Beyond St Lucia to St Maarten

Having finally dragged ourselves away from St Lucia, we are now floating around various islands further northwest. Currently the island of choice is Barbuda, a beautiful, flat island belonging to Antigua surrounded by coral reefs and with the most incredible long beaches of fine pinkish sand, clear waters and stingrays gliding in the shallows. It is all but deserted on the southern coast as it appears that the holiday accommodation is closed up for hurricane season. We sailed up from Antigua with ‘Cooee Too’, a great couple we’d originally met in Tobago last year. Bronte is an extremely keen (and very productive) spear-fisherman and Helmke makes incredible sushi, so our stomachs are full and life is wonderful!!

We left St Lucia stopping at St Pierre in Martinique for a couple of days. This was a thriving town of 30,000 in the late 1800’s but was destroyed by the volcano, Mt. Pelée in 1902. There were only two survivors, a cobbler who was in his cellar and an imprisoned murderer in a stone cell (pictured on the right). Many ruins still remain and some of the current buildings share a wall with these ruins. A lovely little town, very French with all the niceties that go along with it e.g. fresh baguettes, brie cheese, pates and wine!! Need I mention that I’ve gained some weight of late!

Our next stop was the start of the Leeward Islands, Dominica, a luxuriously green mountainous island with wonderful rain forests. It has no great beaches so is not a very touristy location, however, for those interested in hikes and bird watching, this is the place. We, unfortunately, arrived on Easter weekend when everyone was on holiday but plan to revisit at a later stage to make the most of the inland regions. We took a canoe trip up a very picturesque river with the most incredible trees. Sadly, all our photos are on a five year old film which is all we have available right now, hence, not the best quality and certainly don't do these islands justice.

Continuing northwards, we arrived at Iles des Saintes, a group of French islands (back to the baguettes & brie) which were tremendous. We only dared stay a couple of days as Paul needs a visa - we tried to be as inconspicuous as possible, however, we did manage to wander around the village which we loved and to do a bit of snorkelling on one of the uninhabited islands. These are definitely on our ‘must return to’ list. The French certainly have that special way of life.

Then, an overnight stop in Guadeloupe (also French) but didn’t go ashore – we’ll wait until Paul has his visa before spending any time here. This was possibly the most rolly anchorage we've ever experienced, very uncomfortable so we left as soon as the sun came up after a rather sleepless night.

Next it was Antigua in time for the classic boat races where we met up with our friends, Phil & Di, again. The old-style vessels were spectacular with all their sails, a great race to get out there to watch. After the classics it was Antigua Race Week which draws quite a few hundred boats from everywhere. The atmosphere at the harbour was fabulous with lots of activities, music, food, people, drinks and fun. We followed the race up north to Dickenson Bay and Jolly Harbour for a couple of days before returning to English Harbour in the south. Our Scottish Christmas/New Year friends won their class and their fleet thus a Rolex watch. If there had been a prize for drinking and partying, they would have won those also. Well done ‘Jus³ Do It’!

We were keen to get moving on but had to wait another couple of weeks for Paul’s Dutch Antilles visa which he needs to get into St Maarten and the ABC's. Meanwhile, we ducked over to Montserrat for a couple of days (without passport and without exit permit from Antigua, but they were very friendly and very kind so let us in). Again, we went with ‘Cooee Too’. We hired a taxi and guide for the day, a wonderful gentleman who took us to see the volcano and the destruction of the capital, Plymouth, over the past ten years. Montserrat is such a small island and now more than half the area is closed off (the exclusion zone) due to continuing volcanic activity. The mountain still spews forth ash at around two cubic metres per second which covers everything in its downwind path. The city of Plymouth is tragic - huge areas are deeply buried in ash and lava and one can see rooftops peeking out along the sides of the flow. Everything is gray.

Further north, the rainwater has brought down a river of volcanic sand and boulders covering up what was once a beautiful golf course. The island is actually changing shape as more shoaling takes place after each rain. The volcano is quite active at the moment and it is speculated that it will blow again shortly. They have had continual eruptions and activity since 1995 but the worst was 1997 and then, in 2003, the volcanic dome collapsed covering the whole island in thick ash. The original population of 11,000 is now down to 4,500, all living on the north of the island. However, they are the friendliest people we have come across in the Caribbean so far despite these tragedies.

Today, we plan to head a little further north up the west coast of Barbuda just for the fun of it and then we have to think about moving on to St Maarten as we’ve so much to do. We’ve still got to revisit St Lucia before heading south again and hurricane season is not far off.

PS: Since writing the above, we have arrived in St Maarten and are busy with boat related maintenance. After several months of not having a camera (our digital died whilst still in St Lucia) we have been able to replace it so I’m a very happy camper again. If the cameras get much smaller, I’ll be able to wear one as jewellery e.g. an earring or nose stud or something! We have finally met up with quite a few boats from our old yacht club - this is a very popular spot for South Africans.

PHOTO GALLERY:

Scenes of Iles de Saintes

Montserrat

Barbuda