Fear and Loathing in the BVIs

We shoved off from Tortola under a sky blistered with ultraviolet madness, the kind of tropical glare that peels sanity off the bone. The SomewhereHot was clean and white, like a floating dentist’s office – ominous. We were armed with rum, sunscreen, and a broken GPS, ready to vanish into the reef-riddled wonderland of the British Virgin Islands with only Neptune and bad decisions as our guides.

The first stop was Norman Island, a pirate haunt turned tourist fantasy, where we snorkeled into the dark maw of the Caves – hallucinating schools of fish that stared back like DEA agents. I chased a barracuda into the shadows, certain it was hiding some cosmic truth. It wasn’t.

By day two, the boat was a floating crime scene – sand, limes, half-eaten mangoes, and empty bottles of Mount Gay cast about like shell casings. We anchored in Deadman’s Bay on Peter Island, where the beach was so pristine it felt illegal. A stingray the size of a Volkswagen hovered nearby like an aquatic enforcer. I respected his space. We had an understanding.

On to Virgin Gorda – the Baths – giant granite boulders stacked like a drunken god’s Tinkertoys. We crawled through the narrow passages like tomb raiders, sweat mixing with seawater, muttering incoherently about tectonic forces and the impending collapse of Western civilization. Locals eyed us warily. Rightly so.

Jost Van Dyke was where things got biblical. The Soggy Dollar Bar – birthplace of the Painkiller – hit like a hammer in a velvet glove. Rum, nutmeg, pineapple – diabolical. Shoes were obsolete. We danced like pagans under tiki torches until the moon told us to sit down and reconsider our life choices.

Somewhere between Anegada and oblivion, the radio died. Good. Only static and the wind mattered now. The sea stretched out like God’s lazy grin, and the horizon pulsed with unreality. Flying fish leapt beside us like greasy angels. I wrote a poem to a lobster I later ate.

On the last night, back in Road Town, we staggered into civilization like sunburned prophets, bearing no gospel but a lingering headache and a newfound respect for hydration. The boat reeked of triumph and coconut oil.

The BVIs had taken us in, chewed us up, and spit us back out with salt in our blood and truth in our teeth.

I’d do it again tomorrow.