Peter Island Resort Review
| A privately owned island and resort, Peter Island offers the seclusion and privacy of a small resort -- you can contentedly spend days virtually alone with your partner -- and yet is big enough that you can socialize with other guests if you choose to. You will also find lots of activities to enjoy. At Peter Island, your biggest worry is what to have for dinner, and what activities to choose to do for the day. If you are wondering how you might possibly fill your time at a secluded island, Max and I invite you to read about three of our days on Peter Island during the first week of July. Of course, you can choose to relax for a day or two by the pool or Deadman's beach with a tropical drink in your hand, but there are plenty of adventures and activities to keep you busy as well. How you can choose to fill a day or a week on Peter Island is entirely up to you!  | ||
| Morning 5:00 am Corinne A big storm blew through last night, and I awoke to close the two big glass doors against the rain and salt spray. The slats on the rest of the windows seemed to protect against the downpour, and so Max and I lay in bed feeling the cool summer storm gusts and listening to the rain pattering the tiles and the palm trees outside our patio. By morning, the storm had passed, and the azure sky and calm aquamarine waters lapping softly at the beach below our window promised another wonderful day in paradise.  Max: All of the rooms at Peter Island are air conditioned, but the windows open and there are ceiling fans. Rooms on the beachfront face the trade winds so that there is always a steady breeze coming into the room. On some of the more calm or remote portions of the island there are a few bugs, but each room has its own supply of insect repellent. White Bay Beach  11:00 am Corinne: Just returned from a leisurely snorkel out around the rocks on the western side of the bay. We saw a pod of fifteen or so squid hanging out near the reef ledge -- each buff colored and brown polka dotted with a blue strip down the middle of its mantle. Max approached one with his flipper, and it flicked a shocking white before darting back into the middle of the pod. Overall, the squid were just as curious about the people on the beach as people were curious about them. A stingray fed in an eel grass pasture just past a large rock adorned with soft and hard corals. While the snorkeling at White Bay does not approach the Great Barrier reef, it transitions from a sandy bottom to a reef gradually. 12:00 pm Lunch  Max: Water Sports  Max: Watching the beach from the kayak is an interesting experience. There is little excitement across the beach at this time. Most people are either asleep or absorbed in some book while relaxing in their own little beach chair. The resort has thoughtfully interspersed huts with built-in tables throughout the beach at regular intervals separated by bushes or swaying palm trees. Each little hut is its own private oasis along this stretch of beach. Periodically, there are splashes from a few children at the resort. But Peter Island is primarily a playground for adults wanting to escape from responsibilities of the real world. From my vantage point in the kayak, I can cruise up and down the bay, and the most strenuous part of my day is fighting the onshore breeze that is propelling Corinne's windsurfer. After a few moments, other more adventurous couples begin to make an exodus to learn how to windsurf and sail. Suddenly with three other boards and two Hobie cats in the water - there is lots of activity along the beach! Rum Rest Sunset hors de oeuvres A secluded rocky cliff.  Max: Arranging the sunset trip is merely a matter of informing the front desk that morning and filling out a form which includes a handy wine list to accompany your trip to see the sunset. The wine list is the same as the dinner wine list so that all you need to do is to provide them with the bin number of your selected wine. Around 5:30 PM, you meet a driver at the lobby and are whisked to the bluff to watch the sunset. After arriving, you can arrange the pick-up time with the driver or any other couples who are also enjoying the sunset. On our trip, there was only one other couple. On another night, we were told that there were four couples enjoying the sunset. While this may sound like a disturbance to a romantic excursion, it actually works out well with having another couple on the trip, since they can take that incredible sunset picture of the two of you -- a memento of your trip to Peter Island to show your friends and family. 8:00 pm Corinne We head over to Tradewinds restaurant to share a fresh Caesar salad and a wonderful orange roasted duck on a bed of sweet potatoes. Our table overlooks the harbor, and from our window view, we watch the moon rise over the twinkling lights on Tortola. For dessert, we share a Caribbean Snowball - a white chocolate and coconut encrusted vanilla ice cream floating in a shallow pool of chocolate sauce. We join some other young couples at the bar for after dinner drinks and dancing. | ||
 Max: A day in the life of a scuba adventure on Peter Island... While scuba may not be a typical way to enjoy Peter Island, it nicely illustrates the wide variety of options that guests can chose from in their vacation quest to do nothing. SCUBA at Peter Island is by the dive operation of Paradise Waterports. Corinne: The events that transpired this one day should whet anyone's appetite to dive the BVI and through Peter Island. Breakfast  We followed the soft corals for about 75 yards when we reached a small wall that dropped another thirty feet to the sandy bottom. Looking out towards the blue haze, a plush carpet stretched out along the sea floor, but looking more closely, the carpet turned out to be a neighborhood of garden eels hypnotically rising from their holes. Just as we approached their burrows, the eels would quickly disappear into the sandy bottom and sometimes as I glided over individual holes, I could see the annoyed glare of an irritated eel who had just been interrupted by me, a noisy, bubbling, lumbering two finned creature. Further along the sandy bottom, we saw a stingray "print", a large circular outline with what must have been a long tail jutting out from the body, in the sand. However, before we could find the maker of this track, the wrecked carcasses of two tugboats loomed from the sand. Rather recent additions to the Caribbean bottom, the two boats  lay side by side as part of an artificial reef program. In approaching the Marie L., the first of these two tugs, we noticed a southern stingray about the size of our trackmark resting along the bottom next to the hull of the ship. Cautiously, Tony and Corinne approached the stingray, and for a few moments, he/she suffered the indignity of being petted before whooshing off like a flying carpet to a more secluded spot along the sandy bottom. We moved back towards the dive boat, approaching a coral wall and back up the coral canyons.At our fifteen foot safety stop, a host of moon jellies and ctenophores enveloped us. As we ascended to the boat, a cluster of moon jellies looked incredibly graceful in their undulating motions across the water column.  In a few of these jellies, small fry darted underneath the protective umbrella that forms the bell of the jellyfish. These small fish were either immune or oblivious to the nematocysts (stinging cells). Fortunately for us, the moon jelly has a very mild sting so that gently touching these beautiful organisms did not come with a substantial price. The ctenophores, or comb jellies, with their striated motions and psychedelic edge piping, were a delight to see waving slowly in the water. On the surface, Tony mentioned that within weeks, these waters would teem with moon jellies and wart jellies that carry a more lasting sting. Vanishing Rock Dive Site 12:00 pm Corinne: While we rested between dives, allowing some nitrogen to dissipate from our bloodstream, Tony changed over our tanks and explained our second dive, several hundred feet into the channel from the wreck. We anticipated a reef dive around several coral pinnacles in the channel, but were especially on the lookout for sharks moving between the Caribbean waters and the Atlantic Ocean. The coral formations formed a safe refuge for many creatures stranded in the middle of the channel; bassets and parrot fish darted in and out of the orange sponges and black and purple corals. Iridescent blue shrimp and spiny brittle stars hid between the folds of blue fan-like sponges.  Along the sandy bottom, overhangs harbored other kinds of creatures. Charging out of one such overhang was a two foot lobster that menacingly shook its antennae at us and then quickly retreated backwards under a new overhang that was too short for it to slip its large body underneath. The lobster tried a few more spots before it satisfactorily backed into a cave large enough to hide all but the tips of its antennae. Under another overhang, Tony spied a six foot gray nurse shark that uncomfortably fidgeted and stirred up clouds of sand as we peered into its protective shelter. After a few minutes, the shark settled down where we could see it more clearly. Along the edge of the coral heads, facing the open channel, a shy spotted eel gaped its mouth at me, and then hid along the inside of a small cave wall.  Afternoon dive  Max: Peter Island offers a resort dive course on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon. While the course does not replace a certified scuba diving class, it does offer non-divers the basic mechanics of diving. The times that we went out with the resort course divers, we saw a ratio of one dive instructor to two students. While we personally believe that anyone wishing to enjoy scuba diving should be certified prior to diving, the resort course is a nice "introduction to diving" opportunity. Dinner 7:45 pm | ||
| Day Trip to Virgin Gorda On Thursdays, you can catch a Peter Island yacht to Virgin Gorda for the day, and if you haven't made the pilgrimage to see the famous Baths, this is a "must do, must see" trip.  Like all day trips and off-island adventures, you can book in your reservation the day before with Benji at the off-island activities desk. The Virgin Gorda trip costs $35 per person. The day can get really busy and hot, so we suggest you order at least one picnic lunch the night before you go. As you get on the ferry, Benji will hand you a soft ice filled cooler with water, soda, and lunch. We shared one lunch, which was just enough to keep us going during the day, and packed extra water along. We were hoping to find time to search out some local conch fritters, but settled for dockside pina coladas at the end of the day instead. Fortunately, we checked in with the dive shop the day before to get snorkel masks and fins for the trip -- the dive shop is not open by the time the ferry leaves in the morning. At 9:15, we took the Islander IV, a midsize air-conditioned yacht with several large cushy chairs, stools at a bar, and a long couch, over to Virgin Gorda where we were greeted by representatives from Speedy Taxi. Several couples opted to rent Speedy jeeps, but we followed the larger group to a set of two open air vans waiting to take us to the Baths. After later talking with the couples who rented jeeps, we decided that unless you have somewhere particular that you would like to go on Virgin Gorda that is not the baths or an island tour, you are better off relaxing on a tour bus, talking with a local driver about the sights and sounds of Virgin Gorda. Our driver, Simon, gave us the option of a $10 round trip island tour, or he said he could take us straight to the baths for $8. Max and I opted for the tour, and so Simon dropped us off at Little Dix bay for a few minutes while he shuttled the Baths-only goers to the Baths. On our tour of the island, Simon pointed out other resorts like the Bitter End and Biras Creek in the North Sound, and we saw some spectacular vistas of Prickly Pear Island, Tortola, and Peter Island. Towards the end of the tour, we stopped by the ruins of an old copper mine built by Welsh people from Cornwall. A large smokestack and old building were built of large stones of various colors of red, gray, brown, and green (due to the copper in the rock), and perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the Caribbean Sea. If you have ever been to Cornwall, U.K., you will see a resemblance in this Welsh-architectural cousin.  We made it over to the Baths where we ate our lunch - a sandwich, fruit and pasta salad, and a handful of homemade chocolate chip cookies. We snorkeled through shallow caves, inlets, and grottos formed by gigantic granite boulders at the water's edges.We also hiked out to a second beach, which we liked better than the first beach, through a maze-like passage over and under the boulders, and through some of the shallower grottos. At some points, there were ladders and ropes to help us get over some of the steeper rocks. The sunlit tidal pools formed by the boulders were often breathtakingly eerie and beautiful. Our tour guide, Simon, told us he would shuttle us back to the dock at 1:30, 2:30, and 3:00. We chose the 2:30 shuttle time, and spent our last forty minutes or so at a local bar drinking pina coladas sprinkled with island nutmeg. The ferry took us back to Peter Island at 3:30, giving us plenty of time to take a nap and wash up for dinner. | ||
| Getting to and from Peter Island What room should we stay in?
The ocean view rooms and garden view rooms provide quick access to the pool, Tradewinds restaurant and bar, and harbor. These are about a 5 minute walk from Deadman's Beach. The garden view rooms are on the ground floor while the ocean view rooms are the second floor. Max often took a quick refreshing dip in the freshwater pool before getting ready for dinner. Some nights when we retired early, we would open our balcony doors to listen to the live dinner music - sometimes a romantic saxophone player, sometimes a three piece guitar and synthesizer band -- that played near the pool during dinner.  The beachfront rooms are a bit larger and provide close access to Deadman's bay. Many of the ground level beachfront rooms have a comfy hammock near their patios, and the upper level beach rooms have airy vaulted ceilings and private balconies. The beachfront rooms collected gustier sea breezes, and we loved waking up to the sounds of rustling palm leaves and the ocean lapping at the beach.  A hilltop villa, Hawk's Nest, offers a bit more privacy than the other rooms, and it has a spectacular view of Deadman's bay, particularly at sunrise. This villa has three bedrooms, each with its own bath. In addition, there is a kitchen, dining room and living room. We set our alarm for 6:00 am, and watched the sun rise each morning nestled in our bed before dozing back asleep before breakfast. Albert, one of the Island managers, told us some folks like to have coffee on the pool terrace while watching the sunrise, and although that seemed like a great idea, we preferred the comfort of our bedside view. There is also comfortable patio chairs, so it is possible to just lounge all day on the porch that overlooks the rest of the resort. |
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