We reached Bequia and motored into the bay of Port Elizabeth where we had last been for the millennium celebrations in 1999 and called a water taxi to go ashore and clear customs. Dee Dee turned up in her boat, Blessing and we used her the following day too as she regaled us with stories of when she sailed around the island on a catamaran. We only planned to stay for a couple of days so we decided not to blow up the dinghy this time.
The town had certainly grown, with lots more businesses serving the tourists and lots of stalls along the front and waterside restaurant The Whaleboner was the restaurant where we had celebrated the new year 2000 with friends, Nick and Liz, their friends Helen and Phil and our daughter Heather. Sadly Helen is no longer with us.
We promised ourselves a drink there for old times sake. Although we had planned to stay only 2 nights, the weatherforecast was for winds on the nose so we blew the dinghy up and decided to stay longer. In the event 2 days turned into two weeks so we were able to explore most of the island. It is so small that we did this on foot.
We walked over to the other side of the island to visit the whaling museum. Bequia used to have a big whaling business and sadly they still have licence to kill one whale per year. After an hour's walk we came upon the museum but it had clearly been closed for some time. At lest we saw some of the island. We also met Audie Bandana, a Bequian who had returned from Canada to live in his late father's run down cottage. He told us he had some songs on YouTube from when he performed in Canada. He was a lovely man but when we found his music online we could see why he never made it as a singer/guitarist.After we left him we went to a nearby beach to eat a picnic lunch and have a swim,
Another day's walk was to the turtle sanctuary. We had visited this sanctuary for Hawkbill turtles 19 years ago and it was still run by the same man (now 80 years old) and helped by his grandson. He used to be a diver/fisherman and killed many turtles in his youth, before becoming aware of the decline in numbers. He hatches them and keeps them until they are 7 years old and big enough to avoid the sharks and has now returned over 900 to the ocean.
On our walk we came across many beaches ruined by the seaweed that has been washed up all along the Atlantic coast of the Caribbean and elsewhere in the region. The smell is appalling, the beaches unusable and the effects on the tourist trade for the hotels on this side of the island is devastating. They try to clear it but it is a losing battle and one hotel put a boom out to protect the beach but that just broke. Global warming!!
Our final walk on Bequia was to the south of the island. We went as far as we could, passing a luxury hotel that seemed quite empty.The town nearby, Paget Farm, was the least touristic part of the island with friendly, chatty people, a fishing community and lots of rum shacks selling drinks for half the price of those in Port Elizabeth.
Bequia was by far the most expensive island we have visited so far, with everything geared to the tourist market. We went to visit Chameleon Cafe in Port Elizabeth. This is owned by Tom Vernon, our friend Liz's son and by his ex partner, Leandra. Tom no longer lives on Bequia but Leandra still runs the cafe. It was very well appointed with lots of varieties of coffee and snacks. biscuits, cake, breakfast, juices etc, but it was very expensive even by Bequia standards and, unfortunately the wifi was very poor so we did not use it as our local I'm afraid.
We finally realised that the winds were going to keep blowing from the same direction for some time so we decided to alter our plans. We had originally been going to sail from Bequia to Martinique in one go but now we planned to do short hops over the course of a week or so.
First stop St. Vincent.
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