The Bequia Triangle

You've heard of the Bermuda Triangle, of course, where ships disappear? There's a Bequia Triangle too. And it took my brain. But I've found a breezy upstairs spot, and an Internet connection. Uploading pictures takes forever, and I've lost a couple of posts here in the Bequia Triangle also, because of that. And then there's the temptation to just stare off into the beautiful distance, which is mostly what I've been doing. So, these posts are far apart, and I don't know if I'll get another one done before home. Maybe at the hotel in Los Angeles on the way back.

We've moved to our last Bequia accommodation, up the hill behind the Gingerbread Hotel, which is on the water of Admiralty Bay. We'll be here 6 more nights, then start our three day trek home. I didn't plan the transportation for this trip very well. Oh well. Right now in the harbor is David Geffen's yacht, the 8th largest in the world, called Rising Sun. They tell us Prince Edward is aboard -- the British here keep more track of these things -- and he's due to plant a tree on the island at a ceremony on Saturday, I suppose celebrating the age-old St. Vincent & the Grenadines connection with the former British Empire. You know, slavery and all. Some friends said that yesterday the "dinghy" (this one a big catamaran) brought a party to shore at the beach at Lower Bay, tables and lounges, bar and all. Last post I told you about a visit to a yacht, but I suspect my invitation onto this one has been lost in the mail.

Last night we stopped by the Fig Tree for a rum punch and to hear local singer-songwriter Amanda Gooding. I just looked her up so that you can get the flavor, if you go to her MySpace web presence. There's lots of local  music on the island, some of it pan music, some country western, some R&B stuff, some ballads.  Since we're not very much night-time people, we miss most of it unless the bass line is reverberating in our room where we're lying in bed reading. Or trying to sleep.

We've been invited to dinner tonight at Peter and Janet's place, an English couple who now reside in France, and were our neighbors for a while the last time we visited. They've been coming ever since, and they're here for 10 weeks this time. In fact, they came to our Obama inauguration celebration three years ago. We ran into Peter on the street one day and I'm so pleased we're back in touch. It turned out that Peter fishes with George, who was our upstairs neighbor at the Pink House. Everyone is connected, locals and visitors alike.

We're back without a kitchen now, and only have a little electric kettle. So we're going out for meals, and looking for bargains. Yesterday we had lunch at the Fig Tree, and the proprietors Cheryl and Jacqueline were eating their lunch. I noticed they had local food, which is not on the menu, while we were ordering the usual fish plate. So Cheryl told the waitress to have the cook add some "provisions" to our plates. We had breadfruit salad, coconut dumplings, dasheen, and plantain along with the fish and rice -- really good. And a little taste of salt fish. 

While we were at the Pink House we kept up our new habit of cutting up a big bowl of fruit every morning. Bananas here are truly delicious, sweeter than home because they have varieties that don't ship well. It's sometimes puzzling buying citrus fruit. Lemons are orange. Oranges are green. We really notice a difference in availability of good produce this year, just from three years ago. When you walk through town there are probably more than ten little produce stalls, and you can find whatever you're looking for, even nice leaf lettuce that's grown locally. And fresh local carrots. Before, I could only get bagged carrots from California. There's also the big covered produce market, known as the Rasta market because of the large group of dreadlocked vendors that comes over from St. Vincent every day. If you know what you're doing, it's fine shopping there, but a newcomer can be overwhelmed, as I was the first time we came, by some aggressive selling.  

This was a new experience -- I never had soursop before. Maybe it's familiar to others. It's a scary looking fruit, and I might not have tried it if the young man at my favorite produce market hadn't cut a hunk of it for us to taste. 

The flesh is sort of like soggy cotton fiber, and you can eat it, messily. But also you can squeeze all the lovely thick juice out of it and add its tasty tart flavor to other fruit juice, or dilute with water and perhaps add some sugar. I mixed it with orange juice and it was yum. Afterwards I read that if you peel, core and seed it you can use the flesh in blender drinks too. I'll have to check and see if our Mexican market back home carries it.

Well, it's back to Reading Camp. That's my fallback activity when I don't feel like walking in the heat or getting anything written, or cooking. Or else, it's back to staring at beautiful scenery and a huge variety of people. I'd send you lots of pictures if they didn't take so long to load, but I will do an album to link to later. I'm reading a truly fun and giant book by Bill Bryson, called At Home: A Short History of Private Life. I just have to leave off a book or two of ours for trade. Every restaurant and hotel has a shelf of books to trade, on the honor system, so there's a wonderful selection.

And of course I did finally manage to upload my novel as an e-book. It's not setting any sales records, but then all I really wanted was to set it free and get it off my list of undone things.  

Until the next time . . . Barb and Mike in paradise.