Day 1 St. Vincent - East Coast

The girl running the airport car rental agency (bookable via the Avis website, but completely independent)

We drove into downtown Kingstown to find a cash machine, and this was the view across from it.

We then made our way east to the Rosewood Apartment Motel, checked in, and after some driving around ended up at the Lime N Pub where we ended up eating each night (on the soup and roti side of the restaurant).

7 am driving into Kingstown to check out what the supermarkets of St. Vincent stock.

These vans, each with a unique name, are the chief means of public transport on St. Vincent. Their drivers are paid by the number of passengers they can haul, so they move around day and night at great speeds packed with people. (However, though we heard they got in a lot of accidents, which seems likely, we didn't see any sign of an accident in our two days of driving.)

On the whole, St. Vincent drivers were very aggressive, but didn't suffer road rage like many Americans. They just worked around less aggressive drivers on the constantly winding roads of the island, and I actually don't remember running across a slow driver.

Back at the Rosewood Apartments, a modest, but clean and comfortable place to stay with a very nice people running it. That's Young Island in the middle of a couple of the photos (a private resort with 31 cabins, and one of the only places you can find white sand around St. Vincent).

We had two full days in St. Vincent so we decided to head up the east coast on the first day, as we had figured out that we had liked the wilder, windy east side of the Caribbean islands, and figured it might be the same on St. Vincent. We wanted to see as much of it as possible, so we left around 9 am. We had requested a Honda Accord through the Avis website, but we ended up with a Rav4 (a "mini SUV") with no air-conditioning. It hadn't been cleaned and was filled with half drunk pop bottles. But it was our only choice, so we cleaned it out at the motel, and it turned out to be perfect for the route we ended up taking, and we were grateful to have ended up with it. (Our rental car in Barbados hadn't had air-conditioning either, but the Caribbean is the wrong place to drive around with your windows shut.) St. Vincent map



Libby took the above four pictures. There were a lot of banana trees on the east side. Libby particularly liked combination pasture, soccer field, and cemetary in the lower right, (not realizing that goats would be tethered all over the island).

Not far south of Georgetown we came upon this stand by the side of the road where we pulled in to quench our thirst on coconut water. Kenyatta was running the stand, and was a fantastic person. Aaron was one of two other people hanging out with him, and Aaron was equally interesting. They showed us around their community, including the wood carvings in a house across the street and the beachfront property of friend (not that beachfront seemed to have any particular value) . Bright and thoughtful people who love their island, and whom we look forward to tracking down in the future.

Kenyatta with carving of Joseph Chatoyer, the "first national hero" of St. Vincent

Libby took a photo of the long beach at whose distant end we'd met Kenyatta and Aaron. We continued north, and soon drove into the heart of the major town on the east coast, Georgetown. The ocean is a stones throw to the right.

Looking south from the northern outskirts of Georgetown. Continuing onward up the coast, we quickly crossed a place where the road appears to wash out often, and headed up into the foothills to try to find our way up to the trailhead of La Soufriere, the active volcano of St. Vincent. It's also the highest mountain at 3864 feet. We didn't have time on this trip to climb it, but we wanted to see it if possible on this overcast day.

The one-lane road was well marked and lead past banana fields and into an interesting forest.

The end of the road. We weren't sure if the top of the La Soufriere was to the left or right, but it was clearly a few hours away.

The start of the trail. The small trailhead parking area was deserted so no one was climbing today from this side.

Dropping back down to the ocean, which can be seen through palms in the distance on the left.