Bequia - 31 December
Dearloves
Sat 31 Dec 2005 19:32
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Yesterday was our 10th wedding anniversary and we
decided to get off the boat for the night (first time in months that we have
slept ashore). Alice and Pip went for a sleepover with Rob, Kerry, Georgia
(10) and Emma (8) on Whitehaven and we left Keoma securely
anchored. We had discussed whether to move Keoma onto a mooring but our
anchor has such a good hold (for a change!) and the moorings are quite
tightly packed in, with lots of charter boats on moorings all around. The
problem with the charter boats is that many of them are catermerans, meaning
they are so huge they take up loads of space and there is not much room to
manoeuvre around them, and secondly we have seen some horrific boat
handling! The other consideration is that the water taxis are buzzing
around the moorings (as they are close to the dinghy docks) and they are
sometimes driven quite approximately (under the influence of weed).
We weren't worried about these things when we sailed charter boats, but it is a
different thing when it is your own boat and your family home! So we
thought we were better off leaving Keoma a little further out, amongst other
"live aboard" boats. When we returned we discovered that at least
two boats had dragged their anchors in the night, one of which had done
serious damage by T-boning another boat further along the
anchorage. Thankfully we were unaffected, although our friends on
Whitehaven behind us were watching it all unfold, in horror, concerned about
their own boat and ours.
In the afternoon the children had been
invited to a teddy bear's picnic on the beach (Alice = "I am worried my teddy
will get all sandy" - we persuaded her that he would be ok) so Charlie and
I dropped them off (with teddies) and then headed ashore ourselves. We
stayed at a guest house called Spring, which is a few miles out of Port
Elizabeth, in the hills above Admiralty Bay, looking East over the Atlantic
coast. It is an old sugar plantation of 28 acres, where they grow much of
the food they serve in the restaurant. The rooms are all rustic cabins
made of stone and wood and the view from our balcony
was amazing.
 View from our balcony
 Beardy weirdy and the Missus at the
bar
Charlie looks a bit spaced out in the picture,
which I am attributing to Clare and Kevin (Gosling) who very kindly telephoned
Spring and put 100 EC$ on a bar tab for us! We found some wonderful
Chilean white wine, which was such a delicious change from the rum punches
(which we have really overdone recently) and the Spanish wine (imported by us)
that we have been drinking for so long.
The grounds of the plantation are very beautiful
and have lush plants and lots of animals and wildlife. We saw humming
birds and lizards.
 This lizard was around 40cm
long
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