This place gets a blog entry all it’s own. We’ve been here nine days which for us is a long time. Admittedly the first few days I had the flu and don’t even remember. But it definitely went uphill from there. It’s a large, quiet bay with some bbq shacks and a small resort. Boats come in and out every day to anchor. Some only stay overnight, some for a day or two and then there’s us.
We’re in no hurry as we still have over a week to get to Grenada. The other day we decided to take a cab over to Clifton on the other side of the island. They said it would only be a 20 minute ride. We said it would be fun and we needed an atm, a small grocery and somewhere else to eat lunch.
The cab showed up and it looked like something left over from a Mad Max movie. No seat belts, no interior door handles, the upholstery was in shreds and we thought “what have we gotten ourselves into?”
Trusting people that we are we got into the cab. After 20 yards we realized that there wasn’t a road up the rather large hill to the top of the island but a trail and we were going 4 wheeling!
Chatham Bay
Well it was 20-25 minutes to the top where we intersected the main road. Whew. The main road is wide enough for 1 ½ cars, no guard rails and quite a drop off. When we got to the edge of town our driver pulled off and said we needed to get out. What? After a little interrogating we realized he wanted us to get into his other vehicle, the “town” car. This one was newer, clean, a/c and a working radio. This is what we rode into and around town in. Much better.
We did our errands, had lunch, rode back out of town, changed over to the Mad Max vehicle and proceeded back to Chatham Bay. When we got back to the trailhead it was a steep drop into the trail with no visibility. I admit I closed my eyes. Our driver said he makes that trip at least once a day and up to five times a day in season. I doubt my body could take that but he was young and a very competent driver.
When we first arrived I jumped in the water with my snorkel gear to check the anchor and found a galaxy of starfish under our boat, some as big as two feet across. When I snorkeled again four days later they were no where in sight. Where did they go I wondered. Well today we did a dive off the back of the boat and we found them again. There are probably 3000 different species of fish and they are VERY friendly. We’ve also seen quite a few big turtles swim right by the boat.
So it’s been an interesting nine days but tomorrow we leave and head to Clifton Bay to clear customs and immigration and on to Grenada.