Saturday, July 23, 2011

Stardate 65557.05 - April Vacation to BEYC

Back in April we took a 1 week vacation to the Bitter End Yacht Club on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands.


The club was great, but getting there was not. We were not sure Cheryl would be able to be away from work until shortly before Loren's Spring Break, and the cost of the airfare was so high we decided to travel on miles. This meant that we had limited options on getting there. So we flew from JFK to St. Thomas, stayed overnight on St. Thomas, took a taxi to the ferry which took us to Tortola, took another taxi to the dock where yet another ferry was to take us to Virgin Gorda and the BEYC. Then we repeated in the opposite direction for our return trip. It was a lot of travel to get to our destination and back.

Here is the pool at the hotel we stayed at on St. Thomas.


Here I am trying to keep Kate contained as we wait for the ferry to Tortola.


We ended up not seeing part of the paperwork we needed to complete to enter the BVIs, so after a huge melt-down (me and the kids) at passport control, we ended up missing the ferry to the BEYC. Luckily, they sent a power boat to come pick us up. Unluckily, it was quite a bumpy ride. When we finally got to the BEYC this was the view we had from our room.



Here Loren waits for the "taxi" car to take us down to the main resort.



The food was pretty good, especially the open air bar-b-ques at night. We ate right down by the beach and the kids loved being able to play when they were done eating and we could easily watch them while we finished eating.


Here is the view from our usual table.


There was also a pool, and for the first couple of days we spent a lot of time in the pool.




We took a sunset motor around the resort. It was supposed to be a sail but winds were very light while we were there.








Our room is in one of those little huts up on the hill.


We also took an excursion one day up to Anagada. This trip also involved open pick-up truck taxis to get us to the beach, after a high speed ferry ride to the atoll.





Here is one of their taxis, back at the resort. We walked the first couple of days, but it was a good 20 minutes to get to the main resort so by the end of the week we just called for the taxis.


Loren met a friend (Sadie) at the resort and we ended up hanging out with her parents a lot while the kids played.












We also took a small Boston Whaler out to Oil Nut Cove where a very exclusive resort was just about completed and ready for guests.



Here the girls play after breakfast on our last day at the resort.



And now we're back in the pool on Tortola before our flight back to NYC. At least our return flight was direct - we had a stop in Miami on the way down.



And finally, here are a couple of iPhone photos Cheryl took.



NYC