Bequia & Beyond

Norm’s two week Easter break is over and that means it’s back to the regular routine of Norm teaching and me blogging, now and then. Yes, life is tough in the Caribbean. Our Sarnia friends Lou and Dewey were here to share the holidays with us. We took them around St. Lucia for the first few days and then headed off on some new adventures to some other Islands.

We flew from St. Lucia to St. Vincent and then took a ferry to the small Island of Bequia.
Lou is a sailor and we just happened to be in Bequia for the Easter Regatta. While it was fun for him to see all the boats he was a little frustrated that he couldn’t sail with them.
Bequia is a tiny Island, part of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It is 7 square miles with a population of 5-thousand. We walked from one end of the Island to the other, over a two day period. The weather was hot to walk in but there were several refreshing beaches along the way.

We visited a beautiful pottery studio that was built among the ruins of an abandoned sugar mill and finished our walk at a turtle hatchery.
It's run by Orton King, a retired fisherman who has made it his mission to save the hawksbill turtle from extinction. He collects the eggs, hatches them and keeps the turtles in pools for five years, until they are old enough to survive in the ocean. This one is his pet turtle.
http://turtles.bequia.net/

We took a day sale on an old schooner, the “Friendship Rose”. The crew was quick to offer sea sickness pills, ginger all and ginger cookies throughout the morning to prevent people from

getting sea sick. We didn’t take anything and were fine.

Once at the Tobago Cays there was a two hour stop for snorkling or swimming. The pictures don’t do justice to the color of the water. It was really beautiful.

From Bequia, we spent a few nights in St. Vincent. We hired a driver for a day to take us around the Western side of the Island. It's beautiful.

We did a 3 to 4 hour hike to Trinity Falls.
The walk was through a beautiful rainforest with awesome vegetation. Happily no snakes but I’m pretty sure I heard a wild boar grunting.

Our driver then took us to Dark ViewFalls.
We had to walk over a suspension bridge made of long bamboo trunks to get there.

Parts of the Pirates of the Caribbean films were shot in St. Vincent. Our driver was hired to help scout out locations on the Island. They’ve kept part of the sets intact for visitors.

That's just a small sampling of what we did over the two weeks. I'll fill in some more blanks over the next few days. Thanks to Lou for some great photos.