Wednesday, February 8 – St. Vincent

My Quads Are Killing Me!!!

Climbing those steps up to the volcano yesterday took a toll. Therefore, the word for today is REST! I do have four days worth of journal entries to work on though. That will be a nice diversion for the day.

Things Are Falling Apart!!! (and I’m not talking about my decrepit old body!)

Thursday, February 9 – St. Vincent

My plan is to take the ferry to Bequia Island today. And no, I’m NOT going to walk to the ferry terminal in Kingstown! They have a bus system here like in Barbados, but with just one type of transport – the minivan. I can pick it up right at the entrance to the apartment complex. I just need to flag one down as they drive by. So, I’m outside and ready at around 9am. The first bus comes by shortly thereafter. I wave at it. And it keeps going. Huh. I did notice that it was filled to the max though. I guess this is a busy time of day. Well, it turns out a half dozen buses pass me without stopping. Seriously! Finally, the seventh bus was the charm. And it was only a 30 minute wait; the buses are pretty frequent at this time of day. The trip to the bus terminal in Kingstown took about 25 minutes and cost the equivalent of 1 USD. From there it was a 10 minute walk to the ferry terminal.

I ended up staying on the island a couple of hours, roaming around, and then took the next ferry back to Kingstown.

I was kind of disappointed in Bequia Island itself, but I really enjoyed the ferry rides. Very relaxing! And the harbor is beautiful! The round trip ticket for the ferry was 17 USD.

While I was waiting to depart back to Kingstown I spent some time in the indoor seating area of the ferry. A TV was on that was showing the local news. There was a report that someone was killed the previous night in a shooting. It was the eighth killing so far this year on the island (two of which were by police). On an island with a population of 100k. Interesting. There was nothing in the State Department report that I read that mentioned this type of risk here. Maybe an aberration? The TV report did mention that the total number of murders here in 2022 was 34 (still seems kind of high).

These minibuses typically have loud music playing (on Barbados too). Well,it’s funny that one of the songs that played during this trip was Jump Around! I tried to do a little jumping, but was too squished!

Friday, February 10 – St. Vincent

I need to get some work done today. I have transportation and accommodation booked through March 12 so far, but I’d like to get everything else sorted soon. I brag a lot about how my trips are “freelance” and that I have no set itinerary. And that worked pretty well in South America. Very well, in fact. But I’m finding it’s not so easy in the Caribbean. That’s mainly due to the logistics of traveling between the islands. You can’t always go directly from one island to the next. Or, if you can, it might be prohibitively expensive and/or have terrible routing (like flying to Canada and then coming back, just to go from one island to another that is close by – you think I’m kidding?!?). Hubris often comes back to bite you, and I’m feeling the pain here! I’m sure it would have been better if I planned everything out in advance for this trip. And I undoubtedly would have saved money as well! I’ve learned my lesson though. When I go to Africa (probably in 2025) I’m going to have it all figured out and booked in advance.

So, I literally spent most of the day working on this, and only advanced up to March 28 with transport and accommodations. Ugh! Oh well, tomorrow’s another day…

St Vincent Country Information

• Currency: Eastern Caribbean Dollar
• Language: English
• Vehicle Traffic: Drive on the left
• Weather: Highs in the upper 70s, Lows in the lower 70s, Mild Humidity
• Covid Entry Requirements: None
• Mask Wearing: Very few
• Electrical Outlets: My apartment had both U.S. and U.K.!
• Drinkable Tap Water: Yes

Saturday, February 11 – transit from St. Vincent to Grenada

My flight isn’t until 7pm, and I was able to get a late checkout from the apartment (thank you!), so it’s back to work on trip planning today. The main problem is getting to Belize, which is where I want to finish out the trip. I’m currently booked into Jamaica, but getting from there to Belize is proving to be frustratingly difficult. Well, after much thought and analysis, I was finally able to figure things out. It may not be the prettiest, but here’s how the balance of my trip will play out…

• February 11 (today): to Grenada
• February 15: to St. Lucia
• February 22: to Dominica via ferry
• March 3: to Guadeloupe via ferry
• March 9: to Dominica via ferry
• March 12: to Antigua
• March 18: to St. Kitts
• March 23: to St. Maarten
• March 28: to Jamaica
• April 6: to Miami (that’s not a typo!)
• April 8: to Belize
• April 19: to Madison

The most cost-effective and itinerary friendly (one-way flights) way to get from Jamaica to Belize was to go via Miami. And that’s fine; I’ll spend a couple relaxing nights there. You can see I’ve set aside a fair amount of time in Jamaica and Belize. As such, I haven’t yet booked my accommodation there yet. I want to figure out how much moving around I want to do first. Hopefully I’ll get that finalized soon.

Travel Note: Today marks the 1/3 point of trip. It seems like it’s gone by kind of fast, right? I guess that’s a good thing though. I’m currently averaging a little over 12k steps per day, which I’m happy with, taking into account the fair amount of quiet days I’ve had (an old age thing…).

I think I mentioned that my Airbnb reservation included airport transfers, which is a nice bonus. So we headed off to the airport around 4:30pm.

Another Travel Note: Two different cars were used for my airport pickup and dropoff, and I noticed that both were Japanese cars. Not manufactured in Japan, but meant to be sold to the Japanese market. I could tell because there were short vocal announcements in Japanese when the car was started; the satnav was displayed in Japanese; and the safety notes on the sun visors were written in Japanese. Weird.

Once again we were on the plane the boarded from the back. The flight to Grenada originated in Barbados, so was about 1/3 full when we boarded. And the passengers added here in St. Vincent brought the capacity up to about 2/3. And the flight actually departed about 15 minutes early! Airtime to Grenada was about 35 minutes, and the cost of the flight on Caribbean Airlines was 139 USD.

My Airbnb host arranged for a taxi to pick me up at the airport (he knew how to find the Airbnb apartment). The cost of the transfer was 22 USD and took about 20 minutes.