The BVIs – Above and Below the Surface

(Sorry I haven’t been back earlier but January has been much busier than we ever expected. It started with our New Year’s Eve ‘street’ party followed by a slew of fun events that have kept me away from the keyboard. Today and tomorrow, I plan to finish off the news about our BVI trip. I want to complete these two pieces so I can start to share some January ‘happenings’. So, here we go… )

For whatever reason, we are just naturally destined to spend our vaca time around the water. The sooner I am either on the water or in it, the happier I am. The single best-ever day for me is to get out of bed in the morning, put on my bathing suit, spend the whole day in the water then peel my bathing suit off at night to put on my nightie and finally climb back into bed. And this is what made a number of days so great for me on our BVI trip – both above and below the surface.

Now I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard of Stand Up Paddle (SUP) boards - I hadn’t heard of them either until Jimmy and Amanda introduced us to them on this trip. After years of kayaking and more recently kite-boarding, both Jimmy and Amanda took to the SUPs with no trouble. So this is a photo of a good SUP-er (Jimmy):


Despite all my swimming, water-skiing and boating over the years, I have zero experience with this kind of board activity. After several hours of trying, this is the best I could do – trust you recognize me:


Maybe the next time I try to SUP, I’ll be able to actually stand up! After all, they are not called Kneel Down Paddle boards!

On to snorkelling… it is one of my fav things to do – especially in salt water – so easy to float on the surface and just gaze on the marine world below. John likes it a whole lot too.

So Jimmy and Amanda took us the "Indians". This group of small islands is a close-knit set of rock formations jutting directly into the air 60 feet – like fingers reaching up out of the water. At any one time during the day, there are numerous catamarans and sailboats anchored or moored there. It’s a fav place for people to snorkel and dive. It is not a safe place to stay overnight so boaters and sailors tend to go there for the snorkelling experience and then move on to another location to overnight. The afternoon we went to the Indians in the tender, we were so lucky ‘cause there was no one else there – we had the place to ourselves. We hooked up to the mooring lines installed just for dinghies and dropped backwards over the sides of the zodiac into the water. We swam around the rock formations for about an hour gazing at the sea life below - it was incredible!

On our last afternoon in the BVIs, Amanda and I snorkelled right off the stern of the catamaran in Great Harbour on Peter Island. And, earlier in the week, we snorkelled at Money Bay on the other side of Norman Island. Here’s a photo of the bay from above (beautiful, don't you think?):


No matter how or where you enter the water, sea life abounds. Here’s a short list of what I saw on those three snorkelling trips:

• Sergeant Majors
• Midnight (purply blue) and Queen (yellowy green) Parrot fish
• Angelfish
• Barracuda (only one)
• French Angelfish (vertical stripes when they’re young)
• French Angelfish (stripes become spots as they become adults)
• Queen Conch shells (with their protective spiny coatings the size of your head)
• Sea Urchins
• Black Durgons
• Tarpon and plenty of coral – sea fans, brain coral et al.

What made my heart race wildly though was seeing a Southern Stingray – my first time in their world. And just when I thought that seeing one was the best thing EVER, I saw another one! Just watching them beneath me was too beautiful. They were following each other, waving the tips of their wings and gliding inches above the sand bottom. You know there are times your snorkelling buddy is right there beside you and sees the same thing as you at the exact same time. More often, there are moments that you just need to enjoy on your own – it was a truly personal experience interacting with such incredible sea creatures. I’d say I'm a pretty lucky girl.

Hope you enjoyed this piece about being 'above and below' the surface. A concluding piece on the BVIs follows tomorrow about being ‘on’ the surface with a story about Blackbeard and some observations about the infamous Willy T… m.