Days 67 through 69, Year 1: Caribbean Christmas
Date: Sunday, December 25, 2005
Weather: Perfect Tropical Christmas Day
Location: Wallilabou, St. Vincent
Arrrrrrr, Mateys. We are in the land of the pirates. Wallilabou is where Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed and as we sit here in the anchorage, much of the set is still in place along the shore. Wallilabou is a sleepy little place. We are moored on one of the five mooring balls just off the Wallilabou Anchorage Hotel and Restaurant and other than that, there is nothing but the set from the movie. You have to adjust your idea of “hotel” and “restaurant”, but it works in this setting.
As soon as we arrived on Friday, we walked up the road about a mile to a little waterfall with a bit of a basin for sitting in the cool water. We saw cows, goats, and a donkey on the way, and stopped at Mona’s Craft Shop. There were a few handmade woven items, but no fresh produce as we had read in the sailing guide. October and November are the rainy months when nothing can survive the deluge, so the crops are just now beginning to grow. Everyone seems to grow sorrel and dasheen. Sorrel is a bush with beautiful red blossoms that are used to make a drink (that tastes a bit like cough syrup). Dasheen is a root crop and when the leaves are young and tender, they are used to make Callaloo soup. On the way back, Justin, Mark, and I ventured out to visit the Goldenspoon Restaurant that we had read about in the cruising guide. Twins, Ron and Ronnie, are the owners and are trying to get a start. We had a great conversation with Ron and tasted the St. Vincent brew, Hairoun. This was the original name of this island prior to the arrival of Columbus. The Hairoun natives were driven out and replaced with slaves from Africa.
On Saturday, Christmas Eve, we walked to the next little town and then took a bus to Kingstown. As in St. Lucia, the buses here are minivans, but most have the name of the van painted brightly on the front-Apache, Roach, Love, Ranger, Chance, Circumstance. And these minivans drive the narrow roads like maniacs. “Time is Money” is their byline and they pack 17-18 people into the vans. At one point we rounded a curve and there were two men herding their goats on the road. There is no “side” of the road as the road is on the edge of a cliff falling straight down into the ocean. Somehow, the goats were spared, but we were certainly glad to get back to the anchorage safely. We had taken the bus to Kingstown to find an ATM machine and visit the market. Jed was in search of the beautiful nutmeg seeds covered with red mace and found success in the Kingstown Market Place. We then found a cab driver that would take us up in the mountains to the Vermont Trails. There is a river trail and a parrot trail, so we chose to walk the parrot trail through a tropical rainforest. The St. Vincent parrot lives here and we were lucky enough to see three of the one hundred that live in this forest as they flew from one side of the mountain to the other. They were in the distance, but we felt lucky to have gotten a glimpse of this endangered species. When we returned, we decided to have dinner at the Anchorage Restaurant. We met Jake and Kathy from Virginia and celebrated Christmas Eve together. Jake and Kathy charter in the Caribbean once or twice a year and had some great tips for us. We also met the crew and visitors on Linda, a boat from Helsinke headed around the world. They are a young crew and we plan to meet them again in Bequia in the next week. They have a website that we have not been able to check out yet at Linda.fi.
Christmas Day began with the traditional opening of stockings and a few gifts, followed by breakfast and a very untraditional afternoon of snorkeling/snuba adventures. Snuba gives us a way to do shallow diving without tanks, and Heather wanted to help us feel a little more comfortable using the gear. We all tried it out and saw an amazing array of reef fish, including a couple or rare finds – spotted drums, a bridled burrfish, and a chained moray eel on the prowl. We have decided that Justin really is a fish. He swims and dives with and without equipment all day long, but I think we wore him out this day. Heather, Jed, and I went out for a sundown snorkel, but Mark and Justin decided that they had had enough. We ended our Christmas Day with another dinner at the restaurant, followed by homemade pumpkin pie and whipped cream back on the boat. We had a great time with our Christmas crackers (we’ve nicknamed them “poppers”) and fell into bed for a long winters (hot) sleep.
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| 051223 Day 67 Wallilabou, St. Vincent |
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| 051224 Day 68 Rain Forest Explore in St. Vincent |
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| 051225 Day 69 Christmas Day in St. Vincent |
