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TRIP PLANNING GUIDE So you’ve booked your dates for the villa, now what? First: About two months before your trip dates you will need to take a look at flights and decide on options for getting to a hub near Virgin Gorda. (If you are the chosen one to book flights for 10 people, our sympathies). The first thing we do is check the following web site http://matrix.itasoftware.com/ for all the available scheduled flights to San Juan (SJU), St. Martin (SXM), or St. Thomas (STT) from your departure point. (Tip 1: there are only three carriers (American Eagle, LIAT, and Cape Air) that fly into Tortola (Beef Island Airport) from SJU. LIAT flies to Tortola from SXM but their schedule is not the best in terms of linking up with incoming North American flights. Note: if you choose to go to Tortola you will need to take a 20 minute ferry ride to Virgin Gorda – the ferry leaves from a dock about 200 yards from the Beef Island airport. Tip 2: Input your flights as one way, each way to make it easier to isolate your desired times – don’t forget to check one or two days in advance just in case of a better connection). You can use the generated listings to help decide on the timing, routing and price before going directly to an airline’s website to book or redeem points. Note: if you are flying into St. Thomas there is Speedy’s ferry direct to Virgin Gorda on Tuesday’s, Thursday’s and Saturday’s at 5:00 PM which is much less expensive than flying and not a bad way to get on to island time see: http://www.bestofbvi.com/info/info_bviferry.htm If you tend to book flights far into the future, beware of changing flight times; usually flights to the Caribbean hubs are only really settled several months in advance. Second: If the flights you are seeing don’t land you in the hub destination by the mid-afternoon why not consider an overnight in one of the hubs. All three hubs have excellent accommodation and interesting sightseeing opportunities. It’s sometimes much more relaxing to just fly over the following morning or early afternoon. Third: About one month before your dates consider chartering an aircraft to get you to Virgin Gorda direct from the hub. Each charter company below has a choice of a 5 seat or 7 seat planes that can land at Virgin Gorda. (At the moment Air Sunshine is not operating to VG due to restriction). Often the cost of a charter for a group is less than the cost of a scheduled flight and the time savings can be well worth the expense - E-mail for flight costs: Virgin Gorda Air Charters – email: charterflightspr@gmail.com FlyBVI – email: info@bviaircharters.com Island Birds – email: info@islandbirds.com Fourth: About two or three weeks before the trip dates arrange for a rental car by emailing, phoning, or faxing one of the rental car companies on Virgin Gorda:
http://www.islandstylebvi.com/index.htm. Phone: (284) 495-6300; Cell (284) 499-1631; Fax (284) 495-7471 E-mail: islandstylebvi@hotmail.com
http://www.landsjeeprental.com Phone (284) 495-5297 Fax (284) 495-5342 E-mail:landsjeeprentals@surfbvi.com
http://www.mahoganycarrentalsbvi.com/ Phone: (284) 495-5469Fax: (284) 495-5072 E-mail: clennell@mahoganycarrentalsbvi.com
Phone: (284) 495-5235 Fax: (284) 495-5755 E-mail: speedysbvi@surfbvi.com Fifth: About 10 days before your scheduled dates start thinking about an initial stocking of the villa with food and refreshments. Riteway Food Markets (Road Town Wholesale - aka RTW) has an online cart that allows you to order alcoholic and non-alcoholic refreshments and food for a few days – this beats having to go to the grocery store on the day of arrival – their staff will deliver and stock the villa prior to your arrival – give the Riteway staff the following contact information: Adagio Villa, Mahoe Bay, Virgin Gorda – contact Virgin Gorda Villa Rentals att: Donna or Melissa at 284-495-7421. Separately after obtaining the confirmation from Riteway you should advise the Adagio’s villa management company (Virgin Gorda Villa Rentals) that you are expecting an order - e-mail Donna or Melissa at reservations@surfbvi.com and Leti at mahoebay@surfbvi.com. The order form is here: http://www.rtwbvi.com/howto Sixth: Two nights before: Packing suitcases – Virgin Gorda is a casually dressed island – if you are planning on eating out at BIRAS Creek or Little Dix Bay do pack long pants and a collared shirt for gentlemen and a skirt for ladies, but aside from those two restaurants the rest of the island is perfectly fine with casual Bermuda shorts and golf shirts or Tee shirts for dinner. There is a saying amongst frequent travelers to the Caribbean “pack half as much clothes and take twice as much money”. There is a nice clothing store at the North end of the island (Leverick Bay) called Pussers which carries good quality clothing at reasonable prices in case you need something special. http://www.pussers.com/t-shop.aspx Seventh: One day before phone for a taxi or limo to take you to the airport – bon voyage and enjoy.
Updated October 25 2011
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