winds all around in through these rocks that must have been tossed upon this beach by the gods.

They are half in and half out of the water and you could easily spend hours here playing around in the cool recesses.




Hey Brittney... hold this for me for a sec!




Ok Mom... I've got it!




We had the taxi driver coming back for us in a couple of hours and were surprised to find our time was speeding by quickly. We had to move on to the beach for some snorkeling.
It was getting hot even though we had some cloud cover so we were happy to get right into the cool clear waters.




No matter how much snorkeling you do here in the BVIs, it's always very different from each of the other places. The Bath's is one of the most other-worldly there is. The huge rocks tumbling down into the water continue what they started on shore, providing some spectacular snorkeling vistas.




The sandy bottom stretches out from the rocks and I found this ray cruising around with his friend. I hung around for lots of pictures until I began to think he was looking annoyed, so I left him to his business.




We left the beach and trudged back up the pathway to the Top of the Bath's restaurant for a drink. The day had become very warm and we were in need a dip in the pool that was waiting for us there. Bruce and I had a quick dip while the girls did some power shopping. We realized that our taxi driver was waiting for us so we had to cut it short.


The taxi took us back over to Spanish Town so that we could visit the grocery store there. The kids did some more shopping but it was mid afternoon and many of the shops were closed. Thank goodness! While we were waiting for our taxi the skies opened up and began dumping buckets of rain.




We piled aboard our taxi and began the perilous journey back across the way we had come hours before. This time there were rivers of rain washing down the streets.




The wind was attempting to lift the awning right off of the taxi and I thought that if it wasn't successful, it would settle for overturning the whole thing.




We careened through the wet streets narrowly missing the other vehicles. We screamed! Bruce said that if he had been driving like that, I would have had the divorce papers signed before we got back to the boat. Somehow the danger is different when you're on vacation. It was FUN!!!
We made it back alive somehow and had to leave Virgin Gorda behind. We sidled up to the fuel dock to get some ice and fill our water tanks. Hopefully we would make it on what we had for the rest of the week. Leverick Bay provides a free bag of ice and up to 300 gallons of free water with a mooring. Rock on Leverick!
We left there and sailed the short hop back to Tortola and Marina Cay. It's a very beautiful little spot protected by a reef.
We went ashore in the dink to do some shopping at the Pussers store. I found a wonderful sailcloth bag but decided to think about it for a while before buying it. There would be another Pusser's store to visit later in the week.
While we were there, we found out that Michael Bean was in Haiti. We had planned to see his show and were greatly disappointed. It was to have been one of the highlights of the trip. Oh well... it had been a long day so we retired to the boat and made dinner, then turned in for an early night.

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