St.Vincent and Grenadines

A state named St. Vincent and Grenadines is a synonym for vacation on a boat. It has all why one sails on a boat - white sandy beaches, plentiful of small islands with good anchorage and rich underwater life.

Me and Michal were here 9 years ago. Since then it did not change much. Black guys keep offering lobster dinner at the beach and there are still many turtles to watch while snorkelling. Only Pirates of Caribbean shooting location at Wallilabou bay has less props and at the Tobago Keys there are less corals. Unfortunately.

I consider this an interesting contradiction. While the main island St.Vincent with its capital has black sand, islands of the Grenadines are sunbathing in a white sand. 

And I do not know how about you, but white sand beats it all. Not only the visibility is higher, whatever you want to watch under the water. White sand beach simply charges the batteries better.

So it is clear we spent majority of the time at the Grenadines.

Columbus passed the main island on the day of St.Vincent (hence the name, how unique ;) but he did not stop here. 

St.Vincent, similar to Dominica (coming in next article ;) was inhabited by Caribs who fought quite strongly against any colonist attempts be it French or British.

It was relatively late when Britain took over the island, in 1763. Then they were ousted by the French. Then British got it back in 1783 under the Treaty of Versailles.

Many names of towns, streets are thus mix of French and English.

Majority of local Caribs were deported to Honduras and black slaves were imported to work on the fields. 

St.Vincent is also known for the first appearance of breadfruit in the Antilles. It was brought by famous Captain Bligh on his new ship Providence from Tahiti. This happened after the well-known Bounty mutiny. From here breadfruit then spread throughout the Antilles. 

Grenadines were not of economic interest, as they were too small to bring slaves and grow sugar cane. They were though important from strategic and logistic point of view - bays where to anchor or hide with a boat or refill fresh water. 

Now St.Vincent and Grenadines are member of the Commonwealth. British queen is their formal head. As a currency they use East Caribbean Dollar (ECD) depicting Queen Elisabeth II on every bank note. Kids were uniforms to school. English is the main language. 

St.Vincent has an active volcano la Sufrière. It erupted many times. In May 1902 it killed 2.000 people. It was 2 days before the eruption of a volcano Mont Pelée in Martinique, where it killed 30.000 people and buried the Saint Pierre, the capital of Martinique. 

From the latest eruptions 2 are worth mentioning - in 1979 and in 2021. 

It was very bad. The black ash was everywhere. It fallen on the roofs  and when it started raining, it got so heavy that it was breaking them. Even that Barbados is 90nm far, they got so much black ash that the traffic collapsed.

St.Vincent’s driver of the economy is still agriculture. Tourism stays limited here as the main tourist attraction are the Grenadines.

We sailed Grenadines first with Edita and Jarda and also with our friends and their kids. We celebrated here Xmas and New Year and visited majority of the islands. Here are the highlights ❤️

Union island is the biggest out of Grenadines and 2nd biggest after St.Vincent. It has very specific main town Cliffton. 

By specific I mean it is a little village with one main road with restaurants, bars, shops and grocery stands. There are only black guys, so any white guy is clearly a tourist. When you walk there for the first time, you feel like a lollipop. Everybody wants to taste to get a bit of your money. In covid where the tourism is still very low it is understandable.

There are buoys in the bay and great dinghy dock. We did our clearance into the country here and it was good for provisioning of fresh fruits and vegetables.

It however misses a nice beach so we did not stay long.

From the other side of the island there is a bit forgotten jewell for sailors - Chatham bay. Beautiful pristine bay with great anchorage and nice snorkelling. It is also big and calm without strong currents so we could try water ski and surfing (pulling Hugo on a rope) behind the dinghy with our kids. 

The bay is also home to tens of pelicans. Watching them how they dive into the water to catch a fish was a thing none of us could get enough.

Along the bay there are several local bars and restaurants with one decent resort with great coffee called Tenuta. No wonder when Italian guy was in charge of it. 

We spent here Xmas day and also New Year’s eve and both were a pleasant experience with a bonfire at the beach.

On the first day of the New Year we wanted to keep our family tradition of a New Year’s walk. Usually we walk in the snow :) This time we climbed on the highest hill at the bay. The view was breathtaking. Kids were excited by the number of tortoises we met along the walk.

Mopion is a famous miniature island with one umbrella. It is not easy to get there as the surrounding waters are shallow with rocky reefs. You have to anchor the boat and go by dinghy in usually big waves. But we get there. It got however very popular so it is damn difficult to be there alone ;)

One night we anchored at the Palm island. We went ashore but were not allowed to spend much time there. If you look for a private premium island resort, this is it. The whole place is one big resort, not open to public. It seemed pretty classy.

Tobago Cays is why people come to “this country”. It is an archipelago of a few little islands and it is famous for the opportunity to swim with turtles. They come here to feed themselves on the sea grass. So you snorkel and there are 2,3,5 turtles below you. And then one or two need to get fresh air so they ascent. I prefer  just to watch them. My daughter wanted to follow them to touch them. I know she should not. But it is very tempting to try. The turtles are beautiful. And they are pretty fast swimmers too ;)

We saw also stingrays and starfish. 

Just a side note on how we pimp our English vocabulary. A turtle swims in the sea, while tortoise lives ashore! 

Few facts we have learnt about these amazing animals. Turtles cannot hide their head or legs in the shell while tortoises can. Turtles always need to go up above the water to get air. Turtles lay around 150 eggs on the beach and leave them. When the eggs start to hatch, based on the temperature of the sand little turtles wait for the night to rush to the water. During the day they are very easy KORIST for birds, cats, etc. Yet only few make it to the water :/ Such facts only increased my respect for these animals. 

One day we took dinghy and went to a reef. We could tie the dinghy to a little buoy there. So we all could go snorkelling. It was beautiful, corals, fish, plants, tens of tiny medusas in the water (doing nothing ;)

You could feel the current taking you through the reef channel, but not too strong not to be able to swim back to the dinghy. The only sad thing we witnessed were too many dead corals :/

Maireau was a new island we did not visit before. We visited 2 bays. 

Salt whistle bay  has many bars and restaurants. Yes, you do feel a bit hunted by the locals. But the beach is great, with calm water for kids and a long sandbank. It was a bit touristy though.

Where we felt we have the huge beach just for was a Salina bay. We blame the Covid because all the bars along the beach were closed. There were only dinghies of personal sailboats tied to a great pier, no ferries or tourist boats. 

The pier was nice refreshment for the kids. They were jumping there whole day.

There is great walk from the beach to the Atlantic side of the island too with very nice restaurant called Ranch.

We spend two nights at the Bequay island. It is the only island besides some Eskimo village that is allowed to hunt for whales. 

There is a museum dedicated to this but it was closed over the weekend. 

We were on a buoy at the Princess Margaret bay.

There are ferries coming several times every day, so it is quite busy. Yet the beaches are nice. They built a short trail along the coast, but thanks to the salty water and wind it is deteriorating quickly. 

Canouan island was a surprise to us. It seems this is the island that is preparing through the development and investment to be ready to host only rich and demanding  tourists. There is an airport for private jets. There is also a marina that we spend so far the most money ever for one night berth. To be fair, the marina Sandy Lane Yacht Club IS top notch. 

But just to demonstrate our learning curve ;) We were told the marina would cost 100 dollars. Buoy was for 50 dollars - East Caribbean ones. So it seemed very good price. When we arrive there, the price was over 200 dollars, but US not EC :) Next day we went to local marina shop as we run out of coffee and desperately needed to get new capsules. After paying the bill we realised it was again in US not EC dollars ;) One pack of 10 capsules was for 43 USD. Veeeery gooood coffeeee!

But the marina was super clean, huge, with designish bathrooms and jewellery shop.

Last island we visited was St. Vincent. We wanted to show kids the famous location of the movie Pirates of the Caribbean number 1 - Wallilabou Bay. It is the scene where Johny Depp aka Jack Sparrow arrives to the port while his boat sinks there at the pier. Disney built the whole port and then left it there. It is still there despite zero investment into renovations. 

The lack of interest and effort in making this place a money machine for the locals is striking. 

There is one more highlight in Wallilabou bay - 20 min walk to Wallilabou waterfall. 

We also stopped at Chateau Bel Air. There is another much taller waterfall we wanted to hike to. But when we arrived there we did not find good anchorage. The volcano goes steeply to the water. And shallow spots were taken by fishermen. On top we realised that clearance and customs office no more works here. So we had to return back to Wallilabou to check out from St.Vincent and head for Le Martinique.

Stay tuned for articles on Dominica and French connection - le Martinique and Guadeloupe.