Ever since I decided on studying abroad in Barbados I had wanted to do some island hopping around the Caribbean. Luckily I wasn't the only exchange student who wanted to, and soon after we arrived here the group planned a trip to the closest of islands, St. Vincent. Last Thursday night I caught the late flight over to St. Vincent on the smallest, loudest, and most rickety plane I may have ever been in. It's a good thing the flight was only 30 minutes, because it was quite rough. We landed at around 10 at night so it was already dark and sightseeing wouldn't start til the next morning. We stayed at a guest house that the EAP students from last year recommended to us, which ended up being a nice 5 bedroom place with two kitchen/living rooms and 2 tvs. All of this for only $30 each per night. After settling into the master bedroom by myself (I was the only guy so I got a room to myself), I was quick to bed to get ready for the weekend.
The first thing I noticed in the morning was the immense amount of rain outside, but I have gotten used to the rain and figured it would blow over eventually. After a free breakfast upstairs, the rain was still going and it started to look like it would be a long rainy day. We had solid plans for Sunday and Saturday, but for this Friday we had nothing planned and didn't really know how to get around yet, so we decided to just walk around for a bit. We made our way towards the beach and found a tiny little black sand beach (St. Vincent is a very volcanic island and about half of the beaches are black sand beaches), but it was a little too dirty to swim in. After doing a bit more walking up and down the hilly terrain of the area we came upon a taxi who told us he could take us to one of the more popular beaches of the island. At the beach we swam out to a little tiny island in the water and climbed to the top of it and did some mini-cliff jumping into the ocean. Later that night we decided that we'd go out and find a nice dinner place, so following the suggestion of the guy who owns the guest house we were staying at we went to this little place nearby. Even though the food took over 2 hours to get to us after we ordered, it ended being incredibly good. It was an early night that night to prepare for our long day on Saturday.
Saturday morning started by waking at 7ish to get over the the shipping dock in St. Vincent to catch the ferry to a little island called Bequia which is part of the island chain The Grenadines. After an hour or so crossing the sea we arrived on the smaller secluded island to more rainstorms. Half the group went off to go scuba diving, and the other half (including myself) went off to find a taxi to take us somewhere. We ended up finding a guy who said he would give us a mini-tour of the island for a small price, so we took him up on the offer. After driving all throughout the beautiful jungle-like roads of the island our first stop was at the sea turtle reservation. We knew it was closed, but it was still worth stopping by since we could see through and over the fences and could see tons of turtles of all sizes. We took a quick stop at an abandoned sugar mill, then off to a beach in the area where we found a little restaurant and got some food. The taxi then took us back to where we started and we found we had 3 or so hours til the ferry left to go back to the main island and that we really didn't have much left to do. We decided to try and find the scuba divers and see what they were up to. After catching up with them we decided to go to a sports bar that we had heard about. We found the little place and spend the next few hours overlooking the bay and relaxing for a while. The ferry then took us back to St. Vincent where we spent the rest of the night in and watched Across the Universe before another early night.
The final day on the island was set to be our busiest, waking again at 7 a taxi-van came to pick up all 9 of us for an all day tour with a few major stops, the first of which was a hike up the island's active volcano. After 2 or 3 hours hiking up the mountain in scatterd rain showers and constant fog, we all made it to the crest of the volcano where we could look into the mouth of the volcano. After a couple more hours on the way down we headed to our next stop, the filming location for Pirates of the Caribbean 1. It was an obvious tourist destination, but it was somewhat intersting to see the leftover town and buildings specifically for the movie. Jerry Brukheimer's house that he lived in was also on the set, so I went in it and looked around. The house was also used in POTC2 for some scene with the king or something... I kinda forget the details. As time was running out (we had a plane to catch at 6:30) we made our final stop at a waterfall where we ran over one of the most sketchy bridges I have ever seen, then took a quick dip in the falls. Our driver then sped us back to the guest house where we quickly packed our bags, went to the airport, and had about 15 o 20 minutes til our plane departed and we came back home.
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