The Virgin Islands

After hitting the Bahamas we took off to the Virgin Islands.  We landed in St. Thomas and then we stood around on the dock waiting for our excursion of the day.

Mom and I decided to do a dolphin swim.  This required us to actually go to the British Virgin Islands rather than the US side.  While we were waiting to hop on our tour boat we met a gal Gina who just was a hoot.  We made her join in on the family pictures!!! This first green boat had us thinking we were going to have a great ride to the BVI... boy did we guess wrong.

This was our actual boat... it had so much oil dumping into the water it was unreal!!!  We decided to hop up on the upper level seeing all the billows of black smoke just gushing from it.

We had a blast with a little boy on the top, we got him throwing his hands up in the air like it was a roller coaster!  We arrived in Tortola BVI at the customs building after a 45 minute trip and I immediately was chewed out for not having a shirt on.  Sheesh, the excursion director told us to wear our bathing suits.  I had my suit and a sarong around the waist.  Major indiscretion apparently.  He let me through after making sure I knew he wouldn't let me in HIS building again if I wasn't dressed properly.  Even though our tour guide can give us a tour and leave his fly down the whole way through. Good thing I had clothes in my hiking pack!  We then hopped on a bus to the dolphin area and boy these island drivers can drive the hell out of a vehicle in some crazy places .

The dolphin swim was amazing! We immediately got in the water with the dolphins.  They did a ton of tricks for us and jumps.  They kiss you, pose for the camera but letting you grab their fins and ride on their tummies was incredible.  I have tons of pictures from it but decided it wouldn't be prudent to post all gazillion of them!