The lovely British Virgin Islands

Life in the Caribbean is relaxed and easygoing. If you have the right ideas, all you need is food and entertainment. Already the first settlers on the British Virgin Islands got their salt from the sea and pirates distilled rum by the barrel from sugar cane. Josiah's Bay is far off the beaten track. It's really quiet here. Normally... The soca music, the sound of the Caribbean, it must be played loud. They need it for the warm-up of their weekly training. They are moko jumbies, stilts dancers. For their upcoming appearance, they train on the beach of Tortola, the biggest of the British Virgin Islands. From since I was born, I always wanted to be a moko jumbie dancer because I just like to see everyone up there so tall. It just looks so, you know, fun. Chevonne is the group's boss. The first time I tried, it was a little bit scared. But you can't be scared when you're going to do it because you're going to panic and then you're going to fall. It's about that. So you've got to keep chipping while you're holding on until you get your balance to it. And when you don't get your balance, you're going to lose off the wall and then you're going to be like this. You're going to be chipping like this. And then you have all the kind of space, then you're going to try to do all kinds of tricks to it. But this only works if the two meter long stilts are tightly attached to the legs. I was the last one to come up. Everyone is so fast and I'm so slow. Due to the soft sand here on Tortola, it doesn't hurt too badly if you fall. This was Jamal's biggest fear when he tried it for the first time. It was really terrifying because I was scared of heights because looking at these moko jumbies, you could actually fall and hurt yourself. So that's what gave me fear, but I overcome my fear by trying this and I actually get it done. Slaves introduced the stilts dance to the British Virgin Islands. Originally, moko jumbies expelled evil spirits, but nowadays they are mostly booked as a show troupe during carnival or for private parties. Their next show is coming up soon. The British Virgin Islands. The British Queen still reigns over this island state. This overseas territory is under the protection of the British Crown. 350 years ago, Great Britain annexed the remote archipelago consisting of 60 islands in the north of the Caribbean. Only 16 are inhabited. Before the British, Danish, Spanish and Dutch buccaneers roved about these parts. And as pirates like to drink rum, it is distilled here since then. You see, it's very ancient, you know. That is why I always tell people the rum is so good. That's why it keeps me looking young. The Sugarcane Bay distillery is rumored to be more than 400 years old. Calum himself is only 29, but nevertheless, he's the master distiller at Calwood Rum. Every morning before eight, he heats up the fire from rung sugarcane. This makes his product very special. By using the, like, gasoline, it actually gives the rum a taste, like a bad taste. So that's why we don't show any, like, diesel or gasoline in here. So we try to do it, you know, naturally, you know. It's like cooking a food outside. If you cook some food outside with using, like, trees, like woods, like dry woods, it tastes much more better than using a stove, you know. The food will taste totally different. So this is something like it here right now. The ancient pot is still cold, but it may become critical once the fermented sugarcane juice bubbles in there in a couple of hours. The dented copper apparatus has little cracks and holes everywhere. Which is why Kalem always uses his special filler. This is like a flour paste. We make to seal off the leaks from the stills. So this is going to get dry when the pot gets real hot. So it forms similar like a bread. So it would not escape the alcohol. So it would not boost out. The filler out of flour and water is 100% biodegradable. But this is one of the problems. See, sometimes the fowl come like five o'clock in the morning and pick on the flour because this is like a bread to them. So that's why you see all these parts here eat out as the fowl would actually do it. The first drops of rum are supposed to dribble out of the condensing tube around midday. With 500 horsepower through the Sir Francis Drake channel. Alexandra Durant and her brother Edward want to cross from Tortola over to Salt Island. The island is uninhabited but Alexandra and Edward aren't looking for company there. They are after the natural resource that everything revolves around in their family. Maybe like look at all that up there. Yeah, there we go. It's early in the year but still it's extraordinarily hot and dry. Therefore the first salt of the season already builds up at the lagoon. Shimmering. I just love how it's all symmetrical in squares and triangles. Usually their harvest only starts two months later when the seawater in the lagoon evaporates quicker than it can flow up again. Alexandra and Edward have their own exclusive harvesting ground here. Durant mined salt for years where the original family that actually lived on this island and buried the sailors from the RMS Rome in 1867 and for rent the queen actually asked us or asked my family to supply her with one pound of salt a year. Harvesting salt this early in the year. This hasn't happened for a long time. They only need one bucket of salt. From now on they will come here once a week to carefully harvest the crystals. They are supposed to be as big as possible as this salt is the most important ingredient at Alexandra's small soap manufactory. Beautiful. Keep going. It's to fully drain the salt because salt attracts moisture. So the drier it is the longer it keeps in your bucket when you bring it back before we cure it fully so it doesn't all melt in a bucket and you open it up and it's all brine. The freshly harvested salt shall now rest for at least one hour. Salt Island is a natural salt farm. Seawater constantly seeps in two lagoons slowly turning to brine due to the heat and then to salt. Queen Elizabeth also rules over this barren island. It's in control the whole thing. It's hers now because she doesn't want us to come over here and kill each other. I guess the family, you know, because everybody wants to fight over this and that and property and salt rights and whatnot, you know. So I guess she just took it over to mediate it and keep everybody alive, you know, in Tortola. But everybody's cool with it though. Hard solid big chunks. Yeah. After almost two hours, the fresh salt is dry enough and ready for transport. In the midday heat, Alexandra and Edward head back home to Tortola. The smallest of the British Virgin Islands lies in the middle of Beef Island. It's an island within an island. And it's so small that there's just enough room for a bar. It's called The Island, a name that's easy to remember even if you're plastered. It's quite popular due to its exceptional location and famous for its population of hermit crabs. Once a week, the bar staff collects the little buggers. I like the trees. I like to hide. They're under stuff, like under this rock maybe. But I don't, there seems to be none over here. You got one? Hermit crabs don't have a shell of their own. They live in empty snail shells. Some were painted by the bar staff. House and home for crabs. They're awesome and they're good entertainment. And they're like family. All of them have personalities. As you can see, this one here, he's a biter. This one here is kind of shy. This one here is young. So he's, you know, see this one here is not shy at all. He's all over on the rocks. There are hermit crabs everywhere. They even nest inside the walls of the house. They hide inside of the creases of the wall where they think you cannot find them, where the shell can blend in with the wall. So you have to look good in the creases to make sure you found some. See, like this one, you see how he's in there when he's holding on to the wall. See, he's coming out. Well, we have two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. The crabs are taken to the back of the restaurant. Tonight, it's all about them. During the heyday of rum production, there were 26 distilleries on the British Virgin Islands. Rum was mainly exported to Europe. But today, only the Calwood distillery is left. It is said that it's the only distillery that has been running constantly for 400 years. Calum samples the first distillate. The froth will tell you it's alcohol. So that's how we know it's rum. Because if it don't froth, it's not alcohol. This is how they have been doing it for hundreds of years. It's all original, except for the plastic bucket. So we will pick up like 25 gallons a day. So I would get 25 gallons. This is like a half a barrel, so we get a half a barrel a day. Before the fresh rum is bottled, it needs to mature in oak casks for one to up to 10 years. But master distillers like Calum already see the quality of the vintage by looking at the freshly distilled alcohol. Excellent. They get all the sugarcane, like the sweetness, and they get a nice, like a very strong taste when they enter in your mouth. So you remember, this is like a white rum, so it will be more flammable when they enter in your mouth. So it's good. It's good. It's good to bottle. Cheers. Customers, a couple from Glasgow, Scotland. Whiskey country. Hello, hello, hello. How are you guys today? Yeah, we're good. Seven bottles. Three, ten, four. Calwood Distillery is an insider's tip among yachtsmen. A few bottles of authentic Caribbean rum in the onboard bar is more popular in each harbour than the best sailors yard. Do you have a Scottish whiskey? It's a totally different spirit. This is great. It is different. Yeah, totally different. It's fantastic, this rum. Well, whiskey is great, but I'm a rum drinker. And I like rum. There's a discount, but only if you buy more than two boxes. But a small one is on the house. Best rum on the island. Best rum in the world. Thanks a lot. Cheers. The rum is given a lot of time to mature in solitude. There are no tours of the distillery and no ads. Well, behind this curtain is a secret, what we cannot let out for, like, the customers. So it goes way back. And so we have to keep that like how it is. Nobody is not allowed upstairs through this door. So we leave it like that. The midday heat burns down on Tortola's bays and mountains. At the Little Island Bar at Trellis Bay, it's shady and fairly cool. The hermit crab's houses are decorated creatively so that they can be distinguished. Every Tuesday evening, there is a race at the island bar. The crab race. Their claws are very sharp. So once they clip on you, they clip and make you bleed. So sometimes when you see they're coming out to do it, you have to let them go. A funky crab runner requires a groovy name. I'm doing a very glittery design because I love glitter and I love the color purple. So she's gonna be my little art for today. Beautiful. She doesn't really like it. So she's a bit of a runner right now. There we have it. Purple rain. Then the two female bar keepers, Jamila Victor and Rize Baltimore assign the bit numbers. Crab races are a fun activity with sophisticated rules. Then I'm going to paint her number, her racing number on her. And there is her number, number 11. But there's a twist in regards to the numbers that are painted on the shells. Barkeeper Gabriel Woodward already experienced quite some surprises. They switch shells by night. So you never know. You can't really know. Yeah, well, sometimes, sometimes they do. Like this guy, if they're the same size. But yeah, so I don't know. It depends. Some get tired out by night. Because we'll test, we'll test race them. So they might be tired after that. They're all so pretty, though. We did a good job. Which one do you think might be the fastest? I don't know. It's so hard to tell. I got my money on purple rain. For revitalization, the hermit crabs are fed some dog food. In the north of Tortola, way up on the steep hillside, there is an organic farm. Salad, spinach, papaya, avocado fruit and pineapples are grown here. The terraced fields were used for growing sugarcane for the rum distilleries before. Aragorn Dick-Reed and his helpers can harvest fresh arugula today. It's about time. Right now, we're blessed because it rained just a little bit in the past week. But before that, we had like three weeks of no rain at all. And it was scary. But right now, we're pretty much out. So we've had three nights of enough rain to make everything go back in action. Aragorn is part of a network of activists who intend to revitalize self-sufficiency on the island. These fields were overgrown for decades. It's a weird situation we're in in Tortola, where since the beginning of human habitation on these islands, there has never been so little food grown as there is now. And now is the point where it's the most populated it's ever been in history, which is pretty strange and not very stable. But from when I was a kid, there were people farming, not all of these hillsides, but in parts. And it was still a strong part of the whole culture. But the big seller of his fruit and vegetable farm are the birds of paradise. That's what they call the exotic flowers that are mandatory for every holiday photo taken at the Caribbean. Aragorn needs to hurry as he's expected down at the bay. He'll start his delivery rounds later tonight. Roadtown, the capital, isn't just a destination for yachts and cruise ships. It's also a safe haven for the assets of tax dodgers from all around the world. Half a million offshore companies are suspected to exist on the British Virgin Islands. High above town at the mountainside of Mount Sage is Alexandra Durante's small business, a startup inside a bedroom. Here, Alexandra manufactures bathing soap from the salt of Salt Island. It's a clean business, even though she almost landed a job with the money laundering industry. I went to school for accounting because as well as tourism here in Tortola, it's big in trust companies. And so I thought I might go into accounting. But after a summer of, you know, in that field, it wasn't for me. You know, I need to be out and working with my hand. For me, my philosophy is, you know, I'd rather be happy doing something I love than, you know, making money on something that I don't really love doing. It's not my passion. This is my passion. Before she can add the harvested salt, Alexandra needs to mix the base ingredients of her soap. Oil, fragrances, colors, sodium hydroxide. The recipe isn't a big secret, but there are some tricks. I think it's more like an art. You either can make soap or you can't make soap. You can either paint or you can't paint. You know, you can have a recipe, but if you don't know what to do with it, then it's, you know, it's not going to do anything for you. Soap with sea salt. Alexandra first heard of this at a soap makers workshop in Florida. The salt should work like a peeling and rejuvenate the skin. It will crack and crumble when you cut it. A few crystals on top. Almost done. The mixture now needs to harden in the mold for a few days. Then Alexandra will be able to cut it into soap bars. Pretty proud of myself. It's beautiful. Alexandra's father built the soap cutter out of his old guitar. Two bars of sea salt soap are already done. See, it's a mixture of the sand and the salt and the pumice. An island with salt on its doorstep and always a few new business ideas. Salt, I mean, they've been using salt for hundreds of years, to salt from salting beef to, you know, obviously now we're putting them in baths. So I don't think it'll ever go to waste and it'll never die down. It'll be always a tradition in our daily staple of life. I don't think you can really recreate salt. So they'll still be here. At the tiny bar island, preparations for the crab race get into top gear. The bar keepers start the test runs. The hermit crab that reaches the rope ring first is ranked highest. Number one. Number one got a second. Let's see. Number 17. Number seven. Seven is four. Number 19. 19. 11. 14. Four is five. Yeah. 14 is nine. And five. Purple rain trails far behind. Maybe it was a bit too much glitter. As during a horse race, there are test runs. Now they pick the runners for the evening. We rank them. We rank them fastest to slowest. And then we put them in tiers. The fastest guys in tier one, the slower guys, tier two, tier three, then the slowest in tier four. So tier one, if you bet on him, you would get a, you'd win a beer if you're crab one. And then the second tier, you'd get a soft drink. If you're guy one, if he was a tier two crab. And then tier three would be a dessert. If you're crab one, he was from tier three. And then tier four, who's the underdog? There's only one crab, 13, this guy right here. He's the slowest. So if he wins and you bet on him, it'd be a whole entree. Whoever bets on the loser of the training runs, today's number 13 has a chance for the biggest win. At Trellis Bay Beach, organic farmer Aragon Dick-Reed prepares for his evening delivery rounds. The yards anchoring at the bay want to stash the flavours of the Caribbean. They need room. They need room to keep them sailing and they need fresh food. They've come to paradise, so we deliver. It's all part of the plan. It's a shop, man. It is, man. I think we're ready. Every evening at six o'clock sharp, Aragon starts his hustle as he calls his tour on a swimming village shop. The British Virgin Islands are a very popular sailing area, especially among U.S. American families. How are you all? Hey, good day, guys. Wonder if you'd like anything fresh from the farm or any fresh fake breads. How are you all today? Not real hippie. That would be a hard thing to define and a bit of a bracket to start with. Aragon's tour is off to a good start. The family from Baltimore is in a buying mood. Papaya, mango, bread and flowers. $80 from the first yard, tax free. There you go. That's a beautiful sight. Which is the lucky lady? That's what I want to see. Who's going to be the lucky lady? Bring her out here. And the beautiful smile is fantastic. Cool, that's a nice shot. Aragon needs to hurry. One of his regulars is waiting at the harbour of Scrub Island. It's a millionaire from Boston on his luxury yacht, accompanied by his skipper and personal chef. Where did you go today? Well, I've got a little selection of what we picked this morning. Oh, bok choy, wow. Yeah, I got some. Good, good. And we're not ready for them. Yeah, give them two days. Excellent, very nice. That one looks super ready. Look at that, wow. Papaya. Ready to go. Papaya, please. $54, so you gave me my $5 and $1 for gas. It's a good evening for Aragon. He has chosen the right selection of goods and always hits the right mood. With British decency. In the morning, he has an important appointment. Among his clients are also millionaires who own their own private island. High tension at the island bar. It's after eight o'clock and the first run of the legendary crap race is about to start. The staff is betting too. In order to cheer up the mood. Gabriel Woodward is also the bookkeeper tonight. The stake is $1 per crab. The first crab to touch the rope will lift the top, and the first one to touch the rope is the winner. Each race lasts about one minute, but the first run already delivers a surprise. Purple Rain lags far behind again. Flash, number 11, he's not in a good shape. It's sensational. The loser from the training run wins tonight. Number 13, lucky for some, right? So number 13, best number in the world. Everyone just be cool, right? Number 13 as well, the underdog. Yeah, winners, winners. Champions, man, champions. Everyone is in a betting frenzy. The main dish they won will be served later. This strange cargo on Tortola's coastal road is meant for Aragon Dick Reed. The road town port authority has taken some boys out of service. The organic farmer has another string to his bow. He also works with steel. Sole fuel depot, where they tie up their tankers to them. So these are the ones that they're getting rid of, and so I'm recycling them, basically. They, once we grind off the rust and the paint, we're actually pretty usable, and they've got a lot of years as fireballs ahead of them. So that's the name of the game here. These heavy monsters are unpredictable. They roll around, better be careful. But it's a long way from the discarded mooring ton to the flame-spitting fireball. First, they need to be moved from the truck to the workshop. And then the arduous part begins. Aragon uses a plasma torch to burn ornaments into the rusty balls of steel. Goodbye. He likes sun patterns best, but his demanding clientele often has unusual wishes. For Richard Branson, just recently. That was a fun project, because it had scenes of sort of all of his friends that have visited Nicaragua. So there was Mandela there, there was Lady Di and the princes, and Mick Jagger. So they were all kind of Richard Branson's good friends, which was cool. This fireball costs $10,000. Richard Branson's special order cost a bit more. Singing and the sound of the ukulele belong to Carrot Bay like the rushing of the surf, or the screeching of the turn. A party, a party. Egbert Donovan likes to sing all day long, because he is in a good mood, and he attracts customers with it. He writes his own song lyrics, as well as the many epigraphs he sells, handwritten cheeky four-liners in his Caribbean Pidgin English. Egbert needs to paint a new sign, because he just sold this little joke to an American woman. Egbert thought that the original version was a bit too harsh. Egbert has many business ideas too. Up in the village, he has his own little seashell museum inside the ruins of a hotel. He runs a restaurant, a telephone repair shop, and does musical shows. There is always something going on, but Egbert's little wisdoms of life are the biggest seller. The beautiful lady, but he cannot sleep with his two eye closed. Hell, why you see he said that? His lady, his wife was a beautiful lady, but everybody looking at her. So when he now go to sleep, she disappear. So he decide he have to sleep with one eye closed, and one eye open to see when she going out of the house. At Trellis Bay Beach, the Spirit Expellers on their stilts, prepare for their show. Chevron and his Moco Jumbies. It's a premiere for Jamal. He is quite excited. I don't know, you cannot say I'm only for romantic and for graduation. I feel extra anxious. That's in the world, right? Really? Yeah. Why? Because it's like, I actually get to showcase my talent, something I like to do. So it's anxious for me right about now. Like the music, I have to get good music to get me anxious. Yeah. And I get extra hype and actually perform better. Yeah. The costumes are homemade. Onesies with three meter long legs. It is said that Moco Jumbies have magical powers. But in any case, they are an attraction. Aragon Dick Reed employed Chevron's troop for a little party at his workshop. He has a reason to celebrate. Well, I just finished this new ball. So we're doing a little celebration ceremony just to christen the ball, you know, make it come alight. And we hope it's going to catch fire. And then I invited some Moco Jumbie buddies of mine to come and bless it. Chevron and his stilts dancers expel all the evil spirits so that life on the British Virgin Islands here in the Caribbean can remain relaxed and easygoing.