Carriacou Take 2

With the chain plates being fixed by the French guy, we have had a week to explore Carriacou for the second time, eager to make the most of our time here.

So a bit of history about the ladies of Carriacou. Apparently back in the day, this island was huge in lesbianism. With the men having to go away to find work in foreign countries, it left the strong willed women at home, lonely and bored. Having found this tidbit out, Dylan and I can't quite look at crazy shack lady in the same light again.

Crazy shack lady is an older woman that sells bananas out of her garden through a lean-to wooden shack. She has taken quite a liking to Dylan calling him pet names like 'baby' and 'precious' whenever we walk past. Dylan, lapping up the attention often ends up buying huge hands of bananas when we don't need them, just to remain the lady's favourite customer. On our way to a local beach one day, we bumped into her (later finding out her name is Venus) and she proceeded to accompany us for the 30 minute walk. As we followed the road, she regaled us with her life story. Marrying at 18, Venus lived in Trinidad but wanted a nice house whilst her husband wanted to be a career rum taster. 50 years on, still married to him, they live in separate countries. Venus chooses to live in Carriacou, making a living from going out into the hills, picking fruit and veg to sell from her garden whilst her husband is back in Trinidad, flopping about like a jelly fish. At some part in her life, Venus also lived in Canada for 10 years so she brings to our conversations a worldly wisdom, seldom seen in other locals who have only ever known Carriacou. Yet to whack out the camera and take a photo of her....but watch this space. 

As we go on random walks, we come across all sorts of animals just strolling about the roads, no leads or enclosed fields in sight! I am loving this, getting to see this cute animals up close and none seem to be afraid of human contact.

As well as Venus, we have got to know other local people as we have become familiar faces about the bay. Simon, the boat boy will come by our boat (and everyone else’s even if you are in the middle of anchoring!) selling his wares. We have bought some red snapper from him before, giving in to his constant 'oi skip' or 'hello good morning' at the stern of our boat. Getting louder and louder like an alarm clock until we pop our head up and acknowledge his presence.

Not wanting to rely on these boat boys, Dylan and I decided to go hunting for crayfish out on the reef. Armed with our 'crayfish tickler' which is little more than a stick with a hook taped to it, we jumped into the murky water, complete with snorkelling gear. Having battled the current for a good 20 mins, we came across a big rock that had tens of antennae sticking out – indicating we may very well be eating for free tonight. Dylan with stick in hand, dived down to the bottom, grabbing onto a smaller stone to keep him steady whilst he tickled the stick under the rock, hoping to latch onto the middle of the crayfish. I observed from the surface, eager to check out how these things behaved before I was going near them! No such luck, these creatures are wily and as soon as they saw us humans approach, they scurried right to the back of the crevices, far away from our prying eyes and sticks. Just as the sun gave up on us and started going down in the sky, Dylan managed to hook the stick around a relatively small one. Keen to get it back to the boat, I swam over to the dinghy and produced a bucket that we placed the creature in, antennae tickling our legs as we sped back to our boat. I was worried how I was going to kill it, but luckily for us, the poor thing gave up on life as it was travelling in the bucket back to Orion. By the time we picked it out of the bucket to put it in a pot of boiling water, it had no life in it. Dinner that evening was very yummy!

Being in Grenada for that bit longer, we decided to top up the Grenadian sim card. A mission in itself as we needed to go to a store to buy a top up card and the nearest one was in Hillsborough, a 15 min bus ride away – miles away from our contract phones back in UK!! Undaunted by this (well, we didn't have any other plans for the day!) we went into Hillsborough and hunted down a Lime Top Up shop. The shop was pretty much entirely dedicated to lottery tickets but also topping up lime phones. In its previous life, it was a big shop with loads of display cabinets and shelving. Nowadays, these units were covered in layers of dust and the current owners just used a desk right by the door. As we looked around, we saw old scales, gaping holes in the roof and old colouring books with the price tags still on. There were also 2 big wooden benches where it seemed the locals came to just sit and watch the customers. A rather niche business, we wondered how the owners ever made enough money but they seemed happy enough and they had a fantastic view out of the back to the ocean and local fishing boats. Another reminded to us of how life isn't all about money and efficiency!

Also in Hillsborough we visited Patty's Deli. A far cry from any other shops we had been to on the island, this shop sold great cuts of cheese, meats, fresh bread and Britishy produce. Although we are always keen to eat local produce, we had started to miss cheese that wasn't like eating plastic, bread that had a crust and meats that didn't look and smell like dog food. The owner of this shop had lived most of her life in London so it was a great surprise when she opened her mouth and we heard a Britishy accent in such a remote place.

It was in Carriacou we experienced our first 'rainy day'. As a comparison, back in London Dylan and I loved rain days. It was a great excuse at the weekend to stay inside all day and not feel guilty for being unproductive. We would often while away the day by renting movies on BT vision and I would bake some type of cake making the flat smell amazing. On a boat...we couldn't do any of that so we sat there thinking how we could make it just as fun, taking our mind off the leaky porthole and hatches complete with soggy towels mopping up the moisture. We dug around for any DVDs that may have come with the boat and settled for 'Its Complicated' and 'Paycheck'. Both alright movies, we then made banana and peanut cookies on the stove top (still got no oven). After consuming most of the cookies we commenced a mega tournament of dominos of which I of course won. By that time, it was dinner time and we stuck our head out of the boat to buy fish from the boat boy. So despite the wet towels, torrential rain and dripping hatches, we had a great day, ticked nothing off our to do list and still didn't feel guilty!

The next day, I was washing up the dishes, came to an end and threw the dirty sea water over the side only to see a spoon disappearing to the bottom of the ocean....oops! I called to Dylan and made a mental note of the position of our boat. Later that day, Dylan keen to become a salvage diver jumped in with his snorkelling gear whilst I pointed in the direction the spoon could be. Dylan couldn't find it anywhere and he had just about given up when he saw a moray eel swim past. Inquisitive to find out where the eel was heading, he followed it and found a second moray eel...guarding the spoon! Like magpies, the eels had surrounded the shiny object, guarding it with an evil stare. Dylan has always been slightly scared of morays (sorry love, its out of the bag now), perhaps he watched The Little Mermaid too many times as a youngster? Either way, rather than reach down and grab it, he kicked his flippers right at them until the swam off scared and he grabbed the spoon and came shooting up to the surface as if he was Poseidon with his trident. Bless, so easily pleased, as was I, still managing to keep my Corelle set intact!

Today we witnessed our first in politics at anchor. I was up at the bow reading the Kindle when I heard a guy yelling “I told you to move, now MOVE”. I immediately turn the kindle off, put my shades on to look less conspicuous and look for the source of the commotion. Whilst I am doing this, Dylan's head has appeared through the hatch in the v berth, also hearing the raucous in front of us. We hear it again, this time “go back to where you f*cking came from, MOVE”. Now this is very exciting, never before had we seen someone so passionately marking their territory at anchor. I hope we are never on the receiving end but boy is it entertaining to be a spectator!

I lie here at night typing this blog post, whilst listening for the fourth night in a row to a local nutter preaching very loudly into a microphone. We haven't seen a church in sight and the preacher certainly doesn't appear in the day, yet at night it seems the whole town comes out in force to support this guy. The man's voice defies the gusts in the bay and reverberates throughout the anchorage, “hallelujahs” and the awful wailing of the women singing the same song over and over again with the preacher adding the odd 'oooo ooooo' whenever the ladies pause for breath. We can't see any it from Orion which probably makes it more interesting as we can imagine what the scene must be like.

Tomorrow is our last day on the island as we hope to take advantage of the low winds on Friday (still 40 kph) and get up to Union Island. We shall miss the locals here but look forward to more fun experiences in the Southern Grenadines.

P.S. I asked Dylan to run his eye over this before I posted it and I kid you not – he reads it and comes out with 'good selection of grammar and humour'!