Advertisement
Published: March 11th 2007
Edit Blog Post
On the ferry to Jost Van Dyke
We were VERY happy to be on this ferry...it's a long story but it was 99.9% sure we'd miss it - the last ferry. So we were sitting at the beach side bar immediately adjacent to the ferry dock in Cruz Bay, St. John, leisurely sipping drinks with fruit and umbrellas in them waiting for the 3:30pm ferry over to Tortola, an island in the British VI from which we could catch a ferry to Jost Van Dyke, which is legendary for being unbelievably laid back and beautiful. We were waiting for the ticket booth to open - it never does until about 5 mins. before the ferry leaves. When the time came to buy the tickets, we were informed that our ferry was across town! (NO ONE had mentioned, nor had we ever read anything about there being multiple ferry docks.) Needless to say we missed it. We managed to work out a deal with a ferry that was going back to Tortola, via St. Thomas (which is a ridiculous detour), and got to customs five minutes after the last ferry to Jost van Dyke was to leave. We were trying to rush though customes which is all but impossible on island time, but to top things off all we had to fill out the forms on the ferry was Martina's $8 airport pencil
(sudoku). She anticipated that we might encounter problems, and I assured her everything would be fine. It wasn't! The customs agent was not very sympathetic to our unbelievable hurry and told us we would have to fill them out again in pen. Grrr.
So, we ended up making it, thanks to the fact that island time kept the last ferry to Jost at the dock for an extra 20 mins. As is to be expected from Jost, though we couldn't understand it at the time, there were no taxis waiting for the ferry (Jost is an extremely hilly island) and Martina was not about to hoof it to Ivan's with all of our gear so we walked into "town" to look for one. I really liked the littlle town. The entire island only has 180 permanant residents and it seems like every one of them either runs or patronizes an beachside sand floored bar. All the roads are sand. I met Gregory who agreed to give us a ride after I found out that Bun, the transportation minister and taxi driver for the one-road island had gone to Tortola for the day. Gergory was awesome; if I lived on
The other view from our campsite
It was pretty ideal...empty beach stretching on either side, and shaded under a huge tree! All for $20. Jost I would be tired of dealing with tourists, but he started talking to us about music and had a great time. Martina still thinks I sounded like a poser talking about reggae to an Islander, but there is little I can do to mitigate my dorkiness in her eyes... she has seen me dance (which is like Elaine Bennis but with
less coordination).
We got to Ivan's Stress Free Bar and Campground (which is only a 15-min. walk but up and down a monster hill) after dark which is never a fun time to set up a tent. We put all our food away in the kitchen and settled in. Unfortunately, a big multi-million-dollar catamaran moored right in front of us and started blasting Queen and getting loud. We wouldn't have minded it but this was like having a 50 foot RV parked on our tent flaps...lights, noise, a diesel engine running nonstop - literally all night long. It took up our entire view shed. Plus the people were turds, when another camper asked if they could turn it down a little they turned it up louder. I like Queen alright, but it is ridiculous to hear "We
Ivan's Stress Free Bar and Campsite
Ivan's is nothing if not unique...it's a completely open-air, swim-up bar (hence the gorgeous sailboats moored at the beach) run by probably the most laid-back human on earth, Ivan. The entire place is COVERED in sea shells. are the Champions" at full blast on a gorgeous deserted moonlit beach. I have to admit that we were a little jealous: while they were having a candlelit chef-served gourmet dinner with chilled white on one of their decks, we had government surplus cheese served on expired saltines washed down with warm Tang drink Martina fermented on the engine block of her Ford. So we went into the kitchen to make dinner and that is when we realized that there was a big problem with Ivan's...no water! There is water stored in cisterns, but that was not drinkable, and it was salty. Water is pretty critical for having a "stress free" camping experience and that proved to be our main problem with Ivan's. No washing our dishes, no washing ourselves, no brushing our teeth...in the tropics you just need water. In the campers' kitchen there was a tub of nasty cistern water for washing with soap, and then a tub of cistern water "sanitized" with bleach for rinsing...needless to say Martina was not pleased. We had to shell out $3 for a tiny bottle of water at the honor bar. The next morning we decided to hike into town first
Reason #5 why Ivan's is stress free
It's an honor bar...usually there is no bartender so you just make yourself at home! There is a stack of notebooks where you keep track of your own tab, and you settle up whenever you happen to run into Ivan. thing for gallon water; Big Steve, who had given us the low down on Ivan's before we went (he had just returned from there where we met him) had observed that if anything about Ivan's changed then it wouldn't be Ivan's, but still, no water makes things so much less comfortable and practically impossible when you are doing all your own cooking. Had we not brought our own food it wouldn't have been as big a deal, but we could not afford (or stand) to pay 30 bucks for a mediocre burger.
The beach, however, totally made up for it. It was was gorgeous, empty, breezy, and had tons of shady trees to camp under. The people at Ivan's were an interesting assortment. You have to keep in mind that Ivan's is famous (infamous?) - memorialized by Kenny Chesney - for its honor bar and unbelievably laid-back style (we didn't see Ivan, the man who runs the place, until the second day we were there, and even then by chance). This attracts a certain, er, vein of people 😊 During the day it was a mix of the boating crowd bar-hopping, day-trippers from guest houses in town, and those
Josh at Ivan's
Sorry the light's not so great...but you can really see some of the amazing shell detail! of us who woke up early enough to actually enjoy the day 😊, while at night it dwindled down to those of us staying there. It was ALWAYS mellow, with great music (rumor has it one of the de facto residents was a road manager for Lynard Skynard.) We liked some of our fellow guests, others were deadbeats two steps up from winos in manners, temperament, and behavior. Overall it was a human menagerie, but we wanted to relax and have a little more privacy, and weren't that interested in dealing with it all. Martina liked it better than I, which is odd, because I unusually have a higher tolerance for weirdos and dinginess! The thing is that people who go there go to stay for a while, so it sort of felt like being in someone else's group house. We liked Ivan's nonetheless, and probably would have even more if we'd been able to get more into the groove of the place, but realized we were much more comfortable at Cinnamon Bay (which Big steve had warned us was like the Ritz by comparison and Ivan good-naturedly derided as "civilized") so we decided to head back a day early.
That also enabled us to spend our last day swimming instead of a whole day of traveling on ferries, taxis, and planes. Alright, one more post to go!
Love,
josh and martina
Advertisement
Tot: 0.156s; Tpl: 0.018s; cc: 11; qc: 70; dbt: 0.0668s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Lew & Anita
non-member comment
We´re not jealous!
Oooh beach living, That´s put the Virgin islands on our list!