We went to Bougainvillea last night.  We had seen the fisherman delivering the red mullet to the restaurant and couldn’t resist it, and it proved absolutely delicious.  The pudding of three types of ice cream: coconut, sour sop and nutmeg came all as white as each other but were very easy to distinguish when our competitive spoons dug in.  Mmmm.

This morning we headed off to the airport as planned to check out not actually realising that the airport was only 5 minutes walk from the town centre.  We did however continue with a tour of the island with Samuel in one of those taxis like a pickup truck, with us being picked up and hanging on for dear life in the back while being given the running commentary by Samuel through the window.  We had anticipated a couple of hours but were back to Clifton within the hour having seen everything there is to see of Union Island: views of Bloody Bay where the French and the English fought over this tiny little island, the 18th century well with somewhat salty water I felt, the salt ponds where they still pick the salt by hand and even more absolutely amazing views.

We returned and had a tasty local buffet lunch in town: bbq chicken, callaloo, ribs, corn on the cob at a restaurant overlooking the main square which proved an ideal people watching spot with a clearly drunk woman my age, with a shaven head, dancing in the middle of the street and a be robed Eddy Murphy look alike character appearing to bless everyone as he went on his way in a flowing robe and his ample hair stuffed into a high rise hat.  We then beetled back to the boat for an afternoon of idleness, after a somewhat inelegant mounting from the far too high dock where I somehow contrived to make the dinghy disappear under the dock with much kerfuffle and hilarity from the American woman in the dinghy alongside.  Bob finishied a book that he had received on the Rodney Bay book swap and couldn’t wait to finish, in a good way.  I went for an adventurous snorkel out to the reef, trying to avoid being run over by the avid kite surfers, but was disappointed to find only tiny tiny little fish, a few bunches of weed and that was it, but it was lovely to splosh about in the warm warm sea.

We watched the sun set, rather blue and unspectacular, from the strange little island that a local man originally built from abandoned conch shells and is now a thriving concrete edifice and lively bar on the edge of the reef.  He makes a mean rum punch with loads of nutmeg freshly grated on the top, most enjoyable.  We liked Bougainvillea so went there again, the same table, the same list of specials and the same delicious cooking.  I went for the barracuda and Bob filled up on the red mullet fillet which arrived as a giant sized basinful.  We decided to have the “same again” range of ice creams, why not?  They were equally delicious.  We are now back on the boat listening to the roar of the surf over the reef and glad of the strong blast of wind that accompanies it, it is most refreshing on these hot and humid nights. 

We move on tomorrow to pastures new, to Carriacou.