#31 Smuggle beer from Bequia to Denmark

This was a tough one. I didn't have any previous smuggling experience, unlike some people, so I kind of had to learn by doing.

Fortunately my years of beer drinking and border crossing (though not done simultaneously) gave me enough experience to be able to smuggle this bottle of Hairoun across continents to safely reach some thirsty Danes.

The beer in Bequia, getting ready for its voyage.

The beer visiting Karen Blixen- a famous Danish writer.

The beer in one of Copenhagen's touristy streets, about to be drunk by a super cool mustache- who I will assume is named Olav.

Yumm arty stuff I found

Alex Kopps

Ludovica Gioscia

Union Island

We stayed 2 nights in Mayreau and met a cool white Rasta (what everybody calls him) while he was climbing coconut trees. He had a nice little sailing boat and offered us a ride to Union Island- our next destination on the trip. This guy- J.D. - is a French guy about my age whose been living on his boat for the past 6 years and sailing around the Caribbean. A really nice guy, so laid back and friendly.


So we set sail for Union and spent the whole afternoon exploring the one street town (which is about 100 meters long), yep we saw all the sights: first spending a good 2 hours on the bench in front of the main roundabout, then moving on to Lambi's guesthouse where we left our stuff and then at the end of the street we found an amazing little labyrinth- like art bar/cafe/atelier built down a neverending alley leading up to a nice lookout point where we had a drink and played the coolest card game on earth (Bohnanza- which we're all addicted to now). After sunset it was apero time on the beach then a big local dinner and out for a little dancing.


Union Island is a bit smaller than Bequia but I really liked hanging out in town, watching life go by. Its less touristy by far, less picturesque and with hardly any foreign-owned villas on the hills. Just a quiet town- a base for some Yacht charters and entry point of the southern Grenadines.

The next day we walked the whole island- its lots of up and down, with amazing views from pretty much anywhere. After visiting Ashton, the 2nd and smaller village of the island we headed for the hills to Chatam Bay- a beach inhabited by Rastas, fishermen and an out of place fancy pants resort.


We found a shady tree and spent the afternoon eating, sleeping, listening to Irish stories and snorkeling with hundreds of fish just a meter from shore.


The next day we took the long and wavy ferry back to St. Vincent to re-climb the volcano...

Mayreau

I finally managed to get some time to travel around the Grenadines and explore the rest of the country! I not-so-coincidentally managed to get a week off work while my best friends were here visiting, so the past few days have been pure bliss.

The green team.

First stop was Mayreau- the smallest of the inhabited Grenadine islands and (I say) the one with the most beautiful beach. Probaby that I have ever seen. What I love about these small islands is that they are all one-street villages of a similar size but being islands they've developed completely differently, almost in their own bubbles. And it was so interesting to see the little differences in each town and people that really aren't so far away from each other.

For example there's a large french influence in Union Island with lots of French people around (ok, lots is relative), some signs in french and even locals speaking it.

Anyways, back to Mayreau. We took the rocking ferry (bought from Norway, still complete with maps of the fjords) 4 hours down and docked on the little beachfront pier. Walked up the hill to look for Righteous- the friendliest Rasta in the world who has a cool little restaurant and guesthouse.

We felt right at home, after going night-swimming and shooting star watching we slept with a hurricane fan and the next morning sat out on our balcony to watch the little village of 200 people wake up. The same 3 cars drove around in a circle, my barber walked past and waved good morning. The kids went up the hill to the school where we could hear them singing songs.I love little village life.


Oh and then we went to the most amazing beach ever and spent all day wallowing in the sand, floating in crystal-clear water and exploring deserted beaches. Check out the photos and die of jealousy.

Tripping

I have a lot to catch up on... so although the beginning would be a logical place to start I'm not feeling too logical today so I'm gonna talk about my toes. And another task I can cross off my 35 things list:

#22 Seduce a mermaid with my tree-trunk toes.

This was going to be a hard one mainly because the mermaid-seducing season is just coming to a close and now they're about to migrate north to flap around in New-Hampshire. So for this and other reasons I decided to import two experts in the field, Dr. Jingles and Rajbhandari.


Well they got straight to work and in no time I not only managed to seduce a mermaid but she took up (semi) permanent residency on my foot.

Mission accomplished.

#22 Grow Eggplants in a garden under the sea

There's a water shortage on Bequia right now, so we thought it would be the perfect time to try growing eggplants in a garden under the sea, cuz there's always plenty of water there.

After carefully planting and monitoring them, today they were finally ripe for picking... so we headed over to our underwater garden to get us some eggplants!

The eggplants were ready for picking

We sent out the scout dog to make sure they were ripe enough

And of course we used the standard method for sea-eggplant harvesting: child labor!

The dog then had to be harvested too, of course.

We ended up making a delicious fried sea-eggplant and mango meal. Mmmm. And we didn't even need to add salt.

Here's the video of the preparations, shot at the amazing abandoned Plantation House hotel, with a view on Port Elizabeth.

#2 Discover a Treasure

Went treasure hunting at night to continue with my list of 35 things to do before leaving Bequia...

Armed with nothing but a beer and my bare hands I let my intuition guide me straight to this super-amazing treasure. What was in the treasure? I don't know.

How do I know its a treasure? Look at the awesome treasure-chest!! Who cares what's inside when you have such a cool looking container.

Also the sunset was really nice that evening so here are some photos:

Fire! (truck)

THE Bequia fire truck had a flat tire at 2pm a few days ago.

I know this because I passed it on The only road on Bequia.

I said 'Oh look, the fire truck has a flat tire'.

3.5 hours later it still had a flat tire and THE evening flight in had to be diverted to St. Vincent because planes aren't allowed to land if there's no operational fire truck on the island.


Of course we were waiting for hotel guests arriving on that flight, so we had to scramble and hope they made the last ferry over that night, luckily they did and they came only 2 hours later.

Aah, only in Bequia.

# 5 Continued

Myriam. Pre and posthumous.

I was reading the weekly newspaper today and and I saw big news for the future of SVG pineapples! Yes, you'll be happy to know that the national pineapple grower's cooperative has finally been formed, with all of 40 members. To mark this occasion the govt donated 10 rolls of plastic wrap to the cooperative. A spade or subsidies for pineapple juice manufacturers so that we can finally stop importing our pineapple juice from the UK would have been nice, but plastic wrap is cool too.

I'm thinking of making a donation of 100,000 name tags to the pineapple-naming foundation (PNF) so that no pineapple will ever remain unnamed again. This is called tackling the issue at the source.

Feel free to make cash donations or in kind (we also accept plastic wrap) to:

The Pineapple Grower's Cooperative
2nd banana tree after the really tall palm tree (but before the almond tree on the left)
Kingstown
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

So. Good.

Mmmm I like the red filter on my camera.