Farewell SVG
We’ve spent ages here I must admit. I lost a bit of enthusiasm for the project for various reasons but what better place to get stuck for four months. We lay under the palm trees drinking pina coladas made from the local rum and eating bananas.
Food
Try as we might too find some breadfruit, typical of St Vincent, we failed. The best I could come up with was a mango and two pears – all of which are sitting in the fruit bowl refusing to ripen. They weren’t meant to be pears, I was trying to get guava and got confused.
No luck either in finding typical St Vincent cuisine in a restaurant. We did go for a meal in Irie Shack, Caribbean restaurant, in Woodville Road – nice atmosphere and spicy vegetarian food.
Drink
A couple of tequila sunrises in Irie Shack (see above)
Literature
By far the best part of this trip to SCG for me was finding a book of short stories by Cecil Browne. They were beautifully written, gentle but gave me a real feel is the place.
A book at completely the other extreme was by Princess Margaret’s lady in waiting about their time on Mustique. A quick scan and it was soon on its way back to the library. Not my sort of thing.
Film
I watched the swashbuckling ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl’ which was filmed in St Vincent. You get limited shots of the island itself as most scenes are onboard ships.
Music
A little bit of reggae and a little bit of calypso and that was about it.
Sport
I looked at the cricket career of Winston Davis from St Vincent who as well as playing cricket for the West Indies in the 1980s also played for Glamorgan and then Northants. After finishing playing cricket he suffered a bad fall from a tree in St Vincent which left him a tetraplegic. He now lives in Worcestershire. From what I’ve read he maintains a positive outlook on life and is inspirational to others.
Clock
St Vincent is a good shape for a clock but adding the other islands would be tricky. I haven’t made one as yet but if ever I get an opportunity to meet someone from there I’ll head straight for my workbench.
Meeting someone from St Vincent and the Grenadines.
No luck so far meeting anyone from SVG but you never know – someone may turn up.
Railways
There are no railways in St Vincent but for some reason a lot of their stamps seem to have locomotives on them.
Stamps
If I can’t investigate railways in St Vincent I thought the next best thing was to buy some stamps with trains on. Some are even British trains.
Geocaching
There’s one puzzle geocache in SVG, Dark View Falls Mystery Cache, GC85Y44
and luckily I managed to solve it. Don’t think I solved it the proper way, more by deduction than anything. Reading about the cache and the blogs of some of the people who have visited the area gave me a flavour of the place.
Highest Point
At 1,234 m (4,049 ft), La Soufrière is the highest peak on Saint Vincent but its also an active volcano that has seen appreciable activity in the last few years necessitating evacuation of some inhabitants. No I didn’t go up it – only in my imagination, and it left me with hot feet and a headache.
Farewell SVG
Cardiff Capers 