Sometimes I feel like I'm the last tourist on earth that actually carries a camera. Yes, I have an iPhone, and yes, the camera built into it is of extremely high resolution, and yes, it's more convenient to just take the phone out of my pocket and snap a picture. But I really like an SLR camera with a view-finder, especially when taking photos outdoors where the sun wipes out the image in the phone screen. And even though 90% of my photos are taken on the "auto" setting, I do like having some of the special settings available to me when I want to take a closeup, or a rapid sequence of shots to capture something moving quickly. Call me old-fashioned. I can live with that.

Guavaberry Spring Bay (Identified henceforth by "GSB") provided daily housekeeping services, even though we opted for every other day. They also keep a rather well-stocked commissary in the office with basic, and some non-basic food supplies. Eggs, milk, bread, condiments, canned goods, wine and liquor (of which we did not partake), some local fish and meat, etc. Honor system: You write down what you took on a list, and they put it on your final bill. A little pricey, but worth it for the convenience. (Vacation dollars.) But we also supplemented what we bought there with some purchases in town. Jenny had heard about the LSL bakery in town that made some excellent bread, but when she went there to buy some, she found out they no longer made bread, so we were "stuck" with store-bought.

GSB has several different levels of accommodations to offer. Palm Cottage is one of their least expensive. It's a simple one-room octagonal bungalow with bathroom and kitchen facilities. Photo #12 shows the exterior. It's nestled in and amongst the foliage and boulders. Well equipped with propane stove, fridge, freezer, and a very complete set of kitchen implements. from photo #13, you can see the extensive fenestration (windows), which performs the function of air conditioning quite handily. I love the construction of the ceiling (Photo #14). The deck (Photos #15 and 16) goes almost completely around the building, allowing us to have our meals outdoors either in sun or shade any time of the day. I am culinarily challenged, and have lived my entire adult life on frozen dinners and deli sandwiches, and am none the worse for it. I do, however put together a decent breakfast. So our arrangement was that when we were not eating out, I would prepare breakfast, and Jenny would take care of lunch and dinner. And whoever didn't cook did the dishes.

We walked down to the beach after breakfast. Photo #17 depicts one of the many boulders on the premises, which Jenny christened "The Whale" for obvious reasons, that we passed on our way there. The beach itself (Photo #18) is small, but quite pleasant. White sand, and its boundaries delineated by piles of the ever-present boulders. GSB provides beach towels and beach chairs whose unfolding and folding procedures mystified even this engineer. (For some reason, Jenny had no trouble figuring it out.) No umbrellas provided, but trees around the periphery of the beach offered plentiful shade. I can swim, but not strongly. And I tend to get cold quickly in the water. So I went in for a short dip only. There was enough surf to throw me around a bit close to shore (Video #19), and concern for rip tides and hidden boulders dissuaded me from venturing very far out. Later, when changing back into street clothes, I dumped several shovels-full of sand out of my trunks. But mostly I passed a couple of fruitful hours lounging in a beach chair, and listening (and snoozing) to a recorded book on my headphones, and musing on the fact that it was about 12° F back home.

I had some business to take care of with regards to the rental car. I needed to register as a legal driver in addition to Jenny. So we got in the car, and I called up Google Maps on my phone, entered "Mahogany Car Rentals, Virgin Gorda" into the destination. We bumped our way along the roads until Google Maps told us we had arrived. There was nothing that looked anything like a car rental outfit, only a cluster of private homes.I tried to call Mahogany Rentals, and my call went to voicemail. I asked a woman outside one of the homes, and she said, "Oh, no. You need to go..." followed by a long series of directions involving local landmarks. Well, if you read the previous page of this blog, and in particular the paragraph on "Driving" you can guess the outcome of that foray. Fortunately, Google Maps did know where Guavaberry Spring Bay was, or we'd still be wandering around in circles to this day. In the end, Mahogany gave the appropriate paperwork to the offices of Guavaberry Bay, where I signed them.

I had brought my brand new laptop with me, because I had some ongoing administrative work to keep up with for the Folk Project. I also brought a mouse and a keyboard, because I'm very clumsy with the keyboard and touch pad supplied with the laptop. I type with my palms down, and they keep rubbing on the touch pad, moving the cursor around, and putting my input somewhere three or four paragraphs away from where I had intended. Alas, I had left one minor piece of equipment at home. The new laptop only had USB-c ports and the mouse and keyboard had USB-a plugs, and I neglected to bring the adapters with me. A couple more forays into town trying to find an electronics store proved fruitless. (No Staples in Virgin Gorda.) I did manage to borrow a suitable mouse from the Guavaberry Spring Bay office, but I suffered with the damn laptop keyboard for the whole 10 days we were there, backing up an correcting my typos every other sentence I typed. Grrr!

In the afternoon, we decided to visit Virgin Gorda's most famous attraction, The Baths. All through our stay at GSB, we could see the endless procession of pickup truck taxis carrying tour groups to this fascinating geological phenomenon, a BVI National Park since 1990, and only a 9-minute walk up the road from Palm Cottage for us. It is essentially a tumbled pile of those giant boulders that fell in such a fashion that you can clamber among and through the spaces between them traversing the 150 yards or so between the Baths Beach and Devil's Bay. Why it is called "The Baths" remains a mystery to me.