There’s still plenty to come from my big summer trip to Latin America, although it is getting further in the rearview mirrors. Panama is up next but while I’m on a little break from writing about that trip, I want to take the chance to tell you about another, slightly more recent trip. Christmas while living far from home, friends and family can be a difficult time but I have to say that this year I had a blast! The programme that I work for was closed for two weeks because the school that we work in was shut over Christmas and new year, thereby leaving us with nothing to do. In my eyes, that’s a great opportunity to head somewhere exciting!

The exact same day that I got my job in Costa Rica, my twin sister also got her dream job! She had just finished a masters in tropical marine biology in Essex in the southeast of England but the last time I checked, there’s not many coral reefs in that part of the world. Instead she found herself a job in the British Virgin Islands, working for a dive shop and conservation organisation. For those of you reaching for your phones to look up where the BVIs are, I’ll save you the trouble. They are a series of more than 50 islands, alongside the US Virgin Islands, just to the east of Puerto Rico. Basically, island paradise.

Amy moved out there around the start of December so she hadn’t been there long when I went to visit. I wasn’t sure when else I would be able to get a couple of weeks off at a time so even though she was still settling in, I took the chance to go and see her. I had to work until the 23rd so I didn’t set off until the early hours of the 24th. Nearly a full day after I left my house in Cartago, I arrived at my final destination of St Croix. While Amy lives on Tortola, one of the four main islands of the BVIs, we were actually spending a few days over Christmas in St Croix which is one of the US Virgin Islands. After such a long journey, I wasn’t up for much so we just went out for a few drinks, some food and called it a night.

My first full day was Christmas day! And what better way to spend it than scuba diving. We went out on two dives and saw some Caribbean reef sharks, a sleeping nurse shark and lots of turtles, a few swimming and a few sleeping, which made Amy very happy. Whenever she sees a turtle while diving, she does a happy dance! When we were back on dry land, we were starving so went to a popular burger spot called Schupe’s. We had big dinner plans later so split a burger and some chips while we made some of the obligatory phone calls home. We were staying in Christiansted in the east of the island, one of the two main towns, but in the afternoon we went through to Frederiksted, the other main town, in the west. We had been invited to a beach barbecue with our dive shop from the morning through someone Amy knows who works there. It was a really nice atmosphere, a collection of other lost souls far from home in search of some kind of community to celebrate Christmas with. We enjoyed some great food, a beautiful sunset and then went back to our apartment for a few more drinks. Overall, not the worst Christmas I’ve had away from home (at least I wasn’t coming out of covid isolation…).

Boxing Day was exactly as it should be, a day for rotting, relaxing and recovering from Christmas Day. Albeit a lot hotter, sunnier and sandier than it would have been in the UK! We headed to Hotel on the Caye, a resort on a small islet in the bay of Christiansted. The beach is open to the public, you just have to pay $5 for the round trip boat to get there. This is actually a great spot because Christiansted doesn’t really have a beach otherwise. We ended the day at a very popular pizza spot in town called The Mill – big recommend.

And that was our time in St Croix and the US Virgin Islands over. We had to take two ferries to get back to Tortola, the island in the BVIs where Amy lives, travelling via St Thomas. We arrived at Road Town, the main town on Tortola, just before the end of the work day so headed over to Amy’s dive shop to see who was around and could give us a lift home. Amy lives with some of her colleagues who all work for We Be Divin’, a dive shop who run private excursions, mostly for people coming in on cruise ships. All the girls who work at We Be Divin’ also work for Beyond the Reef, a marine conservation non-profit working on coral reef health, building artificial reefs, doing cetacean surveys, beach clean ups and community outreach. They work closely with another business of the same owner, Commercial Dive Services, doing things like ghost net retrieval. It really is amazing the work that Beyond the Reef does. Amy had only been there for a couple of weeks when I was visiting so she was still settling into her job but since then, she’s been regaling our family group chat with envy inducing stories and photos of the kinds of things she is doing every day. More importantly, this is the kind of work that she has always dreamed of doing and that she has worked so hard to get to do and she deserves this so much. I was so happy to see her in this environment, flourishing and thriving, living her dream.

Amy lives on the other side of the island from Road Town but it’s only a ten minute drive or so. We got a lift home with Buzz and Margy, Amy’s flatmates/colleagues, and Margy’s adorable dog Starboy. The bay where they live is absolutely insane, I can’t believe that’s where she lives. It was sunset as we were coming down the hill into the bay and the view was incredible. After a fairly long travel day, we were both tired so we made dinner, chilled out and Amy gave me some of the things she brought me from home! This included some toiletries top ups that I can’t get in Costa Rica, some photos and a chocolate orange that my mum sent me because she always gets me one for Christmas!

Amy was still having to work while I was there so there were some days that I had to entertain myself. My first day on Tortola was one of those days. I got a lift into Road Town with Amy and settled in a coffee shop for a while. After having lunch with Amy, I decided to try out these open air truck tours that are mostly aimed at cruise ship passengers. When it came to the truck tour, I paid $25 for the 2 hour version, deciding to skip the beach stop that adds an hour and an extra $5. This ended up being a good decision because the beach stop is right in front of where Amy lives so I could go there for free whenever I wanted! The tour itself was fine, there was some commentary from the driver but even with his microphone it was hard to hear. The views were of course stunning but it ended up being a loop down to where Amy lives and back to Road Town so I had driven most of it before. At the end of the day, it was something to do and I saw a bit more of Road Town as well but it wasn’t a highlight of the trip by a long stretch.

Instead of going with Amy the following day, I decided I wanted to have a beach day to myself. Who can blame me on such a beautiful island! One end of the beach is super touristy, full of cruise ship passengers most days, with sun loungers, umbrellas, bars and restaurants. The other end of the beach however, on the other side of a small pier, is an untouched stretch. Beautiful white sand, no big waves, a few palm trees for shade and barely ten other people there throughout the whole day!

One of the benefits of having a sister whose job it is to go diving? Sometimes you get to dive for free with her! In this case, I didn’t actually end up diving with Amy because she had gotten an ear infection after our dives in St Croix, but I got to go with some of her colleagues and some volunteers on Beyond the Reef’s coral health surveys. After a quick lesson on the boat, taking me through a few of the most common types of coral, it was time to dive and have a go at identifying them. I was surprisingly good! Unfortunately a lot of the coral is unhealthy, bleached or dead but a lot of Beyond the Reef’s work, and particularly Amy’s part of that, is to monitor and treat coral. We did two dives before heading back to the shop to find Amy and go home for an afternoon on the beach.

Amy was working on Hogmanay (New Year’s Eve for the non-Scots in the room) so I had another chill day in the flat, not so much on the beach because it was drizzling a little. I was fine with a relaxed day though because we had big evening plans! Jost Van Dyke, one of the other main islands, is apparently one of the best places in the world to celebrate the New Year. Along with Amy’s flatmates, we had bought tickets to the main celebration that happens at a bar called Foxy’s. The ticket was $70 which is a bit expensive but the specific ticket we bought included the return ferry ride from Tortola which is $40 so maybe not as bad as it seems. It also meant I got to see another island, even if only for a few hours and in the dark. Foxy’s is a great big bar but the party was in a large area out the back. There was a big stage and throughout the night there were various musical performances from DJs and notably a great band who had really committed to the vague Game of Thrones theme! I enjoyed their performance the most, lots of rock songs and the keyboard player was Scottish! Just before midnight, bottles of water were handed out so that we could welcome the new year in ‘carnival style’ in their words. That meant opening the bottles and spraying the water over everyone around you! The night was great but we headed home at 2.30am so that we weren’t stuck waiting for the next ferry at 5am. There’s not much to report from the first day of 2024 – our biggest achievement of the day was getting down to the beach for a swim!

I had one more beach day to myself while Amy was at work but she had taken my last full day off so we could spend it together. We were ticking off another island, heading to Virgin Gorda to meet up with Amy’s friend who works at a dive shop there and to visit the Baths. These are unique geologic formations and are in one of BVI’s national parks. A series of large granite boulders nestled in between two beaches harbour small lagoons beneath them. There is a one way loop that will take you down to one beach, then through the baths themselves and out onto another beach that is back near the entrance. We had a swim at the first beach and then got caught in a little queue to go through the baths but there were worse places we could have had to wait. Going through the caves involved a bit of clambering, ducking under rocks, wading through water, going down ladders. We had a bit of time at the beach on the other side and then got some lunch at a restaurant at the entrance. I had a Caribbean dish called roti which was a curry stew wrapped in a flatbread which was delicious.

Before I wrap this up, there’s a few random but interesting things I noticed while in the Virgin Islands (and a few observations from Amy as well) – in the Virgin Islands they drive on the left but most of the cars are American so the drivers are also on the left side. People are very friendly and saying hello to anyone you pass in the street, whether you know them or not, is common. It’s also common to use ‘good night’ as a greeting in the evening whereas it’s usually something I would say as a goodbye. Despite this friendliness, customer service is not great. Travel between the islands is expensive, $40 return for a 20 minute ferry to Jost Van Dyke or a 30 minute ferry to Virgin Gorda. There is obviously a large ‘expat’ community but particularly in Amy’s work, it’s overwhelmingly South Africans and Filipinos. In the BVIs, rum is not taxed so the pours are heavy!

Cruise ships are prevalent, I saw them both in Tortola and St Thomas. Tortola is a big cruise ship destination, there was only one day during my stay when there wasn’t a single cruise ship in port and even the girls that live there were surprised because it’s such a rare occurrence! It’s like an invasion on docking days and the people coming off are not necessarily my favourite type of tourists. I think the nature of cruise ship travel can be a little superficial, mostly because of the time constraints. Yes, you get to experience a range of places in a short period of time but you often only have a handful of hours to see a new place. I found that this made some of the cruise ship passengers very impatient and borderline rude as well as entitled. This is of course not the case for everyone but it’s always the worst ones that you remember.

Something that Amy has talked to me about is the levels of wealth that she has noticed the longer she’s been there. The relative remoteness of the islands makes it expensive to get there (I can attest to that!) and once you’re there, costs are high because a lot has to be imported. In terms of visitors to the islands there are different levels, ranging from those coming in on the cruise ships, people staying on the islands and day chartering a boat, those who charter boats for the duration of their stay, crewed charter boats and even mega yachts. There is also a large wealth disparity between the ‘expats’ that move there from the UK, US or elsewhere and the locals.

It was a jam packed two weeks but I was glad that we were able to make it happen. There was a short period of time when I wasn’t sure if Amy was going to get there in time because of the waiting period for her visa. Even though she had arrived so soon before I visited, I was glad to be there. Now I feel I have an insight into Amy’s life, her work and her new home and I feel like I can follow along with her stories. I also know exactly how hard she has worked to put herself into this position and the sacrifices that she’s made. Being able to see those be worthwhile was incredible and I’m enjoying watching her build her life there.