Caribbean Capers

Day Nine: Monday 4th January

The boat sailed to Jost van Dyke in the morning and we took the launch to the beach, upon which is situated Gertrude’s bar, a sort of colourful shack presided over by a woman (called Gertrude) who was apparently born on the beach. (Well I guess someone had to have been).

below; Gertrude's bar

We snorkelled a little, and played sandcastles on the (very sandy) beach, but kept being thwarted by sudden and frequent downpours of heavy tropical rain. We skulked in Gertrude’s under the canopy and sank a couple of beers, trying to keep our stuff away from the rain long enough to dry off. It was not a particularly great day, becoming a bit overcast and increasingly wet, and we were quite glad to be off the beach and back on the boat for lunch (burgers and french fries – again, very American, but not bad). After a dinner of roast turkey and potatoes (disappointing) we took the launch to Foxy’s Bar and spent a couple of hours there. Foxy’s Bar is situated in a forbidding corner of Jost van Dyke where all they seem to have is a gloomy beach front, bars and old shacks and an incongruous brick building which purports to be the local police station. Quite why they need one for the handful of inhabitants (140,apparently) is unclear.

Foxy’s is full of signed trophies, pennants, people’s business cards, hand-inscribed underpants pinned to the ceiling and all sorts of junk which is variously tacked on to parts of the ramshackle interior. This probably stops the place from falling down. I tried a Foxy’s Painkiller, which is an astonishingly revolting mix of rum, fruit juices, some other stuff, and grated nutmeg, and costs about $4, which, frankly, is $4 too much. It tastes like lavatory disinfectant, which could go part way to explaining why the toilets at Foxy’s could easily qualify as a Grade 1 listed biohazard. After a couple of hours we decided to move on. We wandered up and down the beachfront where little seems to go on except drinking in bars, and waited for the launch back to The Sir Francis Drake.