2 Dollar Productions

I've never had more than a passing interest in boats and virtually all things nautical, but after staying in Virgin Gorda for the past week, I suddenly feel the need to own a vessel.

A big one. Why not?

I'll work out the details later. For now, I am merely wondering why I voluntarily left the British Virgin Islands because our vacation could not have been any better.

To reach Virgin Gorda, you fly from the Dallas-Forth Worth airport to San Juan, then take a puddle-jumper to Tortola and finally a 30 minute ferry ride brings you to the island.

Our villa representative met us at the dock with our rental car, a Mitsubishi Montero, and soon I was driving us along on the wrong side of the road, across steep hills and heading towards our living quarters.

The house was perfect. It was set-up nicely for multiple couples as the bedrooms all boasted ocean views and were set high atop the property at opposite ends to ensure privacy.

There was a pool, a large deck with chairs for lounging, a kitchen/main room area, a grill, washer/dryer and outdoor showers for each room, a nice touch that I thoroughly enjoyed all week long.



The villa looked like this:





Virgin Gorda is less than 12 miles wide and has roughly 3,500 full-time island residents. It felt small and relaxed, which was exactly what we expected as the only times I felt like seeing people was when I needed to order a Red Stripe and dinner at a local restaraunt (and it was also pretty damn nice not to see ANY food chain on the island).

Who needs people when you have crystal blue water, white sand and beaches like these:







People could only screw up scenery like this (with the notable exception of our band of travlers). Luckily, the only beach we shared with more than a handful of other humans was The Baths, a beach formed amongst huge boulders that is a popular docking bay for cruise ships and overweight Europeans who still feel the need to wear tiny red Speedos.

The Baths is the most famous beach attraction in Virgin Gorda, and it was fun to hike through the caves and underwater rock formations that jut into the water.




But hiking around places was low on the priority list as this was easily the laziest vacation I've ever taken and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Sloth may be a sin, but I indulged in it all week long as a typical day looked like this:

8 am - Wake up - No alarm clock was ever set and it was phenomenal to wake up to a large window looking out to the ocean every day
8 - 9 am - Eat breakfast and then sit in the deck chairs and drink a pot of coffee while watching the waves break.
9 - 11 am - Read a book and swim in the pool.
11 - 2 pm - Go to the beach and snorkel


2 - 3 pm - Lunch
3 - 4:30 - Nap
4:30 - 6:30 pm - Drink Red Stripes and watch the sunsets like these:





6:30 - 9 pm - Pick a local place to eat dinner or grill something at the Villa
9 - 11 pm - Watch a movie and go to sleep

Rinse and repeat for 7 days straight.

Even the weather cooperated beautifully as it was sunny everyday (1 morning of light rain) and the weather hovered around 87 degrees during the day and dipped into the low 70s at night.

The only negative was the price of food, which was high because nearly everything has to be shipped over to the island, and consequently, food at the grocery store and at the restaurants was costly.

Examples:

24 pack bottled water - $17
1 Honeydew Melon - $5
1 Box Cereal - $6

There was no such thing as a cheap meal, although the quality varied widely across the island. By far the best place we found was Georgios, an outdoor restaraunt on the water that boasted fresh lobsters from Anegada and I have never had a better crustacean in all my life as I feasted on a mutant 3 1/2 lb. creature.

It was amazing and I even had enough leftover to make a lobster omlette for breakfast the next morning.

For everything that Virgin Gorda featured, it was also what I didn't do on the island that made it so great. It's increasingly difficult to drop out of the technology universe, however, during my trip I never:

1) Checked my work Blackberry for emails (nor did it work on the island)
2) Make a cell phone call nor took one
3) Got on the Internet
4) Read a newspaper

It was an excellent shift to undergoe as these old habits were replaced with a daily concern about which beach to visit and where we were going to eat that night.

I was reflecting on all of this as our chartered boat skimmed thorugh the darkness at 6 am yesterday morning en route to the Tortola airport, the start of our long journey back to Austin.

Why were we leaving at all?

Why did I leave 2 beers in the Villa refridgerator?

And how much would a boat like this one cost me because I think I could also make airport runs in the early morning hours?

I had no answers and wanted to speak up and tell the captain to turn the boat back towards Virgin Gorda, a return trip trip to a place I had just left yet already missed.

But I didn't. I'm still not sure why.

-BDS