An adventure in travel today as we make our way all of 60 miles from Grenada to Bequia to spend Xmas and New Year. It took us all day. We start at Grenada airport where LIAT live up to their name of “leave island any time” and are almost an hour late - given this is a 25 minute flight, this delay seems quite big. And shopping in Grenada airport is hardly LHR T5! But as you would expect we did manage to shop - for alcohol of course. We had already secreted a litre of rum - the remains of each of our litres brought in Tobago - we were quite proud of that, only getting through half a litre each in nine days - in Ant's suitcase, so shopped for four bottles of wine at duty free. Arriving at Kingstown airport at St Vincent was refreshing - a tiny shed packed with cardboard boxes and extremely welcoming immigration officers, but sadly no rum punch this time. We have to make our way to the port to catch the ferry to Bequia, which frustratingly we had flown over on the way. But before that we had to go shopping - again, but this time for more mundane products - food. We knew where we were going wasn't flush with little eateries and had already asked for the villa to be "provisioned" with the basics, diet coke, water, orange juice and limes - anything that could be mixed with rum, but still nedded a few basics. So Gill waited at the shed of an airport with the bags whilst poor Ant went off to the local supermarket to shop - exactly what he came away to avoid.... He queued with people exactly the same as at home buying turkeys and all the trimmings, except for no sprouts. Fresh food is really hard to come by. As everything is imported and expensive, but we were now the proud possesors of frozen sausages and bacon, muesli and jam. I am now suggesting Ant fronts the new campaign "Ant goes to Iceland"....
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| Ant goes to Iceland |
So as we traipse across to the port we looked like a couple of gypsies festooned with two big suitcases, two backpacks, one handbag, two cardboard duty free wine carriers and two plastic carrier bags of assorted food. What a stylish way to arrive in Bequia... The ferry goes from an area served by the big cruise ships and has two areas. The swish one with security guards and duty free shops, and ours with the cafe serving "souse with either cattleskin (leather stew perhaps), pig’s foot or cow foot". We were starving but made do with a drink from the bar..... We make our way to the ferry, the Rust Bucket 3, no sorry, the Bequia Express 3 and make the one hour crossing to our home for Xmas.
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| The Rustbucket 3 |
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| Travelling light - not! |
We arrive at the villa which is lovely, light, airy, clean and new with two bedrooms with big fourposters, two bathrooms, a big living kitchen dining area and a huge balcony with wooden sun loungers looking out over the Caribbean with Mustique in the distance and the beach at the end of the garden. Xmas Eve was a starlit night and we went cosmic identifying Sirius, the Star of Bethlehem with the help of the iPad app, Star Walk. Santa appeared racing across the sky as we star spotted - on the app of course, we really hadn't had that much rum......
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| Xmas breakfast |
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| Ant chanelling David Beckham..... |
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| A villa with a view.... |
