Caribbean Cruise Part 3 - Tortola, BVI

For the last nine years, wandering God's wonders has been seen through the windshield of a motor home. But we're in the middle of a Caribbean Cruise, wandering God's wonders from a cruise ship. This sixth day finds us docked at Tortola, one of the BVI.

BVI stands for British Virgin Islands, and we took a picture at the port with our ship in the background.

Looking out over the island of Tortola from the Caribbean Sea, we are sure it has many cool things to see and do. But we had already decided that we wanted to spend the day on an adjacent British Virgin island--Virgin Gorda--that is famous for its "baths."

By now you know that we never book the expensive shore excursions offered by the ship. We had done the research to know that a local ferry runs between Tortola and Virgin Gorda on a regular basis, and the tickets are quite economical. You can leave on the early ferry and beat the crowds to this popular destination. We brought our own snorkel gear, so we were ready to head out on our own once again. Then we found out that two months ago the ferry company decided to no longer run this route on Sundays. Would you believe that we would be there on a Sunday?!? So the only way to get to the island of Virgin Gorda was on our ship's shore excursion. Bummer!

Our tour boat wasted no time between the islands. It was a "hang-on-to-your-hat" kind of ride to Virgin Gorda, and we were blessed with beautiful blue skies.

As we neared Virgin Gorda, we got our first views of its iconic turquoise water.

Our shore excursion included land transportation from the boat dock to the top of the trails inside the Baths National Park. Our large shore excursion group took off down the cactus-lined trail.

Occasionally we would get a break in the shrubs and cactus to get a peak at the Caribbean Sea that we were hiking towards. The trail was all downhill with a descent of 1,000 feet down to the water.

When we got down to the Baths Beach, we got our first view of the boulders that line this southern side of the island. 

The bad news of going on a large ship excursion is that you are in a crowd the entire time. We had planned to come early to beat big groups like this one. Now we are part of the big group. The good news is that there are plenty of people around to take pictures of the two of us together. We are wearing sun-protective shirts and are slathered in sun screen. We have seen many other ship passengers that are suffering through severe sunburns they got on the first day of the cruise. We are proud to say that we are close to the end of the cruise and still untanned, but comfortable.

These are the rock boulders that are the signature part of the baths trail.

They sounded the air horn to gather our large group, and we started the trail through "the baths." We walked through water and across sand on this famous trail through the national park. Water shoes or tennis shoes are strongly recommended for this trail that was listed as "strenuous" in the ship excursion description.

The water is crystal clear and bathtub temperature. What a beautiful place! We've wandered into another of God's wonders!

Our group was very close together as we got to the more technical parts of the trail. So we had time to pause, and traded turns at taking pictures of each other.

At times we had to squeeze through narrow openings . . .

and other times they had ropes and ladders to help us get over larger boulders.

Then we experienced a brilliant turn of events. We had a guide at the front, and everyone in our large group was stacked behind him in a bunch. But we realized that an older couple--even older than us--was at the other end of our large group. The guide bringing up the rear was trying to keep us all close together, but he was having to help them get up and down boulders. 

We found that if we stayed comfortably behind the front group, we had a couple minutes to enjoy picturesque areas all by ourselves before the older couple caught up with us.

We got unhurried pictures without 100 other people in them!

Our good luck means that we took way too many pictures of our journey through "the baths" of Virgin Gorda.

Our shore excursion turned out better than we thought it would. We found that we could crouch under and crawl over the boulders just fast enough to keep us in front of the last group, with time for photo shoots.

The beach got wider and we started seeing more boats in the water. That's when we knew our baths trail was ending.

This wider beach area is Devil's Bay--the end of the baths.

The boats have gathered here to bring snorkelers. This is one of the best areas to see sea life in the BVI. So we dawned the snorkel gear that we had carried through the baths and started exploring.

Denisa loves to snorkel, and she tested out all the rocky areas surrounding Devil's Bay. We found a good selection of salt water fish and some coral.

That's why she wears a long sleeve water shirt on snorkeling days. She has gotten a sunburnt back and arms after snorkeling all day. After snorkeling some, Mark is content to sit on the rocks and take pictures of Denisa in the water. She didn't get out of the water until they sounded that air horn to gather our group again.

We took a final picture of Devil's Bay and its boulders before our group started the hike up the hill. This is a loop hike that will take us back to our safari buses on a different trail than we came down. Once at the top, we rode the safari buses to the dock, and then the ferry back to Tortola.

We were back to the ship by early afternoon, super salty from all that snorkeling. After showers, it felt like we still had plenty of time to explore Tortola. So we walked from the ship into the little city of Road Town, Tortola, by the port.

It was a hot afternoon and we were sweating by the time we arrived at the little park on the coast. The grass needed to be mowed and this colorful sign was the only reason to stop here. We can say that cruisers need to have a plan to go somewhere when docked here at Road Town in Tortola, because a walk around town didn't reveal any tourist treasures.

The sun was setting as our ship left Tortola and the British Virgin Islands behind.

We love a nice sunset over the ocean!

After a busy day on shore, our evenings have taken on a regular routine. We eat in the dining room at 5:30, then head to the theatre for the evening entertainment. We've watched a nice combination of music, magic shows, and comedy on this cruise. Then we usually head to one of the clubs for group games and dancing. We're finished with day six and we're still going strong! Have we mentioned that we really enjoy cruising through God's wonders?