15:51.69N 61:36.09W Respect is not Eric Spaghetti
Lady Corinne
iain and gaynor macalister
Mon 5 Apr 2010 21:50
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Hi to everyone and, slightly belated, Easter
greetings from on board Lady C in the French Islands of Les Saints just
South of Guadeloupe. We arrived here this afternoon after another "
on the nose" performance from the wind. It's around 18 miles from
Dominica to where we're anchored, in a small bay known as Pan de Sucre
(A spectacular promontory with basalt pillars) and I'm beginning to think
it all looks very civilised. Dominica, a small island with a
population of 70,000, was just as we expected it to be and we spent a
glorious week there, it was absolutely beautiful and has been relatively
unspoilt by the levels of tourism that have affected the other areas of the
Caribbean. We spent one night anchored in the picturesque Coconut Beach in
the South of Portsmouth and then on Sunday we moved up to the North end of
the bay and put our hook just outside Big Pappa's bar. As soon as
we'd arrived a boat boy approached but rather than hassle us to buy something he
invited us to their Sunday barbecue. They hold one every week to
raise money for the yacht security that they offer which involves a
boatwatch scheme and night patrols, on the water, around the anchored and
moored visiting yachts. It's a good scheme and I'm sure it's well
intentioned but I'm not altogether convinced it's needed as the Dominican people
on the whole are a very lovely race and are very kind and helpful. I was
quite surprised on Good Friday when Gaynor and I had taken our dingy up onto the
beach and gone off to snorkel and look for turtles. When we got back to the
beach I was aware that a situation had developed where a local guy and his
brother had floated out, on a big inner tube, to where an American yacht
was anchored. They went fairly close and started talking to the people on board
who apparently got "Very personal" and threatened to call the police, one of the
security boats that was around saw something going on and came to check it out
and told the locals to go away from the boats. I was
greeted later on the beach by the so called "perpetrator" and can only say
that he was one of the nicest Rastas you could meet and we chatted for some
time. He was interested in meeting people who visited his country as a lot of
them are. I think that paranoid visitors do overreact when they are
approached by locals and am appalled that a local guy coming to a beach in his
country can be threatened with police action for talking to a visiting
boat.
Apart from that one incident the rest of our time on "The
Nature Island" was bliss and we hired a car for two days and went off
exploring. We visited Rainforest trails, Cold Sulphur pools,
Waterfalls and rivers and we loved every minute of it. The Island is
far from big and the rich diversity of it's topography makes it very
interesting. The roads are, considering how challenging the environment
is, on the whole very good although we did come to one area where there had been
a big landslide and we had to wait for the diggers to clear a path for us. The
views are spectacular, the scenery larger than life and the vegetation is
ridiculous in its variety, size and quantity. We have never seen so much
of everything growing and, as they don't really harvest it, it just
appears to fall from the trees and be left on the ground. The Mango trees are
heavily laden with fruit and next month will certainly be a really
good time to be there. The volcanic soil is extremely fertile and everything
grows in abundance, my favorite find was the cashew nut, we stopped to get a
drink and some fruit from a roadside vendor and they had a very strange looking
fruit with a thing on the top that looked like a parrot's beak. It was one
single cashew nut and the guy there showed us how to cut the shell in half to
get the nut out and said you can also eat the fruit. I was amazed and,
determined to see where they grow, accosted a very old Rasta who was walking
down the road, a little bit later on, carrying a bag of fruit. I
asked if he knew where I could see cashews growing and he said that while
he didn't have any he knew where one of his neighbors had some and said if I
parked up he would take us there. They are truly amazing and it's no wonder
they're so expensive as each single nut has a fruit attached to it the size of
an apple which you can eat or make juice out of and the nut sits in it's
shell on top of it, I will stop complaining at the price now that I have seen
them growing. We ended up near to an Eco-lodge and decided to have a look, it
was set in beautiful land and was owned by an English guy. We asked to see the
huts and were told it was a hard 15 minute hike up to it. Feeling sure we
would like it we ordered dinner, which was outsourced and delivered and
served in the Al Fresco dining room at the bottom, and set
off up the hill with Lincoln the guide. It certainly was a hard climb and
arriving at dusk, with no electricity in the hut and facing the prospect of
a 15 min. walk back down to eat and then up again to sleep we decided that,
after such a long time on the boat we really wanted a little more comfort that
the lodge could offer. We headed back down and told the owner that we
weren't going to stay but as the food had been started agreed to stay and eat
there. He told us of another place and we went there and spent a very
comfortable night in a bed that didn't move once and woke in the morning to find
a spectacular view across the Rainforest to the sea. We ran out of
time and energy traveling around, as it is a very physical place to
explore, and arrived back in Portsmouth late on the second day. We
also went up the Indian River , which is another of the "Pirates of the
Caribbean" film locations, with a boat boy on an organised tour where they
row you up and down. Then on Saturday we decided to do a walk that was fairly
close to Portsmouth called "The Syndicate Trail" We had asked the taxi
drivers how much they would charge to take us there and they wanted 100$ US
which I thought was a bit too much. We asked some locals and they told us we
could get bus up to where the road turns off to the trail and then walk
up. This was looking good, the bus cost us 6$ EC ( about £1.50 ) and we
set off, once again as mad dogs, and started walking up the hill. Well we
walked for 6.5 hours and I promise none of it was flat and the heat was intense,
we were completely exhausted but it was a lovely day. On the
way back down at around 5pm we were rewarded by a pink flowering bush which, at
the moment we chose to pass it, was hosting the "Prettiest Hummingbird on the
Island" competition and they were all around showing off their aerobatics and at
the same time exposing the most amazing array of electric colours I have ever
witnessed. The picture I have attached by no means does it justice and most
of the brighter colours are only visible when they are in flight, we did manage
to get some video footage of them though so I'm hoping that shows it better.
These little birds are usually very hard to spot but they were in
abundance all around this bush and we saw several different species. They
appeared to be quite territorial and were chasing each other away in a fairly
aggressive manner but they were such a treat to behold. The blog
title is another example of the strange things these people write, this one is
the name on one of the boat boys boats. On our last night in Dominica we
met John, who had sailed here from the UK with his brother Chris. John was
on his own as his brother had returned to England for a short time. On
talking to him about fishing, it turned out that he had a lot of fishing
equipment with him and that he was selling it to help finance his trip. As
Gaynor has still not had any success as a Billinsgate supplier John convinced
her that she needed a silver squid lure and that if she had one she would be
assured a regular and copious quantity of Dorado,Tuna,Barracuda and Dolphin
fish. Well before we left we visited John and purchased said lure
which we trailed on the way here, admittedly it was neither early morning or
late afternoon,apparently when fish feed, but we didn't even get a bite.
After a few days in Les Saints we are heading for Marie Galant a short
stop in Guadeloupe and then Antigua for the Classics racing week which starts on
the 15th April. When that finishes we will be heading to Sint Maarten, to
visit Gaynors friend Rebecca (who sailed across the Atlantic with her and Duncan
to Gibraltar) before returning to Antigua to meet Zara & Simon when they
come out for the week.
Hasta Marie Galant
LadyC and her fish starved crew.
Tristan. So good to hear from you and we all miss you lots
too and wish you were still with us - watch this space for some mega fish
catching stories in the next couple of weeks.
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Portsmouth harbour Dominica.lnk
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