Photo 1: Main Street in Great Harbor, Jost Van Dyke
Photo 2: Foxy Callwood, just in from hauling lobster traps. The man loves to fish!
Photo 3: On Culture Day, a young girl gets lessons on plaiting palm fronds.
Photo 4: The principal of the Jost Van Dyke School serves up a Caribbean lunch on Culture Day.

Jost Van Dyke, the fourth largest of the British Virgin Islands, has not been chewed up and spit out by destructive development. There are no gigantic hotels, no fussy restaurants … just a handful of guest houses, some good places to eat and a string of crazy beach bars. Electricity didn’t arrive here until 1992 and public water, in the form of reverse osmosis, finally showed up in 2003. If you want to visit, you’ll need to do as the 200-plus residents do and come by boat. There isn’t even an airstrip.

Your visit will most likely start in Great Harbor, the “port of entry” where the passenger/cargo ferries arrive from and depart to Tortola and St. John on a regular daily schedule. Guests from private and charter yachts dinghy to the beach or main pier, situated in front of the customs and police station, the only place in town requiring shoes, shirts and pants. Definitely pants. The rest of the island accepts the most casual attire I’ve seen this side of a nude beach. Maybe that’s because Main Street is a one-lane track on a white sand beach, flanked with small boats tied to palms on the water’s edge, with open-fronted beach bars behind.

From the police dock situated in the center of a half-moon bay, visitors face only one decision: left or right? Most choose the latter and head on a direct course for Foxy’s Tamarind Bar, possibly the Caribbean’s most famous establishment. Located at one end of the beach, this open-air, wooden structure is a graffiti-filled monument of all who came and went. The ceiling is alive with worn, autographed T-shirts, flags, license plates, photos, business cards and a few mismatched bits of bikinis.

When you talk to Foxy, his wife of 35 years, Tessa, and some of their staff, they’ll tell you they’ve seen it all. And in the short time I watched the jubilant customers knocking back signature painkilling cocktails, I saw enough to understand just what they mean. The exhilaration of eating and drinking in beach attire causes everyone to record the event with photo after photo. Foxy will happily pose with anyone, always wearing a mischievous grin. And if he’s not around, customers snuggle up to the life-size wooden version of him nicknamed Epoxy Foxy, and snap away.

The main event at Foxy’s, besides the man himself, is the New Year’s Eve extravaganza. The staff increases 20-fold to serve several thousand who come by sea to eat, drink and merrily escort in a new year. A lucky few snag reservations for the “upstairs party,” a sit-down meal and open bar on a terrace overlooking the field where Max Cabello Jr. and Cool Sessions Brass will perform this year. That field has been the venue for the Beach Boys, the Mighty Sparrow, Lucky Dube, Third World, Toots and the Maytals and a score of other well loved musicians.

Next to the bar is The Fox Hole, Tessa’s boutique of several rooms packed tight with hats, jewelry, shoes, bags … you name it. One wall artfully displays dozens of Foxy T-shirt designs, and in the back you can find the latest in swimwear, just in case you lost yours.

Two years ago, with much work from Foxy and Tessa Callwood, the non-profit Jost Van Dyke Preservation Society was formed. Managed by its new director, American Susan Zaluski, it is working hard to preserve the land, life in the sea and local heritage that has all but dried up. It’s the only island around without a community carnival or jump up.

Susan invited me one Friday to join her at the school for the one remaining event helping hand the past to the future. It was Culture Day, and I jumped at the chance to go. Twenty-three students, ranging in age from five to 14, had exchanged their uniforms of white button-down shirts, dark pants or plaid skirts for traditional clothing or play clothes. They spent the morning cooking over open coal fires, making brooms from local plants, learning to plait palm fronds or making boats with coconut husks. The lunch they helped prepare consisted of saltfish and fungi, goat water, oxtail soup, ackee, green banana, cassava bread and plenty of starchy roots. Luckily, they served mauby and sorrel, both made from local trees, to help wash it all down.

The well-behaved students soaked up the West Indian tastes and traditions, and hopefully they, too, will one day pass them on.

Jan