Tortola, Virgin Islands - 2nd December

 We woke up this morning to the site of actual dry land – the first we’ve seen in almost a week. We scurried about getting breakfast and ready to go, then headed ashore. Well, tried to head ashore – first we had to get off the boat, which meant a lovely long queue in the corridor outside our cabin shuffling forward at no miles an hour (it turned out later that we were waiting for the recently departed to depart the boat – apparently the Code Alpha we heard the other morning was a case of Pneumonia (!!?!!) a 53 year old is no longer with us, but we don’t know any more about it. I sort of hope they were traveling alone…)

When we got ashore we ambled over to a pagoda where we found the rest of the people booked on the same excursion as us, and then when we had everyone together and we all had little wrist bands attached, we got into a minibus and waited. When the wait was over, we sped off to a little gated area outside of town called Dolphin Discovery.

Oh yes my friends, we were going swimming with dolphins!

First up, we shucked off most of our clothes/changed into swim wear, and put our bags into open lockers, then around the corner to grab a life jacket each before sitting down to watch an awful little video introduction. It actually made me sad to watch as the American voice, dripping with insincerity, told us how lucky the dolphins are to be there…. As it turned out, they seemed very happy (because, of course, Jo and I are expert judges on cerulean emotions) and playful – with a very plentiful supply of fish.

When we’d endured the video, it was off to the pools to line up on a platform that left us about chest/belly height out of the water as Irwin, our guide and showman started introducing us to the dolphins.

It was wonderful. Really truly exquisitely wonderful. They were so much fun to be around, these massive bottlenoses, that jump out of the water, do flips and circles and even stand up on their tails (which I’ve seen before in films and so on, but wow – in the flesh it was really breathtaking!)

Very annoyingly, they wouldn’t let me take my camera in – the reason given that it might scare the dolphins, which of course I agreed to. It was only when we got out and they led us up to the Photo Room that we saw the real reason… They’d been taking pictures of us the whole time we were in there. When we had a kiss from Isla (our lovely dolphin) & kissed her in return, when we shook hands, when we stroked her belly, threw a ball for her & best of all WHEN WE GOT A RIDE ON HER! All these pictures had been taken and now they wanted to sell them to us. Wonderful.

And we really would have bought them if it wasn’t for the fact they wanted to charge $129 for a CD of maybe 20 pictures. Per Person.

I know it’s a once in a life time experience. I know those are memories that will last forever. I know that many people will buy them. I just am not one of those people. And nor were any of the people from our ship. If we’d bought them, we probably would have had to give up an excursion somewhere else. Very very saddening, but hey ho! Who cares?! WE SWUM WITH DOLPHINS! WOO!

I did get to take a few pictures as we were leaving, but they were all very rushed and blurred - sorry about that - for instance, here is one of someone else getting a ride on a couple of dolphins...

(also, a couple of other people didn’t go in, they just wanted to see the dolphins and they took a lot of pictures, so we’ll try and track them down on board and ply them with drinks in return for emailed pictures….)

After that we got a lift back some of the way to town, but got off so we could see a little of the town and do some shopping… Road Town is not, by itself, a tourist destination. It’s like a slice of small-town America dropped into the sweltering humid head of the Caribbean. It is not a rich place, and clearly most of the money comes from Tourism, but it was nice to see people wandering about in their day to day lives – once we were in the back streets, the way they dressed, talked, laughed and so on made me think we could have been in a small town in Sussex. Only in the most amazing heat wave…

It does have an interesting history however - some of which could be seen on the old prison walls

 

The abolition of slavery was not something that happened overnight in the BVI (presumably this is the same in many places?) Rather than just free those in bondage, the authorities made sure that slaves were placed in enforced apprenticeships, which actually meant 4 years as a house slave or 6 as a field slave, working a 45 hour week for free, and only earning a pittance after that - and now they had to feed & clothe themselves, and pay for any medical care they might need, all of which had previously (to one extent or another...) been done my their "masters" in the past...

Ultimately, a combination of freedom not being what was hoped, outbreaks of cholera, massive storms and new taxes combined to force the population to rise up in revolt which resulted in all but a handful of Europeans fleeing the island & massive destruction to houses and infrastructure (such as it was) - so much so that even the schools didn't reopen for 2 years.

It's a sad but interesting history, and one that I think is likely to be familiar in much of the Caribbean (and much of the old British Empire, perhaps?)

We had a little* lunch in a bakery next to a hot sauce shop (mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm), where we tried baked chicken, chicken roti, plantain, rice & peas and a ginger beer. Om nom nom. I felt a bit bad for the chickens begging scraps under the table… Didn’t really want to feed him his mate, I don’t think he’d have appreciated it.

Now we’re back on board where there’s a deck party about to start. No idea what that means, but I think we’ll enjoy. We’ve also let Captain Haddock off – he’s been replaced by a new German Captain, who has already thrilled us with some of his tales over the tannoy. We cannot wait to hear more…

*actually, it was bloomin’ massive! This picture was after a whole lot of eating had been done...