April 5th – 8th
(lost camera – no pics)
St Vincent is the big island in the Grenadines and hence suffers from a higher crime rate. That said it is beautiful with waterfalls, volcanoes, rain forests and the oldest botanical gardens in the western hemisphere. We sailed from Bequia hugging the west coast of St Vincent to decide where to drop anchor. We ended up in a Wallilabou a beautiful little bay and again a location for Pirates of the Caribbean. There were only 4 or 5 boats in the bay all huddled around the dock and beach. There is a little museum covering the filming and the hotel is owned an operated by a St Vincent local and his English wife. We were harassed by boat boys before we even got in the bay. A cruising couple we met advised us not to leave the boat unattended and be mindful of the boat boys. We decided we would spend the next day on an island tour and depart the following day. We booked our tour with Haze-eco tours recommended to us by a woman on Bequia. Although short notice we were able to select our itinerary and have a “land rover” and guide to ourselves. The land rover had no working gauges and our guide although friendly was less than informed and very stoned. This may sound ridiculous but our hike in the rainforest was spoiled by the RAIN! Our guide said he had never experienced such torrential constant rain. We saw no parrots and could barely see a foot in front of us. We did however see some spectacular vegetation. Our next stop was the botanical gardens where we did get to see the beautiful St Vincent parrot (sorry no photo) and finally to Montpelier gardens in the Mesopotamian valley. The rained returned and by the time we arrived at the gardens it was so torrential we had to abort the visit. We left Wallilabou and St Vincent the next morning. For those interested, the American Marijuana Farm is on St Vincent and according to our guide it is good and plentiful and carnival is in June. There is so much to see here but with only one week until Hannah arrives we must move on.
