The Caribbean 2007

The photos here show a glimpse of my time in St Vincent & The Grenadines – my last port of call around my ventures around the Caribbean! (Unfortunately, during my mini trip around the world I had my camera stolen when I was leaving Barcelona, and unable to afford a camera until I reached St vincent).

During 2006-2007 (I think it was then, give or take a year!) I did some independent travel work around the South of Spain, staying at quite a few different places including, “Ecoforest”, and some nice friendly places in Alozaina such as “Temple Garden,” and Martin’s Family house!

Further south in Orgiva I spent some time hitch-hiking around the mountains and living off the land in a wild “hippy” commune called “Beneficio”, I think…

I then worked my way around to Barcelona, spent a bit of time in the Montserrat mountains, before a pit stop at a Vipassana retreat centre where I also worked at for a while…

After all that, I moved on to the Canary Islands, eventually culminating in a speculative sailing voyage, really far away! – almost to the other side of world – The Caribbean!

After countless knock-backs on attempting to board various sailing yacht in Gran Canaria, whilst staying at a youth hostel, having heard that many people have done it, not realising that a little experience was virtually essential!, (as it was the time when most of the sailing boats raced from Gran Canaria to Antigua via the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers)), I eventually struck gold finding a boat and crew that would have me! 

(If you’re crazy enough (like me!) to try something like this I’d recommend you do your homework and research this and you might just find yourself in a tropical island!)

And so I set sail roughly on the 30^th November 2006 onboard “Checkmate” with a New Zealand skipper, one Italian guy, one French girl and her Slovakian boyfriend. We had a roughly 5 day diversion visit to the Cape Verde islands, just off the coast of Senegal, and some dangerous scrapes coming into Sao Vincente, before a full sail to Antigua, St John’s Harbour, clocking up over three thousand miles in the process!

My original intention was to get to the Caribbean island of St marten for a flight to the USA, which I booked well before I set sail (that’s how optimistic I was about finding a boat in time!), so that I could get to see my Aunt who lives in San Antonia, Texas for the new year but I drastically failed! Arriving in Antigua on New Years Eve, I had well missed my flight…. L

After a phone-call to my Aunt I therefore decided to make the most of being in the Caribbean, doing some island hopping, from Antigua to Dominica, getting a boat from Dominica to St lucia, and eventually getting an invite to help someone out in St Vincent & the Grenadines. The island I most preferred was Dominica (the beautiful nature isle).

In St Vincent, Strangely enough I seemed to concentrate more on the closer details of the surrounding plant life, rather than the wider picture. This may have been due to the fact that I had a new camera and its possibilities were restricted. Nonetheless, I’m happy just to have something to show from my travels:

Orange Flower

Yellow flower //1

Yellow flower //2

Micro-droplets //1

Rain Atmospheric 

St Vincent Rainforest

Micro-droplets //2

Papaya Tree

Papaya Seeds

Fruits of the surrounding tropics

One of the highlights of being in the Caribbean is definitely the food & drink! (Cocoa tea, with all fresh, local ingredients was delicious, using, as far as I can remember, of course cocoa, cane sugar from the cane stick, coconut milk, bay leaves and cinnamon.)

All these fruits in the above photo I hand picked from the surrounding area...

Union Island (one of the Grenadine islands that the ferry goes to from St. Vincent)

Islands

Looking out to surrounding isles

The Beach

Boats