On our third trip to the Caribbean, we decided to do more island hopping after our cruise ended in Barbados and one of those islands we went to was St Vincent and the Grenadines which is a mountainous lush green island with black sand beaches (as it is a volcanic island). I actually took a picture of the screen of our laptop as the long name of the country when going on Google was something I’d never experienced.
Fun facts I recorded in my journal back in 2013:
133 square miles; population of 109’022; capital: Kingstown; national dish: jackfish and breadfruit. St Vincent and St Lucia are two countries bought by Japan to support whaling. St Vincent catches 2 to 3 (humpback) whales in a season from Bequoia (the island across the main island as in picture below).
We rented a taxi for the day and asked the driver to take us around the island. We didn’t have any Eastern Caribbean dollars on us and as they had no change for 50 USD, we were granted free entry to the Botanical Gardens which are the oldest in the western hemisphere (we later found out we could have seen the elusive national bird the St Vincent Parrot there) and the Petroglyphs.
The drive up to Fort Charlotte was very steep and scary and we were told that to pass your driving test and obtain the license, one would have to drive this way. We were greeted with amazing views of Kingstown and the surroundings from up there.
The Petroglyphs weren’t amazing. We went to a waterfall which wasn’t impressive.
The highlight of the day was undoubtedly our visit to the set of the famous movie the Pirates of the Caribbean.
There was a restaurant which wasn’t functioning nearby and it had lots of pictures from the making of the movie as well as an autographed piece of paper by the crew. Johnny Depp’s signature is in the skull below.
Dinner was quite expensive: calallou soup with hardly any crab meat for 30 USD and a main of mahi-mahi and tuna for 30USD each at a nearby restaurant. It rained heavily while we were having dinner. Luckily it did not rain during our time exploring the island.
We had a great view of the island and the sea from the balcony of where we stayed.
