Good morning everyone! Just got back last week from 10 wonderful days on Anegada. The trip down was uneventful (CLT-SJU-EIS-NGD) until we got to Tortola. We arrived to Beef Island at 3:30 (InterCaribbean) and had Island Birds scheduled to take us to Anegada between 3:45 and 4:00. We were told that their plane was in St Thomas and would arrive anytime. Finally at 5:15 they put us on a Fly BVI plane which of course got us to Anegada too late to get provisions. We were not too happy about that and I told my wife I would call Nadia later in the week to express our displeasure. Of course once we arrived Dean was there to great us with our vehicle. We went straight to Sid's and he hooked us up with some water, sodas and beer to get through the evening and morning until Lil Bits opened up. Once at Lil Bits the next morning the first thing I noticed was the shelves were nearly empty. She told us they were expecting a shipment the next day. But they had enough stuff for us to get by for a few days. Not a problem at all. Afterall, it is Anegada and we are here!
We spent a good portion of our mornings at the villa (D&H Sunshine Villas). The first couple of the days the mosquitos were really bad. I'm serious, really bad. We had several different types of bug spray. Nothing seemed to work. Andrew had some cortisone cream in the gift shop that really helped. Once the winds picked up after the first two days it got much, much better. The downside to the the winds was not being able to snorkel at Flash of Beauty. But we did get to spend a couple of days there and seeing Monica again was awesome.
My wife and I are not 3 meals a day types. So if we ate breakfast out (usually at ARH) we would not eat out until dinner. If we didn't eat out for breakfast we would eat out for lunch and skip dinner. We did have snacks at the villa to get us by. Lunches, except once, were all at Tipsy's. We did eat once at Cow Wreck. Ann's chefs put out some unbelievably good food. Burgers, Lobster Nachos, Lobster sandwich and more. Really good food. Dinners were at ANH, Sid's, Potters and ABC. All really good. The majority of our dinners were at Sid's. Not only convenient to the villa, but outstanding food.
Besides enjoying our time with Sid, Tipsy's was absolutely amazing. Beautiful bar with lots of toys outside and always busy in the afternoons. Ann & Andrew have done an amazing job with that place. I will add, the barstools are the heaviest barstools I have ever sat on!! It was great to see Nancy and Walker there and we saw them again our last night at Sid's. A nice surprise was finally meeting Sue (Caribbeangirl13) at Tipsy's. We chatted with her and her husband for a bit. Super people. We also were able to see the captain (Stephen Cross) from our sail trip in 2019. He had guests on Anegada for a couple of days. Nice surprise to run into him. We were at Tipsy's pretty much everyday. My tab at the end of 10 days certainly reflected that. Whew!!
It was good to see Bell at Cow Wreck as well. We still love that beach. Very beautiful. We only went a few times. They were not nearly as busy as Tipsy's.
Thanksgiving Day was our travel day going home. I called Nadia the day before to make sure we were being picked up on time and the let her know the displeasure of our arrival. She assured me she would compensate us for the glitch. I am still unsure what that will be as she still has not hit my card for anything yet. Maybe she comped the entire flight? Don't really know yet. We had been seeing news reports of big delays on flights within the US prior to Thursday. I felt good we would be good flying in Thursday as most would be at their destinations celebrating Thanksgiving. We had no issues whatsoever. Island Birds picked us up on time. InterCaribbean was on time and both AA flights were on time. We even made our 40 min connection time in MIA. I was worried about that one.
All in all another great trip with lots of relaxation built in at the villa. Hopefully things will work out to do it again in '24.
Just a small point but a 3:30 arrival with the expectation of a 3:45 to 4pm departure is a quick turnaround at EIS! I would leave yourself a bigger gap given the ontime performance of interCaribbean. I would leave myself at least 90 minutes to prevent being a no show for the charter. It’s also possible it would be cheaper to simply charter direct from SJU to Anegada.
That was this first morning taken from the front porch of the villa. The view is looking towards St Thomas, JVD and Tortola.
Pic 2 is the Lobster pasta from Anegada Reef Hotel Pic 3 is from Tipsy’s with our captain from our 2019 sail trip Pic 4 is my wife on the swing at Tipsy’s Pic 5 is me at Cow Wreck Pic 6 is the bar at Tipsy’s with the new TV Andrew hung that morning Pic 7 is the Lobster Nachos at Tipsy’s Pic 8 is with us and Ann & Andrew from Tipsy’s Pic 9 is my last meal on the island. Lobster at Sid’s Pic 10 is us with Sid and his soon to be wife Issabella
Thanks for the descriptions. If you want to get really ambitious in future, you can actually post captions with the pictures. BUT in order to do so, you have to put up the caption BEFORE you upload the pictures.
George, I looked at chartering from SJU and couldn't come up with anything reasonable. Maybe I didn't search correctly? As for the short window at EIS, Nadia had all my incoming information and set the outbound flight time and was prepared to adjust if need be. Now I'm sure if IC would have cancelled my flight and put us on a later flight there is no doubt we would have been overnighting on Tortola.
I was originally booked on Cape Air out of SJU. But a week before our trip they moved the flight up about an hour which gave us a very short window. Thus the gamble with IC.
I am surprised they would not give you a break to go straight from SJU. They had to ferry the aircraft to Tortola anyway. Perhaps they hope they can fill the ferry leg.
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