Old Carriacou
Quest
Jack and Hannah Ormerod and Lucia, Delphine & Fin
Mon 12 Sep 2016 18:42
'What's it's like?' I asked Jack when he came back from walking Fin. At that moment, Fin looked like the happiest dog in the world, having discovered that our sail to Carriacou wasn't in fact another ocean crossing and Jack clambered out of the dinghy behind her with the rope in his hand. 'There are a lot of cruisers here on their last stretch,' he said, tying Evil Edna to the back to Quest. 'I don't think a lot of them are going to make it back to Europe.' 'Really?' I said and stopped to look around. For sure, it was a restful place but a centre for the over-winched and under-oiled?
It didn't take long to confirm his findings. Indeed, by the look of the boat locals, Tyrell Bay does seem a centre for many last resting spots. But is this a bad thing? 'Let's swim,' I said and dragged the girls from the bowels of the boat. They looked around in the afternoon light. 'There's no kids here,' they correctly moaned. 'Well, let's see what we can find underwater instead,' I said, hoping to equal their sense of fun. Of course it was a rookie's mistake but in Quest's true democratic spirit, I told them to zip it while handing them their snorkelling masks. And we did find something in the sandy bottom, a little ray who was almost completely circular and light brown and spotty. He had a fleshy tail too, not the long spine that most rays grace their back ends with. The girls were happy to watch him from the water's surface but the diving instructor in our party, the guy who took an oath to leave all marine animals in peace, thought they should make proper introductions and gave the ray a little friendly handshake and then another by which point the ray got visibly annoyed and did a loop-de-loop on Jack's hand. We all giggled and watched it swim away, glaring at us as it went.
The following day we followed our noses and went to Carriacou's culinary institution, The Lazy Turtle, a pizzeria and restaurant on the edge of Tyrell's Bay beach. You can't beat a restaurant with a dinghy dock and we discovered a dive shop too next door to the restaurant. In keeping with the Universal code that all diving instructors must meet, we all trundeled in and learnt the crack of the place. The dive instructor had silver hair and an enthusiastic grin. 'This area is a marine park,' he said, 'so you can't dive without a guide.' Really? Our hearts sank a little. In Grenada we've been fast discovering this hand-in-hand rule with most marine parks; that unless you wrangle a service like crayfish counting or coral planting, all the best places to dive require payment in the form of a guide. The thing is we don't need a guide, or their equipment or their air since we forked out for Bertha, our little air compressor we bought on the best whim ever in the Canaries.
'We did see a ray under the boat,' Lulu piped up. The dive instructor perked up. 'You did?' 'We all nodded and explained the look of it and his silvery brow furrowed. He pointed to a photo on the wall. 'Was it like this?' 'Yes, just like that!' we all exclaimed, looking at the round and spotty guy on the wall with the fleshy tail. He blew through his mouth. 'That's an electric ray. It can give you quite a shock.' Our jaws all dropped at the same time. We listened to him explain how the electric areas of the ray are at the top of its head and if you bother it, the ray will try to make contact here. Hence the loop-de-loop on Jack's hand! 'Ok, thank you!' we said and left the shop. The dive instructor waved happily at us. We barely waited until we got back to the dinghy dock before we pounced on our own dive instructor, 'Ha! You could have been fried!' Jack was washing his feet in the sea. He shrugged. 'Did you see how old that guy was?’ Lulu and I stopped to
think about it but Delphine didn't skip a heartbeat. 'And his place smelled weird.'
Love from Quest and her crew xx
