We are back in Bequia for the last dayof the Bequia muic festval, and
to stage ourselves for or return to StVincent. and on to Boston by
air.
We left Clifton harbor for a short sail over to Chatham Harbor (still
on Union Island). Chatham is a very quiet spot in the lee of the
island with a few local beach bars and one development by outsiders.
The development has the look of Herman Mouk's (sp?) play, "Dont stop
the carnival" in which the protagonist had great ideas for improving
the island, but is confronted by obstacle after obstacle, mostly
cultural, until the projects grinds not to a halt, but to island time.
Which may as well be a halt. The development has a couple of LARGE
titki huts with a nice bar and upholstered lounge chairs surrounded by
a dozen or so cinder block structures that are barely started. No
progress at all in the weeks Dawn and Laure have been around.
We went to a local beach bar for dinner, When you arrive, the boat
boys come out and solicit your business for buying their fish,
lobster, or coming to their bars.
If you do want to come to diner,
they take your order right then, I guess that allows them to know what
fish to keep, and which they are free to sell on the local market, Or
maybe that tells them what they have to go catch.
No need to worry about getting frozen fish, there is no electricity on
this side of the island. This particular bar is lit by LED lights off
of batteries. Technology that was doubtless imported by the visiting
yachts.
At Vanessa and Seckie's place, Happy hour is from 3 to 6, with all
drinks half price. At 6 they go up to regular price which is OK since
they become twice as large. Dawn and Laure swear that they saw print
ads for a bar in Bequia that offered 3 beers for $10EC and 4for $15EC. The stupid tax takes many forms.
We snorkeled and read, and the next morning we sailed for 4 hours back
to Bequia for the music festival. We just caught the end of the
festival, and really enjoyed only one of the 3 acts we saw. But it was
cheap and a nice scene for hanging out, and we ran into old cruising
buddies from SV July Indian for pleasant conversation. The music was
mostly popular, and we would have preferred local forms; they have
become one and the same..
Dana has become the fishing soothsayer, She successfully predicted
each of our two catches this trip. True to her second prediction, we
caught a nice little barracuda on the way, and will have it for dinner
tonight. You don't think of Barracuda as an eating fish, but we all like
it's nice white flesh with a flavor of scallops.
Our flight leaves tomorrow at 10:00, so today we'll explore the island of Bequia.
ttyl
