Loving Princess Margaret's beach

El Gaucho asked us if we wanted to share a taxi to the turtle sanctuary, so we agreed to join them. Phoebs diligently stayed behind to work, she is so focused, with the addition of her 10 laps around the boat (I'm pooped after 5 laps especially when the current is strong) and half an hour of exercises.

We were picked up at 10 and went into the town dinghy dock where we caught a taxi called Fat Man, with the skinniest of drivers. It was a lovely drive over the mountain to the other side and then to the Turtle sanctuary at the end of the road along some rugged coastline. We arrived and it was closed, which was very disappointing but Fat Man was soon on the case. Just as we thought we might leave, the old man who runs the show arrived. He's called Brother King, is 84 years old, very articulate and has been running the centre for Hawksbill turtles for over 20 years. He hatches eggs that they collect from the islands, to protect them from being stolen by the locals, rats and mongoose. He supposedly collects only the eggs at the bottom of the nests, that are buried so deep they have no chance of hatching, they each have 160 eggs on average in a nest. He keeps them until they are 3 to 5 years old so that they are big enough not to be eaten by sharks. He's very passionate about them and obviously loves animals, judging from the enormous pack of dogs he has, bizarrely a lot of them were limping with dodgy looking back legs! Hopefully he is helping the turtle population, but the good news is we have seen so many turtles, they certainly don't seem endangered even though they are on the world critically endangered list. The little turtles are 6 months old and very cute as they scream over to where ever you are standing looking for food. Amazingly the hawksbill is omnivorous, eating mainly sponges on the coral, but eat any fish, squid or jelly fish plus any plant matter. It all looks a little run down and I imagine it costs plenty to feed so many little hungry mouths, so I think we are donating to a good cause, even though he has some mixed reviews.

Wild seas on the other side of the island

These 3 year olds look ready to leave!

On our return we stopped at a look out spot and had great views towards Mustique. We also went to a fort on the other side of Admiralty bay, with great views looking back over the bay. The fort had many canons again, now just used for tethering goats!

Admiralty Bay

Princess Margaret beach on the other side of the bay where PolePole is anchored

Port Elizabeth....main town on Bequia

Got back to the boat and joined Phoebs for a bite of lunch before heading off across the bay to snorkel at the headland below the fort where we had just been. It was a great snorkel with loads of fish and the coral looking healthy. We saw a spotty snake, but we have been told it might have been a skinny eel, hmmm I was taking no chances.

Princess Margaret beach with gorgeous colour water

In the evening we picked up the Keller's who we met in the Bahamas last year, and then saw again in Grenada before we went back to the UK. We went to Mac's for Pizzas, which were delicious, it is ages since we last had a pizza, so it was a real treat. Karen is ex S African and has lived in America for many years, and married to an American. They seem to have a dream ticket, they are younger than us and have been retired for over 12 years, they've been campervanning around America and on their Catamaran ever since. They plan to sail around the world. We have just managed to catch them as they leave for St Lucia tomorrow, lucky things had their PCR tests down in Bequia and already have had their results so can move on. They gave us loads of valuable info on their travels around the Grenadines where they have been for a couple of months. Such fun meeting up and comparing journeys. We may be a year behind them crossing the Pacific! They gave us the scary news that a couple of the yachties here in the bay have Covid. We are going to have to be careful.