Road Town, Tortola

Many of the British Virgin Islands are named after 17th century pirates or privateers. Pirates were those sailors who committed illegal robbery on the high seas, while privateers – who committed virtually identical acts of robbery on the high seas – did so legally, by way of an official license granted by their country’s ruling monarch. Pirates who hid their booty (treasure) for safekeeping from other pirates routinely buried pirate treasure on these islands. Apparently, some of the treasure was never recovered, and according to local legend, great fortunes in gold remains buried along these shores.

Virgin Gorda, ‘The Fat Virgin,’ has a ridge similar to Tortola – though only 8.5 miles (13 km) long and reaching 1,370 feet (415m) at Gorda Peak. An intriguing group of huge granite boulders forming water-filled grottos are strewn along the southern beach of Devil’s Bay and collectively titled ‘The Baths.’ These boulders, which researchers believe may have been carried by a glacier in some distant ice age, create an environment so memorable that The Baths have become one of the most famous icons of the British Virgin Islands and indeed the Caribbean.

The British Virgin Islands comprise over 50 islands, ranging in size from Tortola to the tiny Sandy Cay. Verdant with tropical greenery and largely unspoilt, only 16 islands are inhabited.