Caribbean Cruise - Tortola

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Another day, another island! Quite a lot of islands actually as Tortola belongs to the British Virgin islands! Fifty or so islands, most with weird names such as Salt, Norman, Jost Van Dyke, Guana, Fallen Jerusalem, Dead Chest, Virgin Gorda......I could go on!! Local belief is that when Christopher Columbus discovered the islands in 1493, he named them after the 11,000 virgins of the 4^thCentury martyr, St Ursula!

This was our first experience of a Tender to reach land, so we had to wait until all the P & O trip passengers had disembarked before we could get ashore. Reached Tortola by about 10.00am and boarded an open sided trolley for a tour of the island, followed by the beach! We ended up with the ‘Friendliest Driver’ whose vehicle was pretty clapped out and as there were some very steep hills, we only just made it up them!! Stopped for pictures at various view points, and then past Sage Mountain before going to The Callwood Rum Distillery.

The rum here is still distilled the same way as it was 200 years ago and for US$1 you are able to sample 8 different types of rum! Quite a (hic!) bargain! The next stop was Cane Garden Bay Beach that was crowded out with all the tour buses! Chris had a swim but 45 minutes goes quite quickly, and we were back on the bus back to the Capital, Road Town, by about 1.00pm.

We also noticed that most of the islands were right hand drive except (we think!) Barbados and Tortola. In Tortola you drive on the left BUT the vehicles were right hand drive! Very strange as it meant you couldn’t see if anything was coming!!

We thought about going to Virgin Gorda, or taking a taxi to West End (US$ 27) but decided we may not have enough time as the last tender was at 4.30pm, so we ended up having a beer in a cafe and catching up on wifi! Sea day tomorrow!



Didn’t do very much on our sea day except relax in the sun and read, and watch the birds (brown boobies?) diving into the sea to try and catch the flying fish!

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