Not fully knowing how much time we may need at Princess Juliana International in St Martin, we left two hours before our scheduled flight time. The airport was again very quiet — dodging the flight times of all American and European flights. There were a total of 20 passengers in the entire terminal, a terminal which I might add, has been entirely updated finally.
It is now much more spacious and welcoming. To be fair, avoiding the hordes of American tourists at this hour helped, but there was a lot more space to spread out than it used to be. There is even a priority pass lounge now, and we were its only guests. They had a nice spread of various pastries and baked goods, and was a much nicer environment than the lounge in Miami.
Our flight was due to leave at 1030am, but was pushed back to 11 due to the aforementioned tropical depression I had mentioned in other posts. It is working its way through the area, and while it has already left St Martin, it was stubbornly lingering over Tortola. Then the gate agents made an announcement that it would be delayed further, but had an immediate follow-up that they were boarding now. What a rollercoaster! And thus, we were marched down to the gate which (as I predicted) was just a bus. We took the bus to our Twin Otter, as numerous passengers voiced their concern about its size.
We launched out of St Martin and headed west toward the remnants of the cell. As a whole, the flight was pretty smooth, though as we flew westward, the sky noticeably became darker and darker. I was watching the flight radar on the pilots screens (on a Twin Otter you see everything as there is no flight deck door). They did a good job of avoiding the worst of it, and we only had a few bumps during our descent to Tortola. The landing on Beef Island (yes that is the actual name of the island where Tortola’s airport is located) was received with widespread applause.
We had finally made it to Tortola in less than 24 hours after we were supposed to have done it. Furthermore, it’s best that we did our roundabout way through Bonaire and St Martin because today’s flight from Miami to Tortola circled for about 30 minutes, then diverted to San Juan, Puerto Rico, rescheduled multiple times throughout the afternoon to fly to Tortola from San Juan and now they’re not scheduled to take off until tomorrow morning at 7am. Not a good day for everyone involved in that mess. Nevertheless, we still had a few obstacles of our own before we would get to our final destination of Virgin Gorda.
We were the last to make our way through Customs, and we noticed that there were no more bags on the conveyer belt. Nicole quickly tracked down a worker to explain that we didn’t get our bags. I suggested that the crew tags on them might have thrown the baggage handlers who may have left them on the plane — a plane that was due to leave for Antigua any minute. She quickly called someone on the phone who was able to find our bags and bring them to us. Phew. Crisis averted. On our way out the terminal door, we asked our way to the ferry dock and the worker said she could call someone from the ferry company to pick us up.
The ferry was due to leave at 1pm, but the ferry workers informed us that there was an issue with one of the boats and they were only running one boat which would have to make a stop in Road Town on another part of the island before picking us up. We would have to wait for another hour. We waited for a while inside the ferry worker’s car until we got out to go to a market to see if they had anything worth buying. Given that we were in a place called Beef Island, the t-shirt options were disappointing. Eventually the ferry did come, and we were off into the remnants of the rain showers and arrived in Virgin Gorda around 330pm.
We were met at the docks by a representative from Speedy’s car rentals and were soon on our way in our Suzuki Jimny. We checked into the Mango Bay and then headed out for some groceries at a supermarket in town. We gathered some British-type snacks as this is the British Virgin Islands after all, so we acquired some Cadbury chocolates, hobnobs, digestives, etc. Next we attempted to find a place for dinner, but as this is the offseason, many restaurants simply close down between August and October. Our first attempt was not correctly indicated closed for the season, so we drove to an Italian sort of restaurant called The Rock Cafe. Nicole and I had pasta.
We did see a nice sunset from the green hills while we were meandering trying to find a place to eat, so not all was lost — even though we were briefly. It looks like the rain cell is petering out and we should hopefully get some decent weather for the next couple days to do some exploring.
passports & pepto bismol 