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Day 5 Tortola BVI 3/5/2009

Virgin Gorda - The Baths

Virgin Gorda - The Baths

 

Today’s port is only about 92 nautical miles from our last port of St Martin,  Tortola Is the port we will stop at but we have a tour scheduled that will take us to the island of Virgin Gorda,  our port stop is scheduled from 7 am until 1 pm, very short time frame,  our excursion started about 45 minutes late because the ship arrived late. We boarded a bus to the ferry,  took the ferry over to Virgin Gorda,  they had a pretty good amount of rain the previous night and it was still a little rainy on the ride over,  on shore excursions I have learned there is a lot of hurry up and wait moments,  we are off the ferry and now waiting for a bus to take us around,  our beach stop was cut short because of the late start,  we are now finally headed to the Baths,  by goat standards the trail leading to the baths would have been treacherous and I’m sure many have seen the fate of broken hips and other bones.  Once at the baths we start on our way through the baths – huge boulders that make little caves and grottos, at some points you would have to get on your knees to get through,  it was fun and the sights were beautiful.  One on the other end after you enjoy the success of getting there you must go back the same way,  back at the parking lot with no one apparently in charge or guiding all these lost tourists back on the proper transportation to the next destination which for us would be the ferry landing,  we end up in a open air taxi (small pickup truck with converted bed that has benches on each side)  as it turns out he was not to pick us up, so at this point we were separated from our tour,  he took us the tender dock for the other boats in port,  paid him and walked back to the ferry landing for more hurry and wait.  Ferry finally arrives and we head back to Tortola,  upon arrival  in Tortola we were to be bused back to the ship,  unfortunately there were no buses waiting for us and they were running late,  we were told we must walk back to the ship,  this created a commotion with many who demanded a bus take them back to the ship,  we ended up walking back and made it back just in time and the ship did Sail in time.

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