This year's Christmas trip is to Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands (BVI). The BVIs are a bit trickier to get to than the US islands, but they have a lot of small conveniences, like using the US dollar and US-style power outlets. Also, being harder to get to, they're apparently less crowded than the USVI. The lodging options were also much more reasonable, and there are fewer large resorts/chains.
Our journey really started last night; we all convened at Lauren's apartment for dinner, and then spent the night in Morristown; there's a two-bedroom apartment in her building that's available for rent, so we could all get an early start in the morning, not far from the airport. It's also cheaper and easier to park at car at her place than at Newark airport.
Just before 4:30 AM, in the dark, we took a car service to the airport. To get to Tortola, we first flew to St. Thomas, deplaning into the hot sun around noon AST (1 hour ahead of EST). Sabrina, Lauren, and I had been there almost 5 years ago, so it all seemed vaguely familiar.
St. Thomas is a US territory, so there are no customs/immigration lines; we zipped through the airport after changing into lighter attire and found a taxi (van) to take us to the ferry terminal on the edge of Charlotte Amalie.
There are several options for ferry trips, depending which origin/destination ports and days/times work with one's itinerary. Thankfully, the USVI tourism site has thorough information. We opted for the 2 PM offering from Smith's Ferry. On top of the round-trip ticket price, there's also something like a $10 per-bag cost and a $10 per-person "port fee"; these seemed to be common to all of the ferry operators.
While we waited, we ate a light lunch dockside, mostly consisting of sandwiches and snacks we had brought from home; it wasn't clear in advance what the food options were at the ferry terminal, and we knew there was absolutely nothing at the St. Thomas airport.
The ferry ride is about an hour, part of which was rougher than some people would have preferred. We initially sat in a group, but were later split up when the staff asked people to shift more to the port side to balance the boat.
Along the ride, we were treated to lovely views of St. Thomas, St. John, various minor islands, and eventually Tortola. Oddly, one of the Marvel/Avengers movies was playing on a TV at the front.
After all of the luggage (and various packages being shipped via ferry) was unloaded, we disembarked at the BVI customs and border inspection dock, around 3:20 PM. Everyone was very much operating on Island Time at this point.
The Bomba Charger certainly wasn't the nicest ferry option, nor the fastest, but it's what worked with our schedule. Overall, it was uneventful, which is exactly what I'm looking for in a ferry ride.
After having our paperwork and passports checked, and paying yet another per-person fee ($10 Environmental Tourism fee), we hoofed it about 1/4 of a mile to the car rental desk and picked up our ride for the next five days.
After tetris-ing 6 people and all our bags into a Honda Pilot, we ventured out into what qualifies as rush hour here, just down the street to the nearest grocery store. There was absolutely nowhere to park, though, so we abandoned that plan and decided to find one on the way to the Airbnb instead.
We stopped at a
Riteway Food Market just down the road, to pick up some breakfast essentials and something to make for dinner tonight. We knew that the rental villa had a decent kitchen situation, wanted to admire the sunset view, were all somewhat tired, and didn't want to go back out for dinner later.
While we were shopping, the power went out twice. I have no idea if this is typical or not, but nobody else in the store seemed excited or surprised. It sounded like a backup generator fired up, outside, the first time, so the lights were only out for 10 or 15 seconds.
After some probably-power-outage-related problems with the register and/or credit card reader, we finally managed to pile some groceries into the already-crowded SUV and continue along the coast road, west, toward the
Long Bay area. (I just noticed that the villa we're renting is at the top of
their aerial photo. It's the left one of the four in the center/top. Edit: I'm adding it, at the bottom of this post)
Along the way, we got our first taste of Tortola sunsets.
We met the local property manager at the bottom of the hill, and followed him up the steep switchbacks to the villa. Multiple reviewers had suggested that 4WD was a requirement; I don't look forward to driving up or down here if it's wet.
The villa is absolutely stunning. The Airbnb listing always seemed to good to be true, but it really is as nice as their photos made it look.
The property manager showed us around the three separate buildings. The central one is the kitchen, dining, and living room area. It also has a bathroom and an office. The outer buildings are each two bedrooms, one above the other, and each of those has its own full bath.
On his way out, the manager took the solar cover off the pool. We enjoyed the sunset over
Jost Van Dyke, cooked dinner, unpacked, and finally relaxed a bit.
I went for a swim after dinner, and we all turned in early.
Tomorrow will probably involve some sun and sand, but there are no specific plans yet.
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