A night at Concordia

Our next to last night on St John was spent at Concordia, Maho's sister property on the east end of the island. The resort is, like maho, made up of eco-tents,

 connected by elevated boardwalks (made of recycled newspaper! how cool is that):

The tents are definitely a step up from Maho in luxury... 

view from the bedroom! not too shabby... 

... but also in eco-practices, since they all have solar heated showers, 

composting toilets, 

and no electricity! there is a propane stove, and all lights and fans work with a solar battery (so awesome!).. 

This place demonstrates quite well how far you can go on almost exclusively natural resources - it was so inspiring!  

Eco-practices aside, this place has another fascinating feature: from almost everywhere you get these gorgeous, sweeping views of the island's most rugged dramatic side, over Salt Pond and Ram Head: 

the view from our deck!

main boardwalk

Staying there was a lot of fun! We hang out at the swimming pool, 

cooked (and the smell of m.'s ragu attracted a furry visitor that just wouldn't give up): 

chilled out on the amazing deck, 

you can sort of make out the muddy salt pond on the right, right next to the bay! 

took a break to have a couple of goodbye drinks with new and cool friends, 

sad faces at the going away outing :-(

and even found time to go on a full moon hike to Ram Head! 

the moon was so bright that we didn't even need a torch to find our way!

Tortola

Tortola is the main port of the British Virgin Islands, just a dinghy ride away from the US Virgin Islands - and of course m. wouldn't miss an opportunity to pay a visit to the motherland (he kept wondering whether we'd get proper beer and pub food over there, quite cute) (spoiler alert: we didn't)... so, on a cloudy, stormy morning a few days after Isaac's passage, we hopped on a boat and half an hour later landed on the kind of shabby, kind of unkempt island of Tortola... 

What did we see there? Among other things, we saw.... 

a tiny little port town bearing a striking resemblance to the house of Malibu Barbie, 

 shabby roadside huts covered in flowers,  

huge, sort of spooky, unfinished mansions, 

a nice looking rooster marching proudly by the side of the road, 

... and after lots of walking and walking

 we made it all the way to Apple bay:

Apple bay is famous for a couple of reasons: first of all, for being one of the very few spots around the Virgin islands where its is actually possible to surf, and second, because of Bomba's infamous surf shack, perched over the waves. We weren't able to do any surfing, but we did go ahead and pay a visit to the shack.... 

As you can see, the place does do justice to it's name. Made up of painted wooden boards and pieces of metal haphazardly put together,

...its walls (in airquotes) are covered in strange graffiti from all over the world 

even in greek! οποια πετρα κι αν σηκωσεις.... ακομα και στην Καραιβικη!

and pictures of Bomba himself posing with an assortment of topless women (apparently, if you go topless you get free drinks and also end up on the wall of fame). 

It's quite a strange place - notice all the ladies' underwear hanging around? 

I believe that if you're not drunk enough to go topless, you can also get a free drink by donating your delicates to Bomba's collection (!!!). How about that. The place offers an interesting choice of beverages,

including the shack's famous mushroom tea..

i'm not quite sure what you get for donating your flip-flops.... :-)

The shack was absolutely empty when we stopped by, so we just relaxed amidst a sea of panties, had some tea (no effect except what is to be expected from what felt like a ton of rum) and watched the storm roll in from the horizon.... 

Exploring the island

The last few days of our stay in St John we had access to a car! The reason why i got so excited about this is simply because the campsite is quite isolated - located on the top of a hill and at the end of a pretty bad road, we need to rely on a (sometimes quite unreliable) shuttle or on the island taxis who hate coming all the way out here so are generally quite expensive. The island is tiny (about 50 sq.km. in total!) but it is very hilly and walking around can be quite exhausting in this heat. Having a car (and especially an old, beaten up, sturdy 4WD) definitely makes exploring much, much easier...

First, we drove up to the Catherineberg ruins - it's the very well preserved and restored ruins of an old sugar mill: 

The place has an amazing history: in 1733, when a rebellion allowed the slaves to take over the island for 6 months, this place was used as their headquarters (side info: at the end of that period, a fleet of french ships carrying troops to help suppress the insurrection was sent over from Europe - stories say that slaves preferred to commit group suicides rather than allow themselves to get caught and once again enslaved). In the present day it's used as a venue for drum circles and full moon celebrations (it is also apparently occasionally used as a venue for other activities - we ran into a not-very-artistic nudie photoshoot when we drove by!! judging by the speed at which they packed up, and by the fact that you're not even allowed to sunbathe topless on the island, i'm guessing they didn't have permission for it....). 


Since the theme of the day was endless aimless driving around (and since our car of the camel trophy kind!): 

 we decided to take the small rocky, muddy road heading up into Bordeaux mountain right next to a place called Chateau Bordeaux (NOT what you'd expect it to look like - quite the funky shack actually): 

le chateau...

spectacular view from the Chateau 

The road winds up to the top of the mountain and leads to one of the most amazing (and least well known) viewpoints on this island:

even more spectacular view from higher up Bordeau mountain

Some more aimless driving took us to another viewpoint overlooking one of the south side beaches (wilder and more dramatic), Fish bay:

Fish bay

Since this was only a couple of days after the big storm, surf was up (a very rare occurrence!), so all of the island's surfers had come down to enjoy it. We found a small trail leading down to this amazing, kind of wild beach (it's not accessible by car) and had lots of fun walking around, watching the surfers and playing with the waves. 

M. fell in love with this house: 

Half moon house (on the right)

Turns out it's for sale! anybody got a few million to spare? 


After another long(-ish) drive, we checked out Jumbie bay (jumbie means ghost in west indian! apparently, slaves killed a plantation owner and his family here and stuffed them down a well, so the beach is supposed to be haunted. Didn't see any jumbies, but the beach is very pretty and quite secluded):

Jumbie Bay

We ended the day at Trunk bay, which is famous for its marked underwater snorkeling trail (not particularly interesting for experienced snorkelers..). As this is probably the most popular beach on the island, it's always best to go there after 4.30 pm, when the national park facilities close, access is free and the beach is almost deserted! 

Trunk bay

 I was amazed by how much there is to see on such a tiny little place! I'm looking forward to doing some more exploring on my last few days... i'll let you know what i find! 

Hurricane Isaac

Reading my Lonely Planet guide before coming down here, i found out that August is peak hurricane season around here. The weather has been pretty good though - sometimes it rains at night and in the early morning, but it's otherwise sunny, and of course very warm and humid. All that until a few days ago, when we heard that tropical depression #9 had formed not very far away from us.. We watched as it developed from a tropical depression to a tropical storm, and waited to see it if it would go on to become hurricane Isaac (there's an alphabetical list of hurricane names until 2017, and tropical storms take the next name in line as they become hurricanes - so Isaac was the 9th depression this year to become a hurricane, even though - spoiler alert - it did get downgraded into a simple tropical storm again somewhere along the way...)

The storm/hurricane would not actually go through the Virgin Islands, but was expected to pass quite close to us on Aug. 22 (my birthday!) and 23rd, so we were told that we'd have to evacuate the campsite for its passage - so this turned out to be quite an adventurous birthday! After a pre-birthday/pre-hurricane surprise party organised by m. in our tent (i had such a good time! m. even got the chef to make me a little cake, and the girls from the art department made a pretty pretty happy birthday garland), we all started getting ready to evacuate. 

Before leaving the campsite, we had to make sure all tents were prepared for the storm, so as to minimize the damages - so we all went around the camp helping "hurricane" everything.

All glass windows were boarded up:

                        

our windows at the front desk!

In the tents, everything had to be safely stacked as far away from the windows as possible. All blinds had to be rolled up so as not to get torn by the strong winds, and doors had to be tied with zip-ties so as to prevent them from banging:

All the mattresses had to be propped up on the bed frames (to allow the water to drip down to the floor in case they get wet), and everything had to be bagged or stored in plastic containers (in order to prevent things flying around in the wind) and stored as far away from the front windows as possible:

It was a very interesting process, and kind of exciting! By that time i was becoming really curious to see what a tropical storm/hurricane would be like.... 

We left the camp on the morning of my birthday (four day weekend, woohoo!). A couple of friends are currently house-sitting for a gorgeous villa on the other side of the island, and we were lucky enough to be able to stay with them while waiting for the storm to pass - we had a couple of very nice dinners (we tried our first sloppy joes, and m. made his famous Yorkshire pudding), and the guys even made some awesome funfetti cupcakes for my birthday (we ate about five each and now cannot move anymore...). We also enjoyed the hot showers (no warm water at Maho, not that you need it, but still...), learned how to play a card game called yuker (lots of fun), watched movies and Louis Theroux documentaries, and, most importantly, got to catch up on the blog (the connection at Maho is so slow that it's practically impossible).

As for the storm, it was much less intimidating than i expected it to be (then again, it never became a hurricane after all). It became very windy and it rained a lot at around 8.30 in the morning of the 23rd, which was actually the time it was closest to us: 

That lasted about an hour - as soon as the storm moved on on its way to Haiti, Cuba and Florida (where it is likely to cause trouble for the republicans!) it all calmed down. The whole thing was much less exciting than expected, but it was still fun to get a couple of days off work and spend them in a nice villa, and get to hang out with nice new people. I have to say it was a pretty cool birthday!