Wednesday
We were in port at Tortola when I awoke on Wednesday morning, and I was excited. We were scheduled to go to Virgin Gorda to visit Baths National Park, which was the main reason I had chosen this specific itinerary. However, when I first booked the cruise, as it was our first Disney cruise, we did not have priority on booking port adventures, and the Baths excursion had already sold out by the time I was allowed to book. I checked nearly daily for months before more spots finally opened up about a week before our trip!
We ate breakfast and then headed to our meet-up point at Marvel. We followed our group onto the ferry to carry us to the other island, which took about 30-40 minutes. Once there, we boarded an open-air bus to drive us to the park. We met up for a briefing on what we would be doing: a short hike to Devil’s Bay, then heading through the caves to the Baths. (There was a second option for a path going directly to the Baths for those who didn’t want to do the caves.)
We started on the path toward Devil’s Bay, pausing to put on sunscreen. Except I had forgotten to put the sunscreen in my backpack! We headed back to the entrance where there was a shop and found some sunscreen there. This actually turned out to be a bit fortuitous, as now the path was empty of the big crowd of people, and we could enjoy the hike at our own pace.
We soon arrived at Devil’s Bay and took a quick dip in the water. Our time in port was super short (all aboard was 2pm and our excursion didn’t arrive at Virgin Gorda until after 10am), so we didn’t spend a lot of time here. We wanted to maximize our time through the caves and at the Baths, so we headed toward the caves a little earlier.
LS was a little grumpy at first because of the sand in her shoes (she and I were both in Keen hiking sandals) but I promised that once we made it to the caves, there would be water to wash them off and it would feel better. She was relieved when this turned out to be true.
Walking through the rock caves was amazing. There were so many cool formations. At one point, you have to climb down a pretty steep rock with only a rope to hold onto. LS was a bit terrified by this, but she made her way down slowly and was proud of herself that she was able to do it by herself.
Soon after that, we arrived at the Baths! This beach was gorgeous, and LS had a blast spending the rest of our time here. She was very sad when we had to head back to the ship and asked if we could come back to that specific beach at some point in the future.
When we got back on the ship, we changed into dry clothes and grabbed a light lunch by the pools. We headed back to our room to relax before dinner back at Coco’s.
After dinner, the girls wanted to hang out so we went and met Goofy and then got in line for the magician at the Walt Disney Theatre. We got decent seats on the balcony, and the show was pretty cool. Afterwards, she said goodbye to her friend, and we headed back to the room, as everyone was pretty exhausted. However, I headed back out briefly to get a picture with Minnie, Daisy, and Clarabelle dressed up like the Sanderson sisters!
