Rex and I were very fortunate to spend 11/1-11/21 in de ilons this year…it is a long tale and the others who traveled with us will surely post reports as well but here is our story……I’ll do it a couple of posts and try and format it so it’s easy to read…
The Travel: 11/1 Buffalo to San Juan arriving at 11:30 pm, then 6am Cape Air flight to EIS next morning…..depart West End Tortola 11/21 on ferry to STT, Cape Air flight to SJU then BUF
The Dates: 11/2-11/5 land based on Tortola, 11/6-11/19 bluewater adventure, 11/19-11/21 on Tortola again
The Villa: Malcolm’s Chateau Relaxeau Caribe, Little Apple Bay
The Boat: Jeannius Privilege 435 Catamaran, Charter Base TMM Road Reef Marina
The Crew: Mike and Jean Beswick (owners of Jeannius), Malcolm (Manpot), Kit and Nolan North (Polaris) and of course Rex and me (Laura)
The Islands: Bequia, Mustique, Dominica, Ile de Saintes (Guadeloupe), Montserrat, and Saba
PART ONE: (first land based portion)
Because of last minute flight changes by USAir we ended up doing an overnight in San Juan and catching the earliest flight to Tortola the next day. We figured we’d just take a cab to one of the local beach hotels with a casino and hang there all night rather than trying to get a room for a few hours. This was all well and fine except we are really not gamblers and of course lost all of our “allotted” gambling money in the slots in the first hour! And that was playing the nickel slots! Oh well, we made the best of it and then headed back to airport at 5am.
Cape Air flight went well; the pilot even did an extra lap of Saint Thomas so we could see the whole island…very cool of him. We arrived on Tortola early and grabbed our rental car from National at the airport. They were really great because they had another location near RT so when it was time to get on the boat that Sat. we didn’t have to go all the way back to the airport to drop it off. Sean, our rep, was very helpful and even arrived early to work that morning in order to meet us.
We had told Mal that we’d meet him at his place around 4pm so we had all day to do some island exploring. We headed into RT to TMM first to check on Jeannius who had had some engine problems earlier that week, all was going well. We got stuck in Roadtown “rush hour” for a little while and then had breakfast at Bobby’s; they have a really great hot food section available for breakfast and lunch.
We decided to go directly to Smuggler’s Cove and get some sun and beach time, this was our first time there and it was beautiful. Chilled there for a while, then checked out Apple Bay and had lunch, cruised over to CGB for a bit, had fun driving around the crazy roads and then decided that staying up all night was starting to catch up with us and maybe we should grab a nap. So we headed back to Smuggler’s to crash for a while on the beach. Of course got eaten alive by no-seeums doing this! Even with Deep Wood’s Off on.
Note to self…get hotel in San Juan, do not sleep at Smuggler’s Cove
When we finally headed over to Mal’s at 4, I realized that the only pictures I had seen of
his villa were from the front so after driving up and down the road a few times I finally just told Rex to let me out so I could go stand on the beach and sure enough I spotted it right away (pink roof). The reason we kept missing it from the road was also because we were looking in Apple Bay and not Little Apple bay which did not show up on our road map.
Of course Mal’s first question was why didn’t we just call, but the adventure of finding it on our own was half the fun! Besides the car with the case of Red Stripe in the back outside the back door of the villa was an easy hint once we got near.
Well Mal’s place is just amazing! The new construction is absolutely beautiful and the view is to die for! The first floor of the villa is a separate living area with it’s own kitchen, bathroom, king size bed, sitting area, patio etc and the 2nd and 3rd floor are the newly remodeled portion. The porch off the kitchen on the middle floor is perfect for enjoying that morning coffee (which somehow always magically turned into a Red Stripe around 10 am…I have no scientific explanation for this, only that it must be a miracle of some sort)
The porch off of the bedroom on the top floor is the place to enjoy an evening glass of red wine, sunset and then stargazing. The roof over the porch is slightly recessed so when you are lying in the million dollar chaise lounges, there is absolutely no neck strain when trying to view all of those shooting stars.
We immediately cracked a couple of Red Stripes and a bottle of wine and spent the next couple of hours just chatting and reveling in the fact that we still had almost three weeks ahead of us in paradise! Looking out at the turquoise water, listening to the waves lapping, feeling the warm Caribbean breeze, and each of us in agreement that we were “at home” again in the BVI
More to come in Part 2 But for now here are some great pictures of Mal’s Chateau Relaxeau Caribe
(go to BVI Picture Forum to view)
