Chris Doyle's Guide is the cruising guide that we
all follow down here. It's full of
advice about where to sail and where not to sail, along with restaurant
information, things to do, clearing customs and of course, hiking.
We read in his guide that for a pleasant hike in
Bequia, one should try the "Peggy's Rock" hike on the other side of
the island. Further details could be
found on www.dolyeguides.com. He
suggested that we should take a bus to the Whaling Museum on the east side of
the island in order to cut off an hour walk to begin. The instructions began as follows:
" If
you start with your back to the museum you turn left, and take the first
concrete road on your left, it climbs up hill and has a three-barred white wooden
fence along the right hand side. If you take a bus, ask the driver to put you
off on the road where Johnny Olivierre lives; same place. Walk to the top of
this road, it turns to dirt after a while. You will see a house at the top on
your right. Turn left here. Up the hill you will see some utility poles and
wires ahead. Go in their general direction and you will come to another, rather
hidden house. Leave it on your left and pass round the back and head uphill.
Sometimes there is a trail, sometimes just goat tracks, but when you get into
the prickly stuff at the top you need to find the path; it is not hard..."
And on
and on it goes. So I copied the whole
thing down in long hand since we don't have a printer on the boat and held the
pages solidly in my hand in the wind and read each section as we went along.
We were 3
boats in all on this hike:
"Indigo": Greg and Kathy who we had met several years ago in
Trinidad and Grenada; "Easy Listening": Al and Michelle from
Lunnenberg, Nova Scotia who we had met in 2004 coming down from Bermuda when we
were both very new to sailing the big ocean; and of course, "Cat
Tales": with Laurie and myself (Dawn).
You can
see the rock from our boat in Admiralty Bay, but the hike actually took place
on the other side. From the top, because
it's along a ridge, you can see clearly to the east and west.
The hike
itself, varied from an uphill walk, through goat pastures, through an eroded
path among short bushes, and finally a very steep climb up rocks through
prickly catcus. We spent about half an
hour sitting on Peggy's Rock admiring the breathtaking views. Across the bays and over the hills we could
see the mainland of St. Vincent. To the
southeast Mustique could be seen. To the
south was Canaouan and Myreau off in the distance. We saw a small plane leave
the airport way below us and he was out of sight before he was as high as we
were!
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| See the small plane taking off? This is the east side and windy side of Bequia. |
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| Al, from "Easy Listening" hanging onto his hat! |
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| Kathy & Greg from "Indigo" |
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| Michelle and Al from "Easy Listening" with the east side of Bequia in the background. |
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| Admiralty Bay in Bequia...can you find Cat Tales? Photo taken from Peggy's Rock |
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| Laurie & Dawn from "Cat Tales" |
We made
our way downhill even more carefully than the way up. Coming down, we have a tendency to slip on
dry leaves and gravel much like ball bearings under your feet. Your feet had to seek larger stones and
bedrock stuck in the soil.
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| Cleaning out sandy sandals and sneakers near the bottom of the trail. |
Finally
down on the main road at the Whaling Museum, we decided to walk to find a cool
drink and possibly lunch. It's amazing
how entitled one feels after such a hike!
The first spot that advertised food didn't have any. He had just returned, but was very willing to
open 6 very cold hairoun beer! While we
were cooling off a fisherman walked by carrying a large turtle. It really breaks our hearts to see turtles
being fished by the locals, but it is very legal when in season. The sight predictably initiated a discussion
as to whether or not any of us would eat turtle in soup or whatever. We have all heard that it is quite tasty, but
agreed that eating it creates a market for these and we concluded that we
wouldn't do it. Just then, the owner of
the restaurant came over to our tables and suggested that because his brother
just caught the turtle, he could cook us dinner after all! We thanks him very much, but declined telling
him that it indeed looked delicious. He
also apologized that he didn't have any whale meat for us because he had
finished up the last of the whale meat from the freezer just last week!
Off we
went down the road towards the airport...still looking for a restaurant!
We came
upon a place that Kathy and Greg had purchased beer, but had never eaten a meal
before. It was called Toko's . A very big and gruff gentleman met with us
and said he had shark and conch and would gladly make up a small buffet table
for the 6 of us. Like turtle and whale,
both conch and shark are becoming much less numerous in the Caribbean However, we resigned ourselves to this meal
and headed out to the patio with 6 more cold hairoun beer. While waiting, we
watched the neighboring fishermen throwing out seine to catch bait fish. When the owner called us for lunch at 2:00pm,
we were ready! The meal consisted of
conch fritters, small shark steak fried up in seasoning and light batter, potato salad, green salad
and breadfruit. We all had a couple
helpings and left some behind.
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| Fishing boats stored |
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| Toko's Bar and Grill...for the best fish on the island! |
Full of
food and drinks we decided that the hour walk back to our boats would take away
some of the damage done by the lunch time extravagance! Michelle and Greg were way up ahead and when
we came around the corner, we spotted them sitting on the balcony of yet
another bar...oh my! The hell here never
ends!
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| We thought we lost them...but here they were in another bar along the road! Notice Michelle giving the "Queen's Wave". |
Finally,
we made it back to the Admiralty Bay and back to our respective boats where we all bathed in the ocean and went to bed early!
