Beach Options

West End, Tortola

Today, I sampled new beaches. Well, not really new to me. But new to me by land rather than sea.
I remember vividly navigating the entrance into Cane Garden Bay 10 years ago when my son Ben and I sailed the islands when he was still in college. There aren't a ton of channel markers in the BVIs, so you have to either have "local knowledge" which means you know from veterans how to approach, or you look at the visual photo and read your navigational map.

Today, I visited the same bay. But this time by land. From the West End, it's probably only 5 miles max, but those 5 miles are a mix of heart-sttopping climbs,narrow hairpin turns, and little villages with children walking to school, their plaid jumpers and yellow shirts looking too warm for a summery day.

Cane Garden is probably the busiest beach on Tortola--popular with boaters ( evident from the picture above ), and accessible to day trippers from the cruise ships who get a gravity-defying jitney filled with 30 people that crawl up and down the scarey turns to get them there.

I passed by, saw the tourists, and moved on to Brewers, the next bay over. Brewers is a wide beach so good for swimming. Toay, though it was full of cruise ship folks playing volleyball in the sand and generally hooting it up. No worries, I thought as I plunked down my beach chair at the far end of the beach. Swimming was good.

On my way home, I stopped at the far end of Cane Garden at a shack, really, called De Wedding. There was no one in the tattered, whitewashed building except four Tortolan me, watching the charter boats ( and the girls ) in the bay, a spectacular azure cove with white sand. Brown pelicans in front of the railing diving from 30 feet in the air into the surf to catch their prey. I guess the tourists hadn't walked down the beach to the west end, stopping instead at old stand bys like Stanley's. I was pretty fine with that.

"I'd like whatever is best," I said, as a tall, thin man with dark, kind eyes walked toward his bar. Another man, younger, a white dew rag wrapped tightly on his head, followed him.
"That's the captain. I go in his boat fishing, and we all do exactly what he says."
"Where are you from?"
"New York/ Philadelphia," I answered instinctively.
"No, no. Where here?"
Guess I haven't been here long enough to give my local address automatically.

The Captain fixed me a pina colada, the other men left, and he and I chatted a bit. He's a native of the island, has 14 grandchildren, and said he vacationed on some of the other islands that he liked--such as Anguila. ( I've heard that from Tortolans and charter captains alike. ) He talked about the development he's seen from this very perch--double in the past five years.

Eventually, he started looking through his binoculars "at the mermaids", and I leafed through the BVI promo magazine, a glossy four color piece that hawks villas, offshore banking opportunities, and the regs for "Non Belongers" ( that would be us ) who want to purchase property in the BVIS. I have a hunch after talking to some owners from the States that buying property here makes the coop process in New York look like a cakewalk.

The jitney was ahead me all the way back to West End. Good and bad: good because it blocked the sun glare at the dicey hairpin turns; bad because he went excruciatingly slow to prevent hitting a pothole and tourists concussing as a result.

Tomorrow its back to my best beach with few people, no bars, no vendors. Well, that's not quite true. There's one woman with a grill who grills BBQ chicken to order on the beach, the tart smell carried along on the breeze. She even remembers what beer I drink. Nice to have options, but guess I'm just a sucker for quiet, isolated spots with lots of room.

M.C.