We left Rodney Bay on Monday afternoon for Marigot Bay, a quiet little beautiful bay with lots of restaurants built on the docks. We joined John Fallon and his current company for dinner at Chateau Mygot. In the morning, we headed south towards the Pitons!
Check out John sitting on Stopp Knot. We were tied to the moorning ball directly in front of him.
The Pitons, a heritage site, are awesome and photos of them don’t in any way do them justice. We sat on the north side of the Petit Piton and watched smoke and flames lick around from the south side at the very top of the mountain. We could only imagine how big the fire was on the non-visible side. Our link to the news of the day was the through the boat boys. The boat boys will help you pick up a compulsory mooring ball, get you fresh food and anything else – for a fee of course. The boat boys were not excited about the fires at all – seeing how there is nothing that can be done. Apparently in drought conditions beer bottles dropped by hikers can start a fire. Check out the smoke at the very top of the Piton pictured below:
Below depicts our hike to the Botanical Gardens in Souffiere.
Here is the flower of the banana plant. You can see where the bananas will eventually form.
I got to meet Dawn and Laurie’s BBB (Best Boat Boy) Shane. Shane has helped D & L the 5 times they have been here and has met all their past company. (Ron and Judy Roy, Hugh and Liz Whalen, Lorna and Brian Jeffrey, and Scott McAllister)
Shane came aboard for a few drinks the first day we arrived and was very engaging. We got to hear a few stories about the “The Great Container Salvage”. I hadn’t heard the news item about a container ship partly sinking and letting loose what Shane said were about 60 containers. He and his Boat Buddies were able to salvage some boxes of peanuts and television sets that had gotten wet. They dried the TV’s out and sprayed them with WD40 on the components and they worked fine. They promptly sold them all. He was sad to say that they opened a floating container that had 2 sports cars in them. The open container filled with seawater and they watched them go to Davy Jones Locker. As Shane got increasingly lit up on several ‘ti punches he told us about the network of smuggling between the islands and the danger to be had.
Not surprising, Shane was back for more drinks the next night and brought with him a 10 pound tuna for us to buy. He offered it to us at a fair price (approximately $25 Canadian dollars/$50 EC's) and cleaned and scaled it and filleted it. It’s enough for approximately 8 servings. He kept every scrap of entrails, head and tail to stew later on at home.
This morning we rounded the Petit Piton and what we thought would be fire devastation is now inconsequential and appears to look unscathed by fire.
The snorkeling at the Pitons has been wonderful and Dawn says where we are today between the Pitons is better than what we’ve seen yet! It’s going to be another day in Paradise!
