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.

How can I be running behind already?

Wrote the post below yesterday, but stayed in because it rained buckets. We finally got the wireless problem sorted this noon, so here's the news from Wed., Feb 8.

Sitting with the first cup of coffee on the roomy covered porch of our downstairs flat at the Pink House, under a cloudy sky that apparently dumped rain last night. It’s been doing that every night, leaving the days mostly dry. It’s our second accommodation, after three nights at the Frangipani. We’re here for about two weeks, and this is the place where I’m supposed to be able to hop on the Internet with “no problem, Mon.” Evie, my upstairs neighbor from London, is trying to get us help with that. She’s long-time friends with our landlady, who is home in chilly Britain. Evie and George stay here four months a year. Until we solve the connection problem, I can walk down the hill to The Fig Tree, where they have free wireless, and I’ll be able to upload my posts from time to time.

Ah, this very moment we hear soft rain sweeping down the hill and passing us by, leaving a cool breeze behind. It’s sweet.

Yesterday we had our first visit to a yacht. We’ve been in a lot of harbors and met many yachties, but this was our first invitation aboard. We met Sue and David about four years ago, on Carriacou, and when we saw them here we shared some pictures we took at a party we were at together then. They sail six months a year, on their smallish boat -- it’s 32’ I think. Those are some close quarters! David picked us up in his dinghy at the jetty, and gave us a thorough tour of the boat, including explaining all the safety features, how compartments can be closed off watertight in case of a hole in the hull, the emergency signal system, stuff like that which I wouldn’t want to have to think about. Which is why I don’t spend a lot of time on the open sea in small boats. Sue made coffee and some yummy almond cake, which she cooks in the pressure cooker, giving it an interesting texture. Sue and David are humorous and genial -- you’d have to be, to spend half the year cooped up together like that. And courageous. And hospitable -- they’ve invited us to visit them in England when we hopefully go next fall. They live near Southhampton.

It would have been fun to stay longer in the old fashioned room upstairs at the Frangipani, the one with the bathroom down the hall, because of the entertaining neighbors. Gerhard, a friendly German about our age, comes every year. We recognized each other from past years. He was part of a literary group that convened each evening around sunset on the common balcony blue benches, where a former British professor of the classics was reading The Aeneid aloud. A gentle bookish couple from Connecticut and the wife of the professor rounded out the group.

Now we are up the hill in our amazingly roomy digs. We have no ocean view, and less breeze than down by the water, which probably accounts for the best price I’ve seen for any accommodation on Bequia. I won’t mention it here in public -- competition for a place to rent can be fierce. Here we have the spacious porch, well outfitted kitchen, comfortable living room furniture, ceiling fans, and the biggest bedroom I’ve ever slept in.

We run into Ricky and Mabel, from Toronto, when we walk around town, and usually stop to chat. We got to know them three years ago, and kept in touch some, through the Trip Advisor forum for Bequia. Rick is a social animal, and organizes parties and trips, and frequent drinking opportunities at the New York Bar, Maria’s French Cafe, The Step Down Bar, and all the other places he’s discovered in his many years coming here. He’s s retired conductor on Via Rail, and I imagine he was one of those gruff joking ones. The Canadian gang he hangs with seems to be in an ongoing congenial competition for alpha male, trading jokes and opinions, loudly. Funny, that’s not the stereotype of Canadians I was exposed to in Washington state. Maybe all those “nice polite” ones live in BC, and the middle of the country is a bit rougher. But they are fun. We’re more likely to visit in the daytime, and avoid the more serious drinking occasions.

Best food mention of the day: Yesterday we braved the endless wait for callaloo soup at The Green Boley.

Usually callaloo is swizzled into a puree, and I have no complaints about that. It’s cooked from the leaves of a taro-like plant (or maybe it's actual taro with a different name) that is a staple here, and it’s served everywhere. Sometimes it includes crab -- I even made it that way myself at home once, with spinach since it’s hard to find callaloo in the states. But at the Green Boley it’s hearty with little dumplings and bits of beef, and just as peppery as you could wish. I don’t know if they still do it, but last time we were here it was cooked over a fire out back of the restaurant. It’s just special. And next time I’ll take a book to while away the time waiting.

A cranky woman came in and asked Liston, the proprietor and bartender, if there was service out front at the picnic tables overlooking the water, and he said, “Yes, but it might take a while.” She harrumphed off, but was beginning to get the picture. Looking for fast service anywhere here is not a good approach, because you’ll be doomed to disappointment. You might even get your food in a timely manner but your next drink is a long time coming, and then the bill never arrives so you have to chase it down. At the Green Boley, when you’re ready to pay you go up to Liston at the bar, so it’s not a problem. That's Liston in the green shirt.

I’ve had a heck of a time settling down to writing. Everything takes a long time and I seem to only be able to do one thing a day. Tomorrow will be laundry, and it’s a desperate situation. Mulette, the housekeeper, said I should wait for a day when the sun comes out in the morning, and this isn’t it. (We had another little downpour while I was writing this.) Mike has been sketching and painting some in his sketchbook, and now he’s working on his one-a-day small painting (though he’s behind by six days).

Shopping when you are going to be cooking is an all day affair, and one of our days was entirely consumed with that sort of errand. Bread one place, wine another, looking everywhere for butter and discovering it’s not carried anywhere any more, for some mysterious reason. Finally finding cheese, the white cheddar from New Zealand. Trying to identify meat in the freezer case that’s not labeled -- I thought I was getting ham to go with the beans, but when I defrosted it I found I had chunks of the leg of a giant chicken. Choosing produce at several different stalls to get what you want. And stopping for lunch and a couple of Hairouns, the St. Vincent & Grenadines beer. One should be enough, but there’s that wait-for-the-food time to fill in.

I'll wait until tomorrow to get farther on this or it will never be posted. Stay tuned.

Heading south to 13 degrees north

I'm usually content with where I am at the moment, unless it's too cold for comfort, but I do still embrace my Restless Barb identity. This is the spot I'm imagining the most right now. We'll probably come here our first morning, to the tables under the Indian almond tree, in front of the Gingerbread Hotel, facing Admiralty Bay, on the island of Bequia in the Grenadines. The little bakery here has great coffee, and of course gingerbread and cinnamon rolls and cookies and cakes. I expect we'll run into friends from previous trips here. And it's a good place to sit in the shade with a book. Gee, I guess our travels have become less exciting over the years. We'll try to meet a few challenges as well, and here at the Gingerbread we can rest up for those adventures. We'll be here most of February, so there's time for both. I'll try to keep you posted.

Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge

There are more trips to tell, but I think I should start with the current one and work backwards.

Last Sunday was a day trip. We drove down I-15 and then I-5 to Imperial Beach, one of the last towns before the border, to the Tijuana Slough wildlife refuge and nature area. It's part of the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, and there is another wildlife refuge farther south. We intend to wander through that one as well, on another Sunday.
It's easy to get to. Going south on I-5, take the Coronado Avenue exit (Exit 4) and go west. Coronado turns into Imperial Blvd. Turn left on 4th and right on Caspian Way.

At the parking lot there's an interpretive center with racks of birding and environmental information, helpful staff, and a few interesting displays that are worth a few minutes. Then grab a trail map and go for a walk, beginning along the fence of a naval air station. The trails aren't complicated and it's very flat with no shade, but there's an ocean breeze to fool you into thinking you're not getting a sunburn.

We took a closeup of a large and complicated cholla. Touch one of those spines at your peril.

The several trails and loops connect to the Tijuana river mouth, where hundreds of pelicans hung out on a far bank, and on another little island in the stream, egrets and a cormorant. We forgot to take a picture of the river!

We didn't exactly go to Mexico, but you can see it, the hills rising up behind Tijuana with buildings large and small. What stands out is the bull ring, abandoned now, but an icon to the Tijuana experience. The Coronado Islands of Mexico are visible offshore.

When we got to the river we met a white-bearded fellow on a bicycle, who has lived in this neighborhood for 30 years. He had a worriesome cough but was full of joy about this place. He said the city of Tijuana wants to tear down the bull ring, because it's not only unused but in a deteriorated condition. But that old timers like himself object, because they are attached to history.

Mike commented that if we were British tourists, we would have reported back on meeting a friendly American character. And of course, we can report the same.

Guest blogger coming up, maybe

Well first, the guest blogger thing. My nephew the artist Nathan is heading for New Zealand in the middle of January, and I invite him to blog his trip here on my travel blog. So watch for that.

Me? I haven't been traveling much. We made the move and we settled in. We had the anniversary trip, previous post, and if you want to know the truth we actually had a fight as we were leaving Santa Barbara and hardly spoke all day on the train ride home. After 50 years! Yes, fights still happen. But that evened out, as it always does. (Of course I was right, by the way.) That's the nice thing about 50 years. You've put in so much time, you put these things in perspective.

Well we have been to Sacramento and Petaluma, the week before Thanksgiving. Even though I swore I would not travel I-5 again, we took the car. Had a good time with dear friends in Sacramento and dear kids/grandkids in Petaluma. Traffic jam on the way home on the 210 through Pasadena and east that we could have done without. Then Thanksgiving the next weekend in Palm Desert with sister-in-law and four nieces. And that's about it for the road, except to look for an independent bookstore which required going all the way to Del Mar.

Have I mentioned that Southern California is everything I remembered from my kid days? We had a spate of serious rain (some folks even got flooded) but mostly it's been lovely. It's my climate and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

Okay, next trip is the Sacramento/Petaluma thing again, NOT driving, and I will report on what it is like to take the Amtrak bus to Bakersfield from LA and then up the Valley on the San Joaquin. I go first and spend two nights with Judy (sometimes known as Eeyore) in Sacramento and then catch another train and a thru-way bus to Petaluma, and meet up with the old guy there. We'll be spending a week at sesshin, which is a Buddhist retreat, in Santa Rosa and then another weekend with the kids before training home.

This is probably boring in the planning stages, but maybe there will be adventures to report. And we are talking about going back to Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) for three weeks in May, when the off-season hits. So you'll hear more about that. Frequent flyer miles and off-season rates, a very reasonable way to go. Now that we live in Lotus Land we don't have to escape in the winter. Thank you very much.

50 Years and Counting

In October of 1960 we got married in Altadena on a Friday afternoon, in the back yard of the house where I grew up, and then went out for Chinese food, just the two of us newlyweds. I remember we kept holding our left hands up side by side, admiring our new matching gold bands, so I suppose anyone observing us could have guessed what we'd been up to that day. The plan was to drive to Santa Barbara for Friday and Saturday nights, because Mike had to be back at work on Monday. It's about 100 miles. But we got a late start and stayed in Ventura or Oxnard the first night. That left us with a one-night honeymoon at the beach. I remember we ate fried scallops and chips from a beachside fast food place, sitting at a picnic table, and I have never managed to replicate that experience. I suspect -- no, by now I'm sure -- that it wasn't just the scallops.

Last week we commemorated the 50th anniversary of that weekend by returning to Santa Barbara, this time for three nights and no work to come back to. It was actually next door to the place we stayed in 1960! This one was nicer though, and a great internet special price that made it cheaper too. We're not that sentimental.

The fast food fish place is gone. But there are so many wonderful restaurants, and we took advantage. There's a walk around the yacht harbor to the end of the breakwater, and lots of the recovering population of brown pelicans are in view. The wharf is another nice water walk. And the famous El Paseo mall, smack in the middle of downtown, is beautifully laid out with elegant architectural deail. Santa Barbara is unusual in having such a complete downtown mall, with Nordstrom's and Macy's as anchors. There's a 25¢ shuttle from the foot of the wharf that traverses State Street every 15 minutes or so.

This is only one of the blooming things we saw as we walked the blocks inland from the beach, on our way to and from downtown. Maybe it's the most exotic one, but there are huge hibiscus everywhere, and hundreds of other blooming bushes, and ancient trees with thick trunks, just practically a jungle.

We didn't drive this time. A local bus stops just outside our driveway, and it delivered us to the Escondido Transit Center. From there a light rail line goes to Oceanside. From Oceanside we caught Amtrak's Surfliner to Santa Barbara, and ended up in walking distance from our hotel. It excites my imagination that I can roll my bag out my front door and go anywhere in the world, because there's a frequent shuttle from the train at Union Station in L.A. directly to LAX. It makes me feel viscerally connected.

What happens in reality is a little bit of a drag though -- the romance of the rails isn't so romantic on these commuter runs. It's important to have a book. The 15 miles or so to the coast from Escondido takes an hour on the light rail, because there are 15 stops. The Surfliner train is packed, and in order to get seats together we had to sit backwards, because single individuals take up at least half of the forward facing seats. You have to try not to be irritated by that. We spent the whole way from Oceanside to Los Angeles watching for a chance to get seats together where we could face forward, and at about Anaheim we succeeded. Guess what. In LA the train changes direction on the way out of the station and goes in reverse. On the way home again we just sat backwards from Santa Barbara to L.A., because we knew the game.

But here's the thing. You don't have to drive. You don't have to drive through Los Angeles! And the travel times are very close -- 5-6 hours. The round trip price is good, especially if you are old enough to be celebrating your 50th anniversary.

Too much mall travel

The days have been filled with moving in and getting settled chores, and the only traveling we've done once we made the third and final drive down I-5 from Bellingham WA to Escondido CA is shopping. We've done serious Ikea shopping, and hardware stores, and have spent way too much time in parking lots. I do have a few favorite stores, and my sister-in-law who lives here has introduced me to a cool consignment place called Debra's, where I found the Mexican pottery cat who now presides over our living room.

But yesterday we went on a non-retail outing (although we ended up at the mall, again, looking for lunch and chairs). Kit Carson Park in the south part of Escondido is one of those sprawling regional parks, almost 300 acres, with trails and ponds and picnic tables. And all those trees that brought me back here -- eucalyptus and pepper trees, sycamore and live oak. Those silhouettes, and those smells.

We walked a bit, around the aboretum (not much developed), and hidden away in the middle is Queen Califia's Magic Circle. I don't yet have the words for this. Overwhelming. Here's an image hint, but there's so much more. Like they say, you kinda have to be there. You need to walk through and look closely, see the details, and touch stuff. I think I will go back soon and sit on one of the curvy mosaic benches in the shade and try to get my words around it. If you are in Escondido, maybe to see the Wild Animal Park, it's right on your way from San Diego.