We had a lovely stay at Bequia, enhanced by the Bequia annual music festival. It was great (Steve has promised to do a blog on it so I won’t go on) but the local and international artists were very good. If you get a chance to see, watch or listen to Shaun Munday from Missouri and Barracuda from Italy, do so. Shaun is a big guy and he belted out the lyrics and belted his guitar in a most mesmerising way. Barracuda had a beautiful voice and even included some Pavarotti. The venues of the Plantation hotel and De Reef restaurant right on the water added to the ambiance.

Monday was blowing strongly so we lingered another day in Paradise. We went to the turtle nursery. We met Brother King there, who used to be a fisherman and when he retired decided he would try to do something to help preserve the Hawkesbill turtle, many of whom he had caught in his nets. He is of Scottish descent, born and bred in Bequia and therefore has a lovely Caribbean accent. He catches hatchlings on the beach and then raises them till they are 5 years old when he releases them. He has a 30% success rate, but if he didn’t intervene, the hatchlings would have a 1 in 1000 chance of survival. He has released about 1,100 to date. He keeps ones that are injured or disabled (one was an albino and he said it wouldn’t survive, however we all know a humpback whale that has). His pet is Busybody, who is 23 years old. Brother King has an assistant called Jusrun. Jusrun told us he is one of 14, all named Jus something, and that he himself is expecting his first child in July. He will call it Goldone if it is a boy, meaning rich big man or chief. He is tall, fine and beautiful, highly intelligent and full of discontent with his lot. He said blacks cant get access to wealth and therefore all their options are limited. Our taxi driver told us that the Bequians are allowed to catch four whales a year, by traditional methods. He said they usually only catch one as it is very difficult ( I can imagine that!) but they use every bit of it. In the Whaleboner bar, we saw that the seats were made of whale vertebrae and the bar of a long whale bone.

We had a beautiful sail to Union Island, past Canouan, Tobago Cays again, and Mayreau.
Clifton Harbour is another very beautiful spot, and the photo is of a bar on the bar. It is called Janti’s Happy Island. Janti collected up conch shells from conch middens in the waters around the islands ( like we saw at Anagarda last year) and used them to build an island, and then built a bar on it. How clever!
Myra Rowling