Bequia Week 2!

We started off week two with a busy Sunday! We headed out to explore some more, but couldn't go too far before we had to stop and take a photo of the tree in the road we go past every day! Not sure why they didn't take it down when it was a sapling....

We went up to Fort Hamilton and we had a great view of Admiralty Bay right over to Lower Bay. While there is a great view, there really isn’t much of the fort left – just a few cannons and walls plus a little spot to get out of the sun.

We headed back down to Port Elizabeth and met some lovely ladies on their way home from church. They were kind enough to let us snap a photo of them – and then we gave two of them a ride home.

We ended the day at Keegan’s ‘Full Moon Hog Roast’ – dinner was good – Barry liked the bonfire the best! I think he wanted to go down and help get it going – he kept getting up to look at it! And the full moon was so bright. Really nice evening.

Monday we had booked a boat tour to Isle A’ Quatre which included 3 other Canadians and 2 New Yorkers lol. We got to see the old whaling station and some of the areas of Bequia that are only accessible by water. We also had a great beach lunch – I had grilled lobster and tuna, Barry had the chicken – another surf and turf meal!

This week we did a lot of walking to check out other parts of Port Elizabeth and we took did the Belmont Walkway, then the Princess Margaret Trail to Lower Bay. It was a nice walk along the water with a stop at a little bar called ‘The Whaleboner’ for our ‘sundowner’ - guess what the bar stools were made off lol.

So Tuesday we decided to confirm our ferry for Sunday – good thing we did. Our ferry was cancelled for maintenance and the only option was to leave on Friday or the next Wednesday. We quickly made a new plan to leave Friday, stay overnight stay on Union Island and then take a water taxi to Carriacou on Sunday. After we sorted that out, we did more walking about - I wanted to take photos of the gingerbread trim on the buildings.

That left Wednesday to visit to the turtle sanctuary. The ‘Old Hegg Turtle Sanctuary’ has been protecting the Hawksbill Turtles for a long time – they regularly check the beaches for nests, protecting mother and eggs from poachers and once the eggs hatch, they collect the babies and keep them in sea water ponds feeding them until they are three years old. At that time, they release them back into the ocean where they have a better chance of surviving than they did as hatchlings. According to our guide Josh, only 3 out of 1000 hatchlings survive. If they make it from the next to the water without being bird food, they become food for predators in the ocean. Since they began, they have released over 2000 turtles into the ocean – all marked – and divers see them often.

Thursday we finished up our visit with a trip to the Grenadines Salt Co., Bequia Threadworks then packed ready for our ferry trip in the morning.

Valentine’s Day was spend on the ferry – first back to St. Vincent, then to Mayreau and Union Island. The ferry is actually quite nice – nice seats, air conditioned, concession and one still had Christmas decorations up. Our ferry trip in total was about 4 hours on the water – but the cost was right - $100 EC for both of us – less than $50 CAD.

We arrived on Union Island and happened to run into Rob from the Netherlands who we met on our last trip with his wife Jolanda (nothing like our Jolanda!). We caught up with him, enjoyed dinner and a chocolate lava cake for two J Headed to bed early as we had a full day ahead – we had to go through customs to leave St.Vincent and the Grenadines before the water taxi could take us to Carriacou before customs closes.