JOST VAN
DYKE,
four miles long, is truly the "barefoot" island known
by travelers around the world for its casual lifestyle, beachfront
restaurants and bars, protected anchorages and fine beaches. Picture-postcard
tropical isles, like Green Cay and Sandy Spit
seen above, send an invitation to this special place.
A main street that's a beach, the Stress Free Bar, a harbour known for its Lobster
feasts, a bypass road that's just a short-stroll, the Soggy
Dollar bar named for a patron whoswam ashore and home of the Painkiller
drink--this is the life that defines laid back!
A favorite destination of yachties, Jost Van Dyke (see
map) hosts the famous Foxy's New Year's parties that make one
giant raft-up of Great Harbour.
And
the "secret" attraction, the ' Bubbly Pool'
at Foxy's Taboo bar and restaurant, a short taxi ride to a tropical
isle, Little Jost Van Dyke, and Diamond Cay,
the smallest national park.
Really
a delivery boat, the When
(494-2997) is a nice ferry as well and makes a fun day trip
to Jost Van Dyke. The views from the front deck are exhilarating,
especially of Tortola's
Steele Point and undulating coastal peaks
coming out of Sopers Hole.
Aptly named, spacious Great Harbour is
sheltered by small mountains (photo:
Bareboats BVI). An ample, if sometimes difficult
holding, anchorage, Great Harbour has moorings as well
as an easy entrance down the center, but avoid the large
reef that extends 300 yards from the beach.
Getting
There. Located at Great Harbour, Customs
(494-3430) (which has a garbage disposal bin hereby) and the
ferry dock. Ferries go to from Soper's Hole on Tortola's West End.
Another ferry connects St. Thomas via St. John. Here's a
tribute to long time
custom's officer, the late Albert Chinnery.
Taxis.
Locally, Bun's Tequila Sea Taxi (495-9281) and
Gregory's Brat water taxi offers local trips in a center
console boat and Bun's (495-9281) and George's
land taxi (495-9253) costs the same for a trip to White Bay. Walking to
White Bay takes about 20 minutes--see White
Bay Walk. It's longer and a higher fare to Little Harbour.
Foxy Callwood
The yachties' troubadour,
Foxy sings spontaneous Calypso ballads, sometimes about his guests
(photo from TMM
Bareboat Vacations).
Foxy's New Year's Eve party is
perhaps the most famous in the Caribbean and fills Great Harbour
with rafted up boats.
The quintessent beach bar--on
the beach, open to the elements, and personally attended to by Foxy
Callwood. What began as little more than a lemonade-stand-size bar
which was supposed to be open for one day only, Foxy's
(495-9258 email) has evolved
into a major cultural force.
Big annual events at Foxy's are his
Halloween party
(see pictures here)
and Halloween Cat Fight (catamaran race) and Wooden Boat
Regatta (see
article) (Foxy is founder of the Jost Van Dyke Preservation Society).
See the book, Foxy and Jost Van
Dyke.
Known for its great local food, Foxy's has
Friday and Saturday barbecues, rotis and flying fish
sandwiches for lunch and grilled fresh fish and lobster for
dinner.
The Foxhole (495-9275) sells T-shirts, hats, islandwear,
souvenirs and Foxy's tapes.
Great Harbour encompasses a large water area but a
small settlement on the available flat land bordered by steep
hillsides. The ferry dock extends via a small road, The Alley,
transecting the plain to the local Ice House
(which has ice by the block as well as cubes) and a delightful
bypass road, Back Street, that forms an arc toward the back and
invites a stroll
through this interesting community. Jost Van Dyke has lots of
goats but no chickens (for which will be grateful the late
sleepers unused to rural life with roosters crowing at dawn).
Beach Establishments
Main street here is a
beach.
The ferry dock and white building with police (495-9345) and customs
(494-3430) is on the right.
Corsair's Beach Bar & Restaurant,
breakfast, lunch and dinner, has replaced Club Paradise, the "shocking pink"
landmark, but the
wall murals are still inside. This highly rated food includes great
pizza and sushi as well as fresh seafood such as fish tacos, seared tuna
with spicy mango sauce, and their fabulous conch fritters with goat cheese
sauce (photo:
Trip Advisor review).
Jost Van Dyke Ice Cream Parlor
has homemade ice cream with flavors such as coconut ice cream and mango
sherbet.
Happy Laury's Snack Bar
(495-9259, VHF 16) is known for its pig roasts, honey-dipped chicken, Johnny
Cakes, cold beer and ice cream.
Jost Van Dyke Scuba
is the island's only dive shop
with every kind of water adventure, including secret location diving. Browse
the surf gear.
Ali Baba's
(495-9280), a picturesque bar and restaurant open for breakfast, lunch and
dinner, features lobster and grilled local fish, such as swordfish, wahoo,
and kingfish, as well as drink specials on Bushwackers and
Ali Baba's own rum punch, and a Monday night pig roast.
Rudy's
Mariners Inn (495-9282) has five rooms, a bar and restaurant that
features seafood and live entertainment (see picture) and Rudy's
Superette for supplies.
Christine's Guest House
(495-9281), upstairs from the bakery, is a small bed and
breakfast with rooms for 2 or 3 people for that unique
vacation or a night off the boat in air-conditioned splendor.
Up The Alley.
Near the Ice House is
Christine's Bakery (495-9281), a great spot for
breakfast on the small porch with tasty cinnamon buns, coconut
cake, and egg sandwiches as well as fresh baked loaves of whole wheat, white
and banana bread.
Nature's Basket
(495-9312), on the way to the Ice House, has fresh fruits and vegetables.
Its owner, Ivan Chinnery sometimes conductswalks to his own plantation where he grows mangoes,
papayas, pineapples and bananas. During Hurricane Georges, Ivan "lost a
quarter acre of bananas . . . mangos, avocados and all that, they
held up pretty good."
Named for its long and lovely white sand beach, White
Bay, now very popular with boaters, is protected by extensive
reefs.
Hexagonal
Cottages
Especially charming are the
Sandcastle's four hexagonal cottages near the beach.
Chef Oliver Clifton
A BVIslander
who has trained top BVI chefs, Chef Oliver adds a creative
personal touch to a native Caribbean cuisine with strong French
and American influences.
White Bay is the location of
the Sandcastle
(495-9888 open breakfast, lunch and dinner) (more),
a lovely, intimate resort whose restaurant (see
menu) has excellent dining by candlelight.
This hideaway favors sea breezes, hammocks and
beach strolls.
The
Soggy Dollar Bar (495-9888), at the Sandcastle, got its
name from the soggy condition of the dollar bills
from sailors who swam ashore.
The Painkiller,
born here, is a frozen delight made (strongly) from
dark rum (often Pusser's),
pineapple juice (4 parts), orange juice ( 1 part), and Coco Lopez
(1 part sweetened cream of coconut) with fresh nutmeg ground on top
(Pusser's recipe--the Soggy Dollar's is a closely guarded secret).
It is illegal in the BVI
not
to try its most famous drink!
Soggy
Dollar Bar Birthplace
of the Painkiller
For lunch, try
the "best conch fritters," chicken roti, jerk chicken, or
flying fish sandwiches.
New dinner menus
nightly have been "wowing" guests with great dishes such as
crab cakes and duck (no dinner Fridays, reserve by 4 pm).
Great breakfasts too-- with johnny cakes
on Monday.
Ruben Chinnery plays
from 2-4 on Sundays afternoons (see video below).
Up
the beach past the Sandcastle, One Love Bar and Grill is a great spot
for hanging out! Don't miss the Shark and Johnny Cakes (made to order) for
lunch as well as Lobster Quesadilla, BBQ ribs with corn on the cob
with cinnamon and brown sugar. And Seddy does magic tricks (signboard photo:
JostVanDyke.com).
Gertrude's Beach Bar
(495-9104) has excellent wings, sodas, beer and mixed drinks as well as hair
braiding and bungalows for rent.
Jewel's Snack Shack is good for the best burgers,
hot dogs, rum punch and other drinks.
Sea and Land
Adventure Sports, past the Sandcastle, rents every kind of water and
land equipment, including jet boats, water skis, sunfish, sea kayaks,
paddle boats, snorkeling gear, water bikes, banana sleds, ATVs and
mountain bikes
(see road and trail map).
White
Bay Walk An interesting walk to White Bay over the
small mountain, especially for the exercise minded, takes about
20 minutes (10 minutes more along the beach). Take the second
left down to the White Bay Campground, possibly stopping at the Local
Flavor Bar for a refreshment (note the honor
bar if no one's around). Continue along the gorgeous
White Bay beach, over the picturesque rocky outcropping via a path above
it, before reaching the Soggy Dollar Bar, stopping here for a
serious drink, a Painkiller--you've earned it! Call Bun's cab
for the ride back.
The
White Bay campground(495-9358), has bare
campsites, tent
campsites equipped with a bed, lamp and ice chest, and screened
cabins
similarly equipped. The cabin and tent platforms are nestled into a
beautiful natural setting. However, the bare campsites on
the bluff right above the beaches
of White Bay are truly magnificient, the finest camping sites in the world.
Local
Flavor Beach Bar (495-9358), also called the
Stress Free Bar, right at White Bay Campground, has an honor
payment system. Check out all the pictures on the walls as a testimonial to
all the great times people have had here.
Snorkeling
is good in White Bay. The dark blue is a moving
shoal of fish fry
pursued by a flock of pelicans (one is diving) above and a
school of tarpon below. This abundant marine life is more typically
seen at the Twin Towers dive site described below.
Snorkeling is particularly fine out on the point off the White Bay
Campground.
White
Bay Villasare three splendid villas just
above pristine White Bay.
Little Harbour
A
good anchorage with moorings as well, Little Harbour is famous for
its lobster feasts!
All
Little Harbour restaurants have great lobster dinner feasts
(pictures from
Gary Kunkel's
Photo Album).
Nestled
under its small hiking mountain,
Little Harbour is known for its three restaurants,
Abe's By The Sea
(VHF16), Sidney's Peace & Love (495-9271)(see picture), and
Harris' Place (495-9302). Harris' Place has groceries and sundry
items as well.
Sidney's Peace & Love
(495-9271, 495-9010, VHF 16). Open for 26 years with many repeat
customers, Sidney himself captures most of his lobster
from the Anegada reef. Cooked to an old family recipe on an open
fire, Sidney's lobster is served with peas & rice, corn,
coleslaw, potato salad and hot butter. Featuring a self service
bar for sofas, beer and mixed drinks, Sidney's has pig
roasts on Mondays & Saturdays with
live music. Reservations are suggested and credit cards
accepted.
Hostess with
the Mostess
Shown
under rafters full of Sidney's trademark hanging t-shirts of guests,
Sidney's lovely
daughter and hostess Rena describes their lobster as
finger lickin' good.
Tee's and Tings (495-9276)
sells t-shirts, earrings, necklaces, lucky charms & other jewelry in the
shop and also boat-to-boat as Nippy's Traveling Salesman.
A series of small
islands, off Jost Van Dyke's east end, offer the perfect setting for a
tropical isle--spectacular beaches, day anchoring over sandy ground and
snorkeling in the shallow reefs.
Diamond
Cay, seen here in the right foreground, is a very small island, but
a beautiful
national park, worth a tour. Nearby on the Jost Van Dyke
shore, reachable by taxi, is Foxy's Taboo
bar and restaurant as well as the Diamond Cay marina with moorings, dock
and supplies for visiting boaters (photo:
Bareboats BVI).
Long Bay behind Diamond Cay is an good anchorage if the swell is not
too great.
Touring Anchor in Long Bay behind Diamond Cay. Dinghy over to Foxy's Taboo and,
after a refreshment, walk along the shore to the mangroves. Look for blue
arrows, and take the "goat trail" up a small rock face and
through a field of sage bush to the "Bubbly Pool" at a sandy cove
A mile-wide
U-shape, the MiniTour starts at Jost Van Dyke's Diamond Cay
and goes past
Little Jost Van Dyke to
Green Cay before ending at Sandy Spit. Or continue to
Sandy Cay, another mile or so offshore.
Little Jost Van Dyke, seen above in the
right background, offers anchoring (except when the surge is up) and
excellent snorkeling along the shore and its reef to the right. On the
north side, the dive site, Twin Towers, is visited by
schools of reef squid and moving shoals of fish fry
in the springtime.
To the left connecting Jost Van Dyke by a 200' angle deep reef,
the Blue Hole is a small deep area and nursery for juvenile reef
fish. Nearby are many Red Mangrove stands.
Green Cay and Sandy Spit
are further east, adjoining Little Jost and each other, with Sandy
Spit to the south.
Sandy Spit
Sandy Spit, in
particular, is a
superb day anchorage over sandy ground with excellent snorkeling,
especially the shallow wall off the south shore
(photo:
BVI
Yacht Charters).
Off Green Cay's
ocean-side, The Playground (see
video) is an exciting dive site
for swell-less days. A series of pinnacles covered
with
brightly colored sponges and branching hydroid fans
shelter abundant marine life such as juvenile angelfishes
and glassy minnows, patrolled by jacks,
large dog snappers, schools of barracuda,
and
huge tarpon, sometimes seen underneath the white
foaming surf breaking on the shoreline.
Sandy Cay,
about a mile to the south, has the
character of an
ideal tropical
isle, dotted with palm trees on wide, gently sloping beaches as
well as a botanical tour that includes
dramatic surf-side cliffs on its ocean side.
Westernmost
Great Tobago, a little-visited island on the other side of Jost
Van Dyke with remote and advanced dive sites, is a
marine sanctuary, the Caribbean's third largest nesting seabird site
for boobies, terns and long-tailed tropic birds as well as a colony of the
magnificent frigatebird.
