It was a busy day yesterday so we slept in a bit today. Or tried. At 8AM I heard a knocking on the hull. There's no one on deck and no one in the saloon. I'm sure who ever it is will go away. More knocking. Persistent bugger, pull sheet over head. More knocking. Argh, perhaps it is really important.

I got up got dressed and went out to see what the emergency was. Lo and behold a glorified boat boy. This one was Bequia style, not wearing a loin cloth and paddling out on a surf board, but wearing a polo shirt and standing up in a 17 foot skiff with an outboard. He began to explain his services to me and I thanked him and told him we were not interested. After a few more attempts to sway me met with clear no thank yous he departed pleasantly. I wonder what he would have said to me if I had come to his house at 8 in the morning and knocked on the door for ten minutes until someone answered just to try to sell him some aluminum siding?

Later in the morning we took Little Star to the dinghy dock just north of the government pier and, after a one block walk, had another no hassle clearance at Bequea customs. Hideko and I walked around town afterward and found a really interesting bookstore. The shop was filled with Caribbean literature. They had Caribbean fiction, lots of history, books on politics and anything else you could think of.

Just behind the book shop is a juice bar. We stopped to talk to the proprietor who was a friendly lady from Saint Vincent. She gave us a sample of some fresh squeezed juices and we were sold. We had a guava and a sour sop juice. Sour Sop is kind of a funky mushy sort of fruit. I can't quite get used to eating it straight. As a juice it was awesome. The owner of the juice bar told us that you could get Sour Sop ice cream too but we have yet to find it.

We joined Fred and Cindy for lunch at a new beach bar and restaurant at the east end of Princess Margaret beach. We spent the rest of the day snorkeling on the reef right by our boats. It was good to be back in the islands. I'm getting to the point where the big islands feel like the mainland. The grenadines are more Bahamas/BVI in character. If I can't hike to the other side it is too continental. Humm.