Exploring the East End

Wednesday we woke up early because the mid-week maid service came at 9am – she's a super-nice Jamaican woman named Dian. We learned from talking to her that she is also an expert chef, and something our greeter neglected to tell us was that she is available to make private dinners at the villa. She was SO nice, and we could tell that she really enjoyed meeting new people and entertaining them. She chatted with us for a while Wednesday morning while she was cleaning up the villa, and we booked her to come back on Friday night and cook dinner for us.

We had hoped to go to Jost Van Dyke today, but we missed the morning ferry and felt like we wouldn't have enough time there if we only went for a few hours in the afternoon. Instead, we took it easy for most of the morning and then headed out to explore some beaches even farther away from our villa. Brewer's Bay, the farthest one we'd seen so far, is about a 20 minute drive away.

We stopped at Smuggler's Cove, the one right near our villa, first. Then went past Brewer's to some places on the east of the island: Josiah's Bay (very remote and natural looking with big waves for surfing), and Long Bay (farthest one – out by the airport – but beautiful!).
Not only did we get to see some other great beaches, we also got to see other parts of the island – we drove for a good hour each way and saw tons of houses, overlooks, and people, and a beautiful mural along one road depicting the history of Tortola and its people. Tom and I may like St. John better overall, but Tortola's beaches might win (might).

We went to dinner at a place called Sebastian's – it's right on the water, and many previous guests at Casa Luna wrote about how good it was. The food was definitely good, and the free rum shot at the end of the meal was nice. Of course it's a marketing gimmick – we ended up buying at $15 bottle of Sebastian's rum, distilled right there in Carrot Bay. But it was delicious, and the tourism business is definitely hurting here, so we were happy to buy some after tasting it.

After dinner, we were going to go check out a place called The Bomba Shack – they have live music on Sundays and Wednesdays (but their BIG events are their full moon parties, and we're missing the next one by about 10 days). Bomba Shack is right down the road from Sebastian's, so we just walked down to check it out. There was literally ONE customer in there. It was 9pm, and people don't go out super late here, so we knew that Bomba Shack would not be lively tonight. Apparently the full moon parties are awesome and always packed, but the rest of every month, it's pretty dead. I wasn't that bummed about not going – Bomba seems like a pervert. He has all these signs up about how pretty ladies need to give him their bras and panties, and the ones he's accumulated from drunk partygoers are hanging up all over his place. Maybe if I was partaking in his psychedelic mushroom tea I would feel differently. Sober, not so much. We headed home, had a few drinks at the villa, and watched Finding Nemo.