dark n stormy

Some beach sauce near our villa on Virgin Gorda.

It would be incredibly improper to say one of the things we miss about the BVIs and our honeymoon is a rum-soaked day on a gorgeous beach.

But ... it's kinda true.

We didn't know it at the time, but our go-to drink was what they call a Dark N Stormy. Basically, some rum and good ol' ginger beer. You don't know ginger beer until you've been to the BVIs, and lord we miss it! Ginger ale and overpriced ginger peer on the stateside is just not the same, there's not enough ginger!

Rum and ginger beer were cheap on the islands, and we took advantage of it. We were traveling cheap, so we would mix rum and ginger beer into an empty water bottle, throw it in the freezer, and in the morning throw it into our back pack to take wherever we wound up that day.

We did not drive drunk - driving on the left with switchbacks was hard enough! However, we did take this combo with us on a daytrip to Jost Van Dyke, where we basically spent the day letting other people cart us around or being utterly lazy on a white beach with crystal blue waters, where we dreamed about commandeering one of the many catamarans only yards away ...

Prior to our honeymoon, rum was basically a drink to have at a party or bar and make pirate jokes with (thank you, Disney). Now it brings back glorious memories of the breeze, the sand, the sound of waves hitting the rocks or whispering up the sands. It brings us visages of sails on the horizon, of yearning to have our boat, set our own sail, and essentially go wherever the world takes us.

Tonight, I am having a facsimile of our old concoction, and it's not the same. I'm uploading photos from the wedding & honeymoon to Shutterfly so I can take advantage of a promo and fill some of the empty frames on our walls (we put the frames up to motivate us to print some photos). But it also has me thinking about the whole drinkin' and sailin' thing. Sure, it's got history and it's been Disneyfied, but I think the symbolism it has now is a sense of letting go, of traveling somewhere when, technically, you're not going anywhere. This isn't drunken craziness I'm talking about here or alcoholism, but the nostalgia or dreaming the goes along with a certain drink, a certain release of the mind.

I'm not going to fall down drunk or be dumb enough to drive drunk, but I can't deny I look forward to the little wash of nostalgia on my tongue when I drink a Dark N Stormy.