Virgin Gorda's National Park

Hiking at the Baths

I said once upon a time, as in last December, that I would return to the British Virgin Island to visit the Baths National Park.  I hope with this post I prove as I have shown many times to my friends I do what I say I am going to do.  

Hiking in the Baths is a mixture of aquatic trails and volcanic boulders.

This trip to the British Virgin Islands like the last one was via cruise ship, and also like the last one we docked on Tortola. The Baths National Park are located on Virgin Gorda, a neighboring island.   With a limited amount of time in dock (our ship was leaving at two in the afternoon) I was apprehensive about getting to the Baths on our own.  However, I was more apprehensive about paying what the cruise line was charging for a trip to the Baths, especially considering we would have ninety minutes or less in the national park.  After doing some research online David assured me getting to the Baths on our own would be exceedingly easy.  I told him if he would plan it, I would follow.  

The water taxi was so close to the port I had no reason to worry about getting there on our own.

One of my main worries about getting to the Baths was getting to and from the ferry ports, as I read online some people had had issues with this in the past.  Morning of our arrival in Tortola, I stepped out on to the balcony of our stateroom and saw the ferry port right next door.  It wasn't even a half mile away.  walking there required a total of ten minutes all on sidewalks.  At one point we told a cab driver we wanted to get to the ferry port when we were a little unsure of how to get there.  He pointed to a light down the street and said to take a left at it.  The port would be right there.  It was so close he didn't even try to get us to pay him to drive us. 

Getting through the Baths requires some agility.

Once we got the ferry port (run by Speedy's) we purchased roundtrip ferry tickets that included taxi service to and from the Baths once on Virgin Gorda.  The price was less than half the price the cruise line was demanding.  All it required was an extra five minutes walking.  The cruise ship even uses the same ferry service.  We made it in time for the ferry that left just after seven in the morning.  After a forty-five minute ride we walked off the pier on Virgin Gorda and right into a Speedy's taxi.  

Although crowded in may areas, we found a few more secluded sections.

Once we arrived at the park we paid a few dollars admission and hiked down to the beach.  What makes the Baths so unique are these giant boulders strewn across the sandy beaches, forming caves and caverns.  The boulders were created via volcanism, as were all of the Virgin Islands.  The volcanism occurred a long time ago, and these boulders that were once igneous intrusions, i.e. buried under lots of other rocks and sediment became exposed as the land around them eroded away.  

Devil's Bay was dupe busy with tourists.  We kept hiking instead.

At the Baths is a loop trail, allowing visitors to hike down to a beach, climb through the boulders, and hike back up to the parking lot returning from a different direction.  As awesome as the Baths formations are themselves, it was really busy with cruise ship passengers, many of whom were not physically up to the task of climbing through the boulders, all though they tried to do it anyways.  Many times on the cavern hike we wound up literally standing in line for fifteen minutes waiting as some person tried for ten minutes to club down a grade with the help of other people, that most healthy people could jump down from.  I'm not saying only really fit people should experience the Baths, but the constant hold up led to a lot of frustration among the mostly healthy crowd stuck in line.   Eventually we started asking to pass the slowest hold ups, which drastically increased our speed.

We found this secluded trail leading off of Devil's Beach and followed it to a beach empty of people.

We emerged out of the boulder stacks on Devil's Bay.  Supposedly Devil's Bay has great snorkeling, but there were so many people in the water, I would have been shocked if any fish put up with staying in such a human-crowded area.  David and I skirted around the sand of Devil's Bay to find a hiking trail emerge out of the brush.  This is really where doing the trip on our own made a big difference. By the time we got to Devil's Bay it was an hour and fifteen minutes after arriving to the site.  If we were on a cruise line sponsored shore excursion, we would have had to head back to the parking lot.  Since we were on our own, and had hours of time left.  We got to explore that hidden hiking trail.  

I relax on a boulder at the secluded beach we found at the Baths.

What we found a five minute's hike down the trail was a secluded rocky beach, all to our selves.  We spent the next forty-five minutes scaling outcroppings and resting on boulders while taking in the blue-green ocean.  It was awesome.  I felt like a little kid who had just fallen through the wardrobe to find Narnia.  When we tired of our secluded beach, we hiked on to the next secluded beach further down the trail, then hooked back put to the loop trail and up the long winding path to the parking lot.  While the Baths does offer a loop trail.  We only saw two other people utilize the second half of the loop (which is longer than the first half).  Really ever since we left Devil's Bay we had almost two hours of private time in the National Park.  

We kept hiking and found yet another secluded beach.

We bought some sodas at a restaurant near the parking lot before wandering into the parking lot in search of a Speedy's taxi.  The taxi drivers found us via the neon wristbands we sported and directed us into which cab would shuttle us back to the ferry.  We rode back with several members of the crew from a show on board.  Our ferry had not yet arrived when we got back to the Virgin Gorda port, so we bought a few Virgin Island ginger beers and enjoyed the view and the breeze.  The ferry arrived ten minutes later.

The Baths is a national park.

In all by going our own, our excursion to the Baths cost less than half as much of the cruise ship, we got more time at the Baths to explore the secluded areas, and we were back on board in time for lunch over almost two hours before the cruise ship sailed out of port.  Once I got away from the crowds, I enjoyed the Baths.  I would have been pissed if I had gone through the cruise ship though, having paid almost one hundred dollars to only be able to see the super crowded areas.  This will go down as another example of why it is almost always better to do it on your own.