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La Soufrière made me suffer…

English, gereedmaken, ilse, St Vincent and the Grenadines

October 20th, early in the morning, 6 AM, we are ready (we think) to climb the volcano from the leeward side, this the longer and more difficult approach and the trail is more overgrown….Rasta Kenny, our guide, is on time but we have to wait 20 minutes for our taxi driver. Stefan is already getting nervous since we need to get to the top before the hot sun is hitting us. By about 7 AM we arrive at the starting point, the beach in Richmond. Rasta Kenny smokes a joint, maybe it is not that difficult then….Stefan takes the lead after 5 minutes of walking and after one hour Kenny stays behind. It was the first time he climbed the mountain since 3 months. He definitely will stop smoking for about 2 months when the tourists are back 🙂 . He tells us about his jail time in Barbados because he tried to sell 450 pouds of marijuana in Barbados. If you can sell it there you are rich but obviously you cannot get caught. Kenny still has a ganja plantation but only sells in St.Vincent.

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On the beach with black sand in Richmond, our starting point.
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7 AM Richmond Beach, crossing the river.

In the beginning the climbing is not too bad and the path is still wide enough.

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Slowly going up in a dry river bed.

Soon the path becomes more and more overgrown and steeper.

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Where is the path here…? Rasta Kenny, our guide, behind.

When we get to halfway point, I had hoped we were already past halfway…Good thing I did not know what still was to come…

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Rasta Kenny with his rubber boots and machete..he had no water and food with him. Luckily we had enough to share.
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Taking time to take pictures…
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Marijuana plantation in the back of the picture. There are many on the way up to the volcano.
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We come from all the way down there at the beach…

Stefan must have an appointment up there…he is going so fast. I can hardly follow and Kenny does not know what is happening to him…Definitely no more smoking the next months…

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Higher and higher, also the shrubs…

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Almost there, speedy Stefan is probably on the top already.
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Inside the volcano.
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The sight is worth it but now I am going to sit here for the next 15 minutes.

IMG_2714Now we still have to go back down! We arrived at 10 AM at the top, so in 3 hours where most guides speak of 4 hours…Rasta Kenny told me “your man is full of energy man”, I was happy to hear somebody confirmed my feelings. We went down in 2,5 hours, going down was not a peace of cake…luckily it did not rain! When we got back at the beach our taxi driver was waiting for us, it was 1 PM. We got a beer at the first bar, all the water we had with us was gone (3 liter). A nice thought to end the climb was written on the wall (elections are coming up)….

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A great thought to think about the remainder of the day!

When we arrived back at the boat, after a two hour drive, the only thing we did was take a dive in the cool water, wash up, and read or sleep…For dinner we had mangos, nobody felt like cooking :-). Another great day in paradise! 🙂

Hiking on Saint Vincent

English, ilse, St Vincent and the Grenadines

Wednesday, October 21st, we have just arrived in Blue Lagoon Bay on St.Vincent and we have internet on the boat ! What a treat ! We are not anchored but moored on a buoy because apparently the holding is not good here, too many stones and not enough sand. Although Stefan still wanted to anchor I insisted on the mooring because of the good night sleep, there were too many other boats around us moored on a buoy. We motored all the way from Cumberland Bay to here because there was just no wind. Good for the batteries and the watermaker but not something you want to do a lot. We did take some time to do a MOB (Man Over Board) excercise and found out we definitely need some more practice on this! This is scheduled for the next week.

We left Bequia (pronounced Bekway) on October 17th to sail to Cumberland Bay on Saint Vincent.

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Port Elizabeth in Bequia
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Church in Bequia.
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Street in Port Elizabeth
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Church in Port Elizabeth.
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Small grocery store on our way to Friendship bay. We stopped for a cold drink.
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Stefan changing the oil.

Stefan had changed the oil of one of the motors the day before. I must say he keeps surprising me :-). We had smooth sailing for about 3 hours and then we needed the help from the motor to get to our destination. We were surprised of the untouched nature in St.Vincent. So beautiful and green. No white sandy beaches in St.Vincent since this is a vulcanic island the sand is black at the beach. We were especially looking forward to the hiking on the island. When we arrived we immediately were helped to not only anchor(the bow) but also have the stern of the boat tied to a palm tree. The boat did not move 🙂 ! There were only two other boats in the bay. No internet except at the one restaurant open. There were several vendors of fish, souvenirs and fruit. We got lucky with the fruitman since he had fresh guava and passion fruit. Yummy !

October 18th, sunday, we were going for a small hike but ended up walking for 3,5 hours! The sun was hot but luckily there were some parts in the woods. We went through the village into the woods and had a feast on the mangos hanging there for the taking.

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Stefan eating mango number 3…

The tropical forest was really beautiful, we saw only one other person who told us the road back to Cumberland Bay would take “hours”. We decided to do the full loop anyway instead of turning back…We arrived back at the boat at 4PM so not too bad. Apparently we did miss all the marijuana (it is called Ganja here)plantations during our walk. I read later that St.Vincent has the second highest production of marijuana in the Caribbean. Jamaica is number one. It is illegal to plant marijuana but the government is not doing a lot against it (elections are coming up). One pound costs about 500EC dollars in St. Vincent.

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Cumberland Bay with Sanuk all the way to the right.

October 19th, we went to the bay next door, Wallilaboo with Flipper. This is the bay where they filmed the movie Pirates of the Caribbean, the Curse of the Black Pearl. Still today, we are about 10 years later, tourists come to see this bay for this reason.

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Wallilaboo bay – luckily the pirates are gone 🙂
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Wallilaboo bay on St.Vincent

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We decided to hike into the town, apparently there was a waterfall. Whlie we were walking we heard the ice cream man and got an ice cream

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Can you guess the taste on this one ?

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Typical house along the side of the road.
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This was the waterfall….
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Me at the entrance of Wallilaboo bay.

October 20th, we decided to hike the vulcano La Soufriere today so we had to get up at 5AM as a taxi was picking us up at 6 AM with our guide, rasta Kenny. We would hike the more challenging route, from the beach up to the top, 1230 meter. More about this in my next blog update.