Virgin Gorda trip madness

Coming to the Virgin Islands always seems to be an adventure into madness. Getting here from Chicago is not the most convenient week trip I’ve ever done, in fact it’s one of the most circuitous, since the routing involves the following

• St. Charles, IL to Chicago O’Hare airport
• Chicago to Miami – and staying overnight for 8 hours
• Miami to San Juan, Puerto Rico
• San Juan, PR to St Thomas, US Virgin Islands (Which of course was delayed and late)
• Then taking a taxi from the ST Thomas airport to the ferry station (The taxi ride is 10$ USD, and of course there was an Accenture person – noticeable by his ACN knapsack, and laminated business card on the bag – duh)
• Grabbing the Native Son ferry from Charlotte Amalie to Tortola – stopping in the West End 

A couple notes about taking the ferry, if the seas are choppy, do not sit on the upper deck of the ferry, because the ride gets extremely rough and more importantly, you might as well have jumped directly into the sea. I was completely soaked – head to foot. Thankfully my laptop and camera were in my trusty water RESISTANT back pack. Note that water resistant doesn’t mean waterproof … if you jump, into the sea with your bag, water will get into it. Au revoir camera and laptop!

• Then finally, after meeting my friend in Tortola, we then had to take another ferry from Tortola to Virgin Gorda!!!

So after 26 hours, I was finally in a lovely 2 bedroom condo in Virgin Gorda for the Leverick Bay Poker Run 2010.

After a long day of traveling, the welcome buffet function had Moko Jumbie entertainment and some excellent food – the ribs and the pepper grouper were excellent.

 

It’s a long way to come for ribs and grouper. Seriously long way. So I’ll have to say that taking a short pleasure trip from Chicago to Virgin Gorda isn’t going to be high on my next travel routing.  That being said, Virgin Gorda is pretty god damn spectacular, if you flew in from Miami directly.