Christmas and New Year in Bequia
Oriole
Fri 1 Jan 2010 16:56
Admiralty Bay, Bequia.
13:00.692N 61:14.483W.
We chose to forgo the pleasures of
beach barbecued turkey or the restaurant equivalent for a Christmas night
feast of lobster in a delightful French restaurant with a group of 8 yachties
(two imported by air from the UK). We started with champagne and smoked
salmon on Oriole at lunch time and slowly coasted through to midnight. On
Sunday we engaged the services of Martine, our extravert walking guide who took
us to three difficult access beaches where we swam and picnicked and
successfully sweated off the gastronomic excesses. We gratefully accepted
some of Martine's home grown honey, a gift to acknowledge our loyal
patronage.
Boxing Day for lunch and a swim at
Lower Bay.
A group of six of us hired two
clapped out Jeeps and explored every nook and cranny of the island finding our
way on doubtful tracks to the best vantage points and some beautiful and
secluded houses no doubt bought with bankers' bonuses, or maybe they do not have
good enough taste to choose Bequia.
Hemmingway
in lion
country? Martine prepares
a vast Imperial Mango for lunch.
Chris and I also did some strenuous
walking on our own so we are feeling very virtuous. Our explorations revealed an
impressive vehicle smash-up (no-one hurt) where a concrete
delivery truck recently attempting to negotiate an extremely steep track
had turned over. Another was sent to assist (all arriving by ferry from
the mainland of St Vincent) and that too crashed into the first leaving a
very sorry looking mess which will probably stay there indefinitely as one of
the trucks was full of concrete which of course is now solid. It
could only happen in the West Indies.
The first of our Jeep break-downs - quickly
rectfied. This
one not so easy to sort out.
So briefly the partying is over and
tomorrow we plan to sail up to St Lucia where we will leave Oriole for a long
weekend while we fly back to Trinidad for Don and Cathryn Kelshall's daughter's
wedding. There will be 350 guests and the Trinis certainly know how to
party so watch this space.
Admiralty
Bay. Oriole top left-hand
corner. The
Bequia Channel in benign
mood.