It's a bit less than nine years since I wrote this record of a much-relished holiday, which prompted my brother to remark "you should write a blog." I researched how to do that, and started to do so. This is where my recently neglected blog habit started.
Holiday in Bequia, February 2008
Thursday 14th
Reading
Completed packing, shopped, made dinner (chicken and lentil
curry). Dick and Val arrived about
7.30. Got drunk and fell over on patio
after ‘the last cigarette’.
Friday 15th
En voyage; arrival at Barbados; St Lawrence Gap; the Whistling Frog
Café
Up 6 a.m. D drove us
to Gatwick and negotiated parking.
Flight very smooth and shorter than expected. Excel’s idea of in-flight entertainment (not
that I was bothered) seemed a bit weird, as pretty well nobody would’ve been
able to see the miniscule TV screens.
Arrived Barbados
3.30 p.m. local.
I was first to the immigration queue, which stretched out
almost to the runway. D&V, having
been seated amidships in the plane and therefore nearly last off, took a while
to catch up. Inside the building, a
zig-zag snake queue, which took more than an hour to negotiate. Three flights had arrived at about the same
time – several hundred people striving, good-naturedly, towards sixteen or so
hardpressed officials. When we finally
got through, we found that our luggage had taken even longer to get to the
belt. Imagine our surprise!
Taxi to the Dover Beach Hotel at St Lawrence Gap, to be
greeted by charming staff and shown to our very pleasant rooms. We swam in the rough sea (high winds, D a bit
worried about this unexpected aspect), then wandered out to the main Gap drag
in search of food and entertainment – ended up at the Whistling Frog Café for
dinner. Apparently, Barbados is
populated with frogs, which whistle. I
definitely heard whistles, but didn’t see a single frog.
Saturday 16th
Dover Beach; Oistins fish night; karaoke
Breakfast at the hotel bar.
Just after we’d ordered, the bar was invaded by a horde of English
teenage sporty girls from some posh school, on some kind of sporty activity
holiday. We were loudly informed that Gemma
had been sick, but then that ‘I’ve cleaned up the vomit’.
To my relief, we spent the day lounging around the hotel
pool and strolling up and down the Gap strip (which proved to be pretty dreary). We decided to taxi to the Oistins fish night
event – major tourist attraction/trap – overpriced food and 30 mins of local
worthies speechifying and Christian entertainment – then back to the Dover
Beach for their karaoke night (featuring a different bunch of teenage sporty
girls, and some loud Americans). I will
say no more about this – we’ve all been there.
(The karaoke I mean, not the girls …)
Sunday 17th
Transit; first impressions of Bequia; Gingerbread; Farine
We negotiate the complex check-in procedure for the flight
to Bequia, which turns out to be via Mustique, with pick-ups and drop-offs en
route, which almost resulted in my suitcase winging its way back to Barbados. This is a 20-seater two-engined prop plane,
two pilots visible up front, 8,000 feet up (1,000 for the Mustique-Bequia leg),
bucking around in the steady breeze.
Mustique airport looks like a par three golf hole in tarmac. Jolly Mustique holidaymakers with
self-consciously beautiful girls and sulky iPod boys come and go. Landing at Bequia James F Mitchell airport is
like aiming at another par three, through trees and cliffs, on the pillion of a
bucking motorbike.
Once my case has been salvaged, Curtis, our taxi driver (who
we will learn to know and love) greets us and takes us to Gingerbread. On the way D&V are having local knowledge
conversations with Curtis, but I’m just seeing concrete roads, flashes of
turquoise sea, glimpses of colonial or shanty buildings; feeling steep ups and
downs and vicious speed humps; breathing the warm sea air and odd spice smells:
all from the back of this bright yellow Challenger pick-up truck, bench seats
each side, which is a Bequia taxi.
Gingerbread is gorgeous.
I feel at home at once. Easy to
wander out around the town, down to a little local beach (Plantation House) for
a swim, along to Frangipani for rum punches then back to Gingerbread for dinner
and Farine. They’re a local group –
guitar, banjo, bongos, and a varying number of singers – who do a unique take
on everything from gospel to skiffle via Motown, Marley and the Beach
Boys. We get pissed and close the bar.
This is my first experience of the mosquito net – essential
in these parts I’m told. It hangs from
the ceiling, a huge swathe of muslin which you drape over your bed, tuck in,
then crawl under and sleep in your private indoor insect-free tent. Certainly I wasn’t disturbed by mozzies that
night. But nothing is perfect. They will get to you sooner or later. Fortunately, my skin is fairly mosquito-proof
(years of conditioning in Italy,
maybe), and Bequia mozzies are indolent and rather impotent. I got bitten a dozen or so times over the
stay, but none endured or itched intolerably.
There is a notice in my bathroom which reads, in full: ‘Flushing
toilet. Do not let the handle spin
around. Press back until down then let
it come back up. Management is working
to solve this problem.’
Monday 18th
Port
Elizabeth; Princess Margaret Beach; the Green Boley;
Captain Mac’s
We walk into town, where I fail to change money, due to huge
queues in the RBTT bank (Royal Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, I learn from
Google).
Then we try to walk across the headland to our nearest
‘proper’ beach, the Princess Margaret or Tony Gibbons. I haven’t researched either of these labels,
but I’m inclined to D’s theory: originally, it was probably called ‘Middle
Beach’ or somesuch; Princess Margaret went for a swim there one day, slumming
it from Mustique; the locals weren’t having that, decided the beach needed an
authentic indigenous name – and just then good old Tony walks into the bar.
Whatever, the headland path turns out to have been blocked
off by a cavalier housebuilding project.
We were warned of this by a guy cleaning the Plantation House beach and
by an American fellow-tourist, but went to have a look anyway – sure enough, a
block wall and industrial barbed wire make this public right of way totally
impassable. All the locals act
appalled, but nobody seems to know what to do about it. Even the water-taxi drivers (who stand to
benefit) feel that it’s wrong, and probably illegal – yet this construction has
obviously been allowed to go ahead, unchallenged to the point of
irreversibility. It’s my first
intimation, or reminder (Tobago), of the sinuous workings of Caribbean
local politics.
So we get a water taxi.
I am not going to repeatedly describe the experience of
lounging on a Caribbean beach for a day – so pay
attention: I am only going to say this once!
Find a place with available shade and pitch camp. Spread your towel and lie/sit on it; read
your book, shifting your posture according to discomfort levels, which may be
caused by sand, sun intrusion, muscular strain, buried hard objects, or
ants. Go for a swim. Snooze.
Repeat as necessary until lunchtime.
Have lunch at local hostelry.
Return to camp and repeat above, until it’s time to leave.
Henceforth, this delightful process will be identified by
the phrase ‘lounge on beach’.
Lunch, on this occasion, was at ‘Jack’s Bar’, a slick new
venue. Food good (although I still want
my tomato remoulade – having looked it up, what I was given no way conforms to
that description!). The place seems
unfinished – concrete floors and pillars – and so a bit impersonal.
Rum punches at the Green Boley, ten paces down the Belmont Walkway
from Gingerbread. They’re a tad more
rummish than Frangipani’s. Can’t find
out what a Boley is, never mind a green one – but the bar is basic, relaxed, a
place you could sit and lime all evening.
We view the sunset, then head off to Captain Mac’s, a new place opposite
the fruit market. Apart from a bunch of
American teenagers, we’re the only customers.
We ask for the wine list: two bottles are brought to the table for our
selection. We choose the Chilean Sunrise
Merlot, which is to be our staple diet. Food
and service are good; just a bit sad about the ambience, the less than ideal
location, the optimistic desperation of the enterprise. Nice map of the world though, filling an
entire wall of the inside, unused, room.
Tuesday 19th
Friendship Bay; Moskito; dinner at home
The wind (external not self) gets up at 6 a.m. and howls
through the shutters and the plants outside the window. I see I haven’t described my room
properly. It’s big, about 5 metres
square, unglazed but shuttered windows on three sides; bed in the middle, nets
hanging from the ceiling over big wall hooks, a kitchenette and a bathroom off
the fourth wall; big balcony through sliding shuttered doors to the front. I now have a key to my safe.
Breakfast with D&V (purchased yesterday – fruit, eggs
and tomatoes).
We take our first big walk across the island to Friendship Bay.
The ups are a bit challenging, but I’m gratified by how well I
manage. Beach a bit of a letdown, rather
narrow and ant-infested. Good lunch
though at Moskito café – excellent well-endowed burgers, and V’s seafood pasta
looked good.
Lounged on beach.
Dinner at home uncovered a few issues, mainly that we
couldn’t work out how to light the oven – which is a concern when you’re
cooking chicken legs. As luck would have
it, Pat Mitchell had decided to install, experimentally, a microwave in
D&V’s apartment, and V rose heroically to the occasion. But we resolved that eating in probably isn’t
a high priority option – especially as it seems that raw materials in the shops
cost far more than the prepared, cooked and served equivalents in the
restaurants. The starter was a feta
cheese salad, at about sixteen guineas an ounce – at any rate, far more than
we’d paid for the same thing at Jack’s Bar.
How can this be? Caribbean economics becomes more and more mysterious.
Wednesday 20th
Lower Bay; Da Reef; Devil’s Table
After breakfast, split between fruit at D&V’s and banana
bread at Gingerbread café, we walked across to Lower Bay
– the best beach. Far fewer ants.
Lounged on beach.
Lunch at Da Reef, a big canteen-like bar/restaurant right on
the beach. I had conch (pron. ‘conk’)
curry. This is the animal which inhabits
those huge shells you see at beach-side venues everywhere, and which can with
practice be blown, like a trumpet, to announce, for example, the arrival of the
day’s fish catch at the market in Port
Elizabeth.
We’ve discovered a great non-alcoholic refresher, lime
squash. Freshly squeezed lime juice,
sugar syrup, a dash of Angostura, over loads of ice, made up with tap water –
brilliant! You could add white rum or
vodka for a long cocktail … try this at home, when the summertime comes.
Excellent dinner (though not very Caribbean
in character) at Devil’s Table, apparently named after a nearby reef. It’s their ‘reggae night’: a semi-live,
semi-backing tape on-stage performance, which worked – I’d have danced had the
opportunity arisen – because of a young,
lively crowd, all fired up to watch the total eclipse of the moon. This duly came about; would perhaps have been
more interesting if it hadn’t! The moon
gradually disappears from one side, then gradually reappears – a bit like the
London Eye in reverse. I expressed the
view, to a local, that it was being eaten by a dragon, but was told ‘no, man,
it’s a shark’.
Thursday 21st
Friendship Rose to Tobago Cays;
Frangipani BBQ
Up at the crack to join the much-anticipated boat trip. Strong winds and torrential rain overnight
caused some apprehension, but there was no risk of cancellation merely for a bit
of weather.
So we embark and set off, with about forty others, mostly
Americans, and five crew, under the command of Captain Lewis, who has been
running this ship since she was the St Vincent
ferry back in the seventies. Departure is
delayed by engine trouble, and in fact we have to return for repairs; but once
we get going properly, and clear Admiralty Bay, full sail is set and we are
soon scudding along through wine-dark seas past island after island, bucking
and crashing through the waves.
We reach the Cays about 11.30, and are ferried to the reef
for snorkelling.
The undersea views are
breathtaking; but that’s perhaps not the best choice of words.
The sea was choppy enough for me to ship
several mouthfuls of seawater through my snorkel, often when I’d just breathed
out and so had no air in my lungs to blow through like you’re supposed to do;
and the leg action, with fins, is more arduous than I remember from when I was
sixteen.
I’m glad I did it, but not
convinced that this particular recreation is quite for me any more.
Back on the boat, we are served a good lunch, with unlimited
rum punch and wine, then set off for the homeward leg, through a massive blow
and drenching squalls – shipping dense spray and occasional green water, plus
rain – soaked to the skin several times – boat keeling at twenty degrees –
exhilarating!
After regaining dry land (which refuses to stay still for
hours), we freshen up and go to the Frangipani barbeque, which is fine except
that we’re too knackered to do it justice.
We’re seated at the back of the restaurant, away from the band, along
with several of our fellow voyagers – and, as D&V discover to their
amazement, a delightful young couple called Cherie and Dylan, from Toronto, whom they’d met
in Carriacou five years ago. Arrange to
dine with them Monday.
I’m lulled to sleep, under my gauze tent, by the gentle
swaying motion still retained by my body’s memory, sea-legs so thrillingly
acquired aboard the lovely Friendship Rose.
Friday 22nd
Fort Hamilton; Tony Gibbons beach; Tommy Cantina
Despite good intentions to sleep in, we’re up and running by
8.00. ‘Full breakfast’, which is bacon
and eggs, as opposed to ‘English breakfast’, which is that plus sausage, beans,
tomatoes, etc etc, at Porthole café, Mrs Taylor’s tight ship. She and her staff of daughters or nieces are
highly organised, but make us feel comfortable and relaxed, the best customer
care yet!
We walk up through the town to Fort Hamilton,
built by the British in 1760 to defend Bequia from American privateers or
French pirates. The views are great, and
we stroll back down, past ineluctable shacks and enterprises, painted in
vibrant colours or allowed to rot down to sad greys – some with religiously challenging
rasta slogans carefully etched on their facades, others with failed fading bar
names. Now, I am pleased that I didn’t
photograph these relics, or record their names.
I am glad that I didn’t demean them in that way.Lunch at D&V’s, using up the solid gold Feta
cheese. Then water taxi to Princess
Margaret, lounge on beach, return, rum punches (RPs) at the Green Boley
(GB). An intense meeting of, we think,
the Easter Regatta Committee is taking place inside.
Dinner at Tommy Cantina’s – O.K. depending on how far you’re
into Mexican. I ordered a ‘lime daiquiri’
as an aperitif, which turned out to be a rather odd kind of rum and lime
sorbet, to be sucked through a straw as it melted – hardly a drink at all, more
like a dessert.
Saturday 23rd
Spring and Industry; Mrs Taylor’s
Buffet breakfast at Frangipani, then walk across the island
to Spring then Industry
Bay, which is trying to
reinvent itself as ‘Crescent’.
Presumably they think ‘Industry’ has adverse connotations (invokes dark
Victorian satanic mills, whereas I suspect it was actually named for the sturdy
Victorian virtue; ‘Crescent’ is of course free of any such negative
associations, or any other sort for that matter). The beaches, especially Spring, look at first
sight like a lost opportunity, but then you think, just how many idyllic
tourist beaches can this island, and its fragile economy and ecology,
sustain? Certainly, Industry/Crescent’s
café will have to do better – hugely
overpriced and inadequate in quality and service.
At 6 p.m., D&V bumped into Cherie and Dylan at
Gingerbread; we all repaired to GB to find they’d run out of RP (we’d drunk
them dry), so to Frangipani instead.
Then dinner at Mrs Taylor’s ‘Porthole’ – food very good, but the
ambience (irritatingly loud TV) and service not quite up to the price. Shame, because just a little bit more effort
could make this into a star turn (see Fernando’s later).
Sunday 24th
Lower Bay; Can’t Remember the Name; Gingerbread; Farine
Walk across to Lower
Bay. My legs are getting good at this by now: once
you have seen your destination, the journey does become a bit easier!
Lunch at ‘Can’t Remember the Name’, a newly built venue –
very nice building, roof made of natural untreated timbers, a good, friendly,
professional service, we all had ‘fish and chips’ – not quite as we know them
back in Blighty, but then, that’s not what we came for is it?
Dinner at the Gingerbread restaurant, curries. Farine were playing again – what a joyful,
inspirational experience this group is!
The Gingerbread waitress, Arlene, did a couple of numbers with the band,
then went back to work. Next thing,
she’s washing up behind the counter whilst performing ‘Stand By Me’ with the
band, exactly parallel to Aretha’s take on ‘Respect’ in The Blues Brothers –
this woman is precisely conscious of what she’s up to, and, as I told her
later, is an unmistakeable star.
I attract the attention of Farine’s guitarist, who forces me
to play his guitar for about 45 embarrassing seconds. I try to decline: ‘no man, I’m too pissed’;
he responds ‘yeh, so’m I’; I say ‘yeah man but, you got pissed whilst playing, while I got pissed then got asked to play – there’s a
difference!’ He acknowledges this
distinction, but makes me do it anyway.
Monday 25th
Hope Bay; Fernando’s Hideaway
Heavy rain overnight.
Strenuous walk over Mount Pleasant to Hope Bay
– hard work, but there was cloud cover most of the way. Very humid though.
Hope
Bay is a totally deserted
east-facing cove with a derelict shelter, self-seeding coconut palms and
biggish surf, in which we swam. Then
back up a rough overgrown track, a bit hard to find at first, not helped by
well-meaning pink ribbon waymarks which unfortunately had, some of them, been
fixed to moveable objects.
Rotis for lunch at Mrs Taylor’s, then lounged around on the
balcony. We walked into town to change
money and try, unsuccessfully, to find a ‘live-slow@bequia.calm’ T shirt for me
– how can they have failed to re-use such a great slogan?
Cherie and Dylan join us for drinks at D&V’s, then
Curtis taxis us across to Fernando’s Hideaway, now I think just called Nando’s,
an excellent local-style family run outdoor restaurant, with good fish, stewed
eggplant (aubergine) etc. – great meal and lots of good conversation.
Tuesday 26th
Breakfast with ‘Son’; Princess Margaret’s beach; Jack’s Bar; Moonhole;
Moskito
Breakfast at Frangipani, very nice fruit platters. We chat at some length with Sir James (‘Son’)
Mitchell, ex-prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines and Caribbean
world statesman, now owner of Frangipani (and probably half the island),
ex-husband of Pat who runs Gingerbread – very interesting. He isn’t too forthcoming about the famous
footpath blocking – a vested interest in there perhaps? D has bought his autobiography, for which Sir
J gladly supplies a dedication.
Water taxi to Princess M’s; lunch at Jack’s Bar, better than
last time. The feta salad costs
significantly less than it did when we made the identical thing at home – how
can this be? There’s obviously more to
the local economy than meets the eye.
Sorry, I’m repeating myself.
When we arrive at the beach, Friendship Rose is moored
offshore and the place is heaving with people.
After a couple of hours, at least forty are ferried back to the boat,
which then apparently returns to Port
Elizabeth.
Strange, we think.
In the afternoon we visit Moonhole, at the far end of the
island beyond the airport. It’s a
complex of nineteen weird and wonderful houses, built from and totally
integrated into the local landscape – no straight lines. It was initiated in, I think, the sixties by
an eccentric American called Tom Johnston, and now run by his son Jim and
lovely English wife Sheena. The houses
are mostly privately owned, and passed on by inheritance, the managing company
having first refusal should anyone want to sell. So there are a few owned by Jim and Sheena,
and rented out. But they make most of
their money, I guess, from guided tours like this one. Fascinating and great fun.
Curtis taxi to Moskito at Friendship Bay
for dinner – very disappointing, at least for me. My fish was overcooked to inedible, service
was rushed, wine vastly overpriced. Aspirant
corporatism at its worst.
Curtis actually seems stressed out – wife ill in hospital in
Trinidad; can’t meet demand for his services on his own, but terrified of
losing business; drafted in his son to help, but unsure he can trust him to
deliver, etc… Just how ‘laid back, live
slow’ is this place in actuality? Jim
Johnston, as laid back as they come, explained how, in the rental homes at
Moonhole, all you have to do is make your decisions: the full-time staff do
everything else. In the best
restaurants, the staff work their butts off to get it right whilst presenting
as ‘laid back’. V thinks we’re seeing
the early signs of a new ‘laid back Bequia’ corporate product range. The Americans we’ve overheard and talked to
certainly think that’s what they’re buying.
Wednesday 27th
Quiet day; Mac’s Pizzeria; Devil’s Table
Breakfast at Frangipani.
Good pizza for lunch. D&V
went on a snorkelling trip to Moonhole; I lounged, took photos, read, snoozed.
Quiet (!) dinner at Devil’s Table: nothing like the
atmosphere of last week, perhaps due to lack of lunar influences – no hordes of
nubile teenage dancing girls, just middle-aged Yanks who really shouldn’t. Lovely steak though.
Thursday 28th
Lower Bay; Can’t Remember; Fernando’s
Last day!
We attempt breakfast at Frangipani, but are met with
stony-faced opposition (‘all these tables are booked!’) then ignored for five
minutes – so we decamp to Gingerbread.
No fruit (how do they manage that?), but otherwise OK.
We walk over to Lower
Bay, now confirmed as the
very best beach. There’s a huge cruise
liner called ‘Wind Surf’ anchored out to sea, not the first one we’ve noticed,
but thankfully its population haven’t made it to Lower. We lunch at Can’t Remember – their burgers
aren’t as good as Moskito’s!
Another nice dinner at Fernando’s, back to Frangipani for a
beer, and so to bed.
Friday 29th
Homeward bound
We pack, pay, and bid a sorry farewell to sweet Bequia.
We by-pass the immigration queue at Barbados, as transit
passengers. Flight to Gatwick O.K., but
the seats are incredibly uncomfortable – don’t they test these things?
Luggage doesn’t get lost, though it takes hours to find its
way to the reclaim; car delivered by an enthused boy racer; back to Reading, cup of tea – and
I’m back where I started.
Notes
Taxis
There are three kinds of taxi on Bequia:
·
Minibus.
We didn’t use these, but they’re standard people-carriers, with mostly
edifying names like ‘Don’t Give Up’, ‘Justice’, ‘Faith’ etc painted across the
front in graffiti-style lettering.
·
Pick-up truck.
This is Curtis’s style of taxi – a truck with bench seats ranged along
each side. Apart from the taxi firm’s
ID, they don’t seem to have names.
·
Water taxi.
Obviously, these are not strictly ‘on’, but are boats with outboards,
which hang around the jetties or tout for trade up and down the beaches. They have racy names like ‘Humble Afrikan’,
‘Sweat’, and our favourite ‘Phat Shag’.
Birds
The following types of bird were observed:
·
Bequia Blackbird. Shaped more like a starling than its English
cousin. Supposedly says ‘Bequia sweet
sweet’, though to me it sounds more like ‘Bequia cheap cheap’, which isn’t entirely
true. They’re everywhere, but mostly
hang around restaurant terraces.
·
Brown Boobie.
Four foot wing span diver, seen everywhere around the coast. They hunt constantly, not hovering like
raptors but cruising and plunging on the off chance – but rarely seem to catch
anything.
·
Frigate Bird (aka Man o’ War). Magnificent huge sea hunter, up to eight feet
span. They can’t actually dive, not
having water-resistant feathers, so have to snatch prey from the sea surface
(or from brown boobies).
·
A tiny yellow and black finch who frequents
balconies.
·
Humming Bird.
Surprisingly few spotted, as there are allegedly about 29 varieties.
·
A black heron, seen elegantly winging across the
bay one evening.
·
Pigeons.
Music
Quite a conservative scene, with the shining exception of
Farine (named apparently after a kind of cassava-based porridge).
Bequia musicians don’t seem to have got over
Bob Marley yet – seventies style reggae predominates.
A guy called Elvis plays steel drum at the
Frangi once a week, to a pre-recorded backing track.
He’s actually very good, jazzy when he lets
himself cut loose, but mostly feels he has to do tourist-pleasers.
Quite a lot of country & western, which
seems incongruous.
Very little Soca or
other more adventurous forms.
Shopping
We concluded that most locals take the ferry to St Vincent to shop – certainly they don’t get their
clothes here! The fruit & veg market
is vibrant and well-stocked, though the sales technique can be a bit
off-putting – reminded me of the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul.
A notice on the back wall reminds vendors not to apply this kind of ‘in
your face’ selling approach; but one or two of them seem to have missed the
word ‘not’. Clothing is almost
exclusively tourist crap – there is some good stuff, but you have to hunt it
out. Prices, as noted, seem on the high
side.