Christmas in Tortola

So I understand that there has been a lack of a post for quite some time now. . . My excuse is that it is the holidays! (Basically a holiday from our holiday for the Jangles crew!) So first of all, Merry Christmas and a happy new year to everybody! I hope you had a great holiday spent with family and friends. I know that I surely had a fantastic Christmas.

At the beginning of the year, we befriended a man by the name of Robert in St. Lucia. We met his beautiful wife, Agi (Agnes) when they invited us to stay in their villa in Tobago. We have become good friends and they invited us to spend Christmas with them in a villa in Tortola. So after lots of misinterpretation over whether we could fly to Tortola due to my mothers lovely green and gold passport (South African), we found ourselves at the airport on the Thursday evening before Christmas, waiting for our flight. Our flight ended up being an hour late and the people at the airport had no information about it! The board at the airport said that our flight had already departed when it hadn’t even arrived yet! Anyway, it got there eventually and before we knew it, we were being lead out onto the tarmac to board a small island hopper. It was the smallest aeroplane I had ever been on, seating maybe 40 people at maximum. It was literally and up and a down as the flight was a total of 30 minutes. Robert fetched us from the airport and we drove the hour to Villa Ariana on the island of Tortola. Agi met us at the front door and we spent the next few hours catching up.

The villa was stunning. Alex and Josh had a downstairs room that had a massive map of the Caribbean covering an entire wall. Mom and dad had the upstairs room with the Jacuzzi bathtub. Rebecca and I got the studio apartment outside with the outdoor shower and Robert and Agi took the separate cottage across the pool. Each room had a balcony looking over the ocean and in the center was the swimming pool, also with a spectacular view over the ocean. The kitchen was to die for and many a storm was cooked up in it during our stay. We took a drive to Soper’s Hole Marina to go and do some food shopping and to look at a few boats. Robert was interested in one of the boats so he managed to get a tour whilst the girls were shopping. We had drinks and snacks at Pusser’s bar before heading back to the villa to have a delicious dinner of grilled lobster.

View from the villa pool

Half of the villa

Lobster dinner

Map wall

The next day, we went back to the marina to go and see another boat. We had drinks and snacks again at Pusser’s bar before going back to the villa. We went out that night for dinner at a restaurant called Banana Keits that looked out over the ocean, you could see all of the lights twinkling just on the shoreline and over the land. We had a delicious dinner, and decided to stop at Bomba’s Beach Shack for a final drink on the way home. This was a very famous place for their full moon parties, and looking at all the photographs covering the walls it really was a full moon party (if you know what I mean). The roof was covered in woman’s underwear because their policy was that if you gave them your panties then you got a free drink, needless to say we all paid for our drinks that night.

Bomba beach shack

The next day the sun was shining bright so I found myself lying in the sun by the swimming pool for a while. Agi and Rebecca spent the morning baking a cake and baking cookies just to get into the festive spirit. That afternoon I went for a run into town, to the beach and then back to the villa. The dirt road was great to run on and my muscles felt good as they were stretched. That night we had a quiet dinner at home of chicken wraps.

Baking ladies!

Before I knew it, it was the day of Christmas Eve already. It was a busy morning as Alex and I took a taxi to go and swim with dolphins and the rest of the gang went for a dive. Alex and I had such a great time and it was so good swimming with dolphins. They are beautiful, friendly creatures that love to play. We got back to the villa and had a bit of time before everyone else arrived back so we tanned by the pool for a bit. We managed to make a reservation for dinner at the Sugar Mill Hotel for Christmas Eve. We all dressed up for the occasion and went for what turned out to be the most delicious dinner! Everyone enjoyed their meals thoroughly! I had a delicious quail with a honey mustard sauce served with wild rice, talk about tantalizing the taste buds! Rebecca tried to get their Christmas tree as we didn’t have our own but her attempts were shot down. But who needs a Christmas tree when you have friends and family in your company.

All the girls

Our Christmas tree at the restaurant

Then it was Christmas. So clearly the Mayans were wrong because we weren’t supposed to make it to this day; I just hope that Santa sent their children presents as it must of come to a shock to them when they woke up on the 22^nd. We were certainly blessed with gifts. Alex got a gorgeous pair of zebra striped high heels (which I almost fell over when I tried them on). I got a lovely dress, a new bikini and a warm shirt to fair the winter in South Africa! It was a great morning, which got even better when we had our delicious Christmas lunch/dinner. We had a feast of beer chicken with assorted vegetables and roast potatoes. We had a great day filled with chatter and laughter and lifted spirits.

Chilling in the lounge for christmas

Lunch/diner table

Christmas lunch/dinner

The next morning was a sad one as we were all departing Tortola to our new destinations. We said farewell and a final thank you to Robert and Agi at the airport. We flew back to St. Maarten where Jangles awaited us as they departed on the ferry to Virgin Gorda. They almost didn’t let my mother back into St. Maarten due to her South African passport but luckily we had boat papers and letters with us! We eventually went through to find out that everybody on our flight was without luggage as the plane was too full so they left every ones bags in Tortola! We were still in too good spirits to let this get us down so we went back to the boat only to pick up our luggage the next day. So to Robert and Agi, thank you so much for inviting us to spend Christmas with you both. We all had such an amazing time and have memories we will never forget! We hope to see you both soon…

Dominica - Antigua

I do apologize for the lack of a blog post recently, I have just been enjoying myself too much to sit down and write. So here’s what’s been happening on the Jangles boat:

Bubbles at champagne beach

We spent a few days in Dominica; which has been labeled one of our favourite islands. This island was formed by the creation of eleven volcanoes of which seven are still active. Almost the entire island is covered in lush green rainforests where waterfalls and streams abound. It is a truly spectacular island. We spent two days attached to a buoy in Rosseau Bay. The first day, we ruled out an island tour due to the massive cruise ship that had appeared overnight, meaning that the island would be overrun with tourists. So we opted for a tour the second day; which was definitely the right decision. Our first stop on our tour was to Champagne Beach. We all got into our costumes and walked with our snorkeling gear to the end of the beach. It is known as Champagne beach due to the little bubbles that rise from the seabed due to volcanic activity. We floated through the little bubbles; revealing a whole new world full of life below the sea. We saw many fish, some including: massive parrotfish, blowfish, trumpet fish, spotted eels and even a tiny rusty orange seahorse! We emerged after an hour and a half having spent longer at Champagne Beach than we intended too.

Jangles crew with Jangles lifejackets

 After tea, coffee and cake, we headed to Titou Gorge; made famous by the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We walked the ten minutes to the gorge, and then put on our life jackets. Our tour guide said we had to have life jackets as someone had drowned in the gorge recently. So our Jangles life jackets were put to use for the first time. Our guide told us that the water was not cold, only ‘refreshing’ but guaranteed the only word running through my mind once I got in was cold! We swam into this dark gorge in a single file. It was raining up ahead so big drops were splashing down all around us and one drop that splashed in front of me contained a red ant. Now this drop naturally splashed into my eye and the red ant bit me on the corner of my eye; leaving it burning and swelling. But this bad luck of fortune could not of stopped my enjoyment of this beautiful gorge. We swam about 5 minutes to the end of the gorge where this very powerful waterfall gushed down. We each took turns swimming against the waterfall and trying to touch the furthest rock so we could see we reached the end of the gorge. Once everyone touched the rock, we slowly swam back to the entrance; where another group was arriving. From the gorge, we went to lunch at the Rainforest café near the Trafalgar Falls. The food was good but nobody was overly impressed by it. They did have one very strong rum punch though. Again, it was a ten minute walk to Trafalgar Falls. Now Trafalgar Falls are twin waterfalls that the locals call the mama and the papa waterfalls. The papa waterfall being the taller of the two, was a hot water waterfall. The mama waterfall was a cold water fall. All the tourists stood at a balcony overlooking the two waterfalls; we ventured further to actually go and swim in the pools below the waterfalls. We had one French tourist who was yelling at us (In French of course) because we went passed a sign that said ‘proceed at your own risk’. Needless to say we continued walking and climbed over rocks to get to the cold water pool as the hot one was just too hot for us at that moment in time. Alex, Rebecca and I swam in the mama pool. After Trafalgar Falls we had time for one more stop – the Sulphur spring. We were shown the original source of the spring where it was too hot for human contact, so we went to one of the three sulphur spas. This spa had three bathtubs filled with warm water and more dripping down. Needless to say, this is where the four girls stayed whilst the men went exploring around. We went back to the taxi and arrived back to the boat after a very long day of exploring.

Going into the gorge

Trafalgar Falls

Sulphur bathtubs

We sailed up to Portsmouth; occasionally running around to reef sails as gusts of up to 33 knots of wind came through. We arrived late afternoon and attached to a buoy. The next day we arranged to go up Indian River to a small pub. Our boat had to be rowed up the river as it was illegal to use the boats  engine in the protected area. This is all a protected nature reserves and it would destroy the mangroves. Indian River is also another famous spot from the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It was about a 45 minute row to the pub, where the river becomes too narrow and shallow to continue by boat. The little pub offered passion fruit rum punch, lime rum punch, coconut rum punch and their special blend known as dynamite. We each picked a flavour and then once we couldn’t stand the mosquito bites anymore, we hopped back into the boat and rowed back down the Indian River. Great fun was had on the way back where some of us took turns in attempting a hand at rowing the boat, we all agreed that Jerome our tour guy was certainly the best.

Going down Indian River

 The next morning, we sailed to Antigua. It was my parent’s 26^th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a bottle of champagne and fish (the only one that we had managed to catch, thank goodness there are some fish in the ocean, we were beginning to wonder!) once we had arrived in Antigua. The dock was covered in super yachts of various shapes and sizes as they were having a week of charters; a yearly event in Antigua. Most of the super yachts cost around 200 – 250 thousand US for a week of chartering. Given the amount of super yachts I would imagine that there will be many events happening over the next week. . .

Fish for dinner