Tortola BVI

This morning, I was pumped and excited, I work up stupid early so that I could emerge for breakfast and grab some amazing, red sky in morning, photos of the island as the sun peaked over the horizon.

For this morning, I wanted to be ready to go early and quickly plate loaded from the buffet. I then returned to my cabin to shower and prepare the day bag with everything I needed, camera, phone, tripod, sunscreen, sunglasses, hat, and wallet. I really had no plans at all what to do and I had no US cash on me so the vague plan was to get off the ship, find wifi and catch-up, post some pictures to make those at home jealous, and find a bank. Today I arrived at the port of Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands.

I got off the ship and it was a nice close walk to the Tortola cruise village. It was actually quite obvious that the cruise village was a fake example of stereotypical island life and all the usual shopping. I sat on a bench in front of Diamonds International and got on the wifi there. It was pretty good wifi, all my Facebook feed was filled with people talking about a major blizzard. I felt bad of course so I posted this picture.

Then I left the cruise terminal area and came across the CIBC First Caribbean Bank and took out $40USD. I then went to a local shop and picked up a tiny ornament. One of the first things I noticed was that the island was filled with random chickens everywhere.

As I returned to the terminal, I negotiated to take a safari type truck tour of the Island. It was beautiful, although it was mainly a lot of what life was like on the island, and “This is where X used to be”. One of the memorable moments was when we were approaching the wall with the mural of the island’s history, one van going in the other direction got caught on our truck and we were wedged for a while as the only place for the other van to go was over the cliff.

One attraction that is still around on the island is on the far end of the island where there were an amazing rum distillery and a huge and popular beach.

After the tour, I was exhausted and went back to the ship and found a sun chair on Deck 18.