Take our money.........please
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| House in Bequia |
Well, after a month we have left St. Vincent and the Grenadines (BTW, how can Grenada not be part of the Grenadines...........poor branding if you asked me). Anyway, one of the salient features of this place for cruisers is definitely the inability to spend money.........on anything.
Case in point. We anchor off Carriacou (our final island in the SVG chain). A guy in a decrepit, sinking dinghy motors out to our boat.
Sad-sack- "Hi, my name is Simon. You've probably heard of me."
Tom- "Never heard of you"
Sad-sack- "I'm in all the cruising guides.........I'm Simon........I'm famous for helping cruisers".
Tom- "Nice to meet you Simon. Still never heard of you".
He proceeds to try to interest us in "low impact" (on him) services he could sell us. He offers us these 4 small red snappers that are in their death-rattles flapping on the bottom of his boat.........in the oily, slimy bilge water. Totally gross. No way. Have any garbage, he asks. Ah no, because we haven't been able to source much food.
What about the grocery stores? Imagine a closet with a bunch of World War II leftover canned meat. Flies everywhere. Old pasta. And all kinds of deeply frozen parts of pigs that nobody can identify. Guess what? No problem with obesity down here.
We motor to shore and look for a restaurant. It's 1:00 PM.........nobody open except a cheap lunch place. Three things on the menu. OK, I'll take the conch. "We don't have that, and don't have the tuna either. So what will you have?" Some kind of smart-ass - That leaves only 1 option. "Hmmm. It's a tough decision but we'll both have the club sandwich. Do you have that? "I'll have to check". What ?
We are both literally dreaming of a well stocked grocery store... we have eaten through our canned tuna (tuna helper being remarkably tasty when there are no other choices). Americans don't need fat camps - a month long trip to the Grenadines accomplishes much the same thing.
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| Last bottle of wine.... grocery store please!! |