About 9 miles north of Bequia’s Admiralty Bay lies the island of St. Vincent, which together with the Grenadines makes up one country, usually just referred to as SVG. A sail there from Bequia is not a pleasant passage, as yachts have to tack to windward against a foul current. Its capital city, Kingstown, has poor facilities for yachts, and would-be cruisers are advised to guard their boats. Our “Windward Islands Cruising Guide” remarked that most yachties visit Kingstown by road or ferry, and with multiple ferries departing Bequia daily for the one-hour trip, we decided to go that route.
We boarded the Admiralty II at 0900 and commenced a very roll-y ride, bashing into high, confused seas and a howling wind. A little 8-year-old girl seated across from us lost her breakfast into a plastic bag held by her mother. She recovered quickly, however, and by the time we pulled into the calmer waters of Kingstown Bay she was munching on some dry cereal.
We had arrived in Kingstown on market day, when farmers from the hills bring their produce to the city, and the sidewalks were crammed with tables holding an assortment of farm-fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as some flea-market type assortments of toiletries, sunglasses, and beaded necklaces.
As we walked along, we were greeted by a local gentleman who said that he’d seen us in Bequia, boarding the ferry. He told us that he worked in a Bequia hotel, but was originally from St. Vincent, and had come to do some shopping. He explained that all the produce in Bequia was brought over from St. Vincent, and that a 2-pound bag of tomatoes that cost $4 EC in Kingstown would cost $12 EC in Bequia. (His estimation of the Bequia price I had found to be true.)
He joined us as we continued walking, describing local places of interest, and pointed out the best restaurant (“for real St. Vincent food”) for lunch. He talked pretty much non-stop, but we only got about 75% of what he said, because his enunciation was affected by his heavy island accent and a total absence of teeth. We told him that we’d like to take the bus to Wallilabou, which in 2002 was the site for the filming of various parts of the first “Pirates of the Caribbean” movie. It has a picturesque little bay, which we wanted to check out as a possible overnight stop for our northbound voyage next year.
As we walked to the bus station, we passed a man selling drinking coconuts from a truck, and our “guide”, Gordon, asked if we’d like one. We said yes, but the coconut man wanted to charge us the $5 US “tourist” price, and Gordon insisted that since he as a local was ordering it for us, we should only pay the $2 EC “locals” price (a little less than $1 US). A bit of unintelligible (to us) haggling began and in the end, we paid the “locals” price, but it was obvious that the vendor was none too happy about it.
We continued on to the bus station, which turned out to be little more than a big parking lot, with a lot of small vans about the size of small airport shuttle vans. There was no apparent signage, and Gordon just asked a couple of drivers until he found one who was headed toward Wallilabou. Having located the right “bus”, Gordon proceeded to board with us, and we began to realize that his help was probably not motivated by a spirit of altruism, and we suspected that he was going to expect some financial return for his assistance. More than once he made a point of commenting that by our being with a “local” (i.e., him), people would not take advantage of us, but would charge us the same prices as they did locals. Having encountered this type of unsolicited helpful individual before, in the Philippines and in Morocco, we have learned to recognize the signs.
Boarding the “bus”, Gordon directed us to sit in the back, where we would be able to see out the window. I obediently took the far right corner rear seat, and Ken climbed in beside me. The driver was waiting until the bus was full before we left, but once all the seats were taken, he lingered on, apparently intending to cram in as many bodies as possible. There were three 2-person seats behind the driver in our bus, and one three-person bench seat in the back, but more and more people kept climbing in, and little “filler” seats were added, until, finally, 21 of us were shoe-horned into the little van. The driver pulled the bus into a small queue of similar vehicles, where there ensued some prolonged and inexplicable horn-blowing for about 10 minutes.
Finally, we were off, rocketing through the narrow crowded city streets, dodging pedestrians and other vehicles. As we exited the city, we began a white-knuckled (for us – no one else seemed to mind) ride as the driver navigated the steep, narrow, twisting road up into the mountains and back down into the valleys at what felt like warp speed, while high-energy (and high decibel) nightclub dance music played continuously over the speakers. There were no seatbelts on the bus, but it was a bit of a moot point, since we were wedged in so tightly that even if the thing had capsized, we would have stayed in our seats. Whatever suspension the vehicle hay have had, it was no match for the uneven pavement and the aggressiveness of our driver.
It began to rain pretty hard, so despite our window seat, we couldn’t see much, which was probably just as well, since we were frighteningly close to the edge of the rain-slick road, beyond which steep ravines dropped hundreds of feet. We careened past stark, unattractive industrial complexes, then past some residential areas where modern homes mingled with sad, thrown-together shacks which were little more than skeletal lumber frames patched with bits of tin and plastic sheeting. We saw one rum shop with the hand-lettered name of “Slap Me Up Bar”.
We finally arrived at Wallilabou, which appeared to be not so much a town as merely a bend in the road. We disembarked, and at a sign proclaiming “Wallilabou – Home of the Pirates of the Caribbean” we walked down a short steep road to the remnants of the old movie set. The buildings there have pretty much fallen into disrepair, but are optimistically done up in swashbuckling style to capture the spirit of the movie. Some of them held displays of actual daily shooting schedules, cast and crew photos, stills from the film, and a few pieces of clothing (not from the movie) for visitors to wear for pirate dress-up photos.
We did see a couple of genuine recognizable items from the film: the stone arch where hung the remains of three lynched pirates, seen as (“Captain”) Jack Sparrow first arrives, is easily visible at the north end of the bay. (Minus the three dead bodies.) And inside the big roofed open-air wooden restaurant is the actual mast used in the movie from which Jack steps onto the dock at Port Royal. The dock itself is still there, although it was shortened by a hurricane in 2005. The bay itself is small, pretty, and well-protected, occupied on the day of our visit by about five or six boats at anchor.
We strolled and looked for a while, and met a local man selling beaded bracelets and necklaces (“This one is like the one Kiera Knightley wore in the film”), who told us that he’d been one of the locals hired as extras in the movie.
Gordon had by now managed to corral a young couple with British accents and bright pink sunburns, and he herded the four of us up to the main road to walk to a popular waterfall. We walked uphill on a fairly gentle grade for about half an hour, seeing almost no passing cars. The walk was quite pleasant, the road running alongside the river where local women come to do their laundry. We in fact passed one lady walking home with a large basket of wet laundry balanced on her head (no hands!). There were no homes along this stretch, but thick vegetation on the right, greenery-covered mountains rising on our left. Gordon narrated as we walked, plucking pea pods from a bush for us to shell and sample the peas (sweet), and pointing out a nutmeg tree and the ruins of an old arrowroot mill. I said “Hello, goat” to an animal that was tethered at the roadside, whereupon Gordon politely pointed out that it was a sheep.
When we arrived at the waterfall there turned out to be a fee to go see it. Our British companions, unaccustomed to the heat and humidity, were happy to pay the fee and cool off in the falls. But having seen numerous waterfalls and being too cheap to pay a fee, Ken and I declined. We were also beginning to be concerned about the time, as we hoped to catch the 4 pm ferry back to Bequia.
So we started back down the hill with Gordon trailing in our wake, tripping over his flip-flops and occasionally walking right out of one, necessitating a pause while he stopped to retrieve it. A short distance past the little access road to POTC we were able to flag down a bus to Kingstown. This one was as crammed as the first one, and the driver was every bit as lead-footed and aggressive. The ride home was under clear sunny skies, so we had the added terror of being clearly able to see how close we were to the non-existent shoulder of the road, where hundred-foot drop-offs appeared as we rounded the hair-pin turns at breakneck speed. Why we didn’t all end up in a mass of twisted metal and broken bodies in a ravine far below remains a mystery. But we didn’t.
Certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was expected, Ken offered Gordon some compensation when we arrived back at the bus station. Some conversation ensued which I couldn’t make out, but then Ken handed Gordon $100 EC (about $37 USD), which seemed to me to be quite generous. Gordon evidently didn’t think so, and began to plead his case, extolling his skill as a tour guide and the benefits of his companionship, i.e., getting us “local prices” for bus and coconut. Anxious by now just to get rid of the guy (and he had, in fact, been quite pleasant and helpful), Ken gave him a few more bucks, and we shook hands and parted company.
We set off to get some lunch, relieved to be spared the somewhat exhausting task of trying to understand Gordon’s non-stop, toothless, accented, machine-gun prattling. Heading in the general direction of the aforementioned café for “real St. Vincent food”, we kept an eye on the names of shops and eateries we passed, watching for the right one. For some mysterious reason, twice, when locals saw us looking at store-front names, they pointed ahead and said, “It’s further up”. As it turned out, they were right, but without our having uttered a name, how did they know where were going?
Anyway, lunch was delicious: overstuffed fish roti with fresh cabbage salad and a couple of cold beers. Thus fortified, we did a bit of shopping at the hardware store and grocery, and bought a big bag of assorted fresh produce from one of the market ladies, paying $34 EC for what would have cost more than $100 EC in Bequia.
We treated ourselves to another cold beer at the ferry terminal, and after a relatively calm and anticlimactic ride home (nobody threw up), we at last arrived back in Bequia. The end.
Next stop: Canouan Island
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