Posts Tagged ‘anegada’

Fact: The band Iron Butterfly wrote an epic musical number called In the Garden of Eden.

Fact: the lead singer, during rehearsal, was intoxicated (shocking, I know) beyond belief and slurred the title, making it sound like In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. In their inebriated state, the band members all thought this was awesome and decided to change the name of the song to this officially.

Present day (well about a month ago): While leisurely boating our way through the British Virgin Islands, we were fortunate to hit great weather. This allowed us the ability to visit the barely touched, remote island of Anegada (see where I am going with this?)

the guys looking for places to dive

Anegada, the furthest north island in the BVI chain, is also known as the drowned island as you don’t really see it until you are nearly right up on it. The tallest point on the island is 27′ and I am pretty sure after exploring the entire island–that that measurement was obtained by one of the only 200 year round residents standing on top of a beach bar with his hands raised in the air.

The island has more goats than people

With nothing to guide an incoming boat by sight, perfect weather is required to visit the island as it is surrounded by AND made up of coral reef and navigating a boat through the coral when the water is not calm and clear can be dangerous. In fact, many charter companies actually forbid their boats to be taken to Anegada because the seas around the island can be so volatile and the reef so damaging if struck.

the boat population viewed from the beach bar

As I mentioned, we had perfect weather and anchored in the harbor for two nights. We explored the island by foot, a rented Datsun truck and by dinghy. It was on Anegada that we felt the most isolated. The beaches were empty and while there were a handful of restaurants on the island, unless you had your dinner order in by 4pm, you didn’t eat.

(note: As with many places in the BVI’s, the menu is caught shortly before it is cooked so the orders had to be in early. The menu choices didn’t vary much from lobster or prawns on any of the islands both are plentiful. The seafood was fresh and delicious for the most part–but by the end of the trip we were ready for some hamburgers).

our waiter/chef/fisherman/restaurant owner

our truck

Anegada is home to the third largest reef in the world: Horseshoe Reef. We spent our days snorkeling and diving off the shore. We swam with sting rays, swam away from barracuda and interacted with very playful turtles. The underwater coral formations were gorgeous with swim through caves and caverns and although I didn’t see as many colorful fish here as I did on the other islands, the stingrays, turtles and bathtub warm water made up for that.

Each night we’d all head back to the boat for happy hour and talk about the day (this was a regular occurrence every night in the BVI’s and I miss it so much now that we are back at home).

Nightly view

And although some may deny it–every member of our party was guilty for at least once humming/signing/doing air guitar along to the song In a gadda da vida when ever the island Anegada was mentioned by name.

When I returned home and once again had access to a steady internet connection, I learned of this Iron Butterfly story and I put two and two together. Anegada the island does have garden of eden qualities: beauty, peacefulness, desolate white sand beaches (Eden had beaches, right?) like the original name of the song that was changed to sound kinda like the island…

Did those guys in Iron Butterfly know something back then? Was their drunken slurring actually insightful musical genius beyond even their own comprehension?

Hmmmmm.