Over the Top to Taboo

We went to bed knowing that today would break the pattern of beach, read, swim, walk, drink, repeat. Today we are going to walk the top of the island from the west down to the east. We didn't get up quite as early as we wanted but after our normal breakfast of bacon and eggs we headed up the hill behind our cottage. We climb quick from sea level to 600'. Now the path drops down and we normally take the right branch and drop down into Great Harbour, but today we take the left. The road is volcanic rock and dirt. If you slip and fall you'll rip whatever hits first. We quickly climb and in 20 minutes we are at the high point, about 950' above the sea. From here we can see all of the VIs, both US and British. From here the road goes up and down but more gently until we get the views of Little Jost, Diamond Cay and Sandy Spit. From here its 700 toe scrunching, knee pounding feet down till we get to see level and the easy walk thru the mangroves to Foxy's Taboo, his luxury beach bar.
At 11 its a bit later than usual for my Red Stripe, but it really hits the spot. We change from hiking shoes to Tevas and head out to the bubbly pool to cool down.
The bubbly pool is on the north side (think very big ocean) and the waves pound thru the narrow opening and pound down creating a natural jacuzzi. My it feels good to just sit and be pounded by the surf.
My expectation is that we will have 50 memorable meals this year. We've been here 6 days and have 6 contenders. Today's lunch will be one of the best. I had one of the best meals ever 3 years ago, grilled grouper. I'm ecstatic to hear that grouper is the catch of the day and I'm not disappointed. This will be one of our best lunches of 2010 or any year. All too soon, Nadine reminds me that I wanted to mooch a ride back to Great Harbour. The couple with the 4 door rental vehicle is finishing their lunch and its time to make my move. Fortunately they are willing to haul us all the way back to White Bay.
The rest of the afternoon quickly falls back into the drink, read, swim, walk, repeat pattern. We end up as we usually do at Seddy's. Cute little Shannon tells us how we're going to be blown away by our meal tonite at Seddy's. We will be and so ends another perfect day,.

Packing

I've decided to make a list now of the things I need to bring on a trip to the islands. Somehow I always end up packing in a hurrand and this trip I even did it with a list, a rarity for me. I'm makling this list now, not because of what I forgot to bring but what I brought that I will not use.
This is all I brought. The * items are what I should bring:
7 t-shirts (used 1 so far)
2 sleeveless shirts
* 3 tank tops
3 pairs zip-off pants
* 2 pairs short pants with matching tops
* 2 pairs running shorts
* 1 pair long pants
* 1 long sleeved t-shirt
* 1 polo shirt
* 1 zippered fleece (I haven't used yet but you never know)
* 2 dresses (for nice dinners) & jewelry
* ¾ sleeve light weight sweater
* 4 swimsuits
* 3 cover ups
3 pj tops (used 1)
3 sports bras (used 1)
* Underwear
* Slip
* Raincoat
* Light jacket

Must haves:
Sunscreen
Hats both billed and full brimmed
Sunglasses
Kindle, loaded with plenty of reading
Camera
Toiletries
Beach towels, not all places provide
Snorkel equipment
Tennis shoes, for walks
Sandals to get to the beach
$ for taxis and miscellaneous
Credit cards
Passports
Bug repellant
Hydrocortisone in case the repellant doesn't work

Packing

I've decided to make a list now of the things I need to bring on a trip to the islands. Somehow I always end up packing in a hurrand and this trip I even did it with a list, a rarity for me. I'm makling this list now, not because of what I forgot to bring but what I brought that I will not use.
This is all I brought. The * items are what I should bring:
7 t-shirts (used 1 so far)
2 sleeveless shirts
* 3 tank tops
3 pairs zip-off pants
* 2 pairs short pants with matching tops
* 2 pairs running shorts
* 1 pair long pants
* 1 long sleeved t-shirt
* 1 polo shirt
* 1 zippered fleece (I haven't used yet but you never know)
* 2 dresses (for nice dinners) & jewelry
* ¾ sleeve light weight sweater
* 4 swimsuits
* 3 cover ups
3 pj tops (used 1)
3 sports bras (used 1)
* Underwear
* Slip
* Raincoat
* Light jacket

Must haves:
Sunscreen
Hats both billed and full brimmed
Sunglasses
Kindle, loaded with plenty of reading
Camera
Toiletries
Beach towels, not all places provide
Snorkel equipment
Tennis shoes, for walks
Sandals to get to the beach
$ for taxis and miscellaneous
Credit cards
Passports
Bug repellant
Hydrocortisone in case the repellant doesn't work

Let's Exercise so we can Eat and Drink Some More

I wrote earlier that we don't have any urgency to get up in the morning except here on JVD. Here, we like to get up and take a beautiful walker up over the hill behind White Bay and then dropping into Great Harbour. It isn't an easy walk, but the walker is richly rewarded with views to both the Atlantic and Carribean sides of the island. We do this walk every day we are here and one day will continue on over the top of the island to Taboo, Foxy's other place, for lunch and include a trip to the Bubbly Pool.
Besides the spectacular views, the other plus of taking this walk is I can feel less guilty eating and drinking all that I do her on JVD. There are so manty excellent choices for food and who can resist a Soggy Dollar painkiller or a bushwacker blended for you by Raquel at Seddy's One Love? Yesterday I probably should have done the walk about 5 times!

Sleep

Sleep is a precious commodity at home – rarely do I get moire than 6 hours per nite. In the islands, rarely do I get less than 8 hours at night plus a nap during the day. The fact that we really aren't doing anything to become “exhaustedd” makes this interesting to me. I think the reason I get so much sleep here is that I don't have anything I must get up for. At home I need to take care of the puggies, exercise, keep the house reasonably clean and go to work. I'm sure my co-workers wondera about that last part!
Here I gain some understanding of what the elderly deal with – I have nothing to do that anyone is depending on me for so I can just sleep until I want to get up, something I can only dream about at home.

Is it cheap?

I'll have a few conversations over the next few months that will follow this pattern. I'll be asked about our trip, I'll wax enthusiastically about the beaches, the meals, the weather and eventually the follow up question will be a variant of “is it cheap?” Now I realize that what they want to know is it affordable, but I have to bite my tongue to keep from giving them the full answer. To answer the question you first have to know what the cost of your activity truly is and by this I mean how do your choices impact the lives of the locals. This was brought home today talking to a family that had been ferried over to Jost from their cruise boat docked in Road Town. As with every cruise ship passenger who manages to make it to JVD they were lamenting the short time they were able to spend here, the best stop of their trip. They went on to tell us about their stop yesterday in the Dominican Republic. The town was a ghetto, widespread poverty, garbage, beggars, little kids offering to carry their bags for a quarter or sell something woven from palm fronds. Now the Dominican Republic does have some very nice resorts and some offer package deals that might be considered reasonable if not exactly cheap but when we tourists focus solely on what our outlay is we overlook the fact that a cheap trip doesn't leave enough in the overall budget for the locals to even live modestly not to mention aspire to send their kids to college.
The BVIs are never going to be considered budget travel. A good meal here in a restaurant will run you about the same as a meal on the Upper West Side. The cabbie that takes you from Great Harbor to White Bay will want $8 per head for the 5 minute trip. He's not ripping you off, he's only asking you to pay what it takes for him to live modestly, raise his kids and give them the opportunity of getting a college education in the states. Not too much to ask and he knows there are only so many fares on any given day on this small island. The deal he and the rest of the locals make with you is this. Pay us fairly and you won't have to go thru a poverty stricken village on your way to the beach. You won't be pestered by his kids for a handout. Seems like a good bargain to me. I like paying my own way and it makes me feel good that what I'm paying is closer to the true cost.

A brief momemt of panic

There was a sad event on White Bay yesterday. A sailboat coming in for a late afternoon stop must have misjudged the opening in the reef. The ground seas were running yesterday so perhaps he got thrown for just a moment. In any event the boat got hung up on the reef, bobbing up and down doing more and more damage to the hull. Finally another boat was able to pull him off the reef and the pounding surf pushed the boat into the shore near Ivan's. It floundered there for another hour before finally sinking. Search and Rescue was able to drag the boat off the rocks it was on and drag it a ways back into the sea. This morning we saw on our walk that the boat had come to rest on the sand in front of Ivan's. It was still being pounded by the seas.
We found out that those on board were on the second day of their holiday. What a bummer. Boat ruined, all your clothing wet, did you get the passports, where do you stay. Very sad.

One Perfect Day

I like reading “Three Perfect Days” in United's Hemispheres magazine. Its fun to see what someone with pretty much an unlimited budget does in various places around the globe. Today we had One Perfect Day. The weather was spectacular. Clear skies, a good breeze and not humid. We picked Lambert Bay simply because it was the closest beach on the North Side. We didn't realize that it was a resort. The beach of course is public and what a beach it is. A long arc of soft white sand with waves that break 100 yards out and roll on in. A nice parade of boats throughout the day completes the picture. While the beach wasn't deserted, it was far from packed and we had all the space we wanted Not sure the Lambert Bay Resort is doing all that well, but we did our part with lunch and drinks.
On our early morning walk we stopped to talk to a fellow unloading a boat at the Last Resort dock. He's one of the chefs. We told him we would be over at 7:30. The Last Resort pretty much takes up the entire nub of a rock that its on. You get there by dialing from the dock and over comes a shore boat to take you across. It seemed like a small crowd when we arrived but the place filled up quickly. We had a bottle of Australian Sauvignon Blanc and a goat cheese appetizer as a starter. I ordered the red snapper and Melodee had the lobster linguine. Fresh seafood is readily available so we take full advantage. The meals were tasty and well presented; service was a bit chaotic.
We were getting set to leave when the entertainment started to set up and one of the guitarist's friends said we really should stay. We did, it wasn't and we left a bit later. It wasn't that he was bad, his act relied upon most of the crowd being liquored up and it was going to be a while before they were.
One Perfect Day.

BVI Holiday

January 1 is a holiday in the BVIs and most of the restaurants are closed. We took the ferry over to Marina Cay for the afternoon and just read on this little nub of an island. We made a dinner reservation for 7:30 and took the ferry back to Beef Island. After cleaning up and a bit of reading we headed down to the ferry dock and got there a full 10 minutes ahead of the 7PM departure time. We could easily see to Marina Cay and since it was night any boat lights would have been easily seen. We waited for 15 minutes and then called. The restaurant said they would send the boat back. We waited another 20 minutes. Still no boat. Now you may want to write this off as just an island people problem. The trouble is that Marina Cay is not run by island people. We've not had a problem with cab drivers or local restaurants. When they say they'll be there at 7PM they are there on time or 10 minutes before. Its only when we Americans or the British run something that we have a problem.
No problem mon, we just walked back down to the Trellis Kitchen and the Jeremy had the nice lady cook us up a really fine grouper dinner. Subtle flavors, a fresh salad, couple of wines and we paid half of what we would have at Marina Cay!

Trellis Bay New Years Eve Party

We've had this trip booked since mid summer. I had seen on the web that the full moon was on New Years Eve. We've spent more than a little time at Trellis Bay and have wanted to make it to one of their full moon parties. Trellis is a tight knit group of very savvy business people. Aragorn has a terrific art studio and has created a variety of fire structures - fire balls, fire boxes and a big burning man among them. A big fire is built in each and when lit they are very visual. One of the other business owners is Jeremy, a brit who runs the Cyber Cafe and Trellis Kitchen. I'm writing this from the Cyber Cafe's front porch. It has a very peaceful vibe; I'm guessing the bushwacker doesn't hurt that vibe. Jeremy takes full advantage of what every savvy resterauntuer should - the eay access to very specific music on internet radio. Check out SOMA FM, enuf said. Anyway Jeremy runs the food and drinks side of the fireball party. There was a big crowd, Melodee estimates at 500 but I think more. Lots of locals. Entire families came out for the evening of what Melodee called Carribbean Karoke, some really good bands, carrbbean dancers, jumbies and finnaly the lighting of the fire sculptures. There was a good fireworks display ove the bay at midnight. Yes we did make it up to see in the new decade! All in all, it was a fun night, one we'll remember.

Big Old Jet Plane

Any trip to the British Virgin Islands starts with a ride on a big old jet plane. Ours left at 8:30AM on New Years Eve. A full day of travel will get us to the Trellis By full moon party by 7PM. And not just any old full moon party, but a blue moon on the eve of a new decade.

The trip down was just what you want when you travel, uneventful. We arrived at 6:15and walked to the Beef Island Guest House. That's right the guest house is only about 200 yards from the airport terminal, a very big plus. We unloaded our bags and had dinner at de Loose Mongoose. For New Years Eve they had a $55 prix fixe menu. Quite the concept,a beach bar with a prix fixe dinner!