British Virgin Islands · VG

Norman Island

Norman Island is the British Virgin Islands' Treasure Island, and it earns the nickname. A small, scrub-covered hump of land lying just south of Tortola across the Sir Francis Drake Channel, it has no residents, no roads and no resort hotels. What it does have is a famously safe natural harbour, a beach restaurant, a legendary floating bar, and a cluster of sea caves that make it one of the best snorkelling spots in the Caribbean. The pirate stories are not decoration here: they are the reason half the boats in the anchorage arrived. For most travellers Norman Island is not a place you stay in but a place you anchor for a night, dinghy ashore, and swim. It is the standard first stop of a BVI charter and a popular day-trip from Tortola, and it packs a surprising amount into a very small footprint: snorkel the caves in the morning, eat on the beach at midday, jump off the bar at sunset, and sleep in one of the most protected anchorages in the islands.