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As we are in the midst of a cold and very long winter, I’m sure many people are dreaming of an island escape. Two years ago, we had a once in a lifetime opportunity to sail the British Virgin Islands, compliments of my husband’s parents, who were celebrating their 45th wedding anniversary. Their dream was to share their experiences of a previous trip with their kids, once they were all grown up. The account below will hopefully transport you to a warmer world, if only momentarily.
St. Thomas
Our journey began on a ferry from St. Thomas, after a night of Bushwackers the size of our heads.
Norman Island Pier
Norman Island is the uninhabited island that inspired Treasure Island. This is a great stop to rest your sea legs and hike across the island. Even though there are no residents, the Pirates Bight bar is on the shore to welcome sailors, hikers or snorkelers. And don’t confuse uninhabited for quiet. The nearby Willy-T bar, which is floating off the shore, even had Mom hanging from the rafters.
Peter Island
Peter Island is owned by Amway Corporation and is home to a single resort. While anyone can anchor down and come ashore for some exploration, you must be a guest of the resort in order to enjoy a beach chair. Buying a drink at the bar does not count, so be prepared to lie in the sand while enjoying your Pain Killer.
The Baths at Virgin Gorda
Virgin Gorda is best known for The Baths, granite boulders forming caves with pools of sea water. A short hike through the brush leads to Mad Dog Bar for some refreshing Bushwackers. The rest of the island can be explored by a tour bus, which delivered us to the side of the island that is a temporary home to guests escaping their version of the real world.
Road Town
We had a very brief stop in Road Town, Tortola, where most of us shopped for souvenirs while one of our passengers visited a local doctor. Even the best laid plans sometimes take a turn.
Sandy Spit
Imagine a classic desert island. Now open your eyes, and it is in front of you. This is Sandy Spit, complete with a perimeter of sand surrounding an epicenter of tropical vegetation. You can leave me here, thank you very much.
Jost Van Dyke
Jost Van Dyke is a laid back island with a main street of beachfront bars. The traditional way to arrive on the island is to have your sister push you off of the dinghy, so you can swim to the shore and saunter up to the Soggy Dollar Bar to buy a drink with your soggy dollars. Down the road is Ivan’s Stress Free Bar, where honesty is the best policy. You can mix your own concoction and leave the posted amount in a jar on the bar. But the real nightlife occurs at Foxy’s, which is a short jaunt down the road. If you want to be a part of the party, be sure to pack a life vest, because this place is only accessible by boat.
Cane Garden Bay
Cane Garden Bay is a lively beachfront area on the Northern side of Tortola. A short walk from the main beach is Callwood Rum Distillery, where you can sample a variety of local rums. This was our final overnight stop, so I seized the moment and spent that night sleeping outside under the stars.
Whether we were exploring, swimming off the boat, enjoying a delicious dinner at sunset or sailing to our next destination, our hosts were accommodating and fun. They were also extremely patient with repeating the daily agenda – even on a small boat, our group was like herding cats. While they run a different charter now, I’m sure the experience is as wonderful as ours was. Their website is http://www.sailfreeingwe.com/.
Our trip to the Rockhouse in Negril exposed me to a chance to face my fears, even long after we returned home.
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- Rockhouse
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- Sunset from the Rockhouse Restaurant
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- Rockhouse standard rooms
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- The Road to Negril
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- The Road to Negril
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- Taking the leap
We arrived in Montego Bay on a late Thursday morning, and quickly found our chauffeur, the Kenny of Kenny Tours, who would maneuver us through the narrow and windy roads of our two-hour drive to Negril. We felt a twinge of green guilt once we realized that we would be the only two passengers on an entire tour bus. Kenny was great, though, and let us stop to pick up souvenirs and rum before we hit the road. The drive was beautiful and eye opening at the same time, to see first hand the living arrangements of those who were occupants of the villages along our route.
The Rockhouse is a jungle-like retreat situated on the cliffs just outside of Negril. When we were shown to our thatched roof villa overlooking Pristine Cove, we knew that there would be no need for us to leave for the next two days. We had attempted, for previous anniversary trips, to book accommodations at the Rockhouse, and it was always booked up. Luckily, with a more flexible schedule, we were able to discover first hand what all of the fuss was about.
Perhaps since our visit was short, we didn’t quite get the chance to figure out how local restaurants determined their hours of operation. On Saturday, our attempt to grab breakfast next door at Sips and Bites was futile – Saturday is their Sabbath so they are closed. Our attempt to get some famous jerk chicken on the other end of the resort at Three Dives proved equally disappointing, as they are only open in the evening. Unwilling to alter our previously planned dinner reservations, we missed out on this. The hotel always had food available somewhere, so we jumped from the pool bar to the Rockhouse Restaurant to the Pushcart Rum Bar.
Speaking of jumping, the pinnacle event for me on this trip was learning to leap. I have always been afraid of heights, and while I’m not afraid of water, the thought of jumping off of cliffs or a bridge that was more than 20 feet high was pretty daunting.
So, standing on top of the bridge, contemplating the water below and how your body may shift prior to impact, the anxiety builds. Sometimes to take the leap, you just need to be pushed over the edge. Enter, my husband. No, he didn’t push me over the edge, but while I was standing there on the bridge, making the entire thing much worse than it needed to be, he bolted past me and jumped in. Now I have to jump in just to save face. The three seconds it took from the moment I stepped off until the moment my toes cut through the water felt like a breathless eternity. As I sank to the bottom of the cove, my anxiety changed to a combination of exhilaration and relief. What the heck took me so long to do that?
On our final night, we had to change rooms, not only because that was the only way the hotel could accommodate our three night stay, but because I needed to cut some corners on my nearly maxed out budget. Our final night was spent in one of their standard rooms, which was comprised of a free standing building of six rooms in the tropical gardens, complete with paper thin walls and doors with an inch gap at the bottom, so you would be sure to have all kind of creepy-crawly guests join you at will.
It was tough coming from a private villa to more communal quarters, so we spent most of the time at the pool, and we finally ventured out for the evening to Rick’s Café. I conveniently “forgot” to bring along a swimsuit, so I could not be bullied into braving the 35-foot cliff jump that it is famous for. I was not quite ready for that one yet. Instead, we watched the other crazy partiers jump over the edge, sometimes feeling jolts of pain brought on by imagining how that occasional belly flop felt.
Fast forward six months, and I’m taking the jump in ways that extend beyond Pristine Cove. After searching for a relocation deal to Denver for more than a year, an opportunity to jump over the edge presented itself when the company that sent me on that trip as a reward was acquired. What better time to leap over the edge to try to make this dream a reality? Last week, both of my feet left the bridge when I left that job. Within the next several weeks, I will be moving myself to Denver to conduct an intense job search. I am leaving behind the comfort of my “villa” in Atlanta in exchange for a small, more communal living situation (I haven’t lived in an apartment for more than a decade). Right now, I am holding my breath, waiting to find out if the landing will be smooth, or a painful belly flop. In the end, though, it is finding the courage to make the jump. Hopefully my landing will be exhilarating.
We prefer to be off the beaten path travelers. Offer us a chance to go with the crowd on a coordinated tour of anywhere, and we typically express some trepidation. But offer the same opportunity as part of a complimentary excursion with our all-inclusive stay and we can’t pass up the chance to get the most for our money. Our all too short visit to Isla Mujeres taught us that good deals are not always cheap in the end.
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- Isla Mujeres Turtle Farm
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- Isla Mujeres Turtle Farm
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- Isla Mujeres Shopping
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- Leaving our beach chairs behind
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- Palace Resort’s Beachfront
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- Our hammock’s permanent home
We celebrated our fifth anniversary south of Cancun at Puerto Aventura, at Palace Resorts Aventura Spa Palace. The escape from the Cancun party scene and crowded beaches in this adult-only resort was everything that we were looking for.
Our stay included two excursions, and while it was tough to leave our beach chairs by the sea, we chose to take a trip to Isla Mujeres (the Island of Women), which is a popular day trip destination for Cancun visitors. The tiny island is accessible by ferry, and the one reserved for our tour group bounced us across the jeweled turquoise water so fast that those who had one to many El Presidentes at the pool bar the day before struggled to keep it together.
One of the downfalls of traveling with a tour group is that, well, you travel with the group. One of the featured attractions, snorkeling at Playa Garrafon de Castilla, was canceled due to the rough tides. So our revised scheduled activity was to lounge at the Palace Resorts designated beach area and enjoy drinks from Bar Loma (I was on vacation from my job at LOMA, so this caused some mixed feelings. Nothing that a Tequila Sunrise or two couldn’t remedy, though).
The main form of transportation on the island, which is only five miles by a half-mile, is to rent a golf cart. Tempting as this was, we didn’t want to get distracted and miss our ferry back, only a mere two hours from our departure time at this point. So we relied on the attractions that were within short walking distance. The first attraction that we ventured to was the Isla Mujeres Turtle Farm, a preserve and hatchery for sea turtles, which are now federally protected. We must have picked a good time of year to go, because the tanks were full of young sea turtles.
Since sea turtles are only so exciting, the next best way to spend your day as a tourist is to hit several blocks of souvenir shops. Mexico is renowned for silver, and our tour guides pointed us to a reputable shop that sold necklaces that wouldn’t turn your neck green. It was indeed a great place to find a nice silver chain for 1000 pesos.
Our next quest was find a good deal through the customary art of haggling. We strolled from shop to shop, rummaging through towels, sarongs, mini bobble-head turtles. And then I saw it … an array of hammock chairs in an assortment of colors that could be found nowhere else (that we have been in the US, anyway).
“What are we going to do with that?” my husband asked.
Details, details. I was sure that we would be able to find some sort of contraption to hang it from when we returned home. How hard could that be? On to the task at hand – get the best price. I can’t remember where the price started, and I can’t remember how many rounds of negotiations we went for. All I remember was that we got that chair for $20, and I couldn’t have felt more proud. I felt even prouder when we discovered that it actually fit into one of our suitcases for our flight back to the US.
We spent months trying to figure out how we would be able to securely hang that chair without causing damage to our house. We found flimsy metal stands for several hundred of dollars, that would have detracted from the beauty of the chair and most likely would have snapped in half just as one of us was about to doze off in our prize. How relaxing is that? In the end, my husband spent several weekend days and a few hundred dollars on materials to build an arbor off of our patio that would securely hold the hammock. Even better, we will get to do it all over again should we decide to move from our current house. I suppose we could give up the hammock, but how can we let go of such a find? While we won’t let this one go, in the future we will reconsider how much of a bargain our cheap travel souvenirs really might be.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a hammock and an El Presidente that is calling my name.
