Well, Virgin Gorda is incredible. We stayed at the end of the island near the Baths, in the area called the Valley. The guesthouse we stayed at is called “Guavaberry” and is located at Spring Bay. Our cottage had huge boulders surrounding it, one of which we could climb to get an amazing view of the sea, other islands, and the sunsets. The islands were all lush and green from the rains we had a few weeks ago, and the waters sparkling crystal blue. There was a regatta happening while we were there and our favorite lunch restaurant (The Top of The Baths ) was inundated with “yachties” one day. The waiter saw us and came to seat us away from the boat people saying we’d be safer in his section. He was right, we got our food before a large table who had been there before us. We were well taken care of.

All the restaurants we ate at were good, but not quite as good as our St. Croix favorites, and some of the servers were quite inexperienced, which is to be expected during this really  S-L-O-W  time of year. But everyone we met was smiling,  pleasant and helpful. We walked into town one day to check it out. It took around 30 minutes. Nikki wanted to look in any jewelry stores she might find. But they don’t really have any. There are a few souvenir-types shops, though, which also sell jewelry.

We stopped at a bar called the Bath and Turtle for a drink and decided that on the way back, we would stop at every open place for bloody marys. We’d make our walk into a “bloody mary crawl”. Unfortunately, I’d left most of my cash at the cottage and we only made one more stop, because Fischer’s Cove Beach Hotel takes credit cards, and even though we made the long trek to the Mine Shaft Restaurant, just before the ruins of the copper mine, it was closed when we got there. So we were very thirsty when we got back. We ended up being out walking for four hours with only two bar stops. Good thing we had V-8 and vodka back in our room. Both Fischer’s and the Mine Shaft are superb spots. Fischer’s has a nice  bar looking out towards Tortola, and the Mine Shaft is so high on a hill, that the vistas are practically 360 degrees.

Each day we walked to a least one different breath-taking beach. Our resort has it’s own, and Spring Bay National Park is about a 5-minute walk. We hiked down to Devil’s Bay, on the other side of the Baths and shared the beach with a bunch of people until noon, when only a rooster was left. At one point one of the tourist ladies asked if it was a real chicken because it was standing so still under the tree we were near.

Anyway, there was a mass exodus at lunchtime and we had the place to ourselves for a while. The seas were calm the entire time, so swimming and snorkeling were easy and the visibility was good. There aren’t a bunch of coral reefs in this area. Only a few patch reefs and some healthy-looking elk horn and other colorful types growing off the sides of the big rocks. Plenty of parrot fish and others that we recognize. At Devil’s Bay I saw a peacock flounder skirting down a stepped sand hill just off shore and a school of squid on the other side of the bay.

It was great to spend time with my daughter who has been very stressed out from being a small business owner on an island with a stagnant economy during the slowest time of year trying to pay her own personal bills with whatever money is left over from paying bills to keep the store afloat.

She’s really a very nice person and I had a blast hanging out with her. And she probably wouldn’t use a run-on sentence like that last paragraph, either.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 3:31 pm and is filed under Terry Talk, Vacations, Virgin Islands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.