March 1, 2023
Road Town
We have been avoiding going into Road Town, Tortola with Wild Rumpus, because it's like driving a 50' RV around the streets of San Francisco ! A million boats in the harbor, and all are coming and going towards everything everywhere all at once. Being the hub of the worlds best sailing grounds, does have the potential for a lot mishaps....
Thankfully, Stacey guided us neatly into our slip at Village Cay Marina, with 9 fenders out and a roving fender at the ready (our neighbors in the next slip also had a few ready and waiting ). The great thing about parking your boat in the marina is that your neighbors are your new best friends from here on in (as long as you don't hit their boat on the way into your dock đĽ´). I will say our neighbor was actually the not-actually-dead actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman. Really! I think he faked his death and is sailing around the world. The rest of his team were from South Africa and we all got along swimmingly.
I do have to say, that Road Town is something of a mystery to Me... I've never seen so many banks in such a small town?!? Maybe it's the Caribbean drug highway, or a money laundering state, I'm not really sure (if I found out I'd probably be killed anyway).
Thankfully my investigative inquisitive nature ended at the flora. For me, that got really interesting! I noticed that for part of the year at least, no one will go hungry... There are mango trees all over this town, much like the orange trees everywhere in Athens - at least these are edible (the oranges were sour and inedible in Athens đ˘). Sadly it is not mango season in winter, or I'd probably still be there.
Tortola is the most inhabited of the BVI islands, and the hub of the working class live close to the ferries that interconnect all others. Therefore we finally found a grocery store with reasonable priced food ($8 for a box of crackers is pirated robbery, never mind the $24 twelve pack of lame beer).
I don't know how anyone who isnt bazillionair can live and eat here?!? Most of the locals who are surviving and thriving work 3 or 4 jobs to make it happen! ( the manager Ian of the Tola brewery works his 4 jobs and his girlfriend Nina 3 more). OK enough of the realLifeđĽş.
Yes, coming to the "city" for the first time in awhile, opened my eyes again to how well we have it here. Not that I didn't see the mega yachts cruising about, nor the destroyed homes and businesses that haven't been rebuilt after Irma, I just caught glimpses and moved on, where in Road Town I was immersed in a working-towards-recovery, yeah it's gonna take some "islands" time, but we are still gonna greet you with a warm "hello" on the street everyday. The local attitude that this still is, & forever will be, an amazing place to live and to try to do more than survive. Tortola is and will always be to me, the face of beauty, in a world that wants to blow it off the map.
Cheers and thanks for listening to my opinions & rants. (Again my editor is fast asleep as I write and publish). She'll definitely have words to say about all this in the morning đ¤Ź.
Sadly the Wix publishing company has had enough of me this evening, and will not let me upload any photos ... I'll try again tomorrow
(ok after forced shutdown of my phone they relented a little)
Yes there is a lush mountain top park to hike, and a Mtn bike guru-chef named Jim to serve you banana smoothies afterwards
And yes Stacey let me do the itinerary for our day trip:
Our new friend Nina at the Tola brewery, showing us we were not getting out of there sober... but they did give us a ride to dinner.