Tortola, British Virgin Islands (Narrative)

3rd February

Today our island was Tortola, one of the prettiest in the Caribbean, up in the north east corner of the Caribbean, some 50 miles east of Puerto Rico. It is in the British Virgin Islands, a shapeless group of about 50 islands, only four of which are of any size. Tortola is the largest with 17,809 residents, with Road Town where our ship anchors, the capital, and the only town of any size.

There are four groups of islands in the Caribbean and the British Virgins belong to the Leeward Islands and are generally volcanic and hilly. A Dutch party created a settlement on Tortola in 1648 but now came the British expansion in the area and the Dutch were ousted in 1666 by British Planters. The British administered Leeward Islands took over the government in 1672, since when life has been comparatively peaceful, apart from the era of slavery. However, when the colony of the Leeward islands was broken up in 1956, the BVI as they are known went it alone as a separate colony. The new constitution of 1977 gave the islands a considerable measure of self-rule, thereby pre-empting any possible coup or breakaway, and the advent of upmarket tourism on an unprecedented scale has concentrated the minds of the islands wonderfully. Before tourism took over as the chief moneyspinner in the 1970s, generating 4/5ths of the island’s revenue, the people were almost entirely an agricultural community, relying on cattle raising, bananas, sugarcane, citrus fruits, coconuts, mangoes and fishing. The island gets twice as much rain as London and it keeps everywhere emerald green. The temperatures range between 71 and 82 degrees in winter and between 78 and 88 degrees in summer.

Our excursion today was not due to leave until the afternoon, so we boarded our tender for the short trip to the quayside, where we spent an hour or so walking through the small town, stopping to buy spices at the Caribee Spice Company. Other than a few touristy type shops there was not much of interest in town, so we walked to the Marina area where we found a nice bar overlooking the Marina for a beer and snack accompanied by Caribbean music.

After lunch we made our way back to the quayside where we joined our excursion and boarded an open sided island style buses holding twenty people for a short drive round town before climbing the steep narrow mountain roads to the centre of the island, where we had panoramic views of the harbour below. We continued to the north side of the island and drove down to a picturesque bay called Cane Garden Bay, where we stopped for half an hour in the beachside bar for our second local beer of the day. We again boarded the bus to take a winding picturesque route passed Carrot Bay and Capoons Bay leading to our next stop at Pussers Landing, a marina complex set in a secluded bay. We spent an hour walking around the up market boutiques and viewing the yachts/ cruise boats, watching how the other half live.

All too soon we were off again to return to our ship via the Sir Francis Drake’s Highway, which ended a long and enjoyable day ashore.

Tomorrow we are off to Antigua, sadly our last island in the Caribbean.