Back to reality

Sunday morning we got up super early to pack and catch the 9:15 ferry from Tortola to St. Thomas where we would then fly to New York. Getting from St. John to Tortola a week ago was cake – very few people, very easy process. But getting from Tortola to St. Thomas today? Unbelievable. The ferry station in Tortola was overflowing with people who were also trying to get back to the USVI airport that morning, and it was chaos. There was a 9:15 and a 9:30 ferry, and we managed to get on the 9:15 ferry even though we didn't have tickets in our hands until 9:20. We worked our way through the crowd who was starting to board the 9:30 ferry and made our way onto ours.

When we got to St. Thomas over an hour later, the line for U.S. Customs was so long that we had to stay on our stiflingly hot ferry for a good 20 minutes before we could get off. Many of us had a noon flight to catch, so we were starting to get nervous about missing it. And man, it's a good thing we got on the earlier ferry! The 9:30 ferry got to customs about 5 minutes behind us, but since there was such a back up, they actually turned around and didn't come back to customs for a good half hour. We finally got off our ferry and made it through customs in about 15 minutes. Getting into the U.S. from other countries is so freaking difficult! It took us 5 minutes to get into the BVI, but over an hour to get into the USVI.

On the other side, we found a taxi driver to take us to the airport. We told him we were in a big hurry (it was almost 11 and our flight was starting boarding at 11:30), but he of course had to wait until his taxi was full before he'd leave. So, we sat for another 10 minutes while he waited for more travelers to make their way through customs. The drive to the airport wasn't bad, but we were still late enough that we had missed the cutoff time for checking into our flight. My heart skipped a beat at first, but apparently all that means is that we can't check our luggage right at the check-in counter. We still had to hurry through the airport and fill out yet another customs declaration form and go through another form of customs (God knows why since St. Thomas is a U.S. territory). We got to our gate a few minutes before boarding began, so everything turned out alright in the end.

We're flew home to New York after a fabulous two-week honeymoon in the Virgin Islands. We loved both places, but we've already decided that we're definitely going back to St. John in the future (and hopefully staying at The Retreat again!). We couldn't have had such a fun-filled, adventurous trip without the help of all our wonderful friends and family – it truly was a fantastic and memorable trip – the best honeymoon we could have asked for!