First Full Day in Paradise

Monday morning I woke up before 6 as the sun was rising - since our entire wall is one big window, I had the most amazing view!!
After we got up, we headed down the path to our private beach and spent some time exploring our bay... not a person in sight anywhere. Since it's so private, I decided to go topless, and MAN is that liberating! I might actually prefer it to having a top on. Tom was pleasantly surprised when he looked up from snorkeling and saw me sunbathing topless.

We explored the rocks to the right of our villa and found some cool shells and sea urchin skeletons, then we headed back up to our villa to take showers and head into town (we had to sign our jeep rental papers & decided to just grab lunch and do some shopping while we were in Cruz Bay). The master bedroom shower at this villa is outdoors – it felt a little weird to be showering in open air like that!

On the way to Cruz Bay, we saw donkeys and goats on the side of the road! Later on, we also saw deer, roosters, and cows. And lizards? They're everywhere. There are so many animals roaming free on this island. We must've driven by at least 15 donkeys & goats every time we got in a car.

We ate lunch at a local joint called Woody's, and although the food was pretty standard to Tom, beer-battered shrimp, blackened mahi mahi, curly fries, and a cold beer tasted SO delicious to me! Woody's had flags hanging up from some North Carolina and Georgia schools, including one from UNC.

After lunch, we went shopping for a while in a complex called Mongoose Junction. I got some boyshorts for me and a gift for my parents at a local artist's shop. If we had known how terrible the shopping was going to be in Tortola, we would have done more shopping here. The shops in St. John were fantastic, and I appreciate them much more after seeing the sparse, junky stores in Tortola. On our way home, we picked up some groceries so we could grill out some burgers for dinner. Dinner was good (even though the buns we bought were moldy and we had to use pitas as top & bottom buns), and after a long day of swimming, shopping, and exploring, we were tired and ended up heading to bed early.