We enjoyed the beautiful bay of Wallilabou for a few days, every day some locals come by in wooden boats with fresh fruits and sometimes homemade jewellery. We ended up supporting the whole local community by buying mountains of Mango, starfruit, Papaya, and bracelets. Our fruit basket was very full! Close to the anchorage is a picturesque little waterfall, so we walked there one morning and enjoyed the shower of cool freshwater over us and splashed our way back to the bay along the river. Sadly as always, time goes too fast and we had to leave too soon but it’s a place that we plan to visit again with Guppy someday for sure! The next stop is only an hour further up north. We planned a hike to the Dark View Waterfalls – two beautiful big waterfalls with a short jungle hike to get there. Sadly upon arriving at the nature park gate, we were informed that the volcano eruption last year has destroyed some of the paths and stairs – it’s too dangerous to proceed. So we return to Guppy, at least we’d had a nice little hike through St.Vincents rough, green and lush forests 🙂 We stayed another night in the bay and left the following morning to sail to St.Lucia. It was a very squally day, as it had been the day before as well. Lots of rain, which isn’t so bad because it’s nice and cool, but the shifting winds made for a difficult sail and we were only able to see the island when we had pretty much arrived. We picked up a mooring buoy in a very picturesque bay located between the two Pitons. The Pitons are two very high pinnacles ( 744m and 777m high ) that rise out of the ocean. Consequently, it’s very deep next to it as normally the sea bottom reflects whatever the land is doing. So steep cliffs or high mountains often mean it’s still very deep close to shore as well. This was very true in this case as well, the depth sounder had only just started to see depth by the time we reached the mooring field. 80 meters deep! We only stayed here for the night, continuing on our way back to Martinique the following morning. The weather has returned to its usual happy, sunny, blue skies and steady winds which made for a lovely and fast sail. We had a big group of gannets following us most of the way, diving into the water around us in the hopes of catching fish. I wonder if Guppy crashing through the waves chases the fish which makes it easier for them to see and catch? It was late afternoon when we dropped our anchor again in St.Anne. Then it was back to work as Martinique is our halfway re-stocking point. We emptied all our food cabinets, counted what we still have, and made a list of what we needed to get. For the actual shopping we anchored in Le Marin, a bit closer to the store, and made two groups – the shopping group, helping in the shop and taking everything into the dinghy – and the stowing group, stowing everything away aboard Guppy. All in all a full day of work with everyone involved and helping really well! How great to have so many people to help =D Once anchored back in St.Anne I noticed the Tres Hombres coming into the bay – a traditional engineless ship which transports fair-trade cocoa, coffee, rum, and some other things between Europe and the Caribbean. We were invited to come on board for a look and after hearing about their old fashion way of unloading the Rum barrels ( swimming them ashore from the anchored ship) the group offered to help. So we decided to stay a few days longer in St.Anne to be able to help with the unloading of the barrels on Friday which should be lots of fun!
Laura