Anniversary Cruise: Day 6 - Tortola, BVI

This was one of the most fun islands for us.  Like I said in the previous post about Antigua, we chose to do something on each island we visited.  This island was so full of things to do ~ thankfully we took pix!

Unlike St. Thomas, we chose to do our excursion in Tortola earlier in the day.  So early actually that we almost didn't eat breakfast.  Good thing we decided to anyway, we had a major work out.

We chose to do the snorkeling and kayaking trip.  I never would've done the kayaking except that it is a fun Fosburg activity that I've become really fond of.  At this point where I wasn't pregnant for the first time in three years during our anniversary celebration, I was super excited to do this.

We jumped on the boat after taking a few pix at the port.  It was a bit nerve wracking because when we jumped on we were immediately given snorkel gear.  Unfortunately, they didn't have all the necessary gear so they traded with another vessel.  It was quite interesting to see how the crew handled the boat so easily doing such interesting maneuvers.  Anyway, so we were off.

can't hear much, but the guy with the dreads was the "lore master" who shared so much

What always cracked me up - even now- is that while driving out to the locations for our activities the crew always seemed to feel like it was a great time to inform us of the local history, customs, or funny stories.  There was only one problem - the motor on the boat was always so loud we only caught a bit of all the amazing things they had to tell us!  We did catch one great thing though, apparently all the islands we could see were the base for the pirate tales we all know, including Black Beard.  The best part is that Tortola is actually the famous "Tortuga" of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  They actually filmed parts of the movie there.  I love pirates for those of you who don't know.  We revelled in all the pirate lore and mythology.  So it was super fun to get to land on one of the islands.

Once we landed we were given the gear and the kayak and pointed in the correct direction.  Guess what made me laugh the most?  Chris and I started out doing really well and I sat there slipping my yellow plastic paddle into the beautiful turquoise waters when all of a sudden I noticed that we were outstripping most of the other kayak teams.  This worried me for a moment until I saw a blow up speed boat heading our way and then past us!  I cracked up when I recognized the crew in the boat.  Apparently they don't lead by example on that excursion.

on our way to the "other" island

Anyway, so we landed at this beautiful other island, very famous for rich people's houses (like Bill Gates).  The fun part though was meeting the original owner of the island.  This little barefoot, blind wrinkled old man with a huge grin and a very personable disposition was the actual owner of the island with all the famous people's houses on it.  He was so cute.  He'd sold the land with the provision that the developer was required to take care of him for the remainder of his life.  He has a small stone hut-like house at the back of the island with lots of conch shells outside the door and beautiful tropical flowers hanging at the window.  He loved fish and the fruit of the island.  Basically he just wanted to be left alone to enjoy the island he had lived on for so long.  So the people make sure he has what he needs and then leaves him to live his life.  Not a bad setup for either party I guess.

after all the work it was fun to swim for a minute

After the little tour to the back of the island we kayaked back to the other location for snorkeling.  Many of the people took conch shells off the beach.  Really, they were so pretty, but I couldn't figure out what I was going to do with it when I got home, so I left my share there.  Maybe someone else will get the one I would've taken and do something cool with it.  I just took pix and enjoyed the whole thing.  It was a great adventure and the snorkeling was fantastic!

the exercise and the sun felt so good on this day!  

almost forgot I had kids at home!

We got back to port just in time for lunch and holy cow, we were starving!!!  We hopped a taxi into town asking him to drop us at a local place to eat.  By this time we were more brave in choosing to do our own thing.  Myra and Jason did it all the time and we didn't go too far from the ship.  Well the guy took us to this great little shop, but it was all vegetarian type stuff.  We had amazing mango smoothies made from ones we had picked out.  Chris even purchased an extra for later.

the water was so salty getting a person underwater in a picture was really hard!

Then we headed into the main part of town alone.  On our way back to the ship we found the kind of eatery we'd been looking for.  We walked in, grabbed some awesome sandwiches, and sat down to listen to the locals talk.  The whole time we'd been in the Caribbean I couldn't tell what locals were saying.  Chris insisted it was a foreign language, but I wasn't sure.  Then a very pregnant woman came into the shop.  Considering all my previous experience I figured this would be a good conversation to see if I was right or Chris was.  You'll never believe it ~ it's English, sort of.  The alteration of the words and tones is pretty pronounced, but gets easier once you know what they're discussing.  It was so fun to listen to.

not a lot of fish, but it was so pretty we didn't care

On the way out of the shop, I got a bit nervous because I couldn't see our ship.  I didn't want to get left behind because we got lost.  Luckily many other guests had wandered from the ship and we found that all we had to do was follow the white people!  Being a minority in a location never bothered me so I found it funny to use my color as a trail marker.  (If it had bothered me at some point, being the only white girl in a large neighborhood of the Dominican Republic would've cured me before this.)

Eventually we made our way to the ship bypassing all sorts of tents with touristy stuff in them.  Chris got it in his head that we could buy our family Christmas presents while on vacation and I thought it was a great idea.  We found some really fun things on this island and the last one for our family and friends.  It was great to have a reason to be sifting through all the interesting things the locals were selling.

this was so much fun together!

Finally we made it back to the ship for a good long hot shower!  Then we made our way to dinner to share the day's adventure stories with our table companions, Myra and Jason.  They had a great camera.  It was a digital that went underwater!  I so want one next time we do something cool.  We all shared fun anecdotes and experiences of the day.  They always had a good time.  They were less into the structured activities, but it was our first cruise so they understood our desire for more set times and less wandering.

This was my favorite island, but they were all so much fun!