The Trip to the Grenadines

What a trip.

Initially I had planned the whole thing myself, planning to travel by myself. No one else seemed to have their act totally together. But as it turned out, Angela, one of the other volunteers in St. Lucia, had the identical itinerary. So she and I buddied up, and I figured I’d hang out some with her crew.

We were met at the airport in Kingstown by Amber and Tina, two girls from Angela’s training group. Tina also lived with my same host family in Babonneau, so I had met her before. From there we went into town for a little breakfast, and to buy some provisions to take on the ferry. There were quite a few other PCs and affiliates on the ferry down: From my group, Brian (from Madison), Joe, Erin, Megan, her sister and sister’s friends, and their friend, Gary. From the 71s, Amber and her husband Brian L, their friends from home, Jeremy and Dan, Colleen and her boyfriend Tashai, Tina, Nathaniel and Brian from the new group (also called "Cool Brian"). Everyone but Angela and I were from St. Vincent.

The ferry was a long, 5-hour jaunt. After the experience on the Martinique ferry, I anticipated some seasickness, so I took some Dramamine. That completely put me out and made me a zombie for the rest of the day.

Angela and I both planned to get off at Canouan and stay with another guy from her group, Mike. Mike met us at the ferry dock and said that his plans had changed and that he would also be coming to Union. There were also plans to go on a boat ride early the next day. So for both those reasons, Angela and I decided to just go straight to Union with everyone else. I had reservations from Saturday to Tuesday (this was Thursday), but I figured I could crash with the rest of the PCs. They had plans to stay at a Parish center. Dormitory style, but super cheap.

The parish center was just outside the port city, Clifton. The setting was great; it was right on top of a hill with amazing 240° sea views of the six-color blue water. The building itself was rather new also. There were men’s and women’s dorms, each with a bathroom, a common area, the priest’s room, kitchen, and several stand-alone cottages. Fr. Andrew gave us a deal at $10US each per night.

Clifton itself is about two streets. The main street had several grocery stores and touristy shops. It was fairly busy for the weekend. There were lots of yachties, and many Vincentians had come down for the Easterval weekend.

Friday morning we went to the dock in Clifton to meet Seymour, a friend of the PC’s, and speedboat captain/tour guide. Some of the volunteers went on the Capitan Yannis tour, but we took the more informal one with Seymour. We mostly cruised around the Tobago Cays. First we went to Petit Bateau. All of the Cays are uninhabited but on Petit Bateau, several vendors set up for the day. A number of different tour boats come thru every day to hang out on the island and snorkel. We swam and snorkeled for a while, but left when it started to get crowded.

Next we went to Baradal, which was truly uninhabited. That was my favorite place. There was a long sand bar that went off the point where you could sit in the warm water. The point of the island was split by a sand dune in the middle. We stayed mostly to the one side because the sand there was so nice, there was shade, and there was a hammock. You could climb up the sand dune to a small peak where you could see many other islands (including Petit Tabac where Johnny Depp was stranded during Pirates of the Caribbean). There were yachts all around; a lot of them like to moor there because it’s so quiet. After that we went to Mayreau. You can practically jump across Mayreau at certain parts, it’s so narrow. We hung out there for a while and had lunch. From there, we went to Palm Island for a little while. Palm Island is one of several islands that are entirely a resort. We met up with the other PCs there, who were on their Capitan Yannis cruise.

That was more or less the day cruise. It was so fun. I could sit and watch the water there all day, it was so beautiful. Going in the speedboat wasn’t the most glamorous way, and no bottomless rum punches, but we got to go where we wanted and just be leisurely.

That night we made a big spaghetti dinner back at the parish center.

The next morning there was a bit of a bump in the road. I was up early, and talking to Fr. Andrew. He said that the supply of water was nearly gone. Union, and the rest of the Grenadines are so small that they rely only on rain catchments for their water supply. Seeing that it was nearly the end of the dry season, the supply was running low. He gave me a sob story about how water was so expensive, so I told him we’d be more conservative. Apparently that wasn’t good enough. Later in the morning, he approached Brian L, who was sort of the leader of the troupe, and said that he was going to have to purchase more water because we had used over 1000 gallons, and that we would each need to pay $15US per night instead of ten. No one is more diplomatic and kind than Brian L. He went back to Fr. Andrew and said that he thought we were being as conservative as possible with our water usage, but after all, there were eleven of us. Secondly, it was unfair for Fr. Andrew to change the agreed-upon price midway through. In addition, we are poor and lowly PCs who are on stretched-thin budgets anyways. At that (which to me doesn’t seem that confrontational), Fr. Andrew (otherwise a very chill guy) flew into a tizzy and started dropping bombs about Black vs. White issues, American vs. Vincentian issues, etc. This was completely out of nowhere. Brian tried his best to reason, but Fr. Andrew went nuts and gave Brian five minutes to get his things and leave. That really left Brian, Amber and their friends, and the rest of us in a pinch. Now Brian was out on the street on the busiest visitor weekend of the year, with nowhere to stay. The rest of us felt that by staying, we were agreeing with Fr. Andrew, yet we couldn’t leave either. On top of that, we didn’t know what the price of the rooms was at that point, and none of us had extra money.

So on that note, we all quickly got ready and went to the Big Sands beach for the day, to consult, and to just be out of there. On the way, we passed Lambi’s Guesthouse in town, where I had my reservations for Saturday through Tuesday. Though the parish center had been a better deal, most of us wanted out of there. I went to talk to the woman about when my room would be available. The downstairs of the guesthouse is a grocery store. I went up to the cashier and asked about my room. She unequivocally said there was no room for me, they were booked. I said that I had called several months ago to make my reservation. She said there was no room. I said, couldn’t she possibly take my name and check it in the register? She said no. Truly, I wasn’t surprised. Luckily I had other accommodations, because she really wasn’t very helpful (although when after I left, she caught up with me to say check back the next day because they may have an opening.) I wasn’t that upset… it was in a busy and loud part of town and twice the price of the parish center.

So we all just went to Big Sands to chill for the day. That looked to be a very nice hotel, and the food at the restaurant was excellent.

In the end, Brian, Amber, Dan and Jeremy found a spot at Sydney’s Guesthouse, where a couple of other volunteers were staying. People came and went from the parish center, but in the end it was Tina, Angela and me. We ended up giving Fr. Andrew a bit more than the $10US per night, but not much.

The other two days we just cooled out at the different little beaches and waterfront restaurants. One evening a man named Janti came to pick us up in his boat and take us to his Happy Island Bar. The island was about the size of a big car, and his bar took up the whole thing. Actually, Cambria, an ultra-veteran PC, told me that Janti had talked about building an island on the sand bar for a long time. Finally he trucked loads of conch shells out to the sand bar and built his island and bar. He had little windmills to generate power for the blenders and stereo. We sat around there for most of the evening playing cards and dominoes. When we were leaving after dark in Janti’s boat, I saw phosphorescence in the water.

The main goal of any trip is my side game… to see if you see anyone famous or anyone you know (that you hadn’t planned to see). So I don’t count that I saw all the PCs, because I more or less planned to see them. But in the airport on the way home I saw a guy from the gym in SLU, and then the flight attendant was the mother of one of my swimmers (and actually she lives in Antigua). Angela saw one of the boys from her speech pathology program. Then we saw Miss Trinidad and Tobago. She counts as someone famous.

I highly recommend going to check out the Grenadines. It was one of the best trips I’ve had down here. I may actually make it back there at the end of May…

Check out the pics