Day 20: Around Tortola

I spent the day touring the island and reading at Brandywine Bay. Details to come when the mosquitos aren't out near the only free wifi on the island.

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There are certain upsides to stopping in a cruise-ship-town, including the fact that you can always find a group to split a cabbie tour of the island. So I walked down to the massive pier with a skyscraper docked next to it, and allowed myself to be herded to a tour bus after doublechecking that they were saying fifteeN and not fifty. In islander they sound nigh-identical.

The tour buses are f350/f450 superduties with benches and a canopy on the back and a PA system in the front. They have 25 seats and fit "any number of people" - but I sat up front with the driver, where you get a commentary with the commentary.

The tour was good, we took the ridge road so we had great views of most the bays on the island, and all the other islands - which he pointed out and told us fun facts. Like beef island, where pirates would steal cows until the woman who owned the cows invited them all in for arsenic tea.

We saw the highest point on the island, 1780 feet (too far to hike, I decided) and stopped at Cane Garden Bay - one of the nicest beaches on the island. Well, it would have been except for the fact that it was carpeted with people. I found a empty spot out of the rain that found us right as we got off the bus, and had lunch.

In the afternoon, I caught a publico to Brandywine Bay, a small empty bay 4 miles up from town. It was nice, much better than Cane Garden. I sat in some wet sand (oops), finished my book, and watched the locals race RC boats.

Back in town, I finally found a wifi hotspot, caught up on email, and then got attacked by mosquitos... So I had dinner in a pub and called it a night.