Day 2 St. Vincent - The West Coast

We retraced the route we had taken the previous night, which is the only road to the west coast. The east coast road had had some straight stretches on it, and was never tortuously winding. The leeward/east side had only one straight stretch (between Kingstown and Layou), and otherwise, except in the main streets of villages, was constantly turning, and usually going up and down over ridges. Once we reached Layou we asked about beaches, and were told about a local beach north of the town which was accessed by a one-lane gravel road. We checked it out.

Kids of Spring Hill Village
We dropped off a security guard here, who had spent the day hitching from Kingstown, as there is no public transport on holidays, and apparently he didn't want to pay for a van, or the vans were full.

These kids who were playing cricket in a park in the middle of town, saw us taking a "cliff" photo, and jumped in.

We stopped to photograph the view from here which was down below Rose Bank. The family living in this house was very sociable.

Our destination had evolved into the town of Chateaubelair, where we had heard from our security guard hitchhiker that a good restaurant would be open. We had been driving past music celebrations along the way. Most were just huge sound systems pounding out reggae or calypso recordings at such a volume that no one needed to leave their home to be part of the celebration, so there weren't many people around. (But there was one major one with hundreds of cars parked by the road and people making their way through the thick forest down to the beach).

We assumed that this was another party when we arrived at this small town, though there were so many people out that we wondered. It turned out that this was some kind of major long distance foot race between women starting somewhere in the north. The streets were lined with cheering, laughing fans, and once we reached the bottom of the hill we were driving at the participants, who cheerfully ran around us.

We finally reached Chateaubelair (the French colonized St. Vincent originally). This was close to the end of the road, and we decided to turn around so that we could drive back while it was still light. We looked for food, and ended up eating at a seaside restaurant for locals which was hosting some kind of private party. The menu options were simple: fish dinner or chicken roti, so I ordered one of each, and then started exploring with the camera.

Below is one of the many volcanic black sand beaches of St. Vincent (with the bonus of two chickens). Black sand is considered inferior to white sand because it doesn't set off the blue of the waters like white sand does, and this is one of several reasons that St. Vincent is a backwater of tourism.

The culture of St. Vincent, as we experienced it, is warm, friendly, and thoughtful. And polite and dignified, also. Very wonderful people.

It was late afternoon, and we hadn't eaten anything since leaving the motel at 9 am, except for the bananas we'd bought from Armstrong. So we were very happy to find some food. Libby is holding a chicken roti (with vegetables in it--and bones). The large chunk of fish on the right is tuna. Those things that look like small bockwursts are boiled plaintains. The prices were around one-third of the price of food at a tourist restaurant, and it was delicious (well, maybe not the boiled plantains.)

Chicken Roti $2.25	Tuna Plate $6.75

We had got a few bites into us before we ran across McKie, who was hitchhiking south out of Chateaubelair. He had been up in the hills checking over some goats which his family owned, and hoped we could drive him back to Wallilabou. He was a soccer player (a striker) who had spent some time with the St. Vincent national team, so we asked him a lot of questions about how that experience. He was in his early thirties.

Just before reaching Wallilabou, McKie asked me to stop. He wanted to go collect some nutmegs for us at this local tree.

Nutmegs in three states: whole, peeled down to their red mace cover, and peeled down to nutmeg.

Being from Wallilabou, McKie wanted to show us where the hanging scene of "Pirates Of The Caribbean" was filmed, as that has become a tourist attraction. He said everyone had liked Johnny Depp while he was in town.

After dropping off McKie we continued on to Layou. We were hoping to check out some petroglyphs near there carved by the Carib Indians, as these stone carvings are one thing which remains of their obliterated culture. The housing development on the upper right was an anomaly, and there must be a story about why it was created out in the middle of nowhere. The house in the lower left is downstream of the petroglyphs. There must also be a story about why a stretch limousine is parked in front of it, and why anyone would want one on the incredibly-winding roads of the island.

David Edwards - The Professor
We couldn't find the petroglyphs, and ran into Mr. Edwards walking down the road. He gave us directions in faultless English diction an enchantingly beautiful lilt to it. We took a few photos, then caught up with him just above the petroglyphs, and we talked to him longer about life on St. Vincent.

Every night when we ate at the Lime 'N Pub, Desiree Joachim, came out to talk with us a little. Desiree had grown up on St. Vincent, and tried living in London for a while. When you've grown up with the atmosphere of the Caribbean surrounding you where you know everyone, and everyone's super-friendly, it's hard to spend the rest of your life far from that. So she came back and is glad to be home. Desiree made us feel so comfortable each night, and added another dimension to our appreciation of the warmth of St. Vincent.

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