16/03/2014
I snorkel the exit to the lagoon and note the deepest route for our exit and we are off to Wallilabou bay. After a pleasant sail and a cooling downpour we arrive at Wallilabou and are met by small boats wanting to help us tie up. We select a boat boy and he helps us pick up a buoy and tie a stern line to a pile. The charge is 20 EC for the help and 20 EC for the mooring we only have 30 EC until we can change some money at the bar. He takes this and vanishes so we have to pay the mooring fee again I feel a little peeved but it is a £7 loss and a good lesson, the locals are upset also as they are trying to do their best to attract cruisers. Asman and his friends are from the next bay round and tend to poach with no morals!!!
Wallilabou was the setting for a large part of the Pirates of the Caribbean film and parts of the set are still there though a lot was destroyed in a storm in 2008. We eat at the restaurant which is perfect, a surreal setting with deafening sounds of the forest. I dine on curried conch and Karen has the creole shrimp.
There is a waterfall and nature park a mile from the coast and we think this a good excursion, everybody we meet on the road is packing a large cutlass, and although slightly disconcerting they are friendly. We pay our 5EC to enter the park and the facilities are superb and a refreshing change from the UK. If we had park with a pool and waterfall in the UK it would be behind barriers and have signs such as “swimming prohibited”, “deep Water” and “wet water”. Here you are encouraged to use the facilities dive in the pool and fool around in the waterfall which we did. Karen has a reputation for losing her swimming attire when close to water, her Bikini bottoms in Barbados when pulled from the surf by Stefan and her top was a casualty of the powerful waterfall of which she was unaware until I started laughing and taking pictures.
Before we left Wallilabou I wished to get rid of the mountain bike that was becoming a rusty nuisance in the cockpit locker. I went ashore and told speedy that I wanted to give it to a lad who would be unlikely to be able to afford a bike. He exclaimed that he had a lad and neither he or his son could afford a bike. I checked that he actually had a son and upon confirmation built the bike on the quay. The group then spent the next hour taking turns cycling round laughing and I wondered if his lad is actually ever going to see the bike. Later he presented us with a nice handmade necklace that his son had made which was nice as he did not have to!