First days in Tortola
Well, since my last entry, I've done Vancouver, have been up to Revelstoke, BC where the Japanese side of my family comes from, and saw lots and lots of relatives. For those of you keeping track of my Flickr account, you'll have seen the photos of all my various uncles, aunts and cousins. I only seem to get out to that part of the world every 3 or 4 years, so it's nice to see my relatives again, and to meet the new additions to the family, and see how the others have grown. I had a nice few days there, and we had a big family dinner before I drove back to Vancouver and then flew over to Toronto where I saw my brother and sister, my nephew Ty, and my newest nephew Mateo. Mateo was only about 2 weeks old when I was there, so it was good timing that I was there so soon after his birth. Again, I don't get over to Toronto nearly as often as I'd like to.
After a flying visit to Miami to visit my friend Marisa and my cousin Caitlin, I landed in the British Virgin Islands on the 27th and have been meeting my future colleagues and exploring since then.
My first day on island, I was met by a colleague at the airport and taken back to my hotel to drop my bags. We then went for a walk and picked up a sandwich for lunch, then went for a drink in "The Watering Hole" which is a coffee shop by day, bar by night...and which also conveniently doubles as a fairly decent wine shop. Although I'd been told to expect higher prices for groceries (because almost everything needs to be imported), I was rather impressed with the low prices for alcohol. Think $7 for a bottle of Smirnoff, $13 for a bottle of Bombay Sapphire etc. and $10-15 for a fairly decent bottle of wine. After that we went over to the Batcave (a bar above a restaurant called Spaghetti Junction) to watch the Manchester United vs Barcelona match with another colleague. It seemed that a fair number of the island's ex pats had taken the afternoon off work to watch it.
I was pretty exhausted after two consecutive 5am starts, so I went and had a nap which ended up being more like a doze and woke up at about 9:30pm and grabbed a bite to eat in the restaurant in the hotel and then went back to sleep.
My first full day on Tortola and a cruise ship was in port when I woke up. The British Virgin Islands are fairly small...I believe there are about 25,000 residents in total spread between the islands, with the majority on Tortola. When a cruise ship docks, there is a sudden influx of several thousand passengers and crew who dock early in the morning, file off the ship, go swim with dolphins, sit on a beach or shop in the numerous "Diamonds International" etc. shops, and then all sweep back onto the ship in time for an afternoon sailing. The population temporarily increases by 10% in a flurry of activity and then returns to normal by the end of the day. This is the slow season though - there's a cruise ship every 10 days in the summer. Most of the cruise lines will have relocated to Europe or elsewhere for the summer. The Caribbean is too hot and too unpredictable weather-wise for ships to be usefully deployed here, but in the Winter when temperatures are more manageable and weather less violent, there can be several cruise ships in port each day.
The day was particularly hot and I was still tired, so I didn't do too much during the day other than taking a quick walk around town and checking out a car rental place. In the evening, my colleagues picked me up and we went for dinner at the Yacht Club, which has a sushi night every Thursday. The sushi was actually pretty good, so we had a nice dinner and a chat about life on the island. After dinner I went along to a hotel bar to see a local band play, and then got dropped back at the hotel.
Yesterday I popped out in the morning and got some passport photos taken (for the work permit application), and had a bit of a wander about. I was picked up for lunch and we went to a brilliant little local cafe called Roti Palace. Perhaps "palace" is a bit of a misnomer - you walk up some stairs behind a shop and the cafe is about 5 plastic tables with chickens and a little cat running around, but the roti was delicious. I had a mutton roti (which the cynics tend to think is actually goat), but regardless it hit the spot. We had a nice leisurely lunch, talked more about life in the BVI, and fed the chicken a few bits of rice as it stalked around our table and pecked at our hands.
A quick visit to one of the local government offices, the post office and then back to the office of the firm I'm going to be joining where I spent the afternoon. After work it was down to The Watering Hole where drinks and merriment ensued. I stumbled back to my hotel later in the evening, and then got up this morning, bought a beach towel, rented a car and began my exploration.
Driving here can be a challenge. There are some very steep roads, and some of the other drivers can be pretty erratic. I have been told that there is technically no law against drink driving (which I think stems from the fact there is no public transport, probably no breathalysing equipment, and the slightly more relaxed Caribbean attitude). Consequently at night there can apparently be cars driving along at 10 mph trying to compensate for their alcohol consumption. I made sure I was setting off with plenty of daylight ahead of me so I wouldn't have to drive back in the dark. I took the coast road West out of Road Town and it really didn't take too long to get to the end of the Island. I stopped for an early lunch at Pusser's Landing at Soper's Hole on the South West tip of Tortola, and had a nice roti while watching the yachts come and go. Once finished, I continued driving around the island, stopping at all the beaches to take them in and take a few photos here and there, and then due to a closed road in one direction, ended up coming back into town. After that I headed out East towards the airport and explored Beef Island (where the airport is situated) which is over the shortest of road bridges imagineable. I ended up at Long Bay - a beautiful crescent-shaped white beach and went for a swim. The water here is that wonderful crystal-clear blue that you see so often in brochures but rarely experience. It's bathtub warm and you can quite happily spend a long time sitting in the shallows with the water lapping over you.
After a while at the beach I carried on back on Tortola, wanting to check out the other few roads that I hadn't yet driven. I ended up picking up hitchikers twice on the way.
Back to the hotel, had dinner and am now updating the blog and have uploaded some photos which are available here:
and a few below:
posted by Ken at 3:07 am
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