Term 1 Adventures 2016

Before coming to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, I had made a mental bucket list of things I wanted to see or do while we lived in St. Vincent. In just one term, we were able to do quite a bit.
The first adventure, I had to go on without Luke because he had to study for his quiz the next day. On St. Vincent's Independence Day, I went with some friends from Grace Community Baptist Church to hike the volcano, La Soufriere. The elevation of La Soufriere is 4,048', and it last erupted in 1979.

The trail to hike the volcano goes through a rainforest. It was so beautiful! Very few parts of the trail were flat, in fact, most of it felt like walking up steps.

We finally reached the top, and thankfully it was a pretty clear day. I was able to look down into the crater of the volcano and even see some smoke coming out. If we had proper equipment, we could have hiked down into the crater. There is a very steep trail that you can go on and hang on to a rope to get down and back up to the top.

You can see smoke coming out.

We rested at the top for a bit before hiking over to see the old crater. The views were beautiful!

Eventually, we hiked back down and ate lunch before heading home.

On the ride home, we drove through a banana plantation, and the views of the island coast as the sun was setting were breathtaking. I wish I had been able to stop and capture some photographs!

Our next big adventures occurred at the end of the term. Luke had five days to study for his big exam, so one afternoon on one of his study days, we walked with our neighbors to a beach about thirty minutes away. Brighton Beach is more on the windward side of the island, so we enjoyed the huge waves. It reminded me of the waves at the beaches in Maine, only much warmer water, and more consistently large, strong waves. We had to be careful, since there could be a rip current, but we enjoyed some body surfing and diving into waves. Brighton Beach is one of the black sand beaches. It was pretty strange to be at the beach without white or even light brown sand. 

When we tired of the waves, we enjoyed walking on the beach, looking at crabs and flowers. It was such a beautiful and relaxing time with our friends.

After Luke took his last unified exam of the term, we had three days with nothing to do but relax and enjoy the beautiful island where we live. The day after he took his exam, we slept in and just relaxed all day. After a few months of almost constant studying, I was so glad that Luke could just take a break and relax. The day after that, we went with our friends to a beach called Indian Bay Beach. They had been there before and knew people who lived right near the beach, so we were able to leave our things at their friend's place. It is not really safe to leave your things on the beach without watching them. Indian Bay Beach is much calmer than Brighton Beach. It is more on the leeward side of the island, so I believe we were swimming in the Caribbean Sea instead of the Atlantic Ocean. The sand on this beach is golden, instead of black. 

As soon as we arrived, we walked down the beach a ways and swam out to a rock formation. We had to be very careful not to step on any sea urchins. Our friend Michael had gone cliff jumping off of this rock formation before, so we all climbed up. I tend to be very accident prone, so since I had already scraped my knee climbing up, I decided to only jump once. Luke and Michael jumped a few times, and they even climbed up the rock even higher to jump. Karinne, Michael's wife, and I were a little worried, since they were basically rock climbing without ropes, clinging to the edge of the rock formation and finding little hand and foot holds and proclaiming that it was not scary as long as they kept their bodies close to the rock. Thankfully, we all survived, and enjoyed our jump (only one for Karinne and I) and multiple jumps for the guys. Looking back at the rock when we were back on shore, it looked a little pathetic, but the low spot where I jumped was about ten feet or so. 

The rock formation to the right of the one with the cross on it was where we jumped off of. 

After lunch, the guys made a sand castle. It looked pretty good until the waves washed it away. 

Thankfully, Michael and Karinne had extra equipment to snorkel, since Luke and I had not had enough room to bring ours down the first trip. Snorkeling there was incredible. I have always loved snorkeling, and being able to snorkel over a reef and see a large variety of tropical fish, sea urchins, and an eel was like a dream come true. Luke and I were able to find many shells while we snorkeled. We had such a wonderful time! Just before we left the beach, we took a few pictures. 

The apartment where we were able to keep our things while at the beach had one of St. Vincent's parrots near it. This parrot is the national bird, and its blue, green, and yellow feathers were the inspiration for St. Vincent's flag. 

The next day, some girls from church offered to take us around the island and show us some of the sights. The first place they took us to was Fort Charlotte. This place had definitely been on my bucket list. We drove up a very steep, very narrow, very winding road to reach the fort. 

The views of the island from the fort were incredible!

The fort had been used for a few different things throughout the years, so we were able to walk through it and hear bits and pieces about the history of the place.

 Apparently, at one point, lepers were housed there, and we could see where they bathed them in a pool near the sea, and sadly, where they had tossed some of them off of the cliff. 

After visiting Fort Charlotte, we continued driving up the leeward side of the island where we were able to see the industrial areas, various towns and houses, and Buccament Bay Resort which was the only all inclusive resort on the island until it shut down the day before we drove by. Our next stop was the Layou Petroglyph Park. We were able to see photographs of petroglyphs found all over the island.

 After looking at the photographs, we walked down to the river to see the Layou Petroglyph. The petroglyph was so worn away that it was difficult to see, but it was still pretty interesting.

 The area around it was beautiful as well. We enjoyed watching the river and looking at the various plants.

The leaves on this plant were HUGE!

After looking at the petroglyph, we drove back to Kingstown to go to the Botanical Gardens, another thing on my bucket list. The Botanical Gardens were created in 1765, and it is the oldest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. 

We enjoyed walking through viewing all of the beautiful island flowers, trees, and other plants. 

This is the flower of the cannonball tree. The Vincentians usually call it the brush and comb tree since the flower looks like a brush and a comb. It was the strangest tree I had ever seen. 

We even saw more of the St. Vincent parrots. These parrots had been taught to say hello.

 After the gardens, our friends brought us back to our apartment. It was a beautiful day, and we thoroughly enjoyed getting to see so much of St. Vincent in one day! I'm so grateful for all of the adventures we have had so far, and I am looking forward to checking more things off of my SVG bucket list.