Excursion Review – Island Roots Charters, Tortola BVI

On our recent Eastern Caribbean cruise on the Disney Fantasy (full trip report here), we stopped in Tortola, BVI.  Cruise ships had to stop visiting this port after Hurricanes Maria and Irma last fall, and only began returning in August.  The most popular thing to see at this port is The Baths National Park on the nearby island Virgin Gorda.  That was our main priority for this stop, and several months before our cruise, I booked a private charter with Aristocat Charters for their smaller powerboat.  They also do group snorkeling charters on their large sailboat, but you cannot visit The Baths on the sailboat.  The only way to visit The Baths with Aristocat Charters was to book their private powerboat, so I reserved it on their website and paid a deposit.

Then, the week before our cruise, I emailed Aristocat Charters to confirm our charter and the owner, Scott, let me know that he had just sold the boat to Jason with Island Roots Charters.  He assured me that Jason would honor the same price and plans, and that nothing would change on my end.  Island Roots Charters has amazing reviews on TripAdvisor, so I felt confident that we would have a great day.  Jason was very responsive to all of my emails, even replying within minutes the night before the charter when I had some questions about the automatic confirmation email I received.

The morning of the charter, we disembarked the Fantasy about 9:00 AM.  Our reservation was from 9:30-4:30 (all aboard was 5:45 PM) and we were supposed to meet Jason at the Village Cay Marina at 9:15 AM (the same place that the Aristocat charters meet). The walk to the marina is short and easy.  I had printed out a map, as well as the detailed directions provided on the Aristocat Charters website.

The port area is relatively new and looks great.  I didn’t notice any signs of hurricane damage in the port area.  There are shops, restaurants and public bathrooms.

The women in the green vests were keeping everything clean, and offered to help us find where we were going.

It looked like they might have live music later on:

There were lots of buses ready to take people on tours:

Behind the buses, we exited the port area and began walking on city streets.  The scenery immediately changed and I could see evidence of the hurricanes.  A lot of buildings were under construction.

We easily found the marina.  There were lots of people from our ship going there for the Arisocat charter and we followed them.

Here we are at the Village Cay Marina restaurant/pool area, our meeting spot:

While we waited for Jason, we applied sunscreen.  Before too long we found him and walked to the boat.  I forgot to take a picture of the boat, but here is one from the website:

It was the perfect size for the 5 of us and in great shape.  Jason offered us drinks from the cooler, gave us a quick tour, and we settled in.

We briefly talked to Jason about what we wanted to see that day and decided on the Baths, as well as snorkeling the caves at Norman Island and the Indians.  Here we are leaving the marina and setting out for our first stop, the Baths:

We sailed right past the Fantasy:

This is the Arisocat Charters sailboat leaving for the group snorkeling tour:

As we motored to the Baths, we talked with Jason and found out that he was born and raised on St. John, which is really close by.  He moved to Chicago during his teen and early adult years, but has since moved back.  In fact, Island Roots charters is based in St. John and he would be moving this boat there tomorrow.  But, he said that he will still do charters out of Tortola, and also St. Thomas, because they are all so close together.  We found out that his wife had a baby boy 2 weeks ago, and that they had lost their house in hurricane Irma. He is in the process of rebuilding it, but supplies are hard to get on St. John. He told us how many boats were lost during the hurricanes, including all of the Aristocat boats.  We passed a lot of wrecked & abandoned boats in the marina and it was very sobering.

Before too long we arrived at the Baths:

Jason found a good spot to stop the boat and explained the plan to us.  We were going to swim from the boat to the shore, which as you can see in the photo below was kind of far away, but we are all strong swimmers.  He was going to lock everything up on the boat and be shortly behind us.  He told us to wait on the beach for him to arrive, then he would take us through the Baths.  In this photo, the yellow flag is basically where we were supposed to swim to.

Because we were swimming to shore, we couldn’t really take anything with us.  I brought my sunglasses and underwater camera, and I think the girls brought sunglasses and goggles, but that was it.  I had brought these water shoes for all of us thinking they would be handy for walking over the rocks, but Jason said that he didn’t think they were necessary.  He had grown up walking through the Baths all the time as a kid, so I took his word for it and we left the water shoes on the boat.  It turns out that we didn’t miss them one bit.

We made it to shore without any trouble, although our 8 year old did take pool noodle from the boat as a precaution. We hung out on the beach for a bit and waited for Jason.

Here you can see our boat and get an idea of the distance we had to swim – it’s the fourth boat from the left, directly above the man’s head:

Jason joined us and we began walking towards the Baths.  He carried the pool noodle, as well as his mask & fins as he would be swimming back to the boat later from a different beach.

That hole in the middle is where we entered:

I was glad that Jason was leading us so that we would know where to walk because it was like a maze in there.  We saw lots of people along the way who seemed confused and were asking people which way they should go.  And, I am glad that Jason was a local and knew this area like the back of his hand because he was able to take us to lots of places that were off the beaten bath and really neat.  He even cautioned us that once we entered, people would see that we knew where we were going and would try to “piggy-back” onto us and join our tour.

Through this crack was a little room that Jason and his friends used to camp in as kids:

Jason led us up a steep rock to this area where most tourists don’t go.  There was a 30-40 foot drop over the edge of this rock:

It was really neat to see how the huge boulders rested on each other:

We were the only ones up there and we got to see some pretty views:

Jason noticed this puddle of water in a rock and said that it had rained yesterday, and this was the freshest rainwater you would ever drink.  He took a sip, and one of the girls did too.

I wish I had taken more pictures, but we were going up and down rocks and through some pretty tight passages so my hands were just too busy.  We came upon the most famous area, known as the cathedral, and luckily were the only ones there for a few minutes.

Jason told us to swim to the area behind us in the photo above.  The water was too deep for the girls to stand, and too deep for the adults in some places, but it was a really neat, secluded area that most people don’t go to.  Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures but we hung out in there for a little while.

Jason kept leading us thorough the labyrinth.  We went through some really tight spaces! I am pretty sure that this is not the basic path that most people take.

We were rewarded with some cool spaces all to ourselves!

Next Jason took us to an open area with some deep pools that allowed us to jump off some pretty high rocks.  The girls and Jason jumped, but my husband and I stayed below to take pictures.

Our 8 year old was scared, so Jason held her hand and they jumped together:

By this time we had walked all the way through the Baths, and emerged on the other side near Devil’s Bay beach.  We took a short sandy path to the beach:

Here we are at the beach.  One end of it was quite crowded, but we walked down to the other end and were almost the only people there.  Jason jumped in the water and swam back to the boat so that he could move it to this cove.  He told us to watch for him after about 20-30 minutes, and then swim back to the boat.

This kid was making me nervous:

Eventually we saw Jason pull up the boat and we swam back to him.  I turned back to the beach and took this picture:

Before I move onto our next stop, I want to take a few minutes to talk about the Baths and how we did it vs. how the DCL port adventures do it.  If you book one of the Baths port adventures through DCL (full review here), you will take a ferry to Virgin Gorda, then an open-air bus to the Top of the Baths restaurant, where your tour of the Baths begins and ends.  You will have to  descend a long path to Devil’s Bay beach, and then walk through the Baths the opposite direction that we did, ending up on the beach that we started on.  Then, you climb back up to the restaurant at the end.  Since I am a map nerd, I pulled it up on Google Maps and labeled it.  The red line is the path that the DCL people take, going clockwise.  The yellow line is the path we took, from top to bottom:

We saw a lot of people in the Baths from the DCL group, going the opposite direction as us.  Many of them were carrying beach bags, towels, clothes, shoes, etc. and trying to keep them dry.  It also made it hard for them to go up and down some of the ladders and ramps.  I recommend bringing as few things as possible through the Baths.

We left the Baths and headed to our next stop, the Caves at Norman Island.

Here we are approaching the Caves:

Jason pointed out the 3 main caves along this rocky shoreline and gave us a few pointers for how to snorkel them.  He was going to stay on the boat and move it down to the end where we would finish up.  This photo was taken at our starting point, and we swam all the way down to the farthest sailboat:

Here’s my gang:

FYI, we purchased these full-face snorkel masks and brought them with us.  Two of the girls strongly preferred them to the traditional masks, and the other was indifferent.

Entering the first cave:

We went in far enough to where it got really dark, and then turned back.

Then we swam down to another cave:

This one had tons of fish inside!

I didn’t take any pictures of the third cave, but there wasn’t much in there.

Jason had moved the boat down closer to us, so we swam over and climbed back in.  Next stop – lunch!  As we were leaving, a boat with lots of people arrived to snorkel the Caves:

Jason took us to nearby Pirate’s Bight on Norman Island for lunch.  The girls were looking tired and hungry:

This building is the restaurant:

I’m not sure what this building is, but it didn’t appear to be open.  It looked like there was a gift shop though.

The view from our table:

We ordered our lunch and used the restrooms.  Jason played Jenga with the girls.  He used to be a middle school teacher so he was really great with them.

I forgot to take pictures of our lunch, but it was really good.  Between all of us, we got fish & chips, a fish sandwich, and chicken tenders and mozzarella sticks for the girls.  The prices were high, but that is to be expected considering this is an uninhabited island and everything (supplies and people) must be brought here daily.  I thought the food quality was great considering this.

After a relaxing lunch, we had one more place to go.  We sailed a short distance to the Indians, a cluster of huge rocks that is the second most popular dive spot in the British Virgin Islands.

This is the Indians:

I forgot to take my camera with me, but we snorkeled along the edge of the rocks and the underwater landscape was just spectacular!  The steep rocks continued underwater, just as they appear above water.  We even saw an eel!

By this point it was time to started heading back to the Fantasy.  We had worked our way back towards Tortola throughout the day, so it wasn’t very far.

7 hours had gone by so quickly!  We said goodbye to Jason, thanked him for an amazing day, and walked back to the ship.

It had been a great day and the Baths were an incredible sight that I am so glad we got to experience!  Remember, Jason lives in St. John and will do charters out of either Tortola or St. Thomas – just email him and let him know what you want to do and I know he’ll try his best to accommodate you! Check out his website here for all the details.

You can read reviews of other port adventures here.

.

This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you make a purchase through my links, the seller will pay me a small commission for it at no additional cost to you. I am grateful for your support of this site in this way, so thank you!