Our guide book recommended two ‘must do’ things when visiting St. Vincent and hiring a 4WD for a couple of days enabled us to do both.

Day One took us to the Montreal Gardens in the Mesopotamia Valley, just the name and destination alone sounded inviting and it did not disappoint. SV only has two main roads; the Windward Highway going up the windy, eastern side and the Leeward Highway going up the more sheltered west side. There are no roads that cross the middle as it is so mountainous. Not only are the roads in a poor state of repair for the most part, but they also lack road signs and we inevitably got lost on a couple of occasions but that simply allowed us to see more of the island!

Off the ‘highway’ the roads are very narrow and become tracks. When we reached what looked like the end of the road, and thinking that we had got lost again, we turned around and stopped to ask some locals the way. ‘Just keep on going up the road, man’ they told us and so we returned back to the track and kept going and arrived at the gardens shortly after.

As soon as we drove through the main gates, we were engulfed in all kinds of plants of differing colours, shapes and sizes and, best of all, we had it all to ourselves (obviously anyone else trying to find it had either got completely lost or had given up!!). We followed the paths that took us on a tour of these lovely gardens perched on a high ridge and marvelled at the mown grass, and gigantic plants that we also have back in the UK but ours are a small house-plant version kept indoors. Hummingbirds scooted about everywhere going from plant to plant in search of sweet nectar.

Driving back down the mountain afterwards, we had a perfect vista across the fertile valley with colourfully painted houses dotting the landscape and locals getting on with their day.

A great trip out and well worth it.